So with regard to the general question of women's higher education may it be suggested that the moral training, the strengthening of character, is the side which must have precedence and must accompany every step of their education, making them fit to bear heavier responsibilities, to control their own larger independence, to stand against the current of disintegrating influences that will play upon them. To be fit for higher education calls for much acquired self-restraint, and unfortunately it is on the contrary sometimes sought as an opening for speedier emancipation from control. Those who seek it in this spirit are of all others least fitted to receive it, for the aim is false, and it gives a false movement to the whole being. Again, when it is entirely dissociated from the realities of life, it tends to unfit girls for any but a professional career in which they will have—at great cost to their own well-being—to renounce their contact with those primeval teachers of experience.
In some countries they have found means of combining both in a modified form of university life for girls, and in this they are wiser than we. Buds of the same tree have been introduced into England, but they are nipped by want of appreciation. We have still to look to our foundations, and even to make up our minds as to what we want. Perhaps the next few years will make things clearer. But in the meantime there is a great deal to be done; there is one lesson that every one concerned with girls must teach them, and induce them to learn, that is the lesson of self-command and decision. Our girls are in danger of drifting and floating along the current of the hour, passive in critical moments, wanting in perseverance to carry out anything that requires steady effort. They are often forced to walk upon slippery ground; temptations sometimes creep on insensibly, and at others make such sudden attacks that the thing all others to be dreaded for girls is want of courage and decision of character. Those render them the best service who train them early to decide for themselves, to say yes or no definitely, to make up their mind promptly, not because they "feel like it" but for a reason which they know, and to keep in the same mind which they have reasonably made up. Thus they may be fitted by higher moral education to receive higher mental training according to their gifts; but in any case they will be prepared by it to take up whatever responsibilities life may throw upon them.
The future of girls necessarily remains indeterminate, at least until the last years of their education, but the long indeterminate time is not lost if it has been spent in preparatory training of mind, and especially in giving some resistance to their pliant or wayward characters. Thus, whether they devote themselves to the well-being of their own families, or give themselves to volunteer work in any department, social or particular, or advance in the direction of higher studies, or receive any special call from God to dedicate their gifts to His particular service, they will at least have something to give; their education will have been "higher" in that it has raised them above the dead level of mediocre character and will-power, which is only responsive to the inclination or stimulus of the moment, but has no definite plan of life. It may be that as far as exterior work goes, or anything that has a name to it, no specified life-work will be offered to many, but it is a pity if they regard their lives as a failure on that account.
There are lives whose occupations could not be expressed in a formula, yet they are precious to their surroundings and precious in themselves, requiring more steady self-sacrifice than those which give the stimulus of something definite to do. These need not feel themselves cut off from what is highest in woman's education, if they realize that the mind has a life in itself and makes its own existence there, not selfishly, but indeed in a peculiarly selfless way, because it has nothing to show for itself but some small round of unimpressive occupations; some perpetual call upon its sympathies and devotion, not enough to fill a life, but just enough to prevent it from turning to anything else. Then the higher life has to be almost entirely within itself, and no one is there to see the value of it all, least of all the one who lives it. There is no stimulus, no success, no brilliancy; it is perhaps of all lives the hardest to accept, yet what perfect workmanship it sometimes shows. Its disappearance often reveals a whole tissue of indirect influences which had gone forth from it; and who can tell how far this unregistered, uncertificated higher education of a woman, without a degree and with an exceedingly unassuming opinion of itself, may have extended. It is a life hard to accept, difficult to put into words with any due proportion to its worth, but good and beautiful to know, surely "rich in the sight of God,"
CHAPTER XIV.
CONCLUSION.
"Far out the strange ships go:
Their broad sails flashing red
As flame, or white as snow:
The ships, as David said.
'Winds rush and waters roll:
Their strength, their beauty, brings
Into mine heart the whole
Magnificence of things.'"
LIONEL JOHNSON.
The conclusion is only an opportunity for repeating how much there is still to be said, and even more to be thought of and to be done, in the great problem and work of educating girls. Every generation has to face the same problem, and deals with it in a characteristic way. For us it presents particular features of interest, of hope and likewise of anxious concern. The interest of education never flags; year after year the material is new, the children come up from the nursery to the school-room, with their life before them, their unbounded possibilities for good, their confidence and expectant hopefulness as to what the future will bring them. We have our splendid opportunity and are greatly responsible for its use. Each precious result of education when the girl has grown up and leaves our hands is thrown into the furnace to be tried—fired—like glass or fine porcelain. Those who educate have, at a given moment, to let go of their control, and however solicitously they may have foreseen and prepared for it by gradually obliging children to act without coercion and be responsible for themselves, yet the critical moment must come at last and "every man's work shall be manifest," "the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is" (1 Cor. III). Life tries the work of education, "of what sort it is." If it stands the test it is more beautiful than before, its colours are fixed. If it breaks, and some will inevitably break in the trial, a Catholic education has left in the soul a way to recovery. Nothing, with us, is hopelessly shattered, we always know how to make things right again. But if we can we must secure the character against breaking, our effort in education must be to make something that will last, and for this we must often sacrifice present success in consideration of the future, we must not want to see results. A small finished building is a more sightly object than one which is only beginning to rise above its foundations, yet we should choose that our educational work should be like the second rather than the first, even though it has reached "the ugly stage," though it has its disappointments and troubles before it, with its daily risks and the uncertainty of ultimate success. But it is a truer work, and a better introduction to the realities of life.
A "finished education" is an illusion or else a lasting disappointment; the very word implies a condition of mind which is opposed to any further development, a condition of self-satisfaction. What then shall we call a well-educated girl, whom we consider ready for the opportunities and responsibilities of her new life? An equal degree of fitness cannot be expected from all, the difference between those who have ten talents and those who have only two will always be felt. Those who have less will be well educated if they have acquired spirit enough not to be discontented or disheartened at feeling that their resources are small; if we have been able to inspire them with hope and plodding patience it will be a great thing, for this unconquerable spirit of perseverance does not fail in the end, it attains to something worthy of all honour, it gives us people of trust whose character is equal to their responsibilities, and that is no little thing in any position of life; and, if to this steadiness of will is added a contented mind, it will always be superior to its circumstances and will not cease to develop in the line of its best qualities.
It is not these who disappoint—in fact they often give more than was expected of them. It is those of great promise who are more often disappointing in failing to realize what they might do with their richer endowments; they fail in strength of will.