One word more, and I have done. Let me ask women to educate
themselves, not for their own sakes merely, but for the sake of
others. For, whether they will or not, they must educate others.
I do not speak merely of those who may be engaged in the work of
direct teaching; that they ought to be well taught themselves, who
can doubt? I speak of those--and in so doing I speak of every
woman, young and old--who exercise as wife, as mother, as aunt, as
sister, or as friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and
unconscious, but still potent and practical, on the minds and
characters of those about them, especially of men. How potent and
practical that influence is, those know best who know most of the
world and most of human nature. There are those who consider--and
I agree with them--that the education of boys under the age of
twelve years ought to be entrusted as much as possible to women.
Let me ask--of what period of youth and manhood does not the same
hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who
fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women.
I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in
the highest sense, the educator of man from infancy to old age;
that that was the work towards which all the God-given capacities
of women pointed; for which they were to be educated to the
highest pitch. I should have thought that it was the glory of
woman that she was sent into the world to live for others, rather
than for herself; and therefore I should say--Let her smallest
rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed: but let her
never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to
teach man--what, I believe, she has been teaching him all along,
even in the savage state--namely, that there is something more
necessary than the claiming of rights, and that is, the performing