Love to all,
C. A. S. Hall.
2715 N Street [same as 18 Gay St]
Washington D.C. March 28th 1891
My Dear Boys [Angelo and Percival at college], ... I am sorry the Boston girl is getting to be so helpless. I think all who have to keep some one to take care of them had better leave for Europe on the first steamer.
I think co-education would be a great help to both boys and girls. I have never liked schools for girls alone since Harriette Lewis and Antoinette McLain went to Pittsfield to the Young Ladies Institute.
I have just been reading Mrs. Stanton’s advice to her sons, “When you marry do choose a woman with a spine and sound teeth.” Now I think a woman needs two kinds of good back-bone.
As for Astronomical work, and all kinds of scientific work, there may not be the pressing need there was for it a few centuries ago; but I think our modern theory of progress is nearly right as described by Taine, “as that which founds all our aspirations on the boundless advance of the sciences, on the increase of comforts which their applied discoveries constantly bring to the human condition, and on the increase of good sense which their discoveries, popularized, slowly deposit in the human brain.” Of course Ethical teaching must keep pace. It is well to keep the teaching of the Prometheus Bound in mind, that merely material civilization is not enough; and must not stand alone. But the knowledge that we get from all science, that effects follow causes always, will teach perhaps just as effectively as other preaching.
This makes me think of the pleasant time Sam and I had when he was home last, reading George Eliot’s Romola. This work is really a great drama, and I am much impressed with the power of it.
I would say Philosophy AND Science now and forever one and inseparable....