ise and for girls to sit
still, the need of separation would be much less than it is, for the
boys could be sent to the gymnasium while the girls remained in the
school room. But systematic exercise is even more necessary for the
latter than for the former, because they are likely to take it
spontaneously. These exercises must differ in kind and in intensity from
those performed by boys, and for this and other reasons, are best
pursued alone.

The moral differentiation of the sexes requires separate education, for
analogous reasons. Moral differences, though less marked than physical,
are more so than intellectual, and any system of education that might be
supposed to efface these, would be an injury to society, that requires,
not uniformity, but increasing complexity, by means of increasing
variety of character among its members. Thus the education of adolescent
girls should include certain training in the care of children, and other
duties that either permanently, or for the time being, must fall to them
and not to boys. But a more important moral reason for separate
education consists in the desirability of prolonging as late as
possible, the first unconsciousness of sex. At this age the stimulus
derived from co-education, acting upon imperfect organizations, is
liable to be other than intellectual--liable to excite emotions equally
ridiculous and painful from their pre-maturity, and therefore to
increase the very danger most to be averted from this period of
life--the excessive development of the emotional functions and organs of
the nervous system.

But, by the age of eighteen, the reasons against the co-education of the
sexes have ceased to exist, and imperative reasons in its favor have
come into play. The first we have already indicated. Unless the
education of girls be continued beyond the conventional retiring-point
of eighteen, and unless they be permitted access to the State
Universities, they cannot participate in the highest intellectual
education of the race. This cannot be carried on by private teachers, in
isolated classes, under uncontrolled authorities. It must be public,
national, supreme--for it represents the collective intellectual force
of the nation; it is the work of society, and fits for society; and the
social influences presiding over its instruction are as important as is
the technical knowledge conveyed in its system. Only the best minds
should be employed in its service, and in any Stat