degrading. The danger is not that the daughter shall lack polish, but that
she will have but little else; and, instead of being a polished stone,
shall be a polished vanity with no substance at all. Nothing can be more
false and fatal than the notion that a daughter is to be educated for
show, whilst the son is to be trained for usefulness. In her own way, the
sister has quite as much strength of character as the brother has in his
way, and she is cruelly treated when regarded only as a graceful toy.
Sometimes this extreme meets the other, and she who in her girlhood was a
dainty plaything, becomes in womanhood a plodding drudge, without a
particle of worthy spirit or elevated thought to retain the love won by
her beauty, or to replace the fervor lost with her youth. It is very wrong
to make accomplishments the main thing in female education.
Accomplishments are poor tricks, unless their polish is but the smoothness
of substantial knowledge and judgment. A showy girl who can dance, sing,
and prattle two or three foreign languages, without being able to speak
and write sensibly in her own tongue, is one of the most lamentable of
counterfeits, and may chance to blight the peace and dignity of more
hearts than one by her shams. She is the product of that flashy system of
training, which is doing more mischief in America than any where else, and
making society a tawdry Vanity Fair instead of a companionship of hearts
and homes. Not a few of our daughters seem taught to think that
distinction in society is graduated by clothes and confectionery, and to
measure their social honor or obscurity by their ability to follow the
silly code of extravagance. If the folly were confined to those who have
such affluence as craves prodigality in expense to reduce the overplus, it
might be comparatively harmless, but it bears most severely upon families
of limited means, where mothers and daughters are in a fever to ape the
extravagance that they ought to pity. Why all this infatuated excess in
dress? What do our daughters, in their tender years, need for their grace
and dignity beyond the simplest costume that good taste dictates as the
fit robing of girlish innocence? Even a pure French taste, which, in other
respects favors such excess, teaches an almost Christian simplicity in
this respect; and the spectacle, so common with us, of school girls
bedizened with costly dresses of all colors, and loaded with jewels, would
be ludicrous in a Parisian drawing-room, as a walking, jingling toy-shop
attached to a human creature. It is a fine remark of Fenelon in rebuking
the foolish passion for dress, that if daughters were educated in a purer
classic taste, and would study the beautiful in the schools of painting
and sculpture, they would shun many excesses in costume on account of
their deformity, as well as their extravagance. What judgment the good
archbishop would have passed upon our present mode of sweeping the dusty
sidewalks with costly robes of silk and velvet, we have no means of
judging, for this folly seems a recent invention. What a recent French
moralist, who claims to walk in the path of Fenelon, says of France, is
doubly true of America: "The great care," says L'Aime Martin, "is to
please the world, rather than to resist it: the wish is to shine, to
reign:--vanity, that is the end to which tender mothers do not cease to
point their daughters, and upon which the world that pushes them on sees
them wrecked with indifference! Vanity in accomplishments! vanity in
dress! vanity in learning! This show covers all: to seem, not to be, makes
the sum and substance of education." These strong words must have cost the
bland French moralist some pain; but does not their strength come from
their truth? Do they not apply, with fearful truth, to American society?
Does not the prevalent code of feminine ostentation bear with cruel
weight upon our domestic life, making almost a social necessity of the
merest conventional artificiality, and raising up a generation of listless
imbeciles, who measure their social salvation by the magnitude of their
exactions and the littleness of their achievements? in short, setting up a
code of dignity, in which utter uselessness not seldom bears the highest
honor. It would be, probably, a somewhat peculiar revelation, if the young
women who go from boarding-schools into our gay society were to submit to
a thorough catechizing as to what they expect to receive in the world, and
what they expect to do in return. The statistics thus gathered might shed
some light upon our social and political economy, and disclose a standard
of empty extravagance, not very common among the titled nobility of the
Old World. Away with the error upon which the whole mischief rests,--the
error that our daughters are not rational creatures, and that the very
strength of their character is not the best reason and rule of their
accomplishment. Let them be polished stones, not tinsel, with a refinement
and solidity worthy their endowments.
Associating thus the attribute of polish with that of solidity, in our
idea of the education of daughters, we complete the definition by
maintaining, that the two qualities should be so combined as best to fit
the daughter for her providential position as the equal of man; not his
rival, nor his slave, nor his toy. We claim for the daughter entire
mental, moral, and religious equality with the son, yet find in the law
alike of nature and revelation a distinction between their gifts and
spheres. It would be merely beating the air to argue either point,--to try
to prove that woman has all the faculties of human nature, and if, in her
case, they are otherwise adjusted than with man, the difference is such as
to forbid boasting on either side, and to favor mutual help instead of
selfish rivalry. Nor need we couch our lance against the reform school
that claims for woman a masculine position, and asks to have all offices
open to her ambition or zeal. We are little in danger of such
extravagances, and our daughters are more likely to slight the high moral
influence now within their sphere, than to hanker after the notoriety of
professional life or anniversary platforms. Our current modes of society
are so lenient towards those who unsex themselves on the stage, or in the
ball-room, that the moralist need trouble himself very little with the
loquacious sisterhood, that seems determined to have the public ear upon
most exciting questions. The most discouraging thing in their prospect is
in the indifference of their own sex to their appeals. Men prefer to hear
women talk in a less obtrusive manner; and women seem likely to follow
their time-hallowed precedent, and to have men for their orators, leaders,
physicians, and preachers. The freest system will not alter the divine
order, and whatever worthy reforms may come, the end will be the
reconsecration of woman in her true sphere--as the equal, not the rival,
of man. Hers will still be full half the world, and the best half of it
too. To be the polished corner-stone in the palace which the ruling heart
makes royal, is honor and responsibility enough. To carry out this idea
of the education of daughters by a just method, is a work second to none
other to be done or meditated in this world.
* * * * *
What have we to say of such a method? Nothing but simply to appeal to
God's own will as shown in the daughter's faculties and in the spheres in
which she is called to move. Let the method be such as best developes her
powers and fits her for her position.
How great a thing it is to understand a soul, said Theresa of Spain, in
view of the young hearts committed to her care after all her own trials of
faith. How great a thing it is to understand a daughter's mind in which
sensibility, that demands sympathy, has so much larger a place than logic,
that needs only to be reasoned out. We believe that there is sex in mind,
and that the essential type of womanhood appears equally in the example of
the highest culture and genius, as in the average standard. Every page
shows the woman's guiding pen, no matter whether a De Stael or a Godwin
ranges into the bolder realms of thought, or an Edgeworth or Hemans walks
among the daily affections and cares of life. A true culture must be based
upon this fact, and the mind must be trained in accordance. Little may be
gained by persisting in making a dry logician of a school girl, for
abstract reasoning is rarely a woman's forte, but precisely on that
account, the reason must be appealed to by the living truth, which will
find a ready response from perceptions so quick and intuitive as often to
see at a glance what the logical understanding will with difficulty argue
out.
It is a great mistake to try to train a girl to be a man in cast of mind
or way of life. We can never slight the hint of nature without bringing
down her retribution, and temporary success but delays the evil day. What
better instance of this error have we than in the memoirs of that gifted
woman so well known to most of our readers, and probably a personal friend
to not a few of them, Margaret Fuller Ossoli? Her mental career is now
made public property by able and congenial biographers; and who of us does
not see the unconscious cruelty of the stern discipline which sought to
mould her mind after the masculine standard, and which so repressed the
springs of feminine power, until Providence took the noble woman into its
own school, and the wife and mother learned a wisdom and a peace that
classic letters and metaphysical theories never taught her; nay, far
beyond the stature of the "Muse," and the "Minerva," that were once her
chosen types of female dignity? Honor to her name, alike for the mistakes
and the excellencies illustrated by her eventful life?
Truly trained, the girl will have as much _reason_ as the boy; and hers
will be more intuitive, whilst his may be more formal and severe in its
_reasoning_. Strength of character will be hers, not, perhaps, so much the
stern sense of justice that most marks the masculine conscience, as the
full and earnest affection that adds mercy to justice and love to duty.
Force of will shall be hers, not perhaps the iron will of man, but what is
quite as well, and in its place better, the heroic patience that conquers
evil by enduring it. The result shall be a disciplined, sagacious
intellect without masculine hardness, delicate sensibility without
imbecile listlessness, active energy without moping drudgery, a
combination of powers and graces that wins homage from every heart.
I would not adopt any definition of woman's powers less generous than the
hint of nature and the will of God. Rather allow the largest scope to the
development of every gift, and trust the feminine instinct to vindicate
its own prerogative, whatever be the talent called into requisition.
Marked cases show that the feminine mind may sometimes have the faculty
for the severest mathematical reasoning, and England and America have been
taught this fact by the philosophical achievements of women who are an
honor alike to the delicacy and the intellect of their sex. Full well do I
remember a visit to William Mitchell the Nantucket astronomer, years ago,
when I saw that the father and the daughter had each a station and a set
of instruments for taking simultaneous observations of the heavens. Since
that day a gold medal from the king of Denmark has marked the daughter's
triumph as the discoverer of a new comet. I am not ashamed to say, that at
the time of the visit I had been several days puzzling over a difficult
sum in algebra, and that, with a few touches of her pencil, the young lady
made clear as day what I had but suspected, that the difficulty was in an
error of the text-book. She evidently understood Arbogast's polynomial
theorem better than I did.
But the great difficulty in this whole matter is not so much in a proper
definition of characteristics to be cherished, as in the application of
proper motives to bring out those characteristics. With boys the motive is
near at hand, for the world speaks to them with its imperious voice and
bids them prepare for some specific post of profit or ambition. Without
such practical spur, our sons would be a languid generation, since
self-culture merely for its own sake, as an amateur pursuit without any
specific object, is a dull affair, that very feebly goes. Even those young
men who have had a thorough collegiate education are very apt to forget
their learning, and to lose their literary gift unless they carry out the
work of education in actual affairs and keep their attainments by using
them. What shall take the place of such motive in the education of our
daughters? What aim shall we place before them in their early studies and
keep before them in after years? Serious indeed is the question, and too
frivolously answered by the hosts of bright girls who go from school into
a career of folly and dissipation.
There can be but one answer, and that the most Christian word. It is
simply this:--"Daughter, you are under God's rule, and all your gifts and
acquisitions are sacred trusts. Consecrate them by a true service. Look
upon your life as folly and nothingness, until you regard it as a solemn
charge and resolve to use its opportunities faithfully. Choose in the
first bloom of your hope the true, the Christian standard of character,
and give religion the grace and power of your youthful enthusiasm. You
have from Heaven itself a sacred commission, large as the sphere of your
sex, specific as the compass and aim of your own individual talents and
position." Take this ground, and it will appear that the daughter will
find in her own religious susceptibility, and in the Divine grace, a
motive to self-culture as efficient as the son finds in the spur of
business and competition. Both indeed need the same religious discipline,
but the one needs it more as an impelling, the other more as a restraining
motive.
Let the motive spirit be just and fervent, it remains a question with
daughters what shall be the chosen purpose of their after lives.
Circumstances must in some measure influence their choice, for with a
large portion, not merely taste, but the necessity of securing a
livelihood, is to be consulted. But in either case the law of fitness is
to be the guide; and all, without exception, make a sad mistake, who do
not train themselves to some pursuit capable alike of adorning their
affluence and of guarding them against need. It is very clear that there
is some fatal error in the physical education of girls that needs
correcting before they can be sure of any independence of position. "Very
few girls that I know are well," said a lady some time ago in speaking of
the large circle of scholars under her observation. As American boys are
not wanting in robust health, there must be some radical error in the
training of the other sex, that they are so fragile, and that they fade
and languish so prematurely. It is obvious that the power of the free air,
generous exercise, and wholesome hours and diet, is too little understood,
whilst the confectioner's trash often takes the place of substantial
food, and the delicate nerves that the fresh breezes of heaven, the cold
water of the spring, are so ready to soothe and brace with genial health,
are sometimes insanely dosed with brandy or opium at caprice to an extent
that might be too much for the constitution of a Goliath of Gath. There is
no reason to believe that our daughters are doomed by nature to be less
healthy than our sons, or less fitted for a field of usefulness congenial
with their gifts. Small indeed in comparison with the field opened to
sons, is the sphere at present for the talents of daughters. But small as
it may seem, it has not yet been fully occupied, and it will be sure to
enlarge when its capacities are faithfully tested. Certainly the saddest
limitation of feminine competence comes from overdoing some few branches
of labor, and there are great departments of the useful and the beautiful
arts little resorted to by their skill. For ourselves, we have no fear of
harming the delicacy of our daughters by opening to them any honorable
field of culture or industry to which their tastes and talents call them.
It is a sacred duty to employ well every faculty given by the Creator, and
full and fair opportunity to develop all their gifts should be afforded.
If young women wish to be lawyers, preachers, physicians, or merchants, we
would put no harsher obstacle before them than our honest opinion that
such is not their providential career, whilst we would do every thing in
our power to throw open to their pursuit those spheres of action most
congenial with their nature. In the industrial arts who shall number the
departments in which the quick perception and ready fingers and
instinctive neatness of girls would fit them for success more than the
other sex? Who shall limit the range of beautiful arts open to their taste
and genius? What may they not do with the pen, voice, pencil and chisel?
Who shall begin to unfold the future of woman as the Providential teacher
of mankind? Who shall adequately measure her present power over the young?
Honor to the teacher, whether with or without a mother's motive! Honor
to the host of teachers who are now bearing to every border of our
own land, the seeds of sound learning and social refinement. The
school-mistress--not the crone whom Shenstone once painted--but the
earnest, hopeful, high-minded daughter of a worthy home, is one of the
ruling powers of our land, and at her approach barbarism yields and
civilization reigns. I know well what I am talking about, and from years
of pastoral experience I have learned to bless her work and worth.
But without dwelling more on this topic of employment, or expatiating upon
the gifts of daughters for teaching in its various branches, and the
demand for a higher order of teachers than are now easily found, may we
not say that society among us is sadly crude and imperfect, from the
inadequate culture of those especially called to be its light and joy?
What art among those called beautiful or useful, can rank above the art of
guiding the economy of the home, ruling its prosaic abilities so aptly,
that they too shall wear an ideal expression, and the peace of God shall
go with the goods his bounty hath provided? Who shall exaggerate the
worth of the conversational power so congenial with the natural eloquence
of women, and so apt for want of culture or high purpose to degenerate
into the poorest gossip? Who shall over-estimate the power of her who,
from a full and ready mind bears to every circle the charm of an apt,
sparkling, and kindly utterance, making beauty a spiritual benediction
where it exists, and where beauty is denied, making up for its absence by
a grace that no loveliness of feature can rival? Blessed indeed this
ministry, when deep and holy faith completes the consecration, and our
daughters employ for the solace of the afflicted, or the light of the
benighted, the gifts and attainments which make their name so blessed
among friends and in homes.
Polished corner-stones of the temple, they are then builded upon Him who
is the chief corner-stone, and parents with all their solicitude for
beings so tenderly framed, and so exposed to the vicissitudes of the
world, may leave them in perfect faith in guardianship of a heavenly
goodness that cannot fail them. Great wrong we do them, unless, by the
most decided precept and example, we lead them to the Heavenly Father,
through the Gospel and the Church of Him, who is the Way and the Life.
What miserable folly it is that looks upon feminine piety as a weakness,
coming from an understanding too feeble to doubt, or a will too infirm to
be self-relying! The daughter's strength and wisdom are in her faith and
love. The mind is most illuminated when most opened to the light that God
sheds upon the confiding, and there is many a house in which the wife and
daughter's piety rises into a wisdom far beyond the husband and brother's
hard worldly understanding. Bless God for the mission of Him whose deepest
truth and inmost life were revealed to the sisters of Bethany, when hid
from the Scribes and the Pharisees, and who found in their spiritual
sympathy a solace which did not desert him, when his foremost disciple
denied his name. It is the recipient soil, tender and watered by gentle
dews, that nurtures the acorn into the oak by an alchemy that the flinty
rock knows nothing of. Thus has it been with the mighty seed of the Word.
What would have become of it, had there been no feminine faith and love to
receive and nurture it into the tree of life? May that grace which has so
worked upon the heart of woman, and raised her from bondage, and given her
a new throne on earth, work among us, and redeem our daughters from the
snares of the world.
_Week of Religious Anniversaries._
Business and the Heart.
BUSINESS AND THE HEART.
Paul, the spiritualist and devotee, was eminently a practical man, and by
what he did and what he said, gave it to be understood, that life has a
serious business to be done, as well as a firm faith and hearty affections
to be cherished. He himself was an efficient business man, and in his
letters, preaching, and whole administration, he showed singular ability
in dealing with men, and carrying his point in spite of their prejudices,
or his own disadvantages. Even money matters, he did not neglect; but
whilst rigidly simple and independent in his own habits, he had a wary eye
upon the needs of the rising churches, insisted upon due charities and
careful expenditure--nay, he expressly declared that the faculty for
business was to be welcomed among the Christian gifts, and to be used for
the common good, as decidedly as the faculty for teaching and exhorting.
He bids men unite diligence in business with fervor of spirit, and a true
service of God.
"Not slothful in business," he said at a time, when in the first love of
their new faith, many were in danger of slighting practical affairs for
the raptures of devotion, or in impatience for the second coming of
Christ, and the age of Millennial rest. "Not slothful in business," may we
not say now, great as is the temptation with many to think, that we do not
need any such advice in an age and country where business seems to ride
over every thing else, and trample down all fervor of spirit and service
of God. Reflect a little upon the clause in its connection, and we shall
see how admirably all the words go together, and fill out the sense.
Interpreting them so, we will speak of the business man in and out of his
business character, and especially in his character at home, or as a man
of affections--at home, that place where he must show pretty thoroughly
what he is at heart, to family and friends. To see what he is elsewhere,
we will look at him first at his work, for his course there will decide in
a great measure his spirit elsewhere. Look into his store, or study,
workshop, or office, and what is he doing? Whatever it may be, it is the
serious work of his life, and is taking most of his time and thought. He
says to himself, however much or little he likes his occupation, "This is
my business, and thus I use my faculties, and earn my livelihood, and
maintain my family, and win whatever means or influence I can for objects
that I approve." He is willing very honestly to accept the motto, "not
slothful in business" for himself and all in his employment. Does he know
how much meaning lies within those words?
Sometimes when he thinks himself a prodigy of care and industry, and in
the fever of hurry and anxiety, he is almost ready to give up every holy
thought and Christian feeling for the absorbing chase, is not his very
turmoil the fruit of slothfulness? If he had been better disciplined, more
thoughtful, more methodical, would he not have been spared all this fever
of mind, and excepting, perhaps, certain peculiar emergencies, would not
the care as well as the evil of each day have been sufficient for itself,
and send him to his home with heart open to friendly affections, and ready
to thank Heaven for sweetening the repose of his pillow by the work he has
done? Surely there is no way to make business so troublesome as by
neglecting it. The only way of being rid of it, is to do it well, and the
most thorough and careful system is more favorable to peace and
spirituality of mind than slipshod negligence. If a man does not attend to
his business it will attend to him, and dog him night and day, like a
baying hound in chase of a stricken deer. If a man goes beyond negligence
and is dishonest, so much the worse, for the best experience says, that
dishonesty is a mistake, as well as a vice--the poor resort of bunglers in
trade, as well as pigmies in morals. Nothing frets, and in the end
confounds a man more than to patch together a tissue of lies, and this
trouble a thorough business training must shun.
The very habit of earnest attention is wholesome, and need not end where
it begins. Sluggishness of mind and heart is a sad foe to all true life,
and he who studies generously, and does earnestly the work of any worthy
calling, so far educates himself, and is open to all better influences by
the discipline. Who of us, whatever our vocation, is not willing to take
very modest views of himself in this respect? Whether in one of the
learned professions, or in mercantile pursuits, have we been awake to the
highest aspects of our position, and used its opportunities so well, that
we may sincerely call it a liberal vocation? How many professional men
there are, who are mere drudges among drugs, parchments, and ceremonials?
how many merchants, may I not say, are there, who are profoundly ignorant
of the history and relations of their own craft, ignorant of that
wonderful science of trade which is changing the face of the world, and
placing itself among the momentous facts of Providence. Consider the
opportunities of a merchant to observe character, to study times, and
nations; to procure the arts, books, and society best for the mind; to
trace even the changes in the market to causes that connect themselves
with the world's want or welfare,--then say, who is not slothful in
business? Think too, of the best practical examplars of mercantile
culture,--how much of those two ruling forms of practical ability, the
soldier's and the statesman's, have combined in the merchant's enterprise
and comprehension, and an emphasis beyond that of the market-place will
attach to the words--"Not slothful in business." Nay, how can a man be
thoroughly faithful to his daily calling, and use the judgment, energy,
and punctuality essential to the best efficiency, without a training that
looks beyond the shop or office, and introduces him into all the generous
relations of life? In fact, what is business well understood, but the
practical side of life in all its moral and spiritual aspects, as well as
its bodily wants?
* * * * *
Certainly in its own way, the world is ready to require a certain kind of
heartiness in practical affairs, and to regard a certain fervor of feeling
as a pleasant trait in diligence. In its own way it will repeat the second
clause of the apostle, and add "fervent in spirit" to "not slothful in
business." The spirit of trade itself is among us very earnest, and those
men are liked best by their associates, who grace practical energy by a
good share of hearty fellowship and generous enthusiasm. This is well, but
it is not all of the interpretation of the words. Fervor thus interpreted
sometimes would be more fitly called fever, for it is more the hot haste
of the blood than the genial life of the affections, more the gambler's
madness than the disciple's zeal. Fervor in spirit means far less and far
more than this--far less in extravagance and far more in power. It means
that the cares of business should neither chill the heart with avarice,
nor inflame it with passion; and that a man should be more spiritual as he
becomes more practical.
Does any one wonder at this statement? Some persons indeed speak, as if
the spiritual and the practical were antagonist terms. But they are quite
the reverse, and eminently in alliance. Consider them on their human and
their divine side. What is more practical than spirit? what more essential
to efficient action? Certainly he who acts out the most and the best
spirit is the most practical man. He who is most experienced in training
himself or others to practical affairs, knows very well that success comes
according as spirit animates the daily routine, and each day's details
grow out of a root of hearty interest. We really believe that the greatest
business men have been full of spirit, and that the greatest spiritualists
have been eminently practical,--the mere drudge being a faulty business
man, and the mere dreamer a very poor spiritualist.