All this lays the basis for a larger study of modern man, history with the biographical element very prominent throughout, with plenty of stories of heroes of virtue, acts of valor, tales of saintly lives and the personal element more prominent, and specialization in the study of dynasties, wars, authorities, and controversies relegated to a very subordinate place. Sociology, undeveloped, rudimentary, and in some places suspected as it is, should have in the curriculum of her higher education a place above political economy. The stories of the great reforms, and accounts of the constitution of society, of the home, church, state, and school, and philanthropies and ideals, should come to the fore.
Art in all its forms should be opened at least in a propædeutic way and individual tastes amply and judiciously fed, but there should be no special training in music without some taste and gift, and the aim should be to develop critical and discriminative appreciation and the good taste that sees the vast superiority of all that is good and classic over what is cheap and fustian.
In literature, myth, poetry, and drama should perhaps lead, and the knowledge of the great authors in the vernacular fostered. Greek, Hebrew, and perhaps Latin languages should be entirely excluded, not but what they are of great value and have their place, but because a smattering knowledge is bought at too high a price of ignorance of more valuable things. German, French, and Italian should be allowed and provided [p. 644] for by native teachers and by conversational methods if desired, and in their proper season.
In the studies of the soul of man, generally called the philosophic branches, metaphysics and epistemology should have the smallest, and logic the next least place. Psychology should be taught on the genetic basis of animals and children, and one of its tap-roots should be developed from the love of infancy and youth, than which nothing in all the world is more worthy. If a woman Descartes ever arises, she will put life before theory, and her watchword will be not cogito, ergo sum, but sum, ergo cogito. The psychology of sentiments and feelings and intuitions will take precedence of that of pure intellect; ethics will be taught on the basis of the whole series of practical duties and problems, and the theories of the ultimate nature of right or the constitution of conscience will have small place.
Domesticity will be taught by example in some ideal home building by a kind of laboratory method. A nursery with all carefully selected appliances and adjuncts, a dining-room, a kitchen, bedroom, closets, cellars, outhouses, building, its material, the grounds, lawn, shrubbery, hothouse, library, and all the other adjuncts of the hearth will be both exemplified and taught. A general course in pedagogy, especially its history and ideals, another in child study, and finally a course in maternity the last year taught broadly, and not without practical details of nursing, should be comprehensive and culminating. In its largest sense education might be the heart of all the higher training of young women.
Applied knowledge will thus be brought to a focus in a department of teaching as one of the specialties of motherhood and not as a vocation apart. The training should aim to develop power of maternity in soul as well as in body, so that home influence may extend on and up through the plastic years of pubescence, and future generations shall not rebel against these influences until they have wrought their perfect work.
The methods throughout should be objective, with copious illustrations by way of object-lessons, apparatus, charts, pictures, diagrams, and lectures, far less book work and recitation, only a limited amount of room study, the function of examination reduced to a minimum, and everything as sug-[p. 645]gestive and germinal as possible. Hints that are not followed up; information not elaborated into a thin pedagogic sillabub or froth; seed that is sown on the waters with no thought of reaping; faith in a God who does not pay at the end of each week, month, or year, but who always pays abundantly some time; training which does not develop hypertrophied memory pouches that carry, or creative powers that discover and produce -- these are lines on which such an institution should develop. Specialization has its place, but it always hurts a woman's soul more than a man's, should always come later, and if there is special capacity it should be trained elsewhere. Unconscious education is a power of which we have yet to learn the full ranges.
In most groups in this series of ideal departments there should be at least one healthful, wise, large-souled, honorable, married and attractive man, and, if possible, several of them. His very presence in an institution for young women gives poise, polarizes the soul, and gives wholesome but long-circuited tension at root no doubt sexual, but all unconsciously so. This mentor should not be more father than brother, though he should combine the best of each, but should add another element. He need not be a doctor, clergyman, or even a great scholar, but should be accessible for confidential conferences even though intimate. He should know the soul of the adolescent girl and how to prescribe; he should be wise and fruitful in advice, but especially should be to all a source of contagion and inspiration for poise and courage even though religious or medical problems be involved. But even if he lack all these latter qualities, though he be so poised that impulsive girls can turn their hearts inside out in his presence and perhaps even weep on his shoulder, the presence of such a being, though a complete realization of this ideal could be only remotely approximated, would be the center of an atmosphere most wholesomely tonic.
In these all too meager outlines I have sketched a humanistic and liberal education and have refrained from all details and special curriculization. Many of the above features I believe would be as helpful for boys as girls, but woman has here an opportunity to resume her exalted and supreme position, to be the first in this higher field, to lead man and pay [p. 646] her debt to his educational institutions, by resuming her crown. The ideal institutions, however, for the two will always be radically and probably always increasingly divergent.
As a psychologist, penetrated with the growing sense of the predominance of the heart over the mere intellect, I believe myself not alone in desiring to make a tender declaration of being more and more passionately in love with woman as I conceive she came from the hand of God. I keenly envy my Catholic friends their Maryolatry. Who ever asked if the holy mother, whom the wise men adored, knew the astronomy of the Chaldees or had studied Egyptian or Babylonian, or even whether she knew how to read or write her own tongue, and who has ever thought of caring? We can not conceive that she bemoaned any limitations of her sex, but she has been an object of adoration all these centuries because she glorified womanhood by being more generic, nearer the race, and richer in love, pity, unselfish devotion and intuition than man. The glorified madonna ideal shows us how much more whole and holy it is to be a woman than to be artist, orator, professor, or expert, and suggests to our own sex that to be a man is larger than to be gentleman, philosopher, general, president, or millionaire.
But with all this love and hunger in my heart, I can not help sharing in the growing fear that modern woman, at least in more ways and places than one, is in danger of declining from her orbit; that she is coming to lack just confidence and pride in her sex as such, and is just now in danger of lapsing to mannish ways, methods, and ideals, until her original divinity may become obscured. But if our worship at her shrine is with a love and adoration a little qualified and unsteady, we have a fixed and abiding faith without which we should have no resource against pessimism for the future of our race, that she will ere long evolve a sphere of life and even education which fits her needs as well as, if not better than, those of man fit his.
Meanwhile, if the eternally womanly seems somewhat less divine, we can turn with unabated faith to the eternally childlike, the best of which in each are so closely related. The [p. 647] oracles of infancy and childhood will never fail. Distracted as we are in the maze of new sciences, skills, ideals, knowledges that we can not fully coordinate by our logic or curriculize by our pedagogy; confused between the claims of old and new methods; needing desperately for survival as a nation and a race some clue to thrid the mazes of the manifold modern cultures, we have now at least one source to which we can turn -- we have found the only magnet in all the universe that points steadfastly to the undiscovered pole of human destiny. We know what can and will ultimately coordinate in the generic, which is larger than the logical order, all that is worth knowing, teaching, or doing by the best methods, that will save us from misfits and the waste ineffable of premature and belated knowledge, and that is in the interests and line of normal development in the child in our midst that must henceforth ever lead us; which epitomizes in its development all the stages, human and prehuman; that is the proper object of all that strange new love of everything that is naive, spontaneous, and unsophisticated in human nature. The heart and soul of growing childhood is the criterion by which we judge the larger heart and soul of mature womanhood, and these are ultimately the only guide into the heart of the new education which is to be, when the school becomes what Melanchthon said it must be -- a true workshop of the Holy Ghost -- and what the new psychology, when it rises to the heights of prophecy, foresees as the true paradise of restored intuitive human nature.
Notes
[1] The Psychology of Woman. Pop. Sci. Mo., June, 1895 See also Ellis: Man and Woman. London, p. 409.
[2] Die mittlere Lebensdaur in Stadt u. Land. Leipzig, 1897.
[3] Ueber den physiolog. Schwachsinn des Weibes. Fifth ed. Halle, 1903.
[4] The Mental Traits of Sex. Chicago Univ. Press, 1903.
[5] The Chances of Death.
[6] Variation in Man and Woman. Pop. Sci. Mo., January, 1903.
[7] The Condition of Woman from a Zoological Point of View. Two articles. Pop. Sci. Mo., June, 1879.
[8] The Influences of Woman in the Evolution of the Human Race. Natural Science, August, 1897 p. 89.
[9] Female Hygiene, by H. R. Storer, M.D. California State Board of Health, 1871 and in many other publications.
[10] Sex in Education, or a Fair Chance for the Girls, by Edward H. Clarke, M.D. Boston, 1873.
[11] The Education of American Girls. New York, 1874.
[12] The Second Decade of Life. Cincinnati Lancet and Observer, 1877, p. 342.
[13] American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences. New York, 1881.
[14] The Education of Girls as Connected with their Growth and Physical Development. Sanitarian, 1879.
[15] De la Menstruation dens les Etablissements Consacrès à l'Education des Jennes Filles. Rev. de Hygiene et de Police Sanitarie, 1880, ii, p. 605 et sec.
[16] Effects in Woman of Imperfect Hygiene of Sex Functions. Am. Jour. of Obstet., 1882, p. 161.
[17] Female Education from a Medical Point of View, by T. S. Clouston, M.D. Pop. Sci. Mo., 1884, two articles, pp. 214, 319.
[18] Female Education from a Medical Point of View, by John Thorburn, M. D. Manchester, 1884.
[19] Menstrual Disorders in Schoolgirls. The Texas Sanitarium, June, 1885. J. T. Wilson, M. D. See also subsequent discussion.
[20] See e. g. his Doctor and Patient. Philadelphia, 1888, passim, and many other of his writings.
[21] Plain Words about the Woman Question. Pop. Sci. Mo., December, 1889.
[22] Revue Scientifique, 1890, p. 460.
[23] Brit. Med. Jour., vol, i, 1892.
[24] Sex in Education, by Sir James Crichton Browne, M. D. Educational Review, 1892, p. 164.
[25] The Waste of Woman's Intellectual Force, by M. G. Van Rensselaer, M.D. Forum, 1892, p. 616.
[26] American Life and Physical Deterioration, by Cyrus Edson, M. D. North Am. Rev., October, 1893.
[27] Anatomie, Physiologie und Hygiene des Geschlechtsreifen Sohnes. München, 1894.
[28] Der Geschlechtstrieb: Eine socialmed. Studie, 1895.
[29] Remarks on the Education and Training of Girls of the Easy Classes at about the Period of Puberty. Brit. Med. Journal, vol. ii, 895, p. 1405 et seq.
[30] Puberty in Girls and Certain of its Disturbances, by J. Madison Taylor, M. D. Pediatrics, July 15, 1896.
[31] Menstruation and Some of its Effects upon the Normal Mentalization of Woman. M. M. Smith, M. D. Memphis Med: Month., August, 1896, p. 393.
[32] Independent, May 30, 1901.
[33] Health Statistics of Women College Students, by Annie G. Howes. Boston, 1885.
[34] Health and Sex in Higher Education, by John Dewey. Pop. Sci. Mo., 1886.
[35] The Influence of College Life on Health, G..A. Preston, M. D. Communications of Mass. Med. Sec., Boston, 1895, p. 167.
[36] Miss Preston describes typical cases of girls who ought not to go to college. One gave up her leisure for months to entrance conditions, and overwork brought overwhelming desire to systematize. Everything has its exact place, and if a caller moves it slightly, the discomfort is intense until she can replace it. If she writes a letter, she prefers a friend present so that she can have courage to seal it at once rather than look it over again and again to make sure that everything is just right. If not, she would be dissatisfied, tear it up, write another just as inaccurate, and so on. Every night she arranges a precise program for all the next day, and is miserable if it can not be carried out to the letter. She is obliged to make a bedtime review of even the trivialities of every day, striving to recall every word she has heard or spoken. This began as a memory drill, but is now an obsession. She also has to make lists of everything she has done or intends to do, and hoards these up for reference knowing it is very silly, but she just can not help it. All these habits are stronger just after a recitation or a visit. If she wakes at night, she must go through some painful routine; translations must be many times revised, and even then she made poor recitations. She was at last prevailed upon to give up study and quite recovered.
Another student of nervous debility, in love with an intimate girl friend as morbid and nervous as she, had cervical and spinal pressures, twitchings in the right arm, indigestion, etc. She stopped study a year and was greatly improved. Another delicate girl student living at home was subject to strange fears, had always to count the steps upstairs and feared terrible things if the last one was an odd number and had to go back and end with an even one. When away from home, she was always alarmed at the ringing of a door-bell or a knock, fearing ill tidings from home.
[37] Health of Woman Students in England, by Alice Hayes. Education, January, 1891.
[38] The American Girl of To-day. President's Address, Am. Gyn. Sec.. Washington, 1900.
[39] Fed. Sem., vol, iii, June, 1896, p. 469.
[40] Normal Menstruation and Some of the Factors Modifying it. Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, April, May, June, 1901, p. 178.
[41] A Comparison of Coeducation and Women's Colleges. Overland Mo., 1890, p. 443.
[42] Overland Mo., May, 1889, p. 556
[43] Pop. Sci. Mo., 1886, p. 606.
[44] Statistics of College and Non-College Women. Am. Statistical Ass'n, June, 1900
[45] Marriage-Rate of College Women. Century, October, 1895, p. 946.
[46] College Women and Matrimony again, by Frances M. Abbott, M. D. Century, 1896, p. 796.
[47] Education of Women, by M. Carey Thomas. Monographs on Education in the United States, 1899, p. 36.
[48] The Marriage of Women College Graduates. Anon. Nature, September 24, 1890.
[49] College Women and Matrimony again, by Frances M. Abbott, M. D. Century, 1896.
[50] See for details the study of Dr. Theodate Smith and myself on Marriage and Fecundity of College Men and Women. Fed. Sem., September, 1903, vol. x, pp. 275-34.
[51] Miss Smith: Op. cit., p. 280.
[52] The New England Family, by Nathan Allen, M. D. New England Magazine, 1882.
[53] Vital Statistics of Massachusetts from 1856 to 1895, by S. W. Abbott.
[54] Deterioration of Puritan Stock and its Causes, by Dr. Ellis. New York, 1894. Published by the author.
[55] Sterility in Woman. Gulstonian Lectures, by J. Matthew Duncan. London, 1889.
[56] Fecundity, Fertility, Sterility, etc., 1877.
[57] Étude sur l'hérédité. St. Petersburg, 1894.
[58] An Estimate of the Degrees of Legitimate Natality, etc. Phil. Trans. of the Royal Soc., B. Part II, 1895, pp. 781-875.
[59] Ueber den Einfluss des Elterlichen Alters auf die Lebenskraft der Kinder. Jahrbuch f. Nat. Oekon. u. Statistik. Third ser., vol, iv, p. 518.
[60] Proc. Royal Sec., vol. lv, p. 18 et seq.
[61] Maurel,[62] in an interesting study of the conditions which modify masculinity, finds it to be augmented by the youth of the parents, especially the father, when conception takes place nearest the period of marriage, also by the complete maturity of the ovum and perhaps also of the male element, and the vigor of the parents The higher classes develop less masculinity in general than the lower. He also finds that the proportion of male to female births, which in Europe and India is greater in about the same degree, does not hold of the African races. Reduced masculinity means real social deficit, and is, therefore, one of the best criteria of the vigor of a class of the population. Emigration, which in general favors natality, diminishes masculinity, while crossing among the Neo-Latin races and precocious marriages increase it, and syphilis, alcoholism, and arthritism diminish it. He holds that femininity is a product of enfeebled fecundation, and that paternity is a more important fact in sex determination than maternity.
[62] Rev. Scientifique, April 4, 1903.
[63] The Fecundity of the Native and Foreign Born Population in Massachusetts. The Quart. Jour. of Economics, November, 1901, and February, 1902.
[64] The Increasing Sterility of American Women. Jour. of Am. Med. Ass'n, October, 1901.
[65] Health and Fertility of Educated Women. Med. Record, 1885, p. 407.
[66] Woman and Skilled Labor, by Frances E. White, M. D. Penn. Mo., July, 1875.
[67] Mutterschaft und geistige Arbeit, von Adele Gerhard and Helene Simon. Berlin, 1901, p. 333.
[68] See Marriage and Fecundity of College Men and Women. Ped. Sem., September, 1903, vol. x, pp. 275-314.
[69] The cause of race decline is not education. Pop. Sci. Monthly, June, 1903.
[70] Childbirth in New South Wales. A Study in Statistics. Sydney, 1899.
[71] Biomechanik. E. Mehnert, Jena, 1898.
[72] The Only Child in a Family. Fed. Sem., April, 1898, vol. v, pp. 475-496.
[73] David Starr Tordan: The Higher Education of Women. Pop. Sci. Mo., Dec., 1902.
[74] Coeducation. A series of essays by various authors, edited by Alice Woods. With an introduction by M. E. Sadler. London, 1803, p. 148 et seq.
[75] The Evolution of Ideals. W. G. Chambers, Fed. Sem., March, 1903, vol. x, p. 101 et seq. Also, B. Warner: The Young Woman, &c., New York, 1903, pp. 218.
[76] The Psychology of Woman. London, 1899.
[77] Physical Development of Women and Children, by Miss M. E. Allen. Am. Ass'n for Phys. Ed., April, 1890.
[78] Forum, September, 1891. See also Bunge: Die zunehmende Unfähigkeit der Frauen ihre Kinder zu stillen. München, 1903, 32 S. Also President Harper's Decemial Report, p. XCIV., et seq.
[79] Forum, 1891, p. 4.
[80] See vol, i, p. 213 et seq.