Maboh 12, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



4i3 



society. The social sciences ought to be 

 strongly developed. But training for a 

 democratic society is not limited to a pe- 

 culiar subject. Nothing human is foreign 

 to the purpose of the college. But it is 

 a fair question whether literary study may 

 not be for the college less an end in itself 

 and more an avenue through which one 

 comes to know and sympathize with all 

 sorts and conditions of men. And even 

 the natural sciences need not hesitate to 

 let their bearing on human welfare appear. 



An experimental method and a social 

 standpoint are, I conceive, the two re- 

 spects in which the college should perform 

 its ofSce of liberal training in a way 

 suited to our new conditions. 



In view of the fact that women now 

 form so large an element in our colleges, 

 it may be permitted to point out some 

 special applications of these considera- 

 tions to woman's education on the one 

 hand, and to the determination of woman's 

 place in the social order on the other. 



College education for women has thus 

 far followed essentially the lines laid down 

 by the general system already in vogue. 

 "Equal opportunity" was the watchword 

 at first, and it is probable that any dif- 

 ferentiation in kind might have been re- 

 garded as involving inferiority in standard 

 or value. ""Woman's work" is still, it 

 must be confessed, often treated by the 

 world in general as implying a deprecia- 

 tory estimate. As already noticed, a 

 large number of women, looking forward 

 to the occupation of teaching, have found 

 the existing courses largely vocational. 

 For this, or other reasons, the lack of in- 

 tellectual seriousness has thus far not 

 been so much in evidence as with the men. 

 But as an increasingly larger proportion of 

 the women students will not become teach- 

 ers, the question of connection between col- 

 lege work and after life is likely to become 

 more acute. The need for introducing 



into college more material of a vocational 

 sort, and conversely of permeating wo- 

 man's vocational work of all kinds with a 

 scientific method and a broadly human in- 

 terest, is likely to become increasingly evi- 

 dent. The work of the woman in the 

 home has lagged far behind the occupa- 

 tions of men in point of organization and' 

 of the use of scientific method. An edu- 

 cated woman is apt to feel, vaguely, that 

 the whole household life — once the center 

 of all the industries, and the place where 

 discovery and invention had their chief 

 seat — has now been left behind in the prog- 

 ress of civilization and is no longer a field 

 for the exercise of intellectual powers of 

 the highest order. This inevitably tends 

 to depreciation of such occupation, and to 

 strain in the family life. 



Some would find the remedy by purely 

 sentimental and emotional exaltation of 

 home life. They would in effect continue 

 the separation between the scientific spirit 

 and the home. Is it not more promising 

 to work, rather, along the lines suggested 

 in the case of men's vocations, and try to 

 liberalize women's vocations by scientific 

 methods and a more broadly human stand- 

 point? It is not yet sufficiently recog- 

 nized, for example, that in modern city 

 life the home is virtually coterminous with 

 the city. The sanitation, the food supply, 

 the health of the home are now dependent 

 on municipal conditions; the education of 

 • the children, the influences that surround 

 them, the ideals that influence them are 

 reached chiefly by forces that are civic 

 and philanthropic in a broad sense, rather 

 than domestic in the narrow sense. And 

 further, while the organization of produc- 

 tion, the conduct of litigation, and various 

 other traditional vocations are likely to 

 remain predominantly in the hands of 

 men, it is increasingly apparent that as 

 wealth increases beyond provision for bare 

 necessities woman becomes the more im- 



