on. The
education prescribed for any class is likely to be conditioned upon the
presumed relationship of that class to the social body. When woman was
regarded as an inferior creature, whose destiny was to serve as a tool
and plaything of man, she was accorded only such education as would fit
her for this subsidiary function. Any other training was regarded as
unnecessary and mischievous. It is only within comparatively recent
times, when man began to realize the essential human quality and powers
of the female sex, and deemed it not mockery to place her on the same
footing with himself, that the comprehensive education of woman has
become a possibility.

The traditional relation of the American Negro to the society of which
he forms a part is too well known to need extensive treatment in this
connection. The African slave was introduced into this country as a pure
animal instrumentality to perform the rougher work under dominion of his
white lord and master. There was not the remotest thought of his human
personality. No more account was taken of his higher qualities than of
the higher susceptibilities of the lower animals. His mission was
considered to be as purely mechanical as that of the ox which pulls the
plow. Indeed, his human capabilities were emphatically denied. It was
stoutly contended that he did not possess a soul to be saved in the
world to come nor a mind to be enlightened in the world that now is.
Under the dominion of this dogma, education was absolutely forbidden
him. It became a crime even to attempt to educate this _tertium quid_
which was regarded as little more than brute and little less than human.
The white race, in its arrogant conceit, constituted the personalities
and the Negro the instrumentalities. Man may be defined as a
distinction-making animal. He is ever prone to set up barriers between
members of his own species and to deny one part of God's human creatures
the inalienable birthright vouchsafed to all alike. But the process was
entirely logical and consistent with the prevailing philosophy.

The anti-slavery struggle stimulated the moral energy of the American
people in a manner that perhaps has never had a parallel in the history
of vicarious endeavor. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
In dealing with fundamental principles of human rights and human wrongs
involved in the issue of slavery, these moral reformers found that the
Negro was a human being, endowed with hear