with all knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural
instincts of justice, and refine its natural tact of love.

All such knowledge should be given her as may enable her to
understand, and even to aid, the work of men: and yet it should be
given, not as knowledge,--not as if it were, or could be, for her an
object to know; but only to feel, and to judge. It is of no moment,
as a matter of pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows
many languages or one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be
able to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand the sweetness
of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to her own worth or
dignity that she should be acquainted with this science or that; but
it is of the highest that she should be trained in habits of
accurate thought; that she should understand the meaning, the
inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural laws; and follow at
least some one path of scientific attainment, as far as to the
threshold of that bitter Valley of Humiliation, into which only the
wisest and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves for ever
children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of little
consequence how many positions of cities she knows, or how many
dates of events, or names of celebrated persons--it is not the
object of education to turn the woman into a dictionary; but it is
deeply necessary that she should be taught to enter with her whole
personality into the history she reads; to picture the passages of
it vitally in her own bright imagination; to apprehend, with her
fine instincts, the pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations,
which the historian too often only eclipses by his reasoning, and
disconnects by his arrangement: it is for her to trace the hidden
equities of divine reward, and catch sight, through the darkness, of
the fateful threads of woven fire that connect error with