[821] MUIRHEAD, "Is the Family Declining?" _Int. Jour. of Ethics_, Oct., 1896, 47-50.
[822] There are many reasons why all persons do not marry. Among these is a loftier ideal of love. "Persons often live single a whole life-time because they are unable to obtain the only one in the world for whom they can ever experience a throb of pure passion.... We see then that this more diffused and elevated form of love becomes at once the greatest incentive and the greatest barrier to marriage. It differs wholly from the localized passion in being _selective_. While it is less selfish, it must be called out by, and exclusively directed toward, one definite object. From this circumstance it may be called the _objective_ form of love."--WARD, _Dynamic Sociology_, I, 626.
Long ago Mrs. John Stuart Mill explained how essential are knowledge and equality to render woman the real companion of man in the struggle for existence; how the subjection and ignorance of the wife degrade not only her own character, but that of the husband as well. "There is hardly any situation more unfavorable to the maintenance of elevation of character, or force of intellect, than to live in the society, and seek by preference the sympathy, of inferiors in mental endowments."[823]
[823] MRS. MILL, "Enfranchisement of Women," _Westminster Review_, July 1851; or _Dissertations and Discussions_, III, 117, 118. "While far from being expedient, we are firmly convinced, that the division of mankind into castes, one born to rule over the other, is in this case, as in all cases, an unqualified mischief; a source of perversion and demoralization, both to the favored class and to those at whose expense they are favored; producing none of the good which it is the custom to ascribe to it, and forming a bar, almost insuperable while it lasts, to any really vital improvement, either in the character or in the social condition of the human race."--_Ibid._, 101. _Cf._ MR. MILL'S masterly discussion of the relative effects of equality and inequality in marriage, in _Subjection of Women_, 53-90, 146 ff.
If woman's even partnership with man in the nurture of the family and in facing the exigencies of external life depends mainly on equal education, never was such education more urgently required than at the present hour. Social and industrial problems are constantly demanding higher and higher mental training for their solution. The same is true of the problem of the family. It is very largely a question of reform and development in home education. Clearly, then, husband and wife have great need of intelligent sympathy and counsel in the discharge of their joint, yet partially differentiated, tasks. Hence, it should be the high function of public education to promote this healthy companionship in social duty. Furthermore, American experience appears to show that it can best do so by training young men and women together. Indeed, in this regard the sociological value of coeducation is very important. Theoretically it seems reasonable to assume that those who are to work together in later life may gain some advantage by spending the years of study side by side. The practical result of coeducation in the western states, where it has been given the freest opportunity, appears to demonstrate that such is actually the case. The majority of those who have had extended experience, after making all due allowance for special difficulties to be surmounted, are emphatic in their opinion that mentally and morally both sexes are the gainers by it, as compared with training in separate institutions.[824] It is true that eventually marriages very often result from such associations. That is precisely the gist of the matter. Are not the conditions entirely favorable to the fostering of happy unions? Under what better auspices can attachments be formed than when young men and women are learning to gauge each other's character through the varied social and intellectual rivalries of the years of scholastic life?