The aim of education is to enable a person to act wisely in every
emergency of life whatever his particular calling may be, but it is
hardly possible to act wisely without some knowledge of the relation
between cause and effect. This is true whether we are engaged in the
practical affairs of life, in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the effort
to extend knowledge by research. It is sometimes argued that a woman of
trained intellect can easily acquire the art of housekeeping, and this
is no doubt the case if we limit the art to the choice and supervision
of competent domestics, but there can be no doubt that there are many
women of trained intellect who not only suffer themselves but entail
suffering on others from inability to discern good housekeeping, in our
sense of the word, from bad. It must be remembered that courses of
education should be framed for the training of unmethodical and
unpractical minds, which may and often do accompany the highest forms of
intellect, as well as for those of a naturally orderly and practical
bent.
We all consciously or unconsciously make use of the facts of science: we
do not send eggs by parcel post merely placed in a box, we do not even
send one egg in a box that exactly fits it, we are careful to surround
each egg with soft paper or some other elastic material in sufficient
quantity to distribute the effects of the blows that we know the box
will be subjected to in the post, so that the eggs may not be broken; if
we place a tray of china on a table, we are careful that it should not
project beyond the table so as to fall when we let it go; we do not pour
hot water into cut-glass tumblers, and we do not mix effervescing drinks
in wine-glasses. We should call a person ignorant who was unaware of the
probable results of doing the things enumerated above; but if the
accidents following want of knowledge were always so simple, ignorance
would not be a matter of much importance, and we might be willing to let
our girls learn by experience. Unfortunately, the neglect of a
scientific law has led in the past, and may lead in the future, to much
more serious, even fatal results, and Solomon has applied a not very
complimentary epithet to those who have wisdom forced upon them by
involuntary experience. It is to the publication of statistics which
show the alarming spread of such diseases as consumption and the
terrible waste of infant life, that we owe the awakening of the public
mind to the need for systematic training in science and scientific
method.