Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/27

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IDEALS.
23

and holiness, with dominion over the creatures;' and that 'man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.'

Here all is clear and consistent. Thoroughly to carry out the Christian theory would no doubt lead to some startling consequences; but the theory itself is intelligible and workable. Can the same be said of any other of the standards or tests by which educators might shape their work? The only intelligible principle on which modern writers show anything like unanimity, is that women are intended to supply, and ought to be made, something which men want. What that may be, it is not easy to discover. We are met at the outset by a difficulty as to the nature of the want. We may want what we