The Higher Education of Women. 91 



or whether an annexe should be established, where women were 

 educated in different rooms from the male students. The 

 question now arose as to whether the education of men and 

 women was best carried on jointly or in separate colleges each 

 by themselves. The advantages of mixed education were 

 numerous and obvious. There was — First, the same standard 

 of teaching and examination ; second, the distinct economy of 

 having only one staff of teachers ; third, the stimulus of a 

 healthful rivalry in learning between the sexes ; and fourth, the 

 greater likelihood that similar chances might open up to both 

 in the after race of life. On the other hand, there were plain 

 physiological difficulties arising out of differences in organisation 

 and bodily strength that told the other way. It was for that 

 reason he thought that, while mixed classes should remain the 

 rule in the provincial colleges of the country, there would 

 always be some women who preferred separate instruction in 

 colleges of their own, and for whom education on the lines of 

 Girton, Newnham, and the Oxford Halls was much better than 

 anything they could learn in mixed classes could ever be. It 

 must also be remembered, that the mixed system might develop 

 an unhealthy as well as a healthy rivalry. If women began to 

 think it one end of education to outstrip the other sex if possible 

 in every line of effort immense evils would result, and a reaction 

 hurtful to themselves must set in whenever the idea of rivalry 

 became dominant. There should be some colleges exclusively 

 for men, others exclusively for women, others mixed, and open 

 to both, and others open indiscriminately to all. The differences 

 which existed in our social strata necessitated differences in our 

 educational methods as well as in our educational material. It 

 was to be hoped that the recent successes in examinations, over 

 which the whole educated world rejoiced, would not lead many 

 to draw the illogical and extravagant conclusion that all spheres 

 should be opened up to women. Such a result would first injure 

 women themselves, and then react injuriously on men, for the 

 gentler a woman was the more she despised an effeminate man, 

 and the stronger a man was the more he disliked a masculine 



