But I am convinced that their relative
number is not large.
The great majority of those girls who are nowadays subjected to what we
call "higher education" are of the normal type; and this is none the
less true because the proportion of the anomalous is doubtless higher
here than in the feminine community at large. The ordinary observation
of those teachers who year by year see young girls at the beginning of
their higher education will certainly confirm the statement that by far
the greater number of them are of the ordinary feminine type. If this be
so, the necessary inference is that education _has_ a potent influence,
and that it must be held accountable for the observed facts of later
years, whether those facts please or displease us.
The human being is the most adaptable--that is to say, educable--of all
living creatures. This is true of women as well as men. The response of
girls to ideas, ideals, suggestion, the spirit of the group, is an
unquestioned thing. Further, there are basal facts of physiology,
ultimately dependent on the law of the conservation of energy, and the
circumstance that you cannot eat your cake and have it, which work
hand-in-hand, on their own effective plane, with the psychological
influences already referred to. All physiology and psychology lead us to
expect those results of "higher education" upon its subjects or victims
which, in fact, we find, and which, in the main, are indeed its results
and not dependent upon the exceptional natures of those subjected to it.
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