“If the result to the family is such as I have described what must be the effect on the race? A slow but sure degeneration. And has this not taken place? Is the race now such as you read of it in early times before the Mogul invasion brought the Zenana and child-marriage in its train? Where are the Rajputs and the Mahrattas with their manly exercises and their mental vigour? For centuries you have been children of children, and there is no surer way of becoming servants of servants.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos,” p. 9).
Id.... “If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (Letter to Talleyrand).
8.—“The mother free confers her freedom and her grace.”
“The child follows the blood of the mother; the son of a slave or serf father and a noble woman is noble. ‘It is the womb which dyes the child,’ they say in their primitive language.... ‘The woman bears the clan,’ say the Wyandot Indians, just as our ancestors said ‘The womb dyes the child!’”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Ch. XI., XVII.).
XLI.
1.—“By her the progress of our future kind.”
“What may man be? Who can tell? But what may woman be
To have power over man from cradle to corruptible grave?”
—William Blake (“Jerusalem”).
Id.... “The application of the Pfeiffer bequest, ‘for charitable and educational purposes in favour of women,’ has been delayed by legal difficulties, but the Attorney General has now submitted to the Court of Chancery a first list of awards. Details given in the Journal of Education show that Girton and Newnham Colleges receive £5,000 each, whilst Bedford College, Somerville Hall, the New Hospital for Women, the Maria Grey Training College, and a number of other institutions benefit by slightly smaller sums. The bequests will doubtless be welcomed by the recipients, for all the institutions included so far are doing useful work with very inadequate means, and it is to be hoped that the generous example of the London merchant and his literary wife will be often followed in the future. Women’s education—and girls’, too, for that matter—in this country is almost unendowed, and is yet expected to produce results equal to those gained in the richly endowed foundations for boys and men. The interest of the Pfeiffer bequest, however, lies rather in the spirit that prompted it and in the views of progress held by the donors than in the generosity of the gift or the precise manner of its distribution. In a letter explaining his wishes, Mr. Pfeiffer remarks:—