Perhaps it involves more for
women even than for men; indeed it must do so if we are to adhere to our
conception of women as more complex than men, having all the
possibilities of men in less or greater measure, and also certain
supreme possibilities of their own. Whatever complete living may mean
for men, it cannot mean for women anything less than all that is implied
in Wordsworth's great line--
"Wisdom doth live with children round her knees."
That line was written in reference to the unwisdom of a man, Napoleon,
the greatest murderer in recorded time, and I believe it to be true of
men, but it is pre-eminently true of women. There needs no excuse for
quoting from Herbert Spencer, since we have already accepted his
definition of the subject of education, a notable passage which is
perhaps at the present time the most needed of all the wisdom with which
that great thinker's book on education is filled:--
"The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely
overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improvement of
our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most pressing
desideratum, to prepare the young for the duties of life, is
tacitly admitted to be the end which parents and schoolmasters
should have in view; and, happily, the value of the things taught,
and the goodness of the methods followed in teaching them, are now
ostensibly judged by their fitness to this end.
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