Page:Women of distinction.djvu/448

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.

propriety of giving to woman what is known as the higher education. By this term we mean that education involving the same head-training, having for its basis the same general studies deemed essential to our brothers, that education acquired only at the college and the university.

The very fact that woman has a mind capable of infinite expansion is, in itself, an argument that she should receive the highest possible development. Man is placed here to .grow. It is his duty to make the most of the powers within him. Has any one a right to thwart him in these efforts, to shut him out from the means to this end, to say to him as concerns his educational training, "Thus far thou shalt go and no further"? This being true of man specifically, is no less true of man generically. Poets and novelists all agree in according to woman a heart, but in the practical treatment of subjects the fact should not be overlooked that she has also a head. The Martineaus, Hemans, Hannah Mores, George Eliots and Mrs. Brownings have not failed to make this demonstration. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that most women are intellectually inferior to most men, still, in the words of Plato, "Many women are in many things superior to many men." Should not those who have capacity and inclination be allowed to receive this higher education? Should not those who have a gift be allowed to develop and to exercise it? If a woman has a message for the world, must she remain dumb? Notwithstanding woman has been hedged in by certain artificial limitations from time almost immemo-