Let  every  thing  be  taught  a  girl  which  forms  and
exercises  the  habit  of  attention,  and  the  power  of
judging  things  by  the  eye.  Consequently  botany, —
this  inexhaustible,  tranquil,  ever  interesting  science,
attaching  the  mind  to  nature  with  bonds  of  flowers.
Then  astronomy,  not  the  properly  mathematical,  but
the  Lichtenbergian  and  religious,  which  with  the
expansion  of  the  universe  expands  the  mind,  along
with  which  it  does  no  harm  if  a  girl  experiences
why  a  longest  night  is  advantageous  to  sleep,  a  fuU
moon  to  love.  I  should  also  even  recommend  mathe-
matics; but  here,  unfortunately,  women  who  have
a  Fontenelle  for  astronomy  have  not  one  for  mathe-


256  EDUCATION  OF  6IHLS.
matics ;  for,  with  regard  to  girls,  I  only  mean  those
simplest  principles  of  pure  and  mixed  mathematics
which  boys  can  understand.  And  geometry  itself,
as  a  second  eye,  or  dioptric  line,  which  brings  as
distinct  separations  into  the  world  of  matter  as  Kant
has  done  by  his  categories  into  the  world  of  mind,
may  also  be  commenced  early ;  for  geometrical  ob-
servations, unlike  philosophical,  strain  the  mind  to
the  injury  of  the  body  as  little  as  the  external  sense
of  sight.  Sculptors  and  painters  study  mathematics
as  the  skeleton  of  visible  beauty,  without  injury  to
their  sense  of  beauty :  I  know  a  little  girl  of  two
years  and  a  half  old,  who  recognized,  in  the  full
foliage  of  nature,  the  dry  paper  skeleton  of  the  mathe-
matical figures  which  she  had  learned  to  draw  in  play.
