In France there is a magnificent college at Sevres for women, the Eeole Normale Secon daire Superieure, concerning which Professor Darmesteter says " the system for the higher education of women had already produced good results, and he trusted that it was opening up a new era in the education of women." Similar testimony comes from Germany.
There is, of course, another side to the ques tion. The modern objections to an education for girls as complete as that for boys centre round the opinion that such education unfits girls, by the nervous strain to which they are subjected, for their duties in life as wives and mothers. There is evidence in support of that opinion. Professor Loomis, of Yale College, regarding the increasing physical deterioration of American girls, says " the cry to our older colleges and time-honoured universities is: Open your doors fairer part of creation may enter and join in the mental toil and tourna ment! God save our American people from such a misfortune !" This, however, it is right to say, was the opinion of Professor Loomis at a much earlier period than the testimony in favour of university education for girls already given. Dr. Withers Moore of Brighton gave his address as President of the British Medical Association in 1886, on the subject of the higher education of women. He asks: " Is it for the good of the human race, considered as progres sive, that women should be trained and admitted to compete with men in the ways and walks of life, from which heretofore (as unsuited to their sex) they have been excluded by feeling and usage, and largely, indeed, by actual legisla tion?" He answers that "it is not for the good of the human race, considered as progressive, that women should be freed from the restraints which law and custom have imposed upon them, and should receive an education intended to prepare them for the exercise of brain power in competition with men. And I think thus," he continues, "because I am persuaded that neither the preliminary training for such com petition work, nor the subsequent practice of it in the actual strife and struggle for existence, can fail to have upon women the effect of more or less (and rather more than less) indisposing them towards, and incapacitating them for, their own proper function—for performing the part, I mean—which (as the issue of the original differentiation of the sexes) Nature has assigned to them in the maintenance and progressive improvement of the species. . . . This higher education' will hinder those who would have been the best mothers from being mothers at all, or, if it does not hinder them, more or less it will spoil them." Dr. Moore cites in support of his opinion the views of Herbert Spencer, Dr. Matthews Duncan, Sir Benjamin Brodie, the late Dr. Edward H. Clarke (U.S.A.), Dr. Emmet of America, Mr. Lawson Tait of Bir mingham, and others, mostly specialists in dis eases of women.
The general strain of these opinions will be sufficiently indicated by the following from the late Dr. Thorburn, of Owens College, Man chester: "The struggle for existence on the part of single women, and the capacity of a few of their number to ignore, with safety, the physiological difficulties of the majority, are demanding opportunities for education and its honourable as well as valuable distinctions, which cannot and ought not to be refused.
Unfortunately, however, up to this time no means have been found which will reconcile this with the physiological necessity for inter mittent work by the one sex. It becomes, therefore, the duty of every honest physician to make no secret of the mischief which must inevitably accrue, not only to many of our young women, but to our whole population, if the distinction of sex be disregarded." If, however, we carefully consider the bdrden of the objections raised to the full education of girls, and the recent developments of female education in England and America, some way out of the maze created by these differences of authority seems possible. We have to consider that many women find the necessity of earning their livelihood in occupations requiring careful education and a large amount of mental toil, and we find a large and daily increasing num ber of women who value the highest education, not for what it will bring, but for its own sake. The claims of neither of these can be disre garded. Up to the age of twelve years there is no reason why girls should not receive an edu cation equal to, if not identical with, that given to boys. It is after that age that difficulties arise due to the special circumstances of sex. It is about that age that special developments take place in the training of boys dependent upon their intended course through life. If they mean to go in for commercial pursuits, the education is moulded in accordance with that intention ; if for professional life, they go on to training preliminary to the universities. If they are boys who, by reason of their posi tion, can afford to pursue an education whose immediate object is culture, and whose ulterior object may be determined at a much later period, according merely to fancy or inclina tion, the higher education of the secondary school and the university is proceeded with. This age is also the time when, in the case of girls, the special circumstances dependent on her sex require to be taken into consideration. The Americans seem to find that if, after that age, whatever may have been the system adopted before it, the education of girls is directed with special regard to her physiolo gical necessities, that is with regard to the monthly changes which periodically occur, all danger may be averted. This almost implies that girls be taught, after that age, in second ary schools set apart for themselves, where they do not enter into competition with boys, and where, on that account, a periodical relaxation of studies may be permitted to occur without throwing one set of pupils out of line with another in rate of study. Still further to diminish all tendency to overstraining, the beet American opinion seems to indicate the advis ability of abolishing competitive work and ex amination among girls, and it is found that the love of work itself supplies sufficient stimulus to requisite exertion, that, even when compe tition is not engaged in, the eager desire for learning requires careful watching to hold it sufficiently in check. Similarly, colleges for women only, where like care and supervision are exercised, seem preferable to mixed colleges where an unhealthy straining to excel is almost certain to exist. Such a regulation of study, in accordance with girls' physiological require ments, is only possible in an institution exclu sively devoted to girls.