though good, cannot be permanent. Other republics have failed, and
the historian and philosopher have told us that nations are like
individuals; that at their birth they receive the seeds of their decline
and dissolution. Here, deceived by a false analogy, we receive an apt
illustration of particular facts for a general truth. The existence of
nations cannot in strictness be compared with the duration of animate
life; for by the operation of physical causes this, after a certain
length of time, must cease; but the existence of nations is prolonged by
the succession of one generation to another, and there is no physical
cause to prevent this succession’s going on in a peaceable manner under a
good government till the end of time. We must then look to other causes
than necessity for the decline and fall of former republics. If we could
discover these causes, and seasonably prevent their operation, then
might our latest posterity enjoy the same happy government with which
we are blessed; or if but in part, then might the triumph of tyranny be
delayed, and a few more generations be free.
Permit me, then, to ask the enlightened politician of my country whether
amid his researches for these causes he cannot discover one in the
neglect which free governments, in common with others, have shown to
whatever regarded the formation of the female character.
In those great republics which have fallen of themselves the loss of
republican manners and virtues has been the invariable precursor of their
loss of the republican form of government. But is it not in the power of
our sex to give society its tone, both as to manners and morals? And if
such is the extent of female influence, is it wonderful that republics
have failed when they calmly suffered that influence to become enlisted
in favor of luxuries and follies wholly incompatible with the existence
of freedom?
It may be said that the depravation of morals and manners can be
traced to the introduction of wealth—as its cause. But wealth will be
introduced; even the iron laws of Lycurgus could not prevent it. Let
us, then, inquire if means may not be devised to prevent its bringing
with it the destruction of public virtue. May not these means be found
in education? in implanting in early youth habits that may counteract
the temptations to which, through the influence of wealth, mature age
will be exposed? and in giving strength and expansion to the mind, that
it may comprehend and prize those principles which teach the rigid
performance of duty? Education, it may be said, has been tried as a
preservative of national purity. But was it applied to every exposed
part of the body politic? For if any part has been left within the
pestilential atmosphere of wealth without this preservative, then that
part, becoming corrupted, would communicate the contagion to the whole;
and if so, then has the experiment whether education may not preserve
public virtue never yet been fairly tried. Such a part has been left in
all former experiments. Females have been exposed to the contagion of
wealth without the preservative of a good education, and they constitute
that part of the body politic least endowed by nature to resist, most
to communicate it. Nay, not merely have they been left without the
defence of a good education, but their corruption has been accelerated
by a bad one. The character of women of wealth has been, and in the old
governments of Europe now is, all that this statement would lead us
to expect. Not content with doing nothing to promote their country’s
welfare, like pampered children, they revel in its prosperity, and
scatter it to the winds with, a wanton profusion; and, still worse, they
empoison its source by diffusing a contempt for useful labor. To court
Pleasure their business, within her temple, in defiance of the laws of
God and man, they have erected the idol Fashion; and upon her altar they
sacrifice with shameless rites whatever is sacred to virtue or religion.
Not the strongest ties of nature, not even maternal love can restrain
them! Like the worshipper of Moloch, the mother, while yet yearning over
the new-born babe, tears it from the bosom which God has swelled with
nutrition for its support, and casts it remorselessly from her, the
victim of her unhallowed devotion.
But while with an anguished heart I thus depict the crimes of my sex, let
not the other stand by and smile. Reason declares that you are guiltier
than we. You are our natural guardians—our brothers, our fathers, and
our rulers. You know that our ductile minds readily take the impressions
of education. Why, then, have you neglected our education? Why have
you looked with lethargic indifference on circumstances ruinous to the
formation of our characters, which you might have controlled?
But it may be said the observations here made cannot be applied to any
class of females in our country. True, they cannot yet; and if they
could, it would be useless to make them; for when the females of any
country have become thus debased, then is that country so corrupted
that nothing but the awful judgments of Heaven can arrest its career of
vice. But it cannot be denied that our manners are verging towards those
described; and the change, though gradual, has not been slow. Already do
our daughters listen with surprise when we tell them of the republican
simplicity of our mothers. But our manners are not as yet so altered but
that throughout our country they are still marked with republican virtues.
The inquiry to which these remarks have conducted us is this: What is
offered by the plan of female education here proposed which may teach or
preserve among females of wealthy families that purity of manners which
is allowed to be so essential to national prosperity, and so necessary to
the existence of a republican government?
1. Females, by having their understandings cultivated, their reasoning
powers developed and strengthened, may be expected to act more from the
dictates of reason and less from those of fashion and caprice.
2. With minds thus strengthened, they would be taught systems of
morality, enforced by the sanctions of religion; and they might be
expected to acquire juster and more enlarged views of their duty, and
stronger and higher motives to its performance.
3. This plan of education offers all that can be done to preserve female
youth from a contempt of useful labor. The pupils would become accustomed
to it, in conjunction with the high objects of literature and the elegant
pursuits of the fine arts; and it is to be hoped that both from habit and
association they might in future life regard it as respectable.
To this it may be added that if housewifery could be raised to a regular
art, and taught upon philosophical principles, it would become a higher
and more interesting occupation; and ladies of fortune, like wealthy
agriculturists, might find that to regulate their business was an
agreeable employment.
4. The pupils might be expected to acquire a taste for moral and
intellectual pleasures which would buoy them above a passion for show and
parade, and which would make them seek to gratify the natural love of
superiority by endeavoring to excel others in intrinsic merit rather than
in the extrinsic frivolities of dress, furniture, and equipage.
5. By being enlightened in moral philosophy, and in that which teaches
the operations of the mind, females would be enabled to perceive the
nature and extent of that influence which they possess over their
children, and the obligation which this lays them under to watch the
formation of their characters with unceasing vigilance, to become their
instructors, to devise plans for their improvement, to weed out the vices
of their minds, and to implant and foster the virtues. And surely there
is that in the maternal bosom which, when its pleadings shall be aided by
education, will overcome the seductions of wealth and fashion, and will
lead the mother to seek her happiness in communing with her children, and
promoting their welfare, rather than in a heartless intercourse with the
votaries of pleasure, especially when with an expanded mind she extends
her views to futurity, and sees her care to her offspring rewarded by
peace of conscience, the blessings of her family, the prosperity of her
country, and, finally, with everlasting pleasure to herself and them.
Thus laudable objects and employments would be furnished for the great
body of females who are not kept by poverty from excesses. But among
these, as among the other sex, will be found master-spirits, who must
have pre-eminence, at whatever price they acquire it. Domestic life
cannot hold these, because they prefer to be infamous rather than
obscure. To leave such without any virtuous road to eminence is unsafe to
the community; for not unfrequently are the secret springs of revolution
set in motion by their intrigues. Such aspiring minds we will regulate by
education; we will remove obstructions to the course of literature, which
has heretofore been their only honorable way to distinction; and we will
offer them a new object, worthy of their ambition: to govern and improve
the seminaries for their sex.
In calling on my patriotic countrymen to effect so noble an object,
the consideration of national glory should not be overlooked. Ages
have rolled away; barbarians have trodden the weaker sex beneath their
feet; tyrants have robbed us of the present light of heaven, and fain
would take its future. Nations calling themselves polite have made us
the fancied idols of a ridiculous worship, and we have repaid them with
ruin for their folly. But where is that wise and heroic country which
has considered that our rights are sacred, though we cannot defend
them? that, though a weaker, we are an essential part of the body
politic, whose corruption or improvement must affect the whole? and
which, having thus considered, has sought to give us by education that
rank in the scale of being to which our importance entitles us? History
shows not that country. It shows many whose legislatures have sought to
improve their various vegetable productions and their breeds of useful
brutes, but none whose public councils have made it an object of their
deliberations to improve the character of their women. Yet, though
history lifts not her finger to such a one, anticipation does. She
points to a nation which, having thrown off the shackles of authority and
precedent, shrinks not from schemes of improvement because other nations
have never attempted them; but which, in its pride of independence, would
rather lead than follow in the march of human improvement—a nation wise
and magnanimous to plan, enterprising to undertake, and rich in resources
to execute. Does not every American exult that this country is his
own? And who knows how great and good a race of men may yet arise from
the forming hand of mothers, enlightened by the bounty of that beloved
country, to defend her liberties, to plan her future improvement, and to
raise her to unparalleled glory?
MIDDLEBURY, 1819.
FEMALE EDUCATION.
BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.
An address delivered at the Brooklyn Collegiate Institute for
Young Ladies.
At the present period of society, when the light of knowledge, no longer
the feeble glimmering of an uncertain dawn, is rapidly becoming “brighter
and brighter unto perfect day,” it may seem idle and superfluous to
call your attention to so hackneyed a subject as that of education. But
permit me to observe that a subject of such vital importance to us, both
as individuals and citizens, can scarcely be too often presented to
our view. There is perhaps no country in the world where the benefits
of education are so fully appreciated and so widely diffused as in our
own. Schools, both public and private, have multiplied in every part of
the Union; and even our common seminaries are now conducted upon such
enlarged and liberal principles, as were formerly unknown beyond the
walls of a university. But even in this enlightened age there is one
point which yet remains somewhat in dispute—I mean the education of
_females_. It is not long since the belief in woman’s inferior capacity
was at least tacitly admitted, and there are many even now who adhere to
that belief; but let us inquire what domain of human knowledge man can
claim as his exclusive right. Is it the boundless field of classic lore?
Where can be found a more indefatigable laborer in that fruitful soil
than was Madame Dacier, the elegant translator of Plutarch? Is it the
rugged steep of science? How few of all those who have toiled up that
ascent ever attained such an elevated station as Maria Agnesi, the young
and beautiful professor of mathematics at Bologna? Is it the thorny road
of political economy, or the flowery paths of general literature? Who
has ever traversed the former with such masculine vigor, or threaded the
pleasant mazes of the latter with such feminine tact, as Madame de Staël,
the wonder of her own sex, the envy of ours? Is it the fairy-land of
poesy? Who, since the days of Shakespeare, could lay claim to the title
of the “Poet of the Passions,” until it was proudly won by Miss Baillie?
Where, since the early days of Campbell, have been found more sweetness
and polish than in the productions of our universal favorite, Mrs. Hemans?
From the almost numberless examples of female intellect a few only have
been adduced, with which we are all familiar, and surely they are enough
to convince any unprejudiced mind that Heaven has conferred upon woman
no less than upon man the gifts of talent and genius. By the proper
restraints of her sex, woman is prevented from buffeting the waves
of popular prejudice and diving into the depths of science after the
yet undiscovered gems of truth; but who will dare assert that she is
therefore insensible to their value or incapable of grasping them?
It has been asserted by some, whose minds were capable of a much wider
range of observation than the remark would seem to indicate, that
education, though it always renders _man_ an ornament to his station in
society, invariably unfits a _woman_ for the duties which seem to have
been allotted her by nature. This cannot possibly be true. Our ordinary
experience certainly affords no proof that an enlightened mind is the
most prone to error; it rather teaches us that they whose eyes have been
opened to “see the right” seldom will voluntarily “the wrong pursue.”
I speak not now of what is usually termed the eccentricity of genius,
though that might be referred to as another evidence of the necessity of
a proper education; for were talents always subjected to the discipline
of the schools, we should not find a Mary Wollstonecroft pleading the
cause of immorality and atheism under pretence of advocating the rights
of women; nor would our country have been so recently insulted by the
presence of a woman who still more boldly tramples upon the restraints
of modesty and decorum, and publicly proclaims herself the “apostle of
infidelity.” These are things which, if they were the result of mental
cultivation, would induce a parent to suppress every glimmering of
intellect in his darling and innocent child; but we need no argument to
convince us that only those who have been “nursed in darkness” are prone
to evil rather than to good.
Another objection which has been urged, with some apparent truth, against
the present enlarged system of female education is that it is calculated
to render women pedants and bookworms rather than useful members of
the domestic circle; but to confute this we need only recur to our own
personal experience, since doubtless there are few among us who cannot
number among their friends women as much distinguished for domestic
virtues as for superior and extensive acquirements. Indeed, is it not
absurd to suppose that our daily repast will be less grateful because
intellect and elegance preside at the social board? or that household
fires will burn less brightly because kindled by a torch from the shrine
of Minerva?
The true cause of all these various objections appears to be a
misconception of the term education. A good education includes the
culture of the heart as well as of the mind. It implies not merely the
improvement of the mental faculties, but also the government of the
passions and the proper direction of the affections. We should not think
a garden beautiful where the weeds have been allowed to grow up among
the flowers, however green and flourishing it might appear; neither
should we deem a woman well educated whose heart was the abode of folly
and vanity, however her mind might be stored with knowledge. One of our
best writers on education (herself a striking proof of its benefits) has
compared a well-regulated mind to a watch, where every part is so nicely
balanced that no one can preponderate. This is a very apt illustration.
Of the various faculties with which Heaven has endowed us, each may be
perfect in itself; but from some error in our adjustment of them (if
I may use the term), all may become useless. It is only by the most
unwearied self-discipline that this correct balance of mental powers can
be effected; and the ability to discipline one’s self can only be derived
from education.
To employ the rapidly-developing faculties of early childhood merely as
sources of amusement to ourselves is certainly not the proper method of
bestowing upon our children the treasures of wisdom; yet this is the
course usually pursued. If we would reap the rich harvest of a truly good
education, the work of cultivation must commence at a much earlier period
than even our most zealous laborers in the field of knowledge would
deem necessary. As soon as a child is capable of receiving different
degrees of pleasure from different objects, the task of instruction
should commence; not, however, by means of dry precept and tedious
disquisition, for these would be incomprehensible, but by resorting to
all those thousand devices which a judicious instructor is so ingenious
in contriving, in order to inform as well as amuse. Every opportunity of
imparting knowledge should be eagerly seized, for knowledge acquired at
such an age becomes a part of our very nature; and, whatever may be the
course of our after-life, the impressions received in early childhood are
never totally effaced.
But to whom is the sacred and laborious duty of early instruction
delegated? Is it to the father, who, returning from his daily toil, seeks
in the bosom of his family that peace which never abides in the turmoil
of the world? Surely not. The conflict with a hard and selfish world is
enough for _him_; the duty of combating with rebellious human nature is
reserved for the mother’s portion. No father can, no father ought to know
how much heaviness of heart, how much weariness of spirit, the mother
has endured in order to render his children the objects of his pride as
well as of his affection. To foster the germ of mental energy, to train
up the early shoots of intellect, and, more than all, to watch over
the pure fresh feelings of the youthful heart, and direct its innocent
affections to “things above,” so that it may never be induced to “place
its happiness lower than itself,” these are the ennobling duties of a
mother.
But can these duties be performed by the woman whose mental energies
were in early youth wasted upon the fascinating pages of romance, and,
in later life, frittered away amid the frivolities of fashion? “Never,”
observed a man of acknowledged sense and penetration, “never have I
known a man distinguished for wisdom and virtue who was the son of a
foolish mother.” This is emphatically true; and when we consider how
often the temper and dispositions which we falsely ascribe to nature may
be traced to impressions received in infancy, our own experience will
bear testimony to its truth. The husbandman who should scatter his seed
among the dry clods of an untilled field, and then go his way rejoicing
in the anticipation of a rich harvest, would be far more likely to reap
tares than wheat; yet there would not be more folly in _his_ expectations
than in those of the well-meaning but injudicious mother who, after
having allowed the precious years of infancy to slip by, fondly hopes to
gather from the youthful mind the rare fruits of virtue and religion,
the principles of which no previous culture had fitted it to receive.
Education _must_ begin in infancy. Even in the nurse’s arms a child
learns to distinguish between pleasurable and disagreeable objects; and
in the same manner—that is to say, by making appeals to the senses—may it
be taught the difference between right and wrong. If it be true, as some
wise men have asserted, that the first ten years give a coloring to man’s
whole life, then let women look well to their maternal duties, for awful
is their responsibility.
Could the secret biography of heroes and sages throughout the earth be
correctly ascertained, so as to trace the progress of early education,
what a brilliant lustre would be shed on the maternal character!
Even in the pages of general history, notwithstanding its vague and
unsatisfactory sketches of the detail of life, how universally do we find
the influence of women made manifest. It is recorded of the greatest
orator of antiquity that the wise and politic plans which it had cost
him years to frame could be overturned in a single day by a woman; and
Tacitus himself, the most impartial of historians, has not hesitated to
trace the degeneracy of morals under the emperors to the period when the
Roman matrons began to relinquish to slaves and hirelings the education
of their children. If such are the desolating effects of woman’s
ill-directed influence, let us reflect for a moment upon the incalculable
benefits which might be derived from the same powerful force when
exerted in its proper direction. Those only who have been long accustomed
to look into the springs of human action can be aware how much the
general state of civilized society depends upon the sentiments and habits
of women; for while many are willing to admit the powerful effect of
female elegance on the _manners_ of men, few will as readily acknowledge
the influence of female principles upon their _character_. But to those
who can only be taught by examples we can give one noble evidence of the
advantages of woman’s influence. Let us recall to mind the history of the
man who directed the destinies of our own proud and happy country—let
us look at the moral grandeur of his character—let us behold him gifted
with the heart to desire, the intellect to plan, and the hand to achieve
the freedom of an infant nation—let us observe him placed at the head of
that nation, idolized by its citizens, respected by its enemies, admired
by the world; yet, uncontaminated by that ambition which is so generally
the offspring of power, we see him quietly resigning that proudest of all
titles, the ruler of a free people, and returning, with his early, simple
habits, to the tillage of his humble farm. Yes; let us contemplate in
every point of view the majesty of this character, which stands, like
the pyramids of Egypt, the unrivalled object of a world’s admiration,
and then let us recollect with noble pride that the character of our
illustrious Washington was formed by his _mother_.