preponderance of "accomplishments" proves how here, too, use is
subordinated to display. Dancing, deportment, the piano, singing,
drawing--what a large space do these occupy! If you ask why Italian and
German are learnt, you will find that, under all the sham reasons given,
the real reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues is thought
ladylike. It is not that the books written in them may be utilised,
which they scarcely ever are; but that Italian and German songs may be
sung, and that the extent of attainment may bring whispered admiration.
The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like historic
trivialities, are committed to memory, not because of any direct
benefits that can possibly result from knowing them: but because society
considers them parts of a good education--because the absence of such
knowledge may bring the contempt of others. When we have named reading,
writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and sewing, we have named about
all the things a girl is taught with a view to their actual uses in
life; and even some of these have more reference to the good opinion of
others than to immediate personal welfare.

Thoroughly to realise the truth that with the mind as with the body the
ornamental precedes the useful, it is requisite to glance at its
rationale. This lies in the fact that, from the far past down even to
the present, social needs have subordinated individual needs, and that
the chief social need has been the control of individuals. It is not, as
we commonly suppose, that there are no governments but those of
monarchs, and parliaments, and constituted authorities. These
acknowledged governments are supplemented by other unacknowledged ones,
that grow up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives to be
king or queen or lesser dignitary. To get above some and be reverenced
by them, and to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal
struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. By the