The advance of women in the professions was in line with the general widening of the educational horizon of the sex. Partly as the result of her broader education, and partly as a cause of it, there was a juster appreciation of the relative position of the sexes, and into this there entered as well the new economic measure of value. Society was no longer regarded as a congeries of individuals, but as an organism, and an organism whose function was chiefly the creation of wealth. This broader economic estimate of society could but be favorable to women, whose valuation as a part of the commonwealth was largely regulated by their utility. The ideal of political economy is that everyone shall be employed, and employed at that for which he is best adapted, under the condition of freedom of self-development. The prevalence of such truer theories of society aided in dispelling the mists of error which had surrounded the popular notions as to women. Buckle observes, in his _Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge_, that women are quicker in thought than men, and he says: "Nothing could prevent its being universally admitted except the fact that the remarkable rapidity with which women think is obscured by that miserable, that contemptible, that preposterous system called their education, in which valuable things are carefully kept from them, and trifling things carefully taught to them, until their fine and nimble minds are too often irretrievably injured." The close of the nineteenth century witnessed a complete revolution in the constituents of girls' education. French, dancing, flower painting, and music no longer comprised a young lady's accomplishments. The fear of singularity, which was a social bugbear to the young women of other generations, no longer served to prevent them from studying classics and mathematics and science. To-day, they are expected to add their quota to the contribution of the times, in thought as well as in the graces of deportment. The latter can no longer atone for the absence of the former. It is no more the case among the middle classes that only the girl who intends fitting herself to take the position of governess needs an education above the rudiments and the embellishments. Not the least of the departures in the educational scheme for women is the notable change of attitude which has taken place with regard to the development of their bodies. It is but recently that physical training has entered into the curriculum of colleges, but it is even more recently that an opinion has prevailed favorable to the physical culture of women.