en supposed
to be guided by the educator, but now another guide is to be followed,
for it becomes the work of the educator to teach that "nothing in the
world has any absolute value except Will guided by the Right." We must
presuppose before we can produce any great effect in this direction a
considerable education of the intellect, in order that the child may
have some intelligent idea of the Right, otherwise we shall be leaving
her to the saddest mistakes. The African chief, who, being convinced
that it was right for him, before baptism, to dispense with one of his
two wives, for both of whom he had a sincere affection, performed, so
far as he knew, a highly virtuous action in eating one of them, and no
girl whose intellect has not been well trained can safely be delivered
over to the direction of her own conscience. The Spanish and the French
mothers tacitly recognize the truth of this proposition, by the
constant surveillance which they exercise over their daughters. It is
contrary to the whole spirit of our American life to be so watchful. By
so much the more, then, ought we to see to it, that the conscience, to
whose custody American mothers hand over their daughters' actions, be an
enlightened one. No merely prescriptive external rules, borrowed from
society when the mothers were girls, can fully answer the purpose. These
may do for communities that are comparatively stationary, but in our
rapidly moving American life, our girls must have a more stable guide.

It is not often recognized that the cause of much chafing and worry in
American homes--a chafing and a worry which is scarcely found in
Europe--is only this truly American phenomenon of rapid national
growth.[25] The mother who was educated only thirty years ago finds
herself unable to understand her daughter's restlessness. As great a
distance divides the thought of the mother and daughter in America as in
Germany lies between the great-grandmother and the great-granddaughter,
and these latter named relatives are, by a wise provision of Providence,
not often permitted to come into contact at the time when the girl
begins to assert her own individuality, and hence, the chafing referred
to above, is saved. If Methuselahs were not exceptional in these days in
America, who can estimate to how great a degree the unavoidable friction
of family society would be increased!

We must never, in this question of education, forget for one moment the
peculiar condition