CHAPTER VIII.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION.
The seventh count in the Suffrage indictment declared: "He has denied her facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her."
Among the resolutions passed in the first Suffrage convention was one demanding: "Equal rights in the universities," and the first petition presented by Suffrage advocates contained a clause asking that entrance to men's colleges be obtained for women by legal enactment. We note that this is far from being a demand for education for women equal to that given to men in the universities. Men have founded colleges for women, men and women have worked together in securing for woman every facility and opportunity for education of the highest grade; but the "barrier of sex" is not broken down in education. But few of the older colleges for men admit women, and those few, so far as I have learned from conversation with members of their faculties, speak of the arrangement as an experiment, and give the need for economy, combined with a desire to assist women, as a reason for making that experiment. Meantime the knocking at men's literary portals by Suffrage advocates has gone on as vigorously as if women could obtain education in no other way.
In the first Suffrage convention ever held in Massachusetts these two resolutions were adopted: "That political rights acknowledge no sex, and therefore the word 'male' should be stricken from every State constitution;" and "That every effort to educate woman, until you accord to her her rights, and arouse her conscience by the weight of her responsibilities, is futile, and a waste of labor."
The State in which these sentiments were uttered abounded in fine schools for girls, among which were Mount Holyoke and Wheaton seminaries.
A rapid survey of some of the educational conditions that led to the state of things existing when Suffrage associations were formed, will be in place. Learning seemed incompatible with worship early in the Christian era. The faith that worked by love was "to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness." That great battle between the felt and the comprehended, which in this era we have named the conflict between science and religion, was decided in the mind of the apostle to the Gentiles when he wrote: "We know in part, and we prophesy in part; when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." He recalled the accusation, "Thou art beside thyself, much learning hath made thee mad," and he hastened to assure the unlettered fishermen and the simple and devout women who were followers of Christ, that "all knowledge" was naught if they had not love; that even faith was vain if it led to the rejection of the diviner wisdom that a little child could understand.
The great learning of Augustine and the Fathers brought into the Church pagan speculations of God and morality, as well as pagan knowledge in art, science, and literature. The Church became corrupted, and a great outcry was made against the learning itself, which was falsely supposed to be the cause of the degeneration of faith. Symonds says that during the Dark Ages that followed upon this first battle between faith and sight, the meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost; that Homer and Virgil were believed to be contemporaries, and "Orestes Tragedia" was supposed to be the name of an author. Milman says that "at the Council of Florence in 1438, the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople, being ignorant, the one of Greek, and the other of Latin, discoursed through an interpreter." It was near the time of the Reformation that a German monk announced in his convent that "a new language, called Greek, had been invented, and a book had been written in it, called the New Testament." "Beware of it," he added, "It is full of daggers and poison."
But the tradition of the love that book revealed had crept into the heart of the world, and now awoke. Through what struggles the "spirit of all truth" promised by Christ was leading, and would lead the world, the history of civilization can tell. Women shared in some degree the outward benefits of the Revival of Learning. They became in not a few instances Doctors of Law and professors of the great universities that sprang up, as well as teachers, transcribers, and illuminators in the great nunneries. I could give a long and honorable list of names of woman writers and artists, in many lands, from Mediaeval to modern times; and one of the interesting things revealed by such a record would be the number who were working with, or were directly inspired and helped by, a father or a brother. The Court contained some women who, like Lady Jane Grey, upheld the model of purity while acquiring the learning that naturally accompanied wealth. But elegant letters had again become the associate of moral and religious corruption in the courts, and the "ignorance of preaching" arose to combat it, in Cromwell, the Roundheads, the Dissenters, the Covenanters.
Yet sound learning was not to die that Christian truth might live. Of the band of Pilgrims and Puritans that came first to our shores, about one in thirty was college-bred. While subordinating book-knowledge to piety, they had learned scarcely less the dangers of ignorance. Their first college was founded because of "the dread of having an illiterate ministry to the churches when our ministers shall lie in dust." Charles Francis Adams says, in regard to the establishment of Harvard College: "The records of Harvard University show that, of all the presiding officers during the century and a half of colonial days, but two were laymen, and not ministers of the prevailing denomination." He further says that "of all who in early times availed themselves of such advantages as this institution could offer, nearly half the number did so for the sake of devoting themselves to the gospel. The prevailing notion of the purpose of education was attended with one remarkable consequence—the cultivation of the female mind was regarded with utter indifference."