THE BISHOP OF HEREFORD ON A WOMEN'S UNIVERSITY. D R. PERCIVAL,
in his letter to Wednesday's Times on the constitution of a Women's University, of which he proposes to make the Holloway College at Egham the nucleus, shows a good deal more of the courageous and liberal spirit of a reformer than some of those who have seized most eagerly on his suggestion as the best way of evading the opening of the Cambridge degrees to women without joining the party of mere obscurantists who think that women should matriculate when they be- come mothers and take their degrees in housekeeping and nursery science. For Dr. Percival sees none of those great perils which so inflame the fears of the noisy undergraduates of Cambridge, in opening men's degrees to women, though he is quite willing to provide an ad interim scheme of education for women of a kind somewhat different in type from those which have been found best adapted for the rougher intellectual discipline of men, and is even inclined to think that such a course might provide for women a mental discipline of greater elasticity and variety to suit the flexibility of women's powers and tastes. The Bishop of Hereford has no prejudice at all against letting women compete with men in their University studies ; but none the less he is evi- dently more than half disposed to think that in the general way groups of subjects which would furnish some of the best tests for women's education, would differ considerably from those which furnish the best tests of the powers and capacities of young men. Now this is a very plausible and even reasonable position to take up, and twenty or thirty years ago we should have been heartily disposed to agree with Bishop Percival. But so much has been done of late years in all our Universities in giving a large number of options to all the candidates for degrees, in allowing them the choice between physics and natural science, and mental science, and history, and languages, modern as well as ancient, and different branches of literature, that we can with difficulty imagine a woman who could not find a course of study which would well suit her tastes and powers, providing of course, what ought always to be provided, that no man and no woman can he held to be properly educated who does not show at least some power to master uncongenial subjects to which the tastes of the candidate are not specially suited, as well as to master those to which their own inclinations draw them. The options of life, intel- lectual as well as moral, are by no means unlimited in number, and ono of the truest tests of capacity is the ability to row against the stream of inclination, as well as to attain a high proficiency when rowing with it. We do not, therefore, consider that there is now anything like the same need for large modifications of the curriculum which the Universities require that there was a generation ago. And it seems to us that the six hundred odd members of the Cambridge Senate who voted for opening all degrees to women, voted for a much more reasonable and simple course than the seventeen hundred odd who voted for refusing to women the ordinary degrees and honours which appraise the mental capacities of men.
For we must remember that when we come to the question of titles, we are stepping beyond the question of education and culture. There have been many men and many women who have attained by far higher culture without passing any formal test at than the culture of those who have won the highest degrees. The use of degrees is to attest the hind of mental discipline through which the candidates have passed, and though the men or women without a degree may really be far better educated than the men or women ith a very high degree, there is no means whatever of demonstrating to those who do not know his or her in- t-llectual calibre, that so it is. The degree, after all, is a badge, and its value as distinguished from the education of which it is a badge, depends on its being a badge, a producible evidence of that which would be otherwise beyond proof. It is impossible, when we come to the question of titles, to deny that if deprived of the title the candidate loses something which is substantially valuable. Tile world will not usually believe in the capacity for which there is no name, and of which there is no evidence appreciable to those who do not understand the work- ing of academical machinery. Now if you establish a Women's University, and set up a number of diplomas, the value of which depends entirely on the authority of a particular group of learned men or women, the world in general will say: Oh, that is a special woman's diplomas we do not know what it means. We know to some extent what a University degree or honour means. We know what the men can do who have attained them, and if the women had got the same degree or honour, we should be prepared to accept it as having the same meaning. But as for this women's degree, it is a nondescript sort of thing of which we do not know the value.' And as women's careers and their means of gaining a livelihood by teaching or writing depend even more than men's on showing to the world what they can do, it seems to us very unjust to refuse women who have the capacity and have shown it, external evidence which the ordinary world will understand, that they have the capacity they claim. We should have no objec- tion at all to give the young Cantabs who did so much superfluous mischief on Friday week any badge they would like to produce of their power to do mischief, say of the number of windows they had broken or the number of squibs they had let off amongst nervous old gentlemen and ladies. But we see no justice at all in refusing women the evidence of their labour and mental discipline and power to teach any more than we would refuse boys, if they wished for it, a badge that would establish their destructive powers and the animal spirits which drive them into such displays of delight in spreading terror amongst those who oppose their wishes. What is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose. If we grudge men neither the evidence of their studies nor the evidence of their athletic achievements, we can see no reason why we should grudge it to women. To offer women special diplomas of which the world in general will not know the real significance is to offer them just what they do not generally want. What they do want is the chance of comparing their own powers with standards the meaning of which are fairly well under- stood by the world in general. And it is of the greatest importance to their success in life that they should have that chance. It seems to us both unchivalrous and un- just to offer them a good education and then deny them the evidence of it in the only form in which business men and women will really apprehend its meaning. Of course we feel no objection at all to a Holloway University for Women in itself. We have no doubt it would be a good University, and would both teach and test well. But if it were established to-morrow it would not be what women who have to make their own livelihood by teaching or writing really need. The women's special diploma would not carry weight unless it could be compared, and compared habitually, with some already well-known standard by which for centuries back the meaning of men's diplomas has been tried and established.
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