Page:University Education for Women.djvu/18

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UNIVERSITY EDUCATION FOR WOMEN

should have such opportunity as her parents can afford her of developing her capabilities.

This brings us back to the University, The University is primarily the place for those whose tastes and capabilities are of the intellectual or studious order, or who desire to take up work for which academic study is a necessary preliminary. Those who wish to take up professions for which the Universities prepare—in the ease of women chiefly teaching and medicine—will of course if possible go to a University. Those who wish to take up social and philanthropic or administrative work in which economic problems occur, or in which historical or theological or scientific knowledge may be useful, will often find University education of direct value: and there are other employments for which the Universities offer at least part of the preparation required. But we need not restrict ourselves to these strictly utilitarian considerations. Speaking generally the women who should be encouraged to go to Universities are those who, whatever future lies before them, have marked intellectual tastes, or are capable of developing them,—those who most desire to learn for learning's sake. A quotation from a student's letter written at the end of her first term not very long ago will show the attitude of mind I have in view. "I must repeat again," she says, "how I loved my first term and what a revelation it has been to me, having inspired me with irresistible longings to read, learn and inwardly digest. I feel as if the scales had fallen from my eyes at last and I see long avenues before me which I may tread and be aided in that journey." This girl I may say had a professional aim in view though I believe it was not in her case a pecuniary necessity, but she had caught the right spirit, the love of knowledge for its own sake and apart from its examinational and professional value, and whether she practises her profession or not she will have profited by her University education. Among women of this sort will be found a few who will add to our literary stores, and a few who will help in advancing knowledge by