As a broad proposition this may be admitted. But the statement is uninstructive and not to the point. It does not follow from the fact that marriage is the natural state of the race, that individual men and women are developing along unhealthful or abnormal lines because they do not marry, nor that society suffers because it contains an anti-connubial class. Any state in which marriage, lovingly entered into and honorably observed, is the exception and not the rule is of course doomed, and this is all that the general proposition amounts to. But surely there need be no anxiety for social well-being where such marriages are usual, and where celibacy is the decided exception or is confined largely to a class. It is the attitude of people as a whole upon this question, and not that of a part which is significant.'

The statement that marriages are much to be desired for the sake of civic soundness requires still further qualification. Sound, healthful, normal, well-considered marriages are desirable and to be encouraged; but the hasty and the ill-judged, which end in the divorce court, or worse, constitute each a public disaster whose effects are more far-reaching and fatal than are those of even a widely extended celibacy. Marriage per se is not, of necessity, a good to either the individual or the State. A nation is primarily concerned with marriage that through it population may be properly maintained. This end once gained by the general prevalence of a matrimony with whose natural ends the moral sense successfully forbids interference, the presence of a small class of celibates can be of no public

concern.

It is further to be noted that those who are wont to identify marriage with national prosperity often fail to observe that a low marriage and birth rate is never a cause, but only a symptom of national decay. Rome would not have stood a day longer could Cæsar have forced every Roman into honest wedlock. It was idle to try to do away with the cause merely by removing one of the effects. When marriage is shunned through a profound selfishness,-all marriages are not the outcome of the spirit of self-sacrifice-a dread of its responsibilities and restraints, or a desire for license, then it will be full time to deplore the conditions which lead to its avoidance. But when

matrimony is not perhaps precisely shunned,—for surely but an exceedingly small percentage of college graduates deliberately avoid it—but not sought after, through a feeling of unfitness, a realization of its big responsibilities, the conviction that it is not perhaps the only thing in the world, or even the one thing needful, or because of a wish to devote oneself more completely and effectually to some end which is, to say the least, not reprehensible, such as the purely intellectual life or the service of God in peculiar fields, then he must be shrewd indeed who can detect any reasonable ground for complaint.

It is often urged that college women make, or at least should make, the best mothers, and that for this reason it is unfortunate if the tendency of their training is to cause them to shrink from marriage. But it is doubtful after all whether the State loses an exceptionally good mother in the bachelor maid. Opinions might differ as to some of the qualities essential to efficient. motherhood; but it would probably be agreed that among them are good health, good sense, affectionateness and a goodness whose basic element is genuine unselfishness. Now, however much oné may esteem and admire the average college girl, she can hardly be said to be pre-eminent in any of these qualities, though she will doubtless average up well with other women. She can hardly claim superiority in point of health; good sense unluckily can never be taught; while unselfishness comes not from the schools. Education gives a man or a woman a broader outlook, a deeper capacity for joy and ordinarily an enlarged usefulness in the general scheme of things; but the qualities most essential to parenthood lie so close to the roots of character, and are so wholly a part of that secret personality which one is never sure of really getting at, that it is hardly possible to associate them significantly with the training of the schools. To put the thing more concretely, there have been too many altogether lovely mothers without culture to warrant any presumption in favor of the maternal capacities of the college-bred girl. Such a mother can tell her child more, and teach it better grammar,-no mean consideration, either-but she cannot love it better or lead it more winsomely in the paths of righteousness or equip it more fully for its life struggle. Nay, it is barely possible that the mother love may be some

what less 'intense in educated women as a class than in women of narrower outlook. The latter are apt to be wholly absorbed in their children, and to give themselves up to them with a complete abandonment. With the uneducated man or woman the welfare of the child is often the all-controlling motive in the life: one may venture to think that with cultivated parents this is less frequently the case. These considerations, if true, merely go to show that society loses no more by reason of the celibacy of an educated man or woman than from that of one less favored, and that the celibacy of the cultured classes, if it exists, is not peculiarly to be deplored.

It is not singular-indeed, the contrary would be surprisingthat the college graduate of either sex is in no haste to marry. Often he cannot afford to marry for some time, but the case would probably not be much different if this impediment were removed. In the very nature of things, as the natural consequence of a perfectly normal development, marriage must count for less with the cultivated young woman than with the untrained girl. Small wonder was it that our Puritan ancestors wedded young and reared large families. They had little else of interest to think about and little else to do. An eminent expert in adolescence has announced that nine tenths of the thoughts of a youth between fifteen and twenty have to do with the "opposite sex" (one is forced to use this inconsequential phrase for lack of better). The statement appears a ridiculous exaggeration, at least as applied to any normal young man. If it has any application at all it must be to the untrained youth, whose range of thought and vision is painfully contracted, and whose consciousness must perforce center upon the few things within its range. What is true of the young man is no doubt true of the maiden in a less accentuated degree. The Puritan girl entering upon womanhood, whose mental activity was constrained by poverty of surroundings and by a faith which, whatever else it may have been, was at least narrow and repressive; who saw and knew little or nothing beyond the limits of the village and the walls of the meeting-house,―turned instinctively to marriage as a means to new emotions, experiences, possibilities; in a word, to an enlarged consciousness. Now, to children thus circumscribed, love, longing, desire, the stirring of the newly

awakened nature, call it what one pleases, inevitably appealed with a force to which the cultured man or woman is in most

cases, and fortunately, a comparative stranger. The craving for growth, development and emancipation in his case is being already satisfied. With the thought of the race open to them in the literatures of the world, the portals of the temple of science ready to swing at their touch, with an enriched and fructified consciousness, with the charm of intellectual endeavor strong upon them, and with those fascinating dreams of achievement which need not be dreams alone, the young man or young woman fresh from college may perhaps be pardoned for not realizing that his or her chief social function is to beget or to have a baby. Many college women devote their lives to the work of teaching. I shall mouth no unseemly plaudits concerning the teacher's vocation-I have been too long in the business. But after all, if, as the result of her labors, some children have been set right and have had a new birth into the realm of high thought and fine feeling has she not rendered as acceptable a service to the State as she would have done by marrying? and may she not as justly pride herself upon her spiritual offspring as upon those of her body?

In fact, the question which the State has to ask of its educated men and women is not whether they marry, but what they are; not whether they add to the physical, but to the intellectual and spiritual life of the world. The poet is judged and valued by his song, not by his child. Milton's luster is surely not the brighter by reason of his three wives. Anne Hathaway has not added to our esteem of Shakespeare, and the fame of Socrates had not suffered if he had permitted Xantippe to scold in single blessedness. It is quite a mistake to suppose that society looks askance upon the celibate of either sex, or that such a one is necessarily an incomplete man or woman. In truth, few command more unstinted and hearty admiration from the community at large than the man of untarnished reputation who does not marry. Quite a bit depends upon the motive. With the diary of that distinguished divine before him, one can hardly think the better of Cotton Mather for his marriages. Nay, I fancy that even the devoutest admirer of the Rev. Adoniram Judson must quail a little as that worthy chronicles, while sailing by St.

Helena, where lay the body of his second wife, some nine months dead, that her spirit doubtless felt much solace in his delight in her successor, the bride beside him. In a word, the marriage of a man or a woman, or of any particular class of men or women, is inconsequential to the State. The imperative thing is the character of their thought, their act, their mental output. History and observation surely do not warrant the assertion that the quality of these is determined by marriage. One more suggestion. The college girl, if she has acquired any degree of judgment as the result of her training, must know that marriage with her is a more difficult and complex problem than with her simpler and less highly developed sister. The difficulty of adjustment will be much greater, and the consequences of ill-adjustment more deplorable. While her education has increased her capacity for happiness in the marriage relation, there has been a corresponding increase in the degree of misery sure to follow an unfortunate union. This may well cause her to hesitate, and her parents and friends to rejoice and be glad by reason thereof. It is all well enough to say that marriage is a good thing, and to quote questionable texts from Scripture, but when one has an admirable daughter whom some wholly unassured character wants to marry the problem takes on a different aspect. No girls' college need apologize for the celibacy of its graduates. Let the fact be freely admitted. It will lose nothing in public estimation, and many parents will be sure to send their daughters there on that account.

HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN IN THE ORIENT.

MARY MILLS PATRICK, PH.D., PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE FOR GIRLS, CONSTANTINOPLE.

T is not Western civilization alone that demands opportunities of higher education for women, but during the last twenty-five years there has been great progress in the development of culture in the nations of the East, and in the demand for educational opportunities among them. It is my purpose to speak of this demand in the nations of Turkey and the adjoining countries, and of the measures which have been taken to supply it. The peoples principally concerned are the Moham