“Movet me ingens scientiarum admiratio, seu legis communis aequitas, ut in nostro sexu, rarum non esse feram, id quod omnium votis dignissimum est.  Nam cum sapientia tantum generis humani ornamentum sit, ut ad omnes et singulos (quoad quidem per sortem cujusque liceat) extendi jure debeat, non vidi, cur virgini, in qua excolendi sese ornandique sedulitatem admittimus, non conveniat mundus hic omnium longe pulcherrimus.”—­ANNAE MARIAE A SCHURMAN EPISTOLAE. (1638.)

“A great reverence for knowledge and the natural sense of justice urge me to encourage in my own sex that which is most worthy the aspirations of all.  For, since wisdom is so great an ornament of the human race that it should of right be extended (so far as practicable) to each and every one, I have not perceived why this fairest of ornaments should not be appropriate for the maiden, to whom we permit all diligence in the decoration and adornment of herself.”

EXPERIMENTS

Why is it, that, whenever anything is done for women in the way of education, it is called “an experiment,”—­something that is to be long considered, stoutly opposed, grudgingly yielded, and dubiously watched,—­ while, if the same thing is done for men, its desirableness is assumed as a matter of course, and the thing is done?  Thus, when Harvard College was founded, it was not regarded as an experiment, but as an institution.  The “General Court,” in 1636, “agreed to give 400 l. towards a schoale or colledge,” and the affair was settled.  Every subsequent step in the expanding of educational opportunities for young men has gone in the same way.  But when there seems a chance of extending, however irregularly, some of the same collegiate advantages to women, I observe that respectable newspapers, in all good faith, are apt to speak of the measure as an “experiment.”

It seems to me no more of an “experiment” than when a boy who has usually eaten up his whole apple becomes a little touched with a sense of justice, and finally decides to offer his sister the smaller half.  If he has ever regarded that offer as an experiment, the first actual trial will put the result into the list of certainties; and it will become an axiom in his mind that girls like apples.  Whatever may be said about the position of women in law and society, it is clear that their educational disadvantages have been a prolonged disgrace to the other sex, and one for which women themselves are in no way accountable.  When Francoise de Saintonges, in the sixteenth century, wished to establish girls’ schools in France, she was hooted in the streets, and her father called together four doctors of law to decide whether she was possessed of a devil in planning to teach women,—­“pour s’assurer qu’instruire des femmes n’etait pas un oeuvre du demon.”  From that day to this we have seen women almost always more ready to be taught than was any one else to teach them.  Talk as you please about their wishing or not wishing to vote:  they have certainly wished for instruction, and have had it doled out to them almost as grudgingly as if it were the ballot itself.