INFLUENCE OF CHEISTIANITY ON THE POSITION OP WOMEN. 49 



prominence, in a Lecture on the influence of Christianity upon 

 women. 



Miss Maynard wished to express her strong sense of the courtesy 

 with which she had been treated. Her father had joined the Victoria 

 Institute almost at its inception — she believed about 1867 — and in 

 her childhood she had heard it sj^oken of with great respect. 

 Naturally she had felt some trepidation on being invited to read a 

 paper before such an audience, but her fears had been wholly 

 allayed by the kindness she had received. At the same time, 

 through all the personal courtesy, she did not think some of her 

 actual words had been fairly treated. She said : 



My old friend. Dr. Schofield, seems to be intentionally misunder- 

 standing my words — a thing he has never done before ! If you 

 read the context, you will see that the words " Might is Right " 

 are not quoted with approbation, but rather to show how faulty 

 and evil are the unchecked instincts of human nature, as shown 

 even in our nurseries. 



In some of the subsequent criticisms a good deal that I could 

 not endorse springs from the single fact that the speakers evidently 

 hold the Catastrophic Method of Creation, while I hold that the 

 Evolutional Method is proclaimed by the Bible as well as by Nature, 

 and that the story of the inception and growth of the individual and 

 the race run parallel, and this not only physically but as regards 

 the development of character. 



One criticism alone I should like to answer, and that is from one 

 who evidently has had no opportunity of knowing about the college 

 education of women for the past forty years. There was a time, 

 I know, somewhere between 1870 and 1880, when it was feared that 

 such a training would unfit women for married life — but have those 

 fears been justified ? I have known some hundreds of such students, 

 and should say they were distinctly nobler in aim and more skilful 

 in practice than the girls trained only at home. 



Whether married or unmarried, with the right education we go 

 out into the world as " Mothers," for that is our supreme vocation. 

 At college we may hear lectures on " Citizenship," or on "Childhood 

 and Adolescence," or " The Psychology of Attention," or other 

 such themes that prove very important in training both children 

 and servants, and in any case we learn much of public spirit and of 



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