The present practical prohibition of the experiment is the poverty of

our colleges
The present practical prohibition of the experiment is the poverty of
our colleges. Identical co-education can be easily tried with the
existing organization of collegiate instruction. This has been tried,
and is still going on in separate and double-sexed schools of all
sorts, and has failed. Special and appropriate co-education requires
in many ways, not in all, re-arrangement of the organization of
instruction; and this will cost money and a good deal of it. Harvard
College, for example, rich as it is supposed to be, whose banner, to
use Mr. Higginson"s illustration, is the red flag that the bulls of
female reform are just now pitching into,--Harvard College could not
undertake the task of special and appropriate co-education, in such a
way as to give the two sexes a fair chance, which means the _best_
chance, and the only chance it ought to give or will ever give,
without an endowment, additional to its present resources, of from one
to two millions of dollars; and it probably would require the larger
rather than the smaller sum. And this I say advisedly. By which I
mean, not with the advice and consent of the president and fellows of
the college, but as an opinion founded on nearly twenty years"
personal acquaintance, as an instructor in one of the departments of
the university, with the organization of instruction in it, and upon
the demands which physiology teaches the special and appropriate
education of girls would make upon it. To make boys half-girls, and
girls half-boys, can never be the legitimate function of any college.
But such a result, the natural child of identical co-education, is
sure to follow the training of a college that has not the pecuniary
means to prevent it. This obstacle is of course a removable one. It
is only necessary for those who wish to get it out of the way to put
their hands in their pockets, and produce a couple of millions. The
offer of such a sum, conditioned upon the liberal education of women,
might influence even a body as soulless as the corporation of Harvard
College is sometimes represented to be.

Here we are behind the scenes at a great discovery; 'as I

ventured to predict'; prediction is part of scientific
theorizing; there is a place for legitimate prediction as there
is for experimentation
Here we are behind the scenes at a great discovery; 'as I
ventured to predict'; prediction is part of scientific
theorizing; there is a place for legitimate prediction as there
is for experimentation. All discoverers have made predictions;
Harvey predicted the existence of the capillaries, Halley
predicted the return of his comet, Adams predicted the place of
the planet Neptune, the missing link in the evolutionary series
of the fossil horses had been predicted long before it was
actually found by Professor Marsh. Pasteur predicted that the
sheep inoculated with the weak anthrax virus would be alive in
the anthrax-infected field, while those not so protected would
all be dead. A prediction verified is a conclusion
corroborated, an investigator encouraged.

Now, as morality would never have existed but for the necessity of

protecting one human being against another, the power of the mind that
adopts other people"s interests and views must always be of vital
moment as a spring of moral conduct; and Adam Smith has done great
service in developing the workings of the sympathetic impulse
Now, as morality would never have existed but for the necessity of
protecting one human being against another, the power of the mind that
adopts other people"s interests and views must always be of vital
moment as a spring of moral conduct; and Adam Smith has done great
service in developing the workings of the sympathetic impulse.