All such books can be kept out of a house, and their entrance should be guarded against far more vigorously than we oppose the entrance of noxious gases, or even of draughts of pure air. Some of us, many of us, have reason to be grateful that in our fathers' houses no such books were to be found. Poets were there, novelists were there in abundance, but of such poisonous and weakening literature, no trace; and as we are grateful to our parents for the care and simple regimen which preserved our physical health for us, we thank them also for the care which kept out of our way the mental food which they knew to be injurious, and for which they themselves had been too well educated to have any taste.

The possession, through the instrumentality of education, of simple and healthy appetite and taste, physical and mental, is the most valuable gift that the father, that the mother, can give their children, a gift in comparison with which a legacy of millions of dollars sinks into utter insignificance. And a tithe of the thought and care which are expended in accumulating and investing property on the part of the one, a tithe of the care and thought used on dress on the part of the other, would serve to secure it!

The exclusively American habit of taking young girls to fashionable resorts for the summer should also be alluded to here. No custom could be more injurious than this in the influences of food, clothing and sleep, which it almost inevitably brings; and added to these, girls in idleness, and left to amuse themselves, are often in such places thrown into contact with persons of both sexes, whose conversation is the worst possible in its effect on mind and body.[12]

But, according to the general principle of education, we must not repress imagination in one direction without furnishing it some rational food in another; for education, as has been said, consists not in destroying but in training the natural man, and any system which aims at destroying any natural impulse only defeats its own end. For this purpose, and at this period of life, it were well to draw the imagination to "the enjoyment of the beautiful through an actual contemplation of it, and for this purpose the study of painting and sculpture is of pre-eminent value. * * * * * Through their means the allurement which the wholly or especially the half-undraped form has for us, becomes softened and purified. The enjoyment of beauty itself is the enjoyment of something divine; and it is only through a coarse, indecent, and already infected imagination, belonging to a general sensuality, that it degenerates into excitement."[13] "Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace, amid fair sights and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will meet the sense like a breeze, and insensibly draw the soul, even in childhood, into harmony with the beauty of Reason."[14]

There is another matter which can scarcely be passed over in silence in this discussion, but the evil effects of which are seldom recognized. There are many men in middle life against whose character no whisper has ever dared to raise itself, men of culture and power, men of strong personal "magnetism"—I use the term because no other will express exactly what I mean—who often attract the almost idolatrous admiration of young girls and young women. They may do this at first unconsciously; but they are pleased by it finally, and seem to enjoy being surrounded, as it were, by a circle of young incense-bearers, and they seem to see no harm in, to say the least, passively permitting this excessive, sentimental, and unnatural admiration. No harm is done? But harm is done, and that of the most insidious character. There is a time in the life of a majority of girls and boys when the half-conscious and just awakening spirit is, as it were, casting around in every direction for a some one, they know not who;[15] and if at this time the young girl comes under the influence of one of these men, she is likely to fall into a most unnatural and morbid state; and the man, whoever he be, that shows himself pleased by such adoration and devotion, who does not by the force of loyalty to the simple Right, persistently and quietly repel, and effectually repel, all such tribute, is responsible for much harm, and must answer for much unhappiness. The remedy would lie in an education for these girls which should be sound and healthful; in ample, active employment of the thought in other directions. The safeguard, however, lies in the mother's hands. No mother who holds the unquestioned confidence of her daughter need ever fear for her in this or any other way. So long as the girl knows that she can go fearlessly to her mother with all her thoughts and fancies, foolish though they be, so long as she is never repelled or shut up within herself by ridicule or want of comprehension, so long she is as safe, wherever she may be and into whatever companionship fallen, as if fenced about with triple walls of steel. But let that perfect confidence which should subsist between mother and daughter be once lost or disturbed; let the girl once fear to think aloud to her mother, and the charm is broken, and dangers encompass her around. No thoughtful woman can see a girl, thus alone, carried away by her impulsive feeling, devoting herself to the worship of some prominent man who dares to encourage or permit such tribute, without longing to step between and defend her, as Spenser's Britomart did the innocent Amoret from what she knows is the unseen, unfelt, and yet real danger.

As to direct physical care of themselves, American girls between fourteen and twenty-one are to be ruled only through their own convictions on the side of prudence, for they will not, as has been before said, blindly obey what seem to them arbitrary rules, as the girls of some other nations can be easily made to do. The American mother is not so likely to say to her daughter, "You must not go to this party," as, "Do you think you had better go?" If a girl, then, is made to know that when any organ is in a congested and softened state it is much more likely to be injured than at other times, she will not, while this is the case, if previously properly educated on the will side, draw her dress tightly around her yielding form, and stand or dance at a party for hours together; she will not skate for hours; she will probably not ride for hours on a trotting horse; she will not take long walks; she will not race violently upstairs, or plunge violently down, because she has been taught to believe that no one can with impunity array her individual will against the laws of nature; and thus two of the most frequent causes of trouble, which are displacements or the bending forward of any organ, will be avoided. If she persists in trying experiments, she will not be obliged to experiment for a very long time in order to satisfy herself that the wisdom of ancient tradition is of more value than her individual opinion; but the girl who has been properly educated for fourteen years has already made this discovery. However, if, after all advice, any one should persist in so unreasonable a course, she is, when fully grown, a rational and responsible being, and, as such, is answerable alone to herself and to her Creator for the marring of his workmanship. What folly, what worse than folly, should we think it in the managers of a steamship to intrust the care of the machinery to an engineer who knew nothing of its construction, or of the way in which the parts act upon one another; and yet, the mother who leaves her daughter in ignorance, and then does not carefully guard her herself, is guilty of worse than this; and when the evil is done, the advice of the wisest physician can only be the enjoinment of the very sanitary rules which she herself should have long before enforced; for "the true method of Sexual Education must remain that which has been always hitherto spoken of, that of correct living."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mrs. E. M. King, Contemporary Review, Dec., 1873, in an article on "Cooeperative Housekeeping."

[2] Principles of Political Economy, Mill. American Ed., D. Appleton & Co., Vol. I., p. 551.

[3] Body and Mind, 2d Ed., p. 300.

[4] Referring to New York, Boston, or places on same isotherm.

[5] I have never seen the actual figures given on this subject, and in the interest of positive science, therefore, subjoin the following, which any one can easily verify for herself. The following articles, viz., merino and cotton drawers, flannel skirt, a light Balmoral, a short, light hoop, corsets, and dress-skirts, over and under, weighed 9lbs. 4oz. Avoirdupois. It must be also remembered that this pressure is not regularly exerted, but on account of the swinging and swaying motion of the skirts, is applied now in one direction, now in another. The dress weighed was not of the heaviest material, but of fine old-fashioned merino, or what is known this year as Drap d'ete.

[6] Lest this should seem to imply that women should not be employed as bookkeepers, I would call attention to the fact that it presents practically no obstacle whatever to their employment. For instance, one of the largest wholesale and retail firms in St. Louis has for years employed a woman bookkeeper, and she has never been expected to stand. Low instead of high desks are in their counting-room, and low chairs are also found there. The books, bills, etc., are convenient to her hand, and no difficulty whatever is experienced. It may, perhaps, be a pertinent question to ask, in what consists the advantage of a high stool and a high desk over a low chair and a low desk, and whether it takes any more time to rise from a chair, than to swing down from a stool.

[7] In a most valuable and instructive article on the Comparative Health of American and English Women, soon to appear in Scribner's Monthly, Miss Mary E. Beedy, an American woman who has had unusually large opportunities for knowing English girls, states that this is exactly the feeling with which the English girl and woman regard their daily walk. I call especial attention to this forthcoming article because it abounds in accurately observed and skilfully generalized facts; and because it is most suggestive on the whole subject of the health of women, and the causes of its failure.

[8] "The change of character at this period is not by any means limited to the appearance of the sexual feelings and their sympathetic ideas; but when traced to its ultimate reach, will be found to extend to the highest feelings of mankind—social, moral, and even religious. In its lowest sphere, as a mere animal instinct, it is clear that the sexual appetite forces the most selfish person out of the little circle of self-feeling into a wider feeling of family sympathy, and a rudimentary moral feeling."—Maudsley, Body and Mind, 2d Edition, p. 31.

[9] Maudsley: Body and Mind, Am. Ed., p. 304 et seq.

[10] Dr. Karl Rosenkranz, Doctor of Theology, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Koenigsberg.

[11] I quote again from Rosenkranz, because I cannot improve upon his words: "Modesty is the feeling of the primitive harmony of nature and spirit, and it is very decidedly active in children, however unconstrained they are with regard to nature. True modesty is as far removed from coarseness as from prudery. Coarseness takes a delight in making the relation of the sexes the subject of ambiguous, witty, shameless talking and jesting, and it is just as blamable as prudery, which externally affects an innocence no longer existing therein. Here is, consequently, the point in which physical education must pass over into moral education, and where the purity of the heart must hallow the body."

[12] A friend of undoubted accuracy testifies to a case where acute dysmenorrhoea and menorrhagia, begun in over-excitement and tight clothing, and aggravated by the very cause above-mentioned, gradually yielded to regular and nutritious food, a rational mode of dressing, regular sleep, and to the regular brain-work which gave sufficient employment to the over-excited imagination.

[13] Rosenkranz refers here, of course, only to the antique, and to the products of modern art which breathe the true spirit of the antique; for it is unfortunately quite possible to find a Joaquin Miller and a Charles Reade, or a Tupper and a T. S. Arthur, in painting and sculpture as well as in literature.

[14] Plato, Rep., Book III.

[15] "The great mental revolution which occurs at puberty may go beyond its physiological limits in some instances, and become pathological. The vague feelings, blind longings, and obscure impulses which then arise in the mind, attest the awakening of an impulse which knows not its aim; a kind of vague and yearning melancholy is engendered, which leads to an abandonment to poetry of a gloomy, Byronic kind, or to indulgence in indefinite religious feelings and aspirations. There is a want of some object to fill the void in the feelings, to satisfy the undefined yearning—a need of something to adore; consequently, when there is no visible object of worship, the Invisible is adored. The time of this mental revolution is, at best, a trying period for youth; and when there is an inherited infirmity of nervous organization, the natural disturbance of the mental balance may easily pass into actual destruction of it. * * * * * What such patients need to learn is, not the indulgence but a forgetfulness of their feelings, not the observation but the renunciation of self, not introspection but useful action." (The italics are ours.)—Maudsley, Body and Mind, 2d Edition, pp. 83, 84.



"The next step will be to desire our opponent to show how, in reference to any of the pursuits or acts of citizens, the nature of a woman differs from that of a man. That will be very fair; and perhaps he will reply that to give an answer on the instant is not easy—a little reflection is needed."—PLATO, REP., BOOK V.



MENTAL EDUCATION,

or,

THE CULTURE OF THE INTELLECT.

"Now, as refusal to satisfy the cravings of the digestive faculty is productive of suffering, so is the refusal to satisfy the craving of any other faculty productive of suffering, to an extent proportioned to the importance of that faculty. But, as God wills man's happiness, that line of conduct which produces unhappiness is contrary to his will."—FRANCIS BACON.

If one is to educate the body, she would be presumptuous in the extreme if she made the attempt without first understanding in some measure its anatomy and physiology. With as much reason, in approaching the subject of mental education—that one third of education which with too many persons stands for the whole—we must pause a moment for a few reflections on the nature of mind and the necessary results thereof. "Mind is essentially self-activity." In this, as we have been taught, lies its essential difference from mere matter, whose most essential property is inertia—i.e., absolute inability to move itself or to stop itself.[16]

When, therefore, mind acts at all, it must act from within, and no amount of information given will be of the slightest concern to it, unless by its own activity the mind reach forth, draw it in, and assimilate it to itself. This voluntary activity, directed towards any subject, is Attention, and so great is the power of mind when in this state, that it dissolves and draws in all food, no matter how abstruse, that may present itself. Thus the problem of mental education, which had seemed so complex, resolves itself very simply. We have first to educate the attention of the child, so that she shall be able to use it at will, and to turn it towards any object desired; and secondly, we simply have to present to the aroused attention the knowledge which the past centuries have created and accumulated, and to present this in such quantity and in such order as the experience of the same centuries has decided to be best for its normal growth.

To begin with, then, we must educate the child from the first into a habit of controlling and directing her naturally drifting and capricious attention by the will. The power of the child is very limited in this respect. Her eyes, the index of her attention, wander easily from one external object to another, and consequently our work must be very gradual, for, if we attempt to hold the attention one moment longer than the mind has strength for, the tense bow snaps, and the overstrained activity lapses into inanity. We must ask her attention for very short intervals at first, and during many years; for every time that we attempt to convey information for so long that the attention gives way, we have weakened, and not strengthened the power. Exercise, to be judicious, we must remember, must, in mind as well as body, be regular, and increase steadily in its demand. The object of the first teaching should, therefore, be the steady and methodical cultivation of the faculty of attention, and not the acquisition of knowledge. Our first work must be to give such judicious exercise that the mind shall acquire a habit of exercise and an appetite for it, and not to spoil at the outset the mental digestion. A healthy appetite being once created, we have then only to spread the table and place the courses one after another, at proper intervals, and within convenient reach, in regular order, and the work is done.

But the child, as she grows from child to woman, must pass through three stages, showing three different directions which are successively taken by the intelligent activity. First, she is occupied in perceiving objects. She then passes into the years dominated by the imagination, and she should emerge from this into the dominion of rational, logical thought, but, through the fault of a defective education, she often never passes beyond the second stage. Thus dwarfed and crippled she remains during her whole life, physically a woman, mentally a child. Better days are, however, dawning, though the sun be but one hour high.

Again, serious errors are made in education, from the want of a proper appreciation of the time at which the girl passes inevitably from one to the other of these stages. When, for example, authors of text-books on Natural Science, History and Reading, designed for pupils of fifteen and sixteen years of age, cover more space with illustrations than with text, we recognize the fact that they forget that at that age, the first or intuitional stage is past; and when publishers endeavor to recommend their books to teachers, by sending them specimens of the pictures in the books, instead of specimens of the explanations and statements, the teachers know that they are supposed to be equally admirers of fine wood-cuts.

In the first, or intuitional stage, when the child is chiefly employed with perceptions, there is little to be done but to train the eye, the ear, the hand and the voice, and to teach the correct use of distinctly spoken language.

It is clearly impossible to investigate the subject of mental education in detail in the present essay; I must content myself with a few suggestions and statements.

First, is it not evident that it is all-important what kind of training the little girl receives in the first years of her school life, while she is yet in the intuitional or perceptive stage? A failure to properly train her attention here, and the whole of her after-work is invalidated. Her school work becomes, in its progress, tiresome, and hence disagreeable, from the constant necessity of repetition, a necessity arising from the want of a trained power of attention. She is found fault with for restlessness and want of interest, as if that were her fault, and not her misfortune; and, at the end, her knowledge is at best but "a thing of shreds and patches," till, when all is done and the result exhibited, we ask, with a sigh, "whether it be really worth while to go through so much to gain so little." And yet, what care do guardians take to secure the best advantages for their daughters at fifteen and seventeen, and of how little importance do they consider it, under what kind of teaching they place them between eight and fifteen! The error is all the same in the intellectual as in the physical education of our girls. We are continually carefully locking the stable-door after the horse is stolen; we are continually allowing things to go wrong, and then making superhuman efforts to right them, not remembering that it is far easier to keep out of trouble than to get out of it. If a girl must be trusted to incompetent, or, at the best, doubtful, teachers during half her school life, let that half be the last, and not the first, and incompetency will be shorn of half its power to injure. Not only directly in the interest of the girls, but in the interest of my own profession—though the two are one—I ask this, for in that case, our profession would soon be elevated in its general tone by the elimination from it of those who ought never to have entered it.

Passing from the intuitional epoch to the age when the imagination and emotion become the ruling powers, we next arrive at the time at which it becomes necessary for parents to see to it that plenty of good reading is provided for the eager child. It makes not so much difference what kind of books she reads, but they should always be the very best of their kind, for this is the time in which the formation of a correct taste becomes, perhaps, the most important duty of the educator. To poetry, either in verse or not, each child inclines naturally, as did the race in its childhood, and the stories of the Old Testament and Homer are never wearisome. Generally, "the proper classical works for youth are those which nations have produced in the earliest stages of their culture."

Now is the season for fairy stories, and the Germans, who, of all nations best understand the needs of children, have them ready furnished to our hand. I do not mean the absurd, aimless, and meaningless fairy tales with which modern writers endeavor to supplant the fairy classics, and which, for the most part, the instinct of a child at once condemns. I doubt very seriously whether it is possible at the present time, and in America, to write a fairy story which shall have the true ring in it, any more than it would be possible for any one to write a genuine epic poem. The circumstances favorable to the production of both have passed away with modern times, but the productions are left us, a perpetual legacy of delight and charm to every little girl.

We are too apt to forget that the child must live through certain stages of thought and feeling in order to arrive at maturity. And perhaps Americans are more liable to this error than any other nation. We might as well expect the full bloom of the rose to burst from the root without the intervention of stem and bud, and the slow passing of the years. It is right that the children should devour fairy stories, and she, who, at this period of life, fails to read the Arabian Nights, must miss forever a most valuable part of her mental education: for this period, once past, never returns. Don Quixote and Gulliver's Travels may be also mentioned here. It is true that they were not written for children, but so true and genuine are they, that the child enjoys them thoroughly, while the most mature find them a profitable study. This peculiarity of adaptation to all ages belongs to all the genuine myths of any nation, its best modern master being Hans Christian Andersen. It is the royal sign and seal of authority in stories. Ballad poetry belongs too to the beginning of this stage. Scott comes in later, but Tennyson does not belong in it at all. These examples will be sufficient to express my meaning.

It would be a very valuable aid in the education of our girls at this time, if some one who is capable would, out of her riches of wide reading, give us a list, with publishers' names, of these books of all time which ought to be read by every child; a list to which any mother, anxious for the right guidance of her little girl's taste, and yet ignorant of the best means, might refer with perfect confidence.

We must not, as has been well said, deprive books for children of the "shadow-side" of life, because in that case they become artificial and untrue, and the child rejects them. "For the very reason that in the stories of the Old Testament we find envy, vanity, evil desire, ingratitude, craftiness and deceit among the fathers of the Jewish race, and the leaders of God's chosen people, have they so great an educational value," and when we have purged the narrations of all these characteristics, and present to the child an expurgated edition, we find that they no longer charm her. Nothing disgusts a child sooner than childishness in stories written for her, and it is because very few people can rightly draw the line between what is childish and what is child-like, that we find so few who are able to write stories which are really adapted to children, and that so many who address Sunday-schools fail to interest. Every woman who has proved her power in this direction may be said, in the dearth of valuable books for children, to owe a duty to her country by giving them more. As the child grows towards womanhood, tragedy will take the place of the epic poem and ballad, and will lead, it may be unconsciously, to a deepening of the sense of responsibility.

The question what the girl shall read belongs not at all to herself, but to those who know the world better than she, and who, through the fact that they are educated while she is not, know what and when to select. Hence the immense importance, not only to the girl herself, but to the whole country, of the thorough intellectual education of our girls.[17]

But enough has been said on the subject of reading, and of the distinctions which should be made. I may add, however, that the line before alluded to is to be drawn in novels. As, for instance, the girl is ready for Dickens before she ought to read Thackeray, as Dickens dwells more in the region of the simple emotions, while Thackeray has moved on into the sphere of emotion which is conscious of itself, or of the reflecting and critical understanding.

Supposing now that the girl has passed beyond the psychical stage of the Imagination into the stage of Logical Thought, it is immensely important that in this stage also she should not miss a systematic education. If this should be the case, she is defrauded of the key which alone can render intelligible the scattered work of the previous epoch. The work of education in the first, or intuitional epoch is general; in the second, or imaginative, special; and in the third, or logical, returns again to the general; and thus only can it constitute a whole. In the first, the child picks up facts and general principles from them; in the second, the little girl pursues, each for itself, different branches of study; in the third, she should be led to see the connection and interdependence of these branches, to weave together the loose ends. If she is not so led, if her education stops with the work of the second stage—the only work which it is possible to do in the second stage, on account of the laws of the development of the intellectual power—her education remains forever unfinished, a garment not firm enough to endure the stress of time, not fine enough to bear a moment's keen scrutiny, and only strong enough to fetter and trip feet that endeavor to make any real after-progress by its aid.

And yet this is what we are in the majority of cases doing for, or rather against, our intelligent and energetic American girls. Does it ever occur to us to ask what becomes of this energy, deprived thus of its natural outlet? We have only to turn to the records of our insane asylums or to the note-books of the physician and we are partially answered. This is more true than is generally supposed. If these girls had had real work for which they were responsible, and felt themselves able rationally to utilize the power of which they were blindly conscious, they would not be found to-day in the wards of asylums, or condemned to the luxurious couches on which they spend their "inglorious days." Or, thirdly, we may find another and quite different development of this perverted but not destroyed energy,[18] this closing of the top of the chimneys. Many a woman is antagonistic, is combative, because she is forced into such a position, not because she herself desires it. The smoke starts for the top of the chimney, as it should; but, baffled, it frets itself in eddying whirls against the bricks, till, driven by the necessity of an outlet somewhere, not understanding what the trouble is, but only dimly realizing that there is trouble, it rushes back, choking in its passage the fire, and revenging itself on the author of the repression.

Men and women are wonderfully alike after all. The same motives move them, the same incitements spur to honorable effort, and if a girl is assured that, being half-educated, half-educated she must remain, she will not, unless driven by the internal fire of irrepressible genius, try very earnestly to fit herself for the higher plane which she can never reach.

"Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?"

By all means it were far better, if effort for broader work be of no avail, to cease to think of it, and to make one's self as comfortable as possible. And yet, how about the comfort in the coming years, when her girls, who, thanks to the inevitable march of Truth, will have a better chance than she, and her boys, to whom the last stage of education is to be had for the asking, come to her in vain for sympathy and appreciation, to say nothing of the husband, from all understanding of whose rational thought she finds herself barred out?[19] Babies and half-educated children are very pretty to play with, interesting to watch, and delightful to care for, but when they are married and have children, for they can never be said, in any true sense, to be wives or mothers, they appear in a somewhat different aspect. I have sometimes, out of sheer pity, wished that there were some State asylum for such children, when they are left, as the chances of life and death so often leave them, unprotected in the world, with dependent children clinging to their useless hands. I have never seen a sadder sight than such a woman, her physical system in perfect order and superbly developed, looking stunned and helpless into the world, unable to do anything for herself or her children, and dependent upon the charity of her dead husband's friends—and perhaps the wise thought and tender care of a faithful servant, whose practical education was complete in the stern school of necessity—for food, clothing, and shelter. They have been only half-educated, and it seems as if the authority which has refused in the past to provide them with the power for their own maintenance, ought to recognize their right to be supported; as much as it does recognize the duty of supporting others, for whose education it has failed properly to care in their youth, in jails, penitentiaries, and prisons.

As to the effect of the want of education and culture upon what are known as the most characteristic womanly qualities, whether physical or mental, no better illustration can be furnished than that of the women among the Arkansas refugees, who during the war came crowding for protection into Missouri. They had not dwelt in a frigid and contracting climate; they had not been physically overworked, and they had not been co-educated, for they had not been educated at all, either physically, intellectually, or morally. Should we not have expected to find in these children of nature, these women who had spent their lives in idleness, undisturbed by any brain-work, at least, finely developed forms? But what did we find in the quarters assigned them? Without a single exception, they were tall, thin, and angular in face and form, while the masculine loudness, harshness, and depth of their voices, and the masculine expression of features and movement, made us involuntarily recoil from them as if they were something monstrous, in being neither man nor woman. The animal nature, informed only in a small degree by the spiritual, inevitably descends through lower forms, and when we find it deprived entirely of spiritual guidance, we find a something lower than the dog that is grateful for our kindness, or the horse that whinnies as he hears our step on the gravel-walk; for we find the idiot.

But meantime, while the child is passing through all these stages of mental development, as ordained by the Creator, the definite school-work is intrusted to the hands of professional teachers. American parents throw this responsibility entirely off from their own shoulders when they send their girls to school, with somewhat the same feeling of relief as that with which they lead their family physician to the bedside of the little girl, for whose indisposition they have, before summoning him, anxiously endeavored to care. There is only one difference: in the case of the physician, they relate to him fully all the symptoms and previous treatment; they remain by the bedside after he has gone, in the capacity of nurses, and they see to it that his prescriptions are obtained and administered, and his suggestions in every respect exactly followed, while, in the case of the teacher, they send the child, leaving her to make her own discoveries as to previous symptoms and treatment, and they do not inquire into the directions given, the nature of the work prescribed, or the effect. Having thus, as they think, placed the whole matter in the hands of the teacher, they are often surprised and annoyed at the result. I am taking it for granted here that the teacher is qualified for her part of the work, as to method; and, if not working under a course of study laid out for her, as in the public schools, is herself able to arrange and plan. This is the most favorable aspect of the subject. But there is indisputably another side. If mothers would only work with the teachers, so that the home influences brought to bear on the girls in matters already discussed, especially in the direction of the reading of their daughters, should be healthful and strong, the teachers would be saved much time and energy, which could be far more usefully applied for the benefit of the child. I speak from the midst of a profession which often suffers in reputation, nay, even in actual character, from this very cause.

To go in detail through the part of intellectual education which belongs especially to the teacher, is impossible here, nor would such a discussion be in place in these pages. It has its place properly only in professional literature, just as the details of the treatment of a case placed under medical care, whether preventive or curative, belong only in the pages of a medical journal. A few suggestions only will be added in this department.

It is evident to the most superficial observer that a vast amount of time is spent over such studies as grammar, geography and history in our schools, with but little perceivable result. This is due in great measure to the fact that the manufacture of text-books has become in America a profitable business in a money point of view, and that, consequently, what text-books shall be used in our schools, both public and private, is decided more by the publishers than by the educators. Hence the graded series of School Geographies, for instance, through some five or six of which the pupil is obliged to wade, one after another, to find in each, only the same matter in sentences of a somewhat greater length. Hence, to go one step farther, the stupefying of so many minds in our schools. Nothing is more deadening to all mental activity than unmeaning repetitions, a fact easily verified by any one who, wakeful through mental disturbance at night, will take the trouble to repeat and re-repeat any meaningless thing. It is the lounging, deadening brain-work of which we have too much, not the active, vivifying brain-work of which we have too little, that does injure the system. The whole healthy tone of the mind is destroyed, and evils, mental and physical, follow in rapid succession.

From the process of text-book manufacturing also spring the endless number of compendiums and abstracts with which our schools are deluged, mental power diluted, and the pockets of the parents unnecessarily taxed for the support of large publishing houses, not for the education of their children.

Another cause of this stupefying process is the rigid system by which most large schools are conducted, where promotions, from one class to another, can take place, say, once a year, the pupil who, on examination, falls short of the required per cent of correct answers, being forced to review the work of the entire previous year before going on. More elasticity, more fluidity, as it were, is sadly needed in our system of public school education before this evil will be to any great extent modified.[20]

It would be a waste of time to say that one ought not to be overworked, were it not that some persons always seem to imply that any intellectual work is overwork. It would seem equally superfluous to say that for intellectual health there ought not to be any surplus energy, for the latter statement seems as axiomatic as the former.

The problem with which educators are chiefly concerned is that of fully employing the energies without overtasking them. If the dividing line between enough and too much could be determined as exactly as the Mississippi River marks the series of lowest points where the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains meets the western slope of the Alleghenies, our work as teachers were easy indeed. Teaching, however, is not the only profession where such unsolved problems exist, for individual cases, and we teachers are thus but a part of a noble army of professional workers, so we take heart of grace, and are not ashamed.

But the fact remains to be considered that the work of school education is, as the result of unavoidable destiny, in America, passing very rapidly into the hands of women. We may deplore this, but we cannot prevent it. The last census showed that the number of women teachers in the United States stands already to that of the men as 123,980 to 78,709, and the ratio is daily increasing. There is no other country in the world, then, where it is so all important that the girls should receive a complete education. In one view, this tendency of the times is of great value. The years spent in teaching are often the most valuable training for the work of the mother. No other employment calls for a greater exercise, and hence, a greater development, of the directive power, and of the knowledge of human nature which will enable her well and wisely to direct her children, successfully to grapple with the "servant problem," and to sweep a large circle of details within the compass of generalized rules. She has learned what industry means, not, as was said by a Christian writer of the thirteenth century, only "to pray to God, to love man, to knit and to sew." She has not "everlastingly something in her hand, though no one profits by her labor, and she is reduced to look for her sole reward in civil speeches made for useless gifts, or insincere praise of household ornaments that are in everybody's way," covers, and covers for covers, and covers for covers of covers.

Many women "are busy, very busy; they have hardly time to do this thing, because they really wish, or ought to do that, but with all their driving, their energy is entirely dissipated, and nothing comes from their countless labors," and I ask, in the words of a Russian woman, "Is it not a great loss to the economy of society when such an amount of strength is wasted and leaves behind it no good work!"

But many persons continually pursue self-contradictory ends, simply for the reason that their education has been so narrow and limited that they are not able to see these ends as self-contradictory.

Indeed, there are other disabilities than the physical for the duty of a mother. "The want of self-control that comes of an objectless life, the uninquiring habit of frivolous employment, disable her from fulfilling this duty, and to remain a child does not give the ability to educate children."[21] The power of independent thinking, without which there can be no judgment, and which alone frees the soul, the real mother must have, and our girls should be most carefully educated into it.

Which course, then, will be best to fit the average child for her future work in the active world, a course of private lessons, or the life of the school, which is in itself a miniature world, where she learns to measure her own acquirements and character by those of others, and is educated into the knowledge that individual caprice cannot be allowed as a rule of conduct? And is there any country in the world whose citizens need to learn a respect for law more than in America?

As to the branches which girls have the ability successfully to pursue, the question is no longer an open one. The experiments at Oberlin, Antioch, the Northwestern University, Michigan University, Vassar and many other institutions, not to go out of our own country, are sufficiently positive and conclusive to convince the most incredulous.[22] If the question be as to the branches which she ought to pursue, that is also to some extent settled. The courses of study which are laid down for students in European and American universities, represent simply the condensed judgment of centuries of experience and induction as to the means by which the human intellect may be most surely strengthened and developed. They are the results of long generalization, and are founded deep on a knowledge of the human mind. Shall we venture to depart from the old ways, and to decry the customs handed down to us from the ages gone by? Do we not know that the wisdom of twenty centuries, as to the best means for developing the human mind, is greater than the knowledge of one? Since we are "heirs of all the ages," why throw away our inheritance?

In one word, our girls should be so educated intellectually that there will no longer be any internal barriers to their progress, and when this is done they will find that the external barriers, against which they fret themselves, have disappeared. When Britomart had fairly conquered and bound with his own chains the enchanter within the castle, she found, as she passed out, that the castle walls, the iron doors and the fire which had barred her entrance had no longer any existence. We can yet afford to learn lessons of wisdom from the prophetic "woman's poet" of the sixteenth century.

Whether our school girls and college girls will be injured physically, mentally or morally, by granting to the boy and man students, in our high schools and universities, the advantage of fellow-workers of the other sex, is a question which, though practically settled to a large extent by experience, ought not perhaps to be passed over here in entire silence. One very curious feature of this question with regard to the education of our girls seems to be this: those who are most urgent that the question should be decided by facts do not bring them forward, but base their position on general principles assumed, and on theory. As has been well said by President White, of Cornell, to seek for information on the real results, so far, of the experiment in our colleges from the authorities of colleges that have never tried it, would be to commit the same absurdity as "if the Japanese authorities, aroused to the necessities of railroads and telegraphs, had corresponded with eminent Chinese philosophers regarding the ethics of the subject, instead of sending persons to observe the working of railroads and telegraphs where they were already in use." Where inquiries were made of universities which had never tried the experiment, "the majority of responses were overwhelmingly against the admission of women. It was declared to be 'contrary to nature,' 'likely to produce confusion,' 'dangerous,' 'at variance with the ordinances of God;' in short, every argument that a mandarin would be sure to evolve from his interior consciousness against a railroad or a telegraph which he had never seen."

I am not forgetful that the high ground of philosophy is the only proper one from which to settle the question of the sphere of any human being, and what education will fit her for it; but after this has been done, if special objections are raised against the possibility or advisability, in a utilitarian or physiological point of view, such special assertions, in default, from their very nature, of any other possible demonstration, must be proved or disproved by experience—and yet these material facts are not allowed in evidence by those who theoretically insist most vigorously upon facts.[23] The opponents of higher education for women, which practically is the same thing as co-education, have within a few years shifted their ground. At first it was asserted that woman was not equal, mentally, to the thorough mastering of the higher branches of study. Having been driven from that position by the indisputable evidence of percentages on written examinations, they have taken up their new position with the assertion that women are not able physically to pursue a thorough and complete course of study—for, I repeat again, that for the masses, co-education and higher education for women are practically one and the same thing. In this position of the question, we have only two things for which to be profoundly thankful: The first is that we, as living women, are asserted by no one to be composed of more than two parts—spirit and body. The second is, that we have in our own hands, at last, the means of finally disposing of this question, by disproving the second assertion.

To us as women, as wives, as mothers, as older sisters, as friends, as teachers, as college girls, as school girls, and to us alone, the settlement of the question has at last been fairly handed over. We have only, in all these relations, to learn the laws of physical health, and to obey them, and the whole matter will be set forever at rest. We have only to see to it, day and night, that our girls are educated into proper ways of living as regards food, clothing, sleep and exercise, till we have created for them a second nature of fixed, correct physical habits—and we alone can do this—and the end is at hand. We have at last the right to settle our own questions conceded to us. The responsibility of the decision, whether our girls are to have what we demand for them—nay, what they themselves are eagerly and persistently demanding, is decided, by the new position, to belong to us, and to us alone. Responsibility means duty. Are we ready to accept the one, and to perform the other?

FOOTNOTES:

[16] On this statement we may perhaps rest, as our present distinct object is to illustrate mind, and not matter; though any reader will, of course, be entitled to his own "mental reservations" on the other side, and his own ideas on the subject of Attraction, etc.

[17] When those who are supposed to be the educated women of America are really educated, we shall not be pained through our sympathies, in view of such wide-spread evil as the following paragraph from a recent editorial of a leading New York journal would seem to attest.

"It must be confessed, we fear, that wives and mothers are responsible for no little of our too general disinclination for that steady, persevering pursuit of high intellectual aims, of which Agassiz was such a bright example. They are naturally ambitious of the outward signs of social position, and also, on account of those they love, eager for the solid advantages to be obtained by money. They are not content if they cannot be dressed as finely and 'receive' as elegantly as their friends do; and, also, they fret if their children do not have such advantages of education and association as will secure for them an enviable future. And thus, husbands and fathers are driven, not only to ceaseless labor—that they would bear willingly—but to the abandonment of their best-loved pursuits, and their highest, most cherished purposes. Thus, money-productiveness comes to be the test of the value of all intellectual labor, even with men who would gladly devote their lives to science or to literature, and perhaps be willing, for themselves, even to be poor in a society in which poverty is almost a reproach. Thus it is that high aspirations are checked, and that strong resolves are broken. And thus it will be, until we have advanced to such a point of civilization and culture that we shall award that something which is only expressed by the word 'consideration' to other eminence than that which is attained in politics or in trade."

I venture the question with extreme diffidence, but would not this broader education of future wives and mothers save perhaps so much new legislation on the subject of divorce as is now in progress in those parts of the country most characteristically American?

[18] "We are imperfect beings, and in nothing more imperfect than in our power of appreciating each other's mental suffering. We see the odd contortions to which they give rise without seeing the reasons for them, and they are to us fit subjects for caricature. We all know Mrs. Pardiggle and Mrs. Jellyby, but few who have not borne it, know the pain of the pressure from within that forces natural activity into such distorted motion."—Mary Taylor, First Duty of Women.

[19] "Young America is conceited, disrespectful, does not honor over-much his mother. Commonly he soon outstrips, or thinks he outstrips, her mental attainments. Her stature dwindles as his increases. At best, in his fancied greatness, he pities while he loves her. But what if she has traversed every inch of these intellectual regions before him, has scaled those heights, has conquered those enemies, has looked deeper into those mysteries, is superior at every point, can in an instant flood his darkness with light, sweeps with steady gaze the circumference of his groping thought, and shows him ever an angelic intellect as well as a mother's heart! With such a mother, filial love would almost become worship.

"How much of Francis Bacon's greatness was due to his mother, who was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward VI.? Every evening when Sir Anthony came home, he taught his daughter the lessons he had given to his royal pupil. Anne Cooke mastered Latin, Greek, and Italian, and became eminent as a scholar and translator, and she taught her son. A suggestion of Bacon's reverence for her, some conception of what he felt that he owed her, may be gained from the touching request in his will that he might be buried by her side. 'For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church at Gorhambury, for there is the grave of my mother.'"—Address of Homer B. Sprague, at the laying of the corner-stone of Sage College, Cornell University.

[20] For a full and masterly discussion of this subject, its evils and remedies, I must refer to the report on the St. Louis Public Schools for the year 1871-2, by Wm. T. Harris, Superintendent, p. 80 et seq.

[21] A Mary Taylor, First Duty of Women, p. 93, Emily Faithfull, London, 1870.

[22] Extracts from the last two Reports of the President of Michigan University on this point will be found in the Appendix.

[23] On the subject of Co-education, I refer again to the Report of Wm. T. Harris, Superintendent of the Public Schools of St. Louis, for 1869-70, p. 17 et seq., where the actual effects, physical, mental and moral are given in detail.



"The one that received the seed into the good ground is the one that heareth the word and understandeth it."



MORAL EDUCATION;

OR,

THE CULTURE OF THE WILL.

"In hire is hye bewte withouten pryde, Youthe withouten grefhed or folye; To all her werkes vertue is her gyde, Humblesse hath slayen in her, tyrrannye, She is mirrour of alle curtesye; Hir perte is verray chambre of holynesse, Her hand mynistre of fredom and almesse."

—CHAUCER, MAN OF LAWES TALE.

The thorough education of the Will is that which renders the pupil

1. Civilized, 2. Moral, 3. Religious.

If educated into a civilized being, she learns to subject her own natural and unregulated—her savage will, we might say—to the customs and habits of civilized society. If educated into a moral being, she learns to subject her will, not to the idea of what is agreeable or useful, but to the idea of what is simply right. If educated into a religious being, she learns to submit her will to the Divine Will, and in her relation to God, she first becomes freed from the bonds of all finite and transitory things, and attains to the region where perfect obedience and perfect freedom coincide.[24] A woman who is virtuous, so to speak, with regard to the first, might be characterized as polite; she who is virtuous in regard to the second, as conscientious; and she who is virtuous in regard to the third, as humble. She who is all these may be said to have been thoroughly educated as to her Will. The culture of the Will may be, then,

1. Social, 2. Moral, 3. Religious.

In this realm, as in that of the intellect, the process of education consists in developing a spiritual being out of a natural being. It is the clothing, or rather, the informing of the natural with the spiritual. The part of education which relates to the social life is almost entirely given to the parents; and generally, from the great demands which business makes on the father, it falls almost wholly into the hands of the mother. It is she who must train the little girl into habits of neatness, of obedience, of order, of regularity, of punctuality—small virtues, but the foundation stones of a moral character, and into habits of unselfishness and of politeness.

Social Culture.—Neatness in person, as in dress, is not natural to the woman of a savage tribe, neither is it a characteristic of hermits. It is the product of civilized society. It is a recognition, in some sense, of the equality of others to one's self, a bending of the undisciplined will to the pleasure and satisfaction of others. Like all other habits, it becomes, in time, agreeable to the person who practises it, but the first training into it, is a painful struggle.

Do we not all remember that in the picture painted by the melancholy Jacques of the shadow side of human existence, the "shining morning face" of the child was not forgotten as one of the shadow tints of that stage of life?

The education into habits of neatness is almost entirely in the hands of the mother or of her deputies. She herself then must be thoroughly educated into it, and it were well that she remembered and taught her daughters to remember, that real neatness includes the unseen as well as the seen. Neatness has a moral significance not to be despised, for though it is true that the dress is an index of the character, and that external neatness habitually covering untidy underclothing, is only typical of some moral unsoundness, it is equally true that there is an influence in the other direction, from the external, inwards. The habit of neatness furnishes soil in which the tree of self-respect may begin its growth. Do we not all know that a child behaves better in clean clothes than in soiled ones? And has there not been a perceptible elevation in the real character of the city police since they were dressed in neat uniforms? I know that the fact that they are in uniform touches another point, and yet it is not all. If instead of setting the beggar on horseback, we clothe him in clean and neat garments, we all know that we have given him an impulse in the direction of the good.

Obedience is perhaps the next habit to be spoken of. Unquestioning obedience we must demand from the child for her own safety. It may often be a question of life and death whether the little girl runs when she is called, or throws away something which she has in her hand, instead of putting it into her mouth. But has not this habit of obedience a higher office than this? It is the first yielding of the untrained will to rightful authority, and as such, has an immense significance. The mother who cannot train her daughters and sons to obedience were better childless, for she is but giving to her country elements of weakness, not elements of strength. She is furnishing future inmates for jails, penitentiaries, and prisons, and putting arms into the hands of the enemies of law and order. And yet, how can a woman who has no clear ideas herself of what should be demanded and enforced, and hardly a sufficient command of language to express directions clearly, who was never taught herself to obey, and who has no definite idea of what end she really wishes to attain, educate her children into obedience? A sense of exact justice, a persistent attention, and a consistent thought are necessary. Has the education which we have been giving our girls tended to develop these? Are they not "developed only by mental work in those very directions which have scarcely heretofore formed a part of the education of our girls?" Does not the welfare of the country imperatively demand that we give those who are to be the only educators of the children in their first and decisive years, a thorough, slow, a well-founded and finished education?

Order, in any of its manifestations, is not natural to the race. But the very nature of civilization forces it upon us. We may yield our will at first to its demands, or we may oppose, but it will not take a very long time in the latter case for the demands of social life to give us so great an amount of annoyance, that the pain of the inconvenience incurred will far outweigh the pleasure of lawlessness in this respect. Here, also, the mother is supreme, though the teacher should come to her aid very effectually when the school-days begin, and here I touch a subject which demands a little more attention than has hitherto been paid to it, for too much cannot be said of the great significance of rules as educators in girls' schools. It is allowed in very large schools, and where boys and girls are brought together, that there must be strict rules, because large masses cannot be successfully managed without; but it is generally taken for granted in a girls' school, and where the numbers are small, that very little or no discipline is required or even desirable. This view follows logically enough if one assumes that the object of discipline is the present good of the school as a whole. But if we assume that its prime object is the future benefit of the pupils, individually, it will follow that the size of the school is not an element which should enter into the question at all, and this is the basis which I assert to be the only true one.

I do not deny that there may be too many rules. One may endeavor to hedge pupils around with arbitrary prohibitions, but any attempt at this, like any other unreasonable action, will soon result in its opposite, so that the two extremes are ultimately the same in effect. Many persons speak and act as if they believed rules to be in themselves only a necessary evil, of which the less we have the better, and an entire absence of which would be the desirable state. Rousseau might be said to be the leader of this class, educationally speaking, for this is pre-eminently the doctrine which he teaches, though I fancy that those who object most to rules are not often aware that they are arraying themselves under his banner.

That school-work should go on in regular routine, that a regular order should be established, and that no slight cause should be suffered to break this, that there should be some well-defined and regular order in which pupils should come to and go from their hourly duties—the importance of these things to quiet and economy of time is as nothing, compared to the results of regulations like these on the intellectual and moral character. The daily and hourly habit in external observances repeats itself in habits of thought and study. Unconsciously, facts are learned, and thoughts take on regular habits, and the impress made by the silent work of years is ineffaceable. It will show itself, in years to come, if we refer only to so-called "practical" things—and this is what our condemners of rules are seeking for,—in well-ordered homes, where each duty has its appointed time, and where the necessary labor goes on so regularly that it is hardly noticeable, except in an absence of all confusion and a permanent sense of quiet;—homes where, because of this regularity, time will remain for higher culture, and the whole family will be elevated thereby.

Closely connected with this matter of regularity is that of Punctuality, which should be no less trained at school into a habit, and the effect of which, on the moral character, is no less important. As far as school goes, punctuality is necessary in order that work be thoroughly done, and that time be saved. But it is not for this reason so much as for the far-reaching influences on the whole character, that the little girl should be made to feel it a matter of importance that she is in her seat when the bell strikes, and that she is ready for her work at the precise minute appointed. Is it not at once seen how a requisition of this kind will gently force her into habits of order? If she suffer for being late, because, when she started for school she could not find her rubbers or gloves, she will be more careful the next day that they are in their proper places. If she is late at recitation because her pencil was not to be found at the call, she will finally conclude that it would be a better plan to keep arithmetic, slate and pencil together; and so, almost insensibly, her books and appointments generally will fall into groups and classes in her desk. Not only there, but at home, will the same effect be seen; and not only now, but through all her life, the habit will run. It needs only a moment's reflection to show how great will be the result. Accustomed to collect her thoughts at a certain time, for a certain work, she will have acquired a mastery over them which will make her self-controlled, ready in emergencies, and able to summon her whole mental power at will for any work when it may be necessary.

Again, that silence should be enforced in school may be desirable for the immediate quiet resulting therefrom, but that the continual impulse to talk should be restrained and held in check by the will, till the subjection of impulse to will shall become a daily and hourly habit, is a matter of no less than infinite moment.

And the wise teacher, who must always look beyond the present and immediate result, to its future and mediate consequences, works steadily, through the enforcement of such regulations, on the formation of the character of the child under her influence, basing her action on the rational foundations of the Science of Education, and mindful ever that the so-called intellectual part of her work will not be well performed if these be neglected.

Laws and rules are, to her, not an unfortunate necessity, inseparable from society, but the divinely-appointed means whereby the human soul shall attain perfect development; not a record of rights grudgingly surrendered by the individual for temporal advantage, but the voluntary placing under foot of capricious impulses, that by this renunciation the individual may ascend to his own noblest freedom.

Do not the very weaknesses, habits and failures, which are considered especially feminine, result from the general lack in a proper appreciation of the educational value of strict and exactly enforced rules? It is because little girls have not, in their educative process, been forced to accept the responsibility, and to suffer the results of their own deeds, that they are, in after life, placed in false and ridiculous positions, when they are forced to come in contact, whether in housekeeping or in business, with the rational regulations of business life. They expect, and take, special privileges, and feel themselves aggrieved if these are not accorded; they continually place their own individual opinions or fancies alongside of the necessary laws of trade, as if the two were to be balanced for a single moment; they have not learned that there are times when silence is better than speech, and they seem to think that a polite apology ought to be accepted by the president and directors of a bank, in lieu of the payment at the proper time of a protested note.

That these follies are universally characterized, wherever they occur, by the term "a woman's way of doing business," is sufficient proof that they are characteristic of the majority of women; but that the cause of the trouble lies, not in their nature, but in their education is proved by the fact that wherever women have received a thorough business training, these charming and bewildering feminine characteristics, which render them only a source of confusion, are not found. Co-education is, in this respect, of incalculable good to our American girls, for the necessary laws of rational discipline, in a mixed school, must bear as well on the girls as on the boys, and the result is, if possible, of greater value to the girls than to the boys.

When we tell the little girl that she must not insist on keeping all her playthings tightly hugged to her bosom, and persuade her to allow her sister to look at or play with them, when the little arms are slowly unfolded and the toy half hesitatingly handed over, we behold the bending of a natural will, and one of the first victories of the spiritual being. There is a great struggle going on in the tiny thought. She is probably too young to be amenable to reasoning, and simply yields to the force of the already acquired habit of obedience, or to the force of her affection.

But if she do not yield, if she still hugs the toys in her natural selfishness, shall we be educating her if by physical pain we force her to drop them? A single illustration and question of this kind will show how large interests are involved in what is seemingly so simple a matter. The question of how we shall deal with her to force her to do what she ought to do, cannot be answered without first determining what is the end in view. Have we simply in mind as an end that the other child shall have some of the toys in that particular instance, or is it the training, the education of the untrained will, of which we are thinking? And yet the question must be decided at once. The pouting child stands there in full possession of all the playthings, her arms rosy with the strain, and the other child, quite as natural, quite as untrained, is perhaps preparing to take her share by violence, and cries aloud for justice. Is it not manifest that every mother—that every woman who may have the care of children, should be so educated that she may guide her conduct in every such emergency by some established principles, and with a clear vision of causes and results? How many such questions come up for settlement in the course of twelve hours, only a woman who has had for a day the charge of two or three young children can know; and how often has she, in the course of half an hour, either from the result of her decision, or from her own reflection, become convinced that she has done exactly the thing which she ought not to have done! This would not be so often the case if our girls were really educated.

We hold a general in the army responsible for the mistakes of execution made under his orders, and if he commit many, we assert him to be incompetent, half-educated, and demand that he be superseded.

We put a girl who has never had the chance for any study or comprehension of the only thought which could give a rational ground for such decisions, at the head of a family, and when, either in devotion to interests which she practically thinks of greater importance, or in despair at her own want of success, fretted and worried beyond the power of endurance, she fails in nervous health and gives up the care of her children to ignorant nurses, we wonder that American children are so unruly. We sow the wind and we reap the whirlwind, but the sowing was done long ago in the narrow and unfinished education which we gave to our girls, now the mothers.

Politeness does not consist in any outside mannerisms, nor is it simply kindness. It consists, as a wiser than I has said, in treating every person as if she were what she might be, instead of what she actually is. A person tells us what we know not to be true. We do not contradict her, which would be treating her as if she intended to tell a lie, though we may be convinced that such was the actual case, but we treat her as if she intended to be a scrupulously truthful person. We speak not to her then, but to a non-existing ideal of her, when we ask her politely whether she may not be mistaken, or when we do not answer at all, thereby assuming that her statement was correct. Or a self-important salesman insists, very impolitely, because he thereby implies that we know nothing of what we desire, that the piece of goods which we are examining is of charming colors, tastefully combined, and is in fact the very thing which we most need. If we answered him as our natural impulse prompts, "according to his folly," we simply treat him as what he actually is, and we are as impolite as he. The woman who has been educated into true politeness answers him, if she answer him at all, as if he were what he actually is not, a better judge of her needs than she herself is. And so with all cases of politeness.

It is manifest that no manual of manners or etiquette of polite society can be of the slightest avail, and all such would seem beneath notice here, were it not evident from the number of such books published, and the number sold, that there is a large demand for them.

Nothing to an observer can be a more comic sight than the result produced on manners by their faithful study. It is sufficient for us to try to imagine the man who of all our acquaintance is the most truly and exquisitely polite, endeavoring to follow out the cast-iron rules contained in these books, for us to appreciate the difference between the politeness which springs from within and that which is only a shabby veneering. Of American mothers and American teachers what proportion are, by having attained a mastership in this art of politeness, fully able to educate our girls into it? Are we not a sadly uneducated people?

But there is still something else to be done. In the unrestrained and affectionate intercourse of the family, the girl has not felt the necessity of concealing in any degree her real self. She is under an observation that is intelligent and sympathetic, and she is sure of the kindest construction of all her actions. If she talks or laughs loudly, for instance, it is not supposed that this springs from a desire to attract attention, but from the natural, innocent overflowing of healthful spirits, and a forgetfulness of self. But her social education cannot be called finished till she has in some measure been taught to distrust others. She must learn that society is not one vast family, abounding in sympathy, and always ready to put the kindest construction on her words and actions. She must learn this sooner or later. Shall she learn it by mortifying experiences, by finding herself often in absurd and annoying positions, by having her confidence betrayed, and the outspoken utterances resulting from her very purity of thought made the occasion of coarse remarks and suspicions; or shall she be guarded against all these by being taught that she must not give all the world credit for being as pure and innocent as she? We must so educate her that she will not lightly give her confidence, or show to uninterested persons too much of her real self. In other words, we must educate her into a reserve, into the gentle, unoffending dignity which holds all but the nearest and dearest at a little distance from herself. This is not teaching deceit. It is only teaching what must be learned, the means of "possessing one's self in peace." The majority of our girls who talk and laugh loudly on Broadway, do not do this to attract attention. They do it simply because their education on this point is not yet completed. A slight indication of the same defect in education is the profusion of endearing pet names, which we find in the published catalogues of girl students. If the girls themselves do not realize the impropriety of thus publishing to a world of careless strangers, the names which family affection has bestowed upon them, should not the teachers who compile the catalogues, direct and overrule their uneducated taste? It is only necessary to imagine the catalogue of Harvard or Yale, printed in the same manner, to make manifest, even to the girls themselves, the want of proper dignity displayed. Men, in their intercourse with the world, learn sooner than women, by the rough teaching of experience, the necessity of fending in their inner selves from the outer world. But both boys and girls might be saved much time and pain, if parents and guardians recognized more clearly that this was a part of education.

But in all the training of the will on this social side, we must never forget, and here lies the greatest problem for the educator, that individuality is not to be sacrificed, that it must be most jealously preserved. We have only to remember what has been so often said before, that education consists, not in destroying, but in training. The will is only to be directed, never to be broken, or even weakened, and she who endeavors to do this is working in the interest of evil and not of good, while she who should, if it were possible, succeed in it, would have, as the result of her efforts, only a total ruin instead of a fair and stately edifice. It may often, indeed, become her duty to strengthen it, for without a strong will, the moral nature will fall a prey to the forces of evil as surely and quickly as the body, deprived of the life principle, rushes to corruption and disintegration.

* * * * *

Moral Culture.—In the previous division, the will has been supposed to be guided by the educator, but now another guide is to be followed, for it becomes the work of the educator to teach that "nothing in the world has any absolute value except Will guided by the Right." We must presuppose before we can produce any great effect in this direction a considerable education of the intellect, in order that the child may have some intelligent idea of the Right, otherwise we shall be leaving her to the saddest mistakes. The African chief, who, being convinced that it was right for him, before baptism, to dispense with one of his two wives, for both of whom he had a sincere affection, performed, so far as he knew, a highly virtuous action in eating one of them, and no girl whose intellect has not been well trained can safely be delivered over to the direction of her own conscience. The Spanish and the French mothers tacitly recognize the truth of this proposition, by the constant surveillance which they exercise over their daughters. It is contrary to the whole spirit of our American life to be so watchful. By so much the more, then, ought we to see to it, that the conscience, to whose custody American mothers hand over their daughters' actions, be an enlightened one. No merely prescriptive external rules, borrowed from society when the mothers were girls, can fully answer the purpose. These may do for communities that are comparatively stationary, but in our rapidly moving American life, our girls must have a more stable guide.

It is not often recognized that the cause of much chafing and worry in American homes—a chafing and a worry which is scarcely found in Europe—is only this truly American phenomenon of rapid national growth.[25] The mother who was educated only thirty years ago finds herself unable to understand her daughter's restlessness. As great a distance divides the thought of the mother and daughter in America as in Germany lies between the great-grandmother and the great-granddaughter, and these latter named relatives are, by a wise provision of Providence, not often permitted to come into contact at the time when the girl begins to assert her own individuality, and hence, the chafing referred to above, is saved. If Methuselahs were not exceptional in these days in America, who can estimate to how great a degree the unavoidable friction of family society would be increased!

We must never, in this question of education, forget for one moment the peculiar conditions which surround our girls, from the peculiarities of national government and society. Again, then, it is, in this point of view, of imperative importance that our girls be allowed, nay, forced, to complete their intellectual education.

We have now so to educate the girl that she shall do what is right, simply because it is right, and not because it is useful or politic so to do; that she shall abstain from what is wrong, simply and, only because it is wrong, and not because it will be harmful to her if she do not. These two statements would, however, be fully expressed by the first one, for it is evident that if she always do what is right she will never be able to do what is wrong, and positive education is much better than negative, and an active, better than a passive state of mind. In the first years of the little girl's life this lesson can be impressed upon her only by example, and fortunate have those of us been who, both in grandmother and mother, from our earliest childhood up, can remember no single instance, however trifling, of deviation from obedience to the "stern daughter of the voice of God." Though at first we did not know what the power was, we felt, through all our childish consciousness, that there was a power behind the throne from which our laws emanated, whose voice was authority itself. Some of us may even recall the impression made upon us, as clear now as in the long gone years, when we distinctly formulated in words, with a certain sense of satisfaction, the conviction that "even grown-up people cannot do as they please;" and yet, that the power which prevented this doing as they pleased was neither fashion, nor custom, nor the opinion of society.

Let the little girl be so educated that "while she praises and rejoices over, and receives into her soul, the good, and becomes noble and good, she will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of her youth, even before she is able to know the reason of the thing, and when Reason comes, she will recognize and salute her as a friend with whom her education has made her long familiar."[26]

But when the girl is older, and especially at the time when the whole character is most impressible, this part of education can be firmly laid in the cement of rational conviction, and if it is laid on no shifting sands of contradictory character in the educator, we may safely trust to its enduring support. There must be no compromise here. The doctrines that the good are happy, that honesty is the best policy, etc., are of no avail. They will not do as a guide for life, and the sooner American mothers and teachers learn this, the better for America.

When the girl yields in every direction unquestioning obedience to Duty, she is virtuous, and she is virtuous only in so far as she does this. But as duty rules in every direction, to God, to the State, Society, the Family, and ourselves, and as her voice is as authoritative at one time as at another, it follows that no one virtue can be said to be superior to any other. Those of us who have had the widest experience have learned that the whole hierarchy of virtues generally stand or fall together, for they are all only the making actual of simple duty.

I quote again from Rosenkranz, with regard to a habit often found among girls: "The pupil must be warned against a certain moral negligence, which consists in yielding to certain weaknesses, faults or crimes, a little longer and a little longer, because he has fixed a certain time, after which he intends to do better. Perhaps he will assert that his companions, his surroundings, his position must be changed before he can alter his internal conduct. Wherever education or temperament favors sentimentality, we shall find birthdays, New Year's day, confirmation day, etc., selected as these turning points. It is not to be denied that man proceeds, in his internal life, from epoch to epoch, and renews himself in his most internal nature, nor can we deny that moments like those mentioned are especially favorable in man to an effort towards self-transformation, because they invite introspection; but it is not to be endured that the youth, while looking forward to such a moment, should consciously persist in his wrong doing. If he does, when the solemn moment which he has set, at last arrives, he will, at the stirring of the first emotion, perceive with terror that he has changed nothing in himself, that the same temptations are present to him, and the same weakness takes possession of him. * * * In morality there are no vacations and no interims."[27]

The power of voluntary Renunciation is another power which the educator has to develop in the girl. It can be cultivated, of course, only by judicious exercise.

But the formation of Character is the great work of the educator, for this may be said to be the object of a woman's existence. Character has been defined as "a completely fashioned Will"—i.e., a completely educated Will. If it is "completely fashioned," it must of necessity be consistent. It is scarcely necessary here to call attention to the fact that by character, in any educational sense, we mean that which the woman really is—not what she is thought to be by others.

Character may, it is evident, be either good or bad; for one may be consistently bad as well as consistently good. But we are concerned only with the building of character where that building means the "making permanent the direction of the individual Will towards the actualization of the good."

The woman of good character is she who, while she acts spontaneously, acts in all things consistently; the parts of whose life grow together, as it were, into one organic unity. We know what to expect of her. In her friendship we confide, on her love we safely rely, by her judgment, provided she has been intellectually educated, we regulate our action in times of difficulty and distress. "The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, and her children rise up and call her blessed," and when she passes through the gate of death, her country should mourn, for it can ill-afford to miss her.

RELIGIOUS CULTURE.

When the girl has learned to accept duty as the decisive guide of her actions, she is acting conscientiously, and passes over into the real religious life. A distinction must be here made between Religion and Theology, the latter of which belongs to special educators. At first, in the child, religion is a feeling, a sentiment, which the mother generally fosters and directs. It appears in the form of wonder at natural phenomena, of fear and terror when these are disagreeable, and of gratitude when they are agreeable. But this feeling or sentiment of religion the savage has, and it properly belongs, in civilized Christian communities, only to the period of childhood. If the little girl be not educated into a higher religion than this, and if, at the same time, her whole mental horizon have, from unfinished intellectual education, remained narrow, she has nothing on which any teaching of Theology can be based, and nothing which will bear the stress and strain of actual life. In such a case—that is, if her religion is only gratitude for favors, if her only idea of God is that of a Benefactor—when benefits fail, her religion will fail also. While she has all that she can desire, she is full of religious faith. She loses parents, husband, and only child, and her faith has vanished, and she even doubts whether there be any God, since he can allow so much misery. She asks why, if he were good and kind and loved his children, he could not have divided his gifts more equally, why he could not have taken one child from her neighbor who has seven, instead of her one ewe lamb. Allowance must be made for the first unreason of terrible torture to the affections, and the first heart-broken exclamations are not always to be trusted as an index of the religious faith. But when in many a woman, this becomes a chronic state of mind, is it not a serious question for educators to ask, whether the fault does not lie in her narrow education? Ought she not to have had her intellect so cultured that she should be able to hold at once in her thought, and without confusion, these two truths: that God's thought and care for the Universe must be a thought of Law which cannot be broken for individual cases, and also that even one sparrow does not fall without his notice?

Ought she not to have been educated into so wide a horizon of thought that she herself, and her affairs, her loves, and hates, should not loom up before her in such disproportionate size? A woman is to live in her affections? But what if her affections have been outraged, betrayed, or crushed? The sentiment is a very good one, but it is but sentiment still, and our American girls will not be less strong in their affections if we educate them into thought and knowledge, as well as into emotion and blind belief. If the mere religious feeling which belonged to the child is not led over into a something stronger and surer, it becomes morbid and degenerates into sentimentality and mysticism. Can we afford to let the strong feeling in our American girls be lost for all real good, in this way? Shall we not rather direct it by a sound religious education, into more healthy channels? In such a completed education alone can we find the ground for any active acceptance of our lot. "The constant new birth out of the grave of the past, to the life of a more beautiful future, is the only genuine reconciliation with destiny."

* * * * *

Only when we have accomplished such an education as this for our American girls, the best material the world has ever yet seen, may we safely trust the interests of future generations to their strong, intelligent, and religious guidance.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] I am following here, as elsewhere, the direction indicated by the German philosopher, my obligations to whom I have before acknowledged, and from whose work on the Science of Pedagogy I have so often quoted.

[25] We may, from the same cause, expect soon to detect signs of the same trouble, to a marked degree, in Russia.

[26] Plato, Rep., Book III.

[27] Pedagogics as a System. Rosenkranz, p. 83, Published by William T. Harris, St. Louis, Mo.



A MOTHER'S THOUGHT

ON THE

EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

"Why does the meadow flower its bloom expand? Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its root, and in that freedom bold. And so the grandeur of the forest tree Comes not from casting in a formed mould, But from its own divine vitality."



A MOTHER'S THOUGHT

ON THE

EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

There is no situation in life more freighted with responsibility than that of the mother of girls, be it one or many, the one as heavy as the many, because the only child is less naturally situated; and therefore upon the mother rests the necessity of intentionally providing many influences which are spontaneously produced in a large and varied family circle.

I emphasize also the responsibility of the education of girls over boys for the same reason, because girls are more largely withdrawn from the natural education of life and circumstances than boys, and their development seems to depend more exclusively upon the individual influence of the mother.

The public school, the play-ground, the freedom of boyish sports, the early departure from home to college or business, the prizes offered to ambition, all exercise a powerful influence upon the boy, tending to modify the action of the mother's conscious training. More powerful than her intellectual and determined effort is usually her affectional influence, swaying him unconsciously and giving him always a centre for his heart and life, to which he returns from all his wanderings.

For men, too, life, with all its evil, seems to be measurably adjusted. We do not hear constant discussions of men's sphere and men's education. Each man is left very much to work out his own career, without the responsibility of the whole sex resting upon him. He is at liberty to make mistakes in his medical practice, to blow up steamboats by his carelessness, to preach dull sermons, and write silly books, without finding his whole sex put under ban for his shortcomings, and so he works with a sense of individual power and responsibility which calls out his energies, and educates him even in spite of the foolish cosseting of a mother or the narrow pedantry of a teacher.

But in regard to woman, there is a general confession that life is not yet well adapted to her needs, or she to her place in the world. There is a perpetual effort to readjust her claims, to define her position, and to map out her sphere, and these boundary lines are arbitrarily drawn at every conceivable distance from the centre, so that what seems extravagant latitude to one, is far within the narrowest limits of another.

Very few have arrived at the conclusion that woman's nature, like man's, is self-determining, and that her character and her powers must decide her destiny; that instead of prescribing the outward limits of her action, the important point is to increase her energy, to regulate her activity by self-discipline, to purify her nature by nobility of thought and sentiment, and then to leave her free to work out her thought into life as she can and must.

But this, it seems to me, should be the grand leading principle of a mother in the education of her daughter, to give her such faith in herself, such knowledge of the laws of her own being, such trust in the guiding power of the universe, that she will have a principle of life and growth within her which will react upon all outward circumstances and turn them into means of education.

It is in this freedom alone that the essential meaning of her nature will show itself. In free, conscious obedience to law, natural limitations become a source of power, as the hardness of the marble gives effect to the sculptor's forming stroke; but all arbitrary restraints dwarf and deform the growing soul.

But in the very beginning a great difficulty meets the mother of the girl who seeks to train her up into glad, free acceptance of life, for instead of general rejoicing in the birth of her child, too often there is a wail of discontent over the hapless infant who is "not a boy."

It is an idea very deeply grounded in our social feeling, that it is a misfortune and an indignity to be a woman. True, all men do not, like the Jews in the old service, insultingly thank God that he has not made them women, while the meek woman plaintively thanks God that he has made her at all. But how constantly is the thought and feeling expressed, that the boy is a more welcome comer into the family circle than the girl, and that the woman is to have a hard fate in life. And if the popular idea of woman be true, is it not a great calamity to be born a girl? "If man must work, and woman must weep," who would not choose the former lot? It is a very common thing to hear women wish most earnestly from their earliest to their latest hour of life, that they had been born men. It is very rarely that the youngest boy wishes to be a girl, or that men covet the vaunted privileges of womanhood.

Margaret Fuller alludes feelingly to this prevailing sentiment in her noble Essay on Woman, and quotes Southey the despairing cry of the Paraguay Woman, "lamenting that her mother did not kill her the hour she was born—her mother, who knew what the life of a woman must be."

And yet, it seems to me, any woman is entirely unfit to educate her daughter who has not so sifted her life experience, so learned the meaning of her creation, so separated the accidents and follies of to-day from the divine purpose, as to read clearly the meaning of life, and to accept for her daughter, as for herself, the great fact of her womanhood; not with submission merely, but with a joyful recognition of its wonderful possibilities and its supreme glories.

That this is possible to achieve, I might bring the testimony of women speaking from the midst of suffering and anguish, and yet rejoicing in the spiritual ideal of womanhood. Mrs. Eliza Farnham has done great service by her eloquent vindication of the claims of womanhood, which she bases on very noble spiritual truths. But too often the high estimate of woman is placed on purely aesthetic and sentimental grounds, and does not satisfy the demands either of mind or heart in the hour of trial, or the practical common sense applied to daily life. It hardly strengthens a woman, to be told that women are more angelic by nature, more amiable, more religious, and more holy than men, when she is suffering from excessive nervous irritability, from neglected solitude, from want of employment suited to her feeble powers, or from the unused energies of mind and body which are devouring her day by day—to be called an angel, when she is only a drudge, is not consoling.

The work must be begun early in life, and the mind of the girl must be braced by a recognition of natural law to the acceptance of all the conditions of her nature. But for this she must learn to distinguish between the ideal and the actual, between woman's nature as God designed it, and her nature as long years of hereditary sin and disease and false custom have made it; between the unfallen Eve, the last best work of Creation, and the daughters of corruption and luxury, bearing the sins of their fathers and their mothers for more than three or four generations.

The mother must be prepared to meet the terrible questionings of her daughter on those points of physiology which are still baffling the most candid observers.

She should prepare herself for this duty by obtaining all the knowledge of the subject that is possible to her. She will find that the laws of the human organization are marked by the same wisdom and beauty as those of the physical world; and many things which seemed dark and cruel will be seen to be beneficent and beautiful when their whole relation is understood. She may then give some reasonable answer to the question which the young intellect, struggling with the great problems of physical life, is so prone to ask, "Why was I thus made?" It helps us very much to learn the how, even if we can never solve the why.

Every mother has not the power to answer these questions scientifically; but if she have it herself, she can at least inspire in her child a firm faith that everything in creation has its meaning and its use, and that until the workings of any function are made to promote the highest health and welfare of every human being, its law has not been discovered and obeyed.

The very search after the answer to her inquiry, is often the healthful exercise of mind which will drive away morbid doubts.

Health is the holiness of the body, and every girl should have a high standard of perfect health set before her, and be made to feel that she has no more right to trifle with and disobey the hygienic laws, than those of morality or civil society. She should be as much ashamed of illness brought on by her own folly, as of being whipped at school for disobedience to her teacher.