THE LADY BACHELOR OP ARTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1343, 25 August 1877, Page 19

THE LADY BACHELOR OP ARTS.

The following remarks were made by the Bishop of Auckland (Dr Cowie) on the occasion of admitting Miss Kate Milligan Edgar, a student of the Auckland College, and Grammar School, to the degree of Bachelor of Arts of the University of New Zealand :—": — " I have great pleasure in accepting your invitation to say a few words on this interesting occasion. I have been looking round to see whether there is an older English Bachelor of Arts than myself in the audience, and I see there is. I salute the oldest, and, at the same time, the youngest Bachelor of Aris, who is a lady, in New Zealand or the British Empire. (Cheers.) I may say that I niyself submitted to no higher intellectual test for other degrees than that which, admitted to that degree. As to the value, of- the degree now conferred on Miss Edgar, I can testify that the Chairman has said nothing more than is literally true when he said that it iB quite as good, in some respects more valuable, than the ordinary B.A. degree conferred by Cambridge ; certainly, in my time. There. are many -matters in connection with this subject upon which this community might be congratulated. First, the admission of a lady to this degree is the triumph of a great principle. Ladies hare, sought to be admitted to a degree at Edinburgh, if not at other Universities, and have been refused. In the next place, this event is a great honour to her parents and her teachers. I would not be understood to mean that a degree obtained in the colony was the same thing as one obtained from Oxford or Cambridge. Sir James Stephen once said, it was no, matter of grief to him when his son left the University without taking a degree, because that son had had the advantage of a three year's course at Cambridge, associating with 1700 young men of his age. In these days it is not unfrequent to hear the nickname of "blue-stocking" given to women who cultivated their intellect. A nickname is no argument. The ordinary arguments against the cultivation of the intellect of women, are jtwo :— l. That high cultivation of the intellect involved the sacrifice of . qualities which are prized in women — above all, their tenderness. But it was not the cultivation of the intellect which produced this result, but the neglect of cultivating the affections. Whenever any point of character is neglected, then the symmetry of the man or the woman mustsuffer — neglect avenges itself. Sara Coleridge, daughter of the poet, was one of the most intellectual women of her time, and she manifested no want of tenderness. It was next said that it put an end to the subjection of women to men — whatever that may mean. We see- large numbers of men. who are rather in subjection to good and clever women (laughter and cheers), and to say that women would be less in subjection, because more highly cultivated, was a reductio ad absurdum. Let us remember that subjection, in the" proper sense, is subjection through the affections, not the intellect. The advantages of cultivation of the intellect in women are both positive and negative— positive in that it makes her more a help meet for man, and negative because it will probably set some limit to the sacrifice of valuable time which a woman gives up to conventional usages. I can assure parents it will not occupy more time or be more expensive to have daughters competitors for such an honour as is about to be conferred. I shall be glad to help any of my yonng lady neighbours. I look forward to making my own daughter a candidate for ouch a degree. But we should teach our daughters as well as our sons to pray the prayer of old Thomas a Kempis, " Grant me, O God. to know that which can be known." (Cheers.)

The Rev. David Bruce, referring to the value of the degree itself, said : — I may tell you that what has been said of this degree does not distinctly point out the very high character of it as an academical standard. It is customary to estimate the value of these things by comparison. Now, the standard of examination in some of the Scotch Universities is even higner than that of Cambridge. The standard of the University of Victoria was, until lately, the highest; but the standard of the University of New Zealand is even higher than that of Yictoria — it is now the highest in the world for admission to the B.A. degree. Such is the degree Mies Edgar has obtained. (Loud cheers.)