Iowa Capitol Reporter

Education of Women

A continued mental culture ought to be one of the leading objects of human life, and the plea that young or even married ladies often make, that they have not leisure, mostly means that they have not the inclination. There are few women that could not find an hour every day for consulting authors, and that would furnish food for thought, while they were heating the tea-kettle or mending a garment. It is not so much the amount that we read as it is the after reflection that strengthens the mind. Incessant readers like incessant eaters are only benefitted by the quantity they digest--a certain amount is essential: too much only clogs and deranges the system.

The elevation of women to their true and position in society must be accomplished measure by their own active exertions and perseverance. Could the current of society once be brought within the fascinating influence of science, they would soon convince themselves and the world of their capabilities. Any study is arduous, while the mind feels indifferent, but let any woman once become enamored with a subject, and she will apply herself with a vigor that she was before unconscious of possessing. and her advancement would establish her more than herself.

She has no reason to shrink from the abstract studies, not even mathematics, for in this a woman has excelled the world, and may do so again. I cannot believe that any person, man or woman, who has without any extraordinary effort, ability sufficient to comprehend the arithmetic, lacks anything but application to become a profound astronomer and mathematician. Men of rather weak intellects have become good mathematicians through an untiring devotion that concentrated all the energies of their minds on this subject.

If the intellectual standard of women was one raised, and the proper stimulus given to them, they would just as easily reach it then as they do now. They would no longer be ridiculed for having minds only adapted to tea-table-talk, and their elevation would act as a powerful incentive to the opposite sex. Men would be under the necessity of cultivating their brains as much as they do now their beards, in order to do the agreeable. Woman's influence might give to the world a host of sages as it now gives a legion of shallow fops- but if her standard was lowered, man's would in proportion be dragged down with it.

So far as the posterity is concerned, it is of more vital importance that girls should receive a more thorough education than boys, so that they may, as intelligent mothers, impart an impulse to the minds of children, forestalling all counter seducements that they are destined soon to be assailed with. A child, when placed amid circumstances calculated to instruct, advances with a natural and easy progress; his sports and his pastimes are of an intellectual character. But place him among ignorant associates, and as certain as he is a social being he will conform in a great measure to their standard, thereby impeding his own improvement and rendering his studies irksome.

It cannot be expected that children can be made proficient, but they may be inspired with the love of learning, and then the future scholars are but natural growth. The only difficulty in acquiring a science, is in becoming enamored with it; after that, study is a pleasure and no longer a task. The mother, more than any other, may control the mind of her child, but she can never enamor it with that ardent desire for knowledge, without first possessing the knowledge and the infatuation herself.

It will be well for the country when correct notions of government are more generally taught in the homes of childhood. A sense of the sacredness of justice ought to be inculcated at the mother's knee, with every other sentiment suited to the expanding intellect, and ennobling to human nature. Every home should be a government where the affections preserve order; every fireside should be a lyceum where the sciences are taught.

If the acquisition of knowledge could be converted into a popular amusement to take the place of diversions that are useless or even pernicious, nothing more would be wanted to turn the country into one grand university, and the people into a nation of scholars. Yet this is very possible, for through a chain of events almost anything may become a ruling passion. This passion at one time contented a people with their druids, their barbaric amusements, and treachery; at another it inspired them to deeds of chivalry, and fanatical crusades to the holy land; again the same people were fired with holy love of distant adventures, discovery and emigration, and in rivalry in the arts of peace. We may then fairly suppose that the leading and general passion may yet be the cultivation of the intellect and the supremacy of the mind.

But without woman's sanction, influence and cooperation, this can never become the general or ruling passion. Therefore, science most imperatively demands her elevation. Notwithstanding a few individuals may get beyond the common herd, and although our pride may revolt at the idea, yet the mass of men never get free from woman's leading strings, and she will hold them near the same mental level with herself; and if she was inferior to man in mind, it would still be necessary that she enjoy equal privileges, in order to encourage her to the utmost to cultivate her capabilities, that her social and maternal influence may have the most beneficial effect in stimulating the minds of men to more vigorous exertion and greater proficiency. -Del. Co. (Pa.) Republican.