forever from honorable motherhood, gone to dire destruction, because untrained in anything which would insure to them a self-respecting independence.
Just what is meant by the term "being trained for motherhood," or why this training should be designated as "one of the two great channels of expenditure of physiological force," I find myself unable to understand. But it may safely be asserted that any training which exhausts without more than correspondingly strengthening a part, no matter where applied or for what purpose, should straightway be condemned. The "competition" and the "terrible strain" theories seem to me to have but little foundation. In my university life I saw nothing to confirm them. The work was pleasant and inspiring, and I am sure I can safely say that for the most part we enjoyed it. We did not trouble ourselves about the relative weight of our brains, and, as in the district school or the high-school, so here, it mattered little whether it was Jane or John who stood best; and it was quite as likely to be Jane as John.
As I recall the animated faces, the healthy bloom, and high spirits of the young women, I fail to find any ground for the assumption that their work was in any sense done at the expense of their vitality. On the contrary, I know that in many cases there was decided improvement in health from the beginning to the end of the course.
All this much-talked-of "physiological expenditure" is a myth. The intellect is quickened and strengthened by proper use, not at the expense of any other organ, but in and of itself. It is with this as with the muscles: strength comes with use. The fault has lain, not in the training of one set of organs, but in the neglect of others. The balance of health has thus been lost, and all parts have suffered in unison. To correct this, to establish a harmonious development of mind and body, is what true higher education aims to accomplish; and in doing this it is striking at the very root of woman's disabilities.
Seeing daily, as I do, young women in college in far better health than young women in society, or living in pampered idleness at home; seeing them healthier as seniors than they were as freshmen; knowing that my records tell me that they average a smaller number of excuses because of illness than do those of the men's colleges with which I am able to compare data, and knowing from statistical evidence that woman college graduates enjoy a sum total of twenty per cent better health than the average woman, how can I conclude otherwise than that college-work, per se, is not injurious to health, nor incompatible with the best good of the sex and the race?[1]
- ↑ President Bascora, of the University of Wisconsin, says on the same point: "The young women do not seem to deteriorate with us in health, but quite the opposite. . . . It has long seemed to me plain that a young woman who withdraws herself from society and gives herself judiciously to a college course is far better circumstanced in reference to health than the great majority of her sex.
