PART III.
Girls and Young Women, Their Education and Training.
Education, considered in its largest sense, has the mission of rendering the youth of both sexes beautiful, healthful, strong, intelligent and honest. Thus it comprehends such physical and moral training as shall most surely conduce to these objects. We have but to glance around us at the dwarfed, miserable, sickly specimens of feminine humanity, which really constitute the rule rather than the exception, to observe at once how far short of the attainment of these ends is our system as actually conducted. The very name of youth should imply beauty, strength, vivacity, and integrity. We have said sufficient elsewhere to show that these attributes in no way pertain to our American youth as a class. We propose briefly, in this connection, to analyze somewhat philosophically, the errors in practice which have conduced to these disasters. It is conceded on all sides that the race is unmistakably deteriorating. With some it is the fashion to charge this upon the advance of centuries, and to say that as the age of the race increases deterioration advances. If this were true of the human family, it ought also to be true of the brute creation; for the same laws which govern the physical condition of the one, are likewise applicable to that of the other. Sheep, cattle, and horses, however, when placed in conditions favorable to their development, increase in fecundity, in size, in strength, and in beauty. It cannot be otherwise with man. But the mens sana in corpore sano
(17)
