t, disable her from fulfilling
this duty, and to remain a child does not give the ability to educate
children."[21] The power of independent thinking, without which there
can be no judgment, and which alone frees the soul, the real mother must
have, and our girls should be most carefully educated into it.

Which course, then, will be best to fit the average child for her future
work in the active world, a course of private lessons, or the life of
the school, which is in itself a miniature world, where she learns to
measure her own acquirements and character by those of others, and is
educated into the knowledge that individual caprice cannot be allowed as
a rule of conduct? And is there any country in the world whose citizens
need to learn a respect for law more than in America?

As to the branches which girls have the ability successfully to pursue,
the question is no longer an open one. The experiments at Oberlin,
Antioch, the Northwestern University, Michigan University, Vassar and
many other institutions, not to go out of our own country, are
sufficiently positive and conclusive to convince the most
incredulous.[22] If the question be as to the branches which she ought
to pursue, that is also to some extent settled. The courses of study
which are laid down for students in European and American universities,
represent simply the condensed judgment of centuries of experience and
induction as to the means by which the human intellect may be most
surely strengthened and developed. They are the results of long
generalization, and are founded deep on a knowledge of the human mind.
Shall we venture to depart from the old ways, and to decry the customs
handed down to us from the ages gone by? Do we not know that the wisdom
of twenty centuries, as to the best means for developing the human mind,
is greater than the knowledge of one? Since we are "heirs of all the
ages," why throw away our inheritance?

In one word, our girls should be so educated intellectually that there
will no longer be any internal barriers to their progress, and when this
is done they will find that the external barriers, against which they
fret themselves, have disappeared. When Britomart had fairly conquered
and bound with his own chains the enchanter within the castle, she
found, as she passed out, that the castle walls, the iron doors and the
fire which had barred her entrance had no longer any existence. We can
yet afford to learn lessons of wisd