Page:University Education for Women.djvu/10

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UNIVERSITY EDUCATION FOR WOMEN

professional needs, but the spirit in which they are studied by the academic teachers and, under their influence, by the students, may be and should be an essentially liberal spirit. The best teachers are inspired by and endeavour to communicate a love of knowledge for its own sake, and they will never lose sight of the importance of developing the intellectual faculties.

At a University too the student is brought under the influence of other students studying other subjects and especially of teachers in close communication with teachers of other subjects; and more important still he is placed in an atmosphere where the mere acquisition of knowledge is not the sole object, but the advancement of knowledge is an important part of the work of the place. It is in these last respects, perhaps more than in any others, that the University differs from the merely professional or technical college or institution. Hence the student, par excellence, whose sole aim is knowledge for its own sake without arrière pensée—without thought of the use it is to be in enabling its possessor to win prizes, to earn a livelihood, or even to make himself more useful in practical work afterwards—will always be specially valued in a University worthy of its name. Such students are, we may say, a leaven, helping to leaven the whole lump with a truly academic spirit. In this spirit all earnest students may and ought to share, whatever their duties and capacities; but the number of those who can afford to pursue knowledge alone, with entire singleness of aim and concentration of effort, must, from force of circumstances, always be comparatively few.

From this preliminary consideration of what Universities provide let us turn to the other side of the question—what it is that girls want or that we want for them. Speaking, quite generally, we shall all agree that we want every woman's life to be effective. We want her to be happy herself and to take her full share in making others happy, in helping on the world's work and leaving it if possible a little better than she found it. We should