Ought she not to have been educated into so wide a horizon of thought that she herself, and her affairs, her loves, and hates, should not loom up before her in such disproportionate size? A woman is to live in her affections? But what if her affections have been outraged, betrayed, or crushed? The sentiment is a very good one, but it is but sentiment still, and our American girls will not be less strong in their affections if we educate them into thought and knowledge, as well as into emotion and blind belief. If the mere religious feeling which belonged to the child is not led over into a something stronger and surer, it becomes morbid and degenerates into sentimentality and mysticism. Can we afford to let the strong feeling in our American girls be lost for all real good, in this way? Shall we not rather direct it by a sound religious education, into more healthy channels? In such a completed education alone can we find the ground for any active acceptance of our lot. “The constant new birth out of the grave of the past, to the life of a more beautiful future, is the only genuine reconciliation with destiny.”
Only when we have accomplished such an education as this for our American girls, the best material the world has ever yet seen, may we safely trust the interests of future generations to their strong, intelligent, and religious guidance.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] I am following here, as elsewhere, the direction indicated by the German philosopher, my obligations to whom I have before acknowledged, and from whose work on the Science of Pedagogy I have so often quoted.
[25] We may, from the same cause, expect soon to detect signs of the same trouble, to a marked degree, in Russia.
[26] Plato, Rep., Book III.
[27] Pedagogics as a System. Rosenkranz, p. 83, Published by William T. Harris, St. Louis, Mo.