The most effective instruments for bringing this about are the synthetic
powers of woman herself, combined with her practical skill and her ready
intuition. As we have tried to show, the best chance for the eliciting
and the disciplining of these powers of hers, so as best to fit them for
the struggle of modern life, is afforded by biology.
It must be clear how many reforms--impossible to the nominally educated
women of the present day--would flow easily from this better training of
women; for those so trained could certainly not endure the futility of
some of our educational ideals, nor that haphazard disregard of the
nature and needs of the child, which still characterises so much of our
educational method. They could not support the continuance of many of
the common evils of modern life--the noise and dirt, the brutality of
manners, the scamping of work, the rush for pleasure. These, however
they may or may not affect the adult, are plainly impairing the best
promise of the children; and that fact will be enough for the truly
educated woman.
Knowing, too, as she will, more accurately and scientifically than women
to-day generally know, how largely energy and depression, irritability
and calm strength are questions of right or wrong food, the educated
woman may be trusted to find a means to put an end to the crying
iniquity of adulteration. Directly or indirectly, by the pressure of her
determination that the race shall no longer be offered a sacrifice to
Mammon, she will assuredly find a way to put an end to all not
absolutely necessary dangerous trades.
The opposition of such women to what is wrong in social custom, in
government, in education, will be a very different thing from the
opposition of well-meaning but imperfectly instructed women on the one
hand; or, on the other, that of a few thoroughly trained and informed
ones working more or less in isolation, scattered over the country. It
would mean a body of sound, enlightened, disinterested public opinion,
so vast, so far-reaching, yet so intimately cognisant of all the little
daily details of life in the home, that it is difficult to see what
other body of opinion could be found mighty enough to resist it.
If, unhappily, this advance should not be made--if our present Western
civilisation be allowed to run unchecked down the groove into which it
has sunk--there seems nothing before it but destruction.