DAUGHTERS 325 



woman's highest vocation, if she can get it which is. of 

 course, marriage and motherhood. 



The word superficial, its dictionary synonym being 

 shallow, is one that will, I fear, be a rock of offence to 

 many ; and yet I know none better. Mr. Morley, in his 

 lecture on Popular Culture, expresses what I mean when 

 he says : ' What I should like to see would be an 

 attempt to compress the whole history of England into 

 a dozen or fifteen lectures lectures, of course, accom- 

 panied by catechetical instruction. I am not so extrava- 

 gant as to dream that a short general course of this kind 

 would be enough to go over so many of the details as 

 it is desirable for men to know ; but details in popular 

 instruction, though not in the study of the writer or the 

 University professor, are only important after you have 

 imparted the largest general truths. It is the general 

 truths that stir a life-like curiosity as to the particulars 

 which they are the means of lighting up.' That is what 

 I mean by superficial teaching, something which gives a 

 desire in the child or the girl to learn. Instead of boring 

 her to death with what teachers consider the roots and 

 foundations of knowledge, and which no child can under- 

 stand or appreciate, I would strive to arouse curiosity, 

 and trust that she would go deeper herself when the 

 desire for knowledge came. 



Mr. Morley goes on to say : ' Another point is worth 

 thinking of, besides the reduction of history for your 

 purposes to a comprehensive body of rightly grouped 

 generalities. Dr. Arnold says somewhere that he wishes 

 the public might have a history of our present state of 

 society traced backwards. It is the present that really 

 interests us ; it is the present that we seek to understand 

 and to explain. I do not in the least want to know what 

 happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my 

 way more clearly through what is happening to-day. I 



