st give an idea of the resources which the
human soul has at its command when it seeks to take itself in hand. It
would allow of some response to a reasonable appeal from outside. And
all the time the first principles of ethics would refuse to be killed
in the mind, and would continue to bear witness against the waste of
existence and the diversion of life from its true end.

Rational principles of aesthetics belong very intimately to the
education of women. Their ideas of beauty, their taste in art,
influence very powerfully their own lives and those of others, and may
transfigure many things which are otherwise liable to fall into the
commonplace and the vulgar. If woman's taste is trained to choose
the best, it upholds a standard which may save a generation from
decadence. This concerns the beautiful and the fitting in all things
where the power of art makes itself felt as "the expression of
an ideal in a concrete work capable of producing an impression
and attaching the beholder to that ideal which it presents for
admiration." [1--Cardinal Mercier, "General Metaphysics," Part iv.,
Ch. iv.] It touches on all questions of taste, not only in the fine
arts but in fiction, and furniture, and dress, and all the minor arts
of life and adaptation of human skill to the external conditions of
living. The importance of all these in their effect on the happiness
and goodness of a whole people is a plea for not leaving out the
principles of aesthetics, as well as the practice of some form of art
from the education of girls.

The last and most glorious treatise in philosophy of which some
knowledge can be given at the end of a school course is that of
natural theology. If it is true, as they say, that St. Thomas Aquinas
at the age of five years used to go round to the monks of Monte
Cassino pulling them down by the sleeve to whisper his inquiry, "quid
est Deus"? it may be hoped that older children are not incapable of
appreciating some of the first notions that may be drawn from reason
about the Creator, those truths "concerning the existence of God which
are the supreme conclusion and crown of the department of physics, and
those concerning His nature which apply the truths of general
metaphysics to a determinate being, the Absolutely Perfect."
[1--Cardinal Mercier, "Natural Theology," Introduction.] It is in the
domain of natural theology that they will often find a safeguard
against difficulties which may occur later in life