extravagance", "in unreasonableness", in this trick or that. The chief
effort of conservatism is to make them alike, to fit each one for the
same life by the same training in habits, knowledge, abilities, and
ideals.

Talk about Prussianism! The great Prussianism, with its ideal of
uniformity, serviceability, and servility, has been the masculine ideal
of woman's life. Man was to be diversified as life itself, was to taste
all its experiences, but woman had her sphere, which belied all
mathematics by being a narrow groove.

The nineteenth century changed all that,--or started the change which
is going on with extraordinary rapidity in the twentieth. There are all
kinds of women, at least potentially. It may be true that woman
tends less to vary than man, that she follows a conservative
middle-of-the-road biologically, while man spreads out, but no one can
be sure of this until woman's early training to some extent resembles
man's.

1. From the very start woman is trained to vanity. Every mother loves to
doll up her girl baby, and the child is admired for her dress and
appearance. Now it is an essential quality of the normal human being
that he accepts as an ideal the quality most admired. To the young
child, the girl, the young woman, the important thing is Looks, Looks,
Looks! The first question asked about a woman is, "Is she pretty?" The
pretty girls, the ones most courted, the ones surest on the whole to get
married and to become housewives are usually spoiled by indulgence,
petting, admiration, and this for a quality not at all related to strong
character, and therefore vanity of a trivial kind results.