ies
impracticable and dangerous. We cannot follow them everywhere, and
therefore, more than in any other country must we educate them, so that
they will follow and rule themselves. But no platform of premise and
conclusion, however logical and exact, is broad enough to place under an
uneducated mind. Nothing deserving the name of conviction can have a
place in such. Prejudices, notions, prescriptive rules, may exist there,
but these are not sufficient as guides of conduct.

Education, of course, signifies, as a glance at the etymology of the
word shows us, a development--an unfolding of innate capacities. In its
process it is the gradual transition from a state of entire dependence,
as at birth, to a state of independence, as in adult life. Being a
general term, it includes all the faculties of the human being, those of
his mortal, and of his immortal part. It is a training, as well of the
continually changing body, which he only borrows for temporary use from
material nature, and whose final separation is its destruction, as of
the changeless essence in which consists his identity, and which, from
its very nature, is necessarily immortal. The education of a girl is
properly said to be finished when the pupil has attained a completely
fashioned will, which will know how to control and direct her among the
exigencies of life, mental power to judge and care for herself in every
way, and a perfectly developed body. However true it may be, that life
itself, by means of daily exigencies, will shape the Will into habits,
will develop to some extent the intelligence, and that the forces of
nature will fashion the body into maturity; we apply the term Education
only to the voluntary training of one human being who is undeveloped, by
another who is developed, and it is in this sense alone that the process
can concern us. For convenience, then, the subject will be considered
under three main heads, corresponding to the triple statement made
above.

Especially is it desirable to place all that one may have to say of the
education of girls in America on some proved, rational basis, for in no
country is the work of education carried on in so purely empirical a
way. We are deeply impressed with its necessity; we are eager in our
efforts, but we are always in the condition of one "whom too great
eagerness bewilders." We are ready to drift in any direction on the
subject. We adopt every new idea that presents itself. We recognize our