given an equal share of ideality,--in which the conception and the
desire of excellence are equally strong, but in which a discriminating
common-sense acts like a balance-wheel in machinery. What is the reason
that the most exacting idealists never make themselves unhappy about not
being able to fly like a bird or swim like a fish? Because common-sense
teaches them that these accomplishments are so utterly out of the
question that they never arise to the mind as objects of desire. In
these well-balanced minds we speak of, common-sense runs an instinctive
line all through life between the attainable and the unattainable, and
sets the key of desire accordingly.
Common-sense teaches that there is no one branch of human art or science
in which perfection is not a point forever receding. A botanist gravely
assures us, that to become perfect in the knowledge of one branch of
seaweeds would take all the time and strength of a man for a lifetime.
There is no limit to music, to the fine arts. There is never a time when
the gardener can rest, saying that his garden is perfect. Housekeeping,
cooking, sewing, knitting, may all, for aught we know, be pushed on
forever, without exhausting the capabilities for better doing.
But while attainment in everything is endless, circumstances forbid the
greater part of human beings from attaining in any direction the half of
what they see would be desirable; and the difference between the
miserable idealist and the contented realist often is, not that both do
not see what needs to be done for perfection, but that, seeing it, one
is satisfied with the attainable, and the other forever frets and wears
himself out on the unattainable.
The principal of a large and complicated public institution was
complimented on maintaining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid such a
diversity of cares. “I’ve made up my mind to be satisfied, when things
are done _half_ as well as I would have them,” was his answer; and the
same philosophy would apply with cheering results to the domestic
sphere.
There is a saying which one often hears among common people, that such
and such a one are persons who never could be happy, unless everything
went “_just so_,"--that is, in accordance with their highest
conceptions.
When these persons are women, and undertake the sway of a home empire,
they are sure to be miserable, and to make others so; for home is a
place where by no kind of magic possible to woman can everything be
always made to go “just so.”
We may read treatises on education,--and very excellent ones there are.
We may read very nice stories illustrating home management, in which
book-children and book-servants all work into the author’s plan with
obliging unanimity; but every real child and real servant is an
uncompromising fact, whose working into our ideal of life cannot be
predicted with any degree of certainty. A husband is another absolute
fact, of whose conformity to any ideal conceptions no positive account
can be given. So, when a person has the most charming theories of
education, the most complete ideals of life, it is often his lot to sit
bound hand and foot and see them all trampled under the heel of opposing
circumstances.
Nothing is easier than to make an ideal garden. We lay out our grounds,
dig, plant, transplant, manure. We read catalogues of roses till we are
bewildered with their lustrous glories. We set out plum, pear, and
peach, we luxuriate in advance on bushels of choicest grapes, and our
theoretic garden is Paradise Regained. But in the actual garden there
are cut-worms for every cabbage, squash-bugs for all the melons, slugs
and rose-bugs for the roses, curculios for the plums, fire-blight for
pears, yellows for peaches, mildew for grapes, and late and early
frosts, droughts, winds, and hail-storms here and there for all.
The garden and the family are fair pictures of each other. Both are
capable of the most ravishing representations on paper; and the rules
and directions for creating beauty and perfection in both can be made so
apparently plain that he who runneth may read, and it would seem that a
fool need not err therein; and yet the actual results are always halting
miles away behind expectation and desire.
It would be an incalculable gain to domestic happiness, if people would
begin the concert of life with their instruments tuned to a very low
pitch: they who receive the most happiness are generally they who demand
and expect the least.
Ideality often becomes an insidious mental and moral disease, acting all
the more subtly from its alliances with what is highest and noblest
within us. Shall we not aspire to be perfect? Shall we be content with
low measures and low standards in anything? To these inquiries there
seems of course to be but one answer; yet the individual driven forward
in blind, unreasoning aspiration becomes wearied, bewildered,
discontented, restless, fretful, and miserable.
An unhappy person can never make others happy. The creators and
governors of a home, who are themselves restless and inharmonious,
cannot make harmony and peace. This is the secret reason why many a
pure, good, conscientious person is only a source of uneasiness in
family life. They are exacting, discontented, unhappy; and spread the
discontent and unhappiness about them. They are, to begin with, on poor
terms with themselves; they do not like themselves; they do not like
their own appearance, manners, education, accomplishments; on all these
points they try themselves by ideal standards, and find themselves
wanting. In morals, in religion, too, the same introverted scrutiny
detects only errors and evils, till all life seems to them a miserable,
hopeless failure, and they wish they had never been born. They are angry
and disgusted with themselves; there is no self-toleration or
self-endurance. And persons in a chronic quarrel with themselves are
very apt to quarrel with others. That exacting nature which has no
patience with one’s own inevitable frailties and errors has none for
those of others; and thus the great motive by which Christianity
enforces tolerance of the faults of others loses its hold. There are
people who make no allowances either for themselves or anybody else, but
are equally angry and disgusted with both.
Now it is important that those finely strung natures in which ideality
largely predominates should begin life by a religious care and restraint
of this faculty. As the case often stands, however, religion only
intensifies the difficulty, by adding stringency to exaction and
censoriousness, driving the subject up with an unremitting strain till
the very cords of reason sometimes snap. Yet, properly understood and
used, religion is the only cure for the evil of diseased ideality. The
Christian religion is the only one that ever proposed to give to all
human beings, however various the range of their nature and desires, the
great underlying gift of _rest_. Its Author, with a strength of
assurance which only supreme Divinity can justify, promises _rest_ to
all persons, under all circumstances, with all sorts of natures, all
sorts of wants, and all sorts of defects. The invitation is as wide as
the human race: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden,
and I will give you REST.”
Now this is the more remarkable, as this gracious promise is accompanied
by the presentation of a standard of perfection which is more ideal and
exacting than any other that has ever been placed before
mankind,--which, in so many words, sets up absolute perfection as the
only true goal of aspiration.
The problem which Jesus proposes to human nature is endless aspiration
steadied by endless peace,--a perfectly restful, yet unceasing effort
after a good which is never to be attained till we attain a higher and
more perfect form of existence. It is because this problem is insolvable
by any human wisdom, that He says that they who take His yoke upon them
must learn of Him, for He alone can make the perfect yoke easy and its
burden light.
The first lesson in this benignant school must lie like a strong, broad
foundation under every structure on which we wish to rear a happy
life,--and that is, that the full gratification of the faculty of
ideality is never to be expected in this present stage of existence, but
is to be transferred to a future life. Ideality, with its incessant,
restless longings and yearnings, is snubbed and turned out of doors by
human philosophy, when philosophy becomes middle-aged and sulky with
repeated disappointments,--it is berated as a cheat and a liar,--told to
hold its tongue and take itself elsewhere; but Christianity bids it be
of good cheer, still to aspire and hope and prophesy, and points to a
future where all its dreams shall be outdone by reality.
A full faith in such a perfect future--a perfect faith that God has
planted in man no desire which he cannot train to complete enjoyment in
that future--gives the mind rest and contentment to postpone for a while
gratifications that will certainly come at last.
Such a faith is better even than that native philosophical good sense
which restrains the ideal calculations and hopes of some; for it has a
wider scope and a deeper power.
We have seen in our time a woman gifted with all those faculties which
rejoice in the refinements of society, dispensing the elegant
hospitalities of a bountiful home, joyful and giving joy. A sudden
reverse has swept all this away, the wealth on which it was based has
melted like a fog-bank in a warm morning, and we have seen her with her
little family beginning life again in the log-cabin of a Western
settlement. We have seen her sitting in the door of the one room that
took the place of parlor, bed-room, nursery, and cheerfully making her
children’s morning toilette by the help of the one tin wash-bowl that
takes the place of her well-arranged bathing-and dressing-rooms; and
yet, as she twined their curls over her fingers, she had a laugh and a
jest and cheerful word for all. The few morning-glories that she was
training over her rude porch seemed as much a source of delight to her
as her former greenhouse and garden; and the adjustment of the one or
two shelves whereon were the half-dozen books left of the library, her
husband’s private papers, and her own and her children’s wardrobe, was
entered into daily with a zealous interest as if she had never known a
wider sphere.
Such facility of accommodation to life’s reverses is sometimes supposed
to be merely the result of a hopeful and cheerful temperament; in this
case it was purely the work of religion. In early life, this same woman
had been the discontented slave of ideality, had sighed with vain
longings in the midst of real and substantial comfort, had felt even the
creasing of the rose-leaves of her pillow an intolerable annoyance. Now
she has resigned herself to the work and toil of life as the soldier
does to the duties of the camp, satisfied to do and to bear, enjoying
with a free heart the small daily pleasures which spring up like
wild-flowers amid daily toils and annoyances, and looking to the end of
the campaign for rest and congenial scenes.
This woman has within her the powers and gifts of an artist; but her
pencils and her colors are resolutely laid away, and she sits hour after
hour darning her children’s stockings and turning and arranging a scanty
wardrobe which no ingenuity can make more than decent. She was a
beautiful musician; but a musical instrument is now a thing of the past;
she only lulls her baby to sleep with snatches of the songs which used
to form the attraction of brilliant salons. She feels that a world of
tastes and talents are lying dormant in her while she is doing the daily
work of a nurse, cook, and seamstress; but she remembers WHO took upon
Him the form of a servant before her, and she has full faith that her
beautiful gifts, like bulbs sleeping under ground, shall come up and
blossom again in that fair future which He has promised. Therefore it is
that she has no sighs for the present or the past,--no quarrel with her
life, or her lot in it; she is in harmony with herself and with all
around her; her husband looks upon her as a fair daily miracle, and her
children rise up and call her blessed.
But, having laid the broad foundation of faith in a better life, as the
basis on which to ground our present happiness, we who are of the ideal
nature must proceed to build thereon wisely.
In the first place, we must cultivate the duty of _self-patience_ and
self-toleration. Of all the religionists and moralists who ever taught,
Fénelon is the only one who has distinctly formulated the duty which a
self-educator owes to himself. HAVE PATIENCE WITH YOURSELF is a
direction often occurring in his writings, and a most important one it
is,--because patience with ourselves is essential, if we would have
patience with others. Let us look through the world. Who are the people
easiest to be pleased, most sunny, most urbane, most tolerant? Are they
not persons from constitution and temperament on good terms with
themselves,--people who do not ask much of themselves or try themselves
severely, and who therefore are in a good humor for looking upon others?
But how is a person who is conscious of a hundred daily faults and
errors to have patience with himself? The question may be answered by
asking, What would you say to a child who fretted, scolded, dashed down
his slate, and threw his book on the floor, because he made mistakes in
his arithmetic? You would say, of course, “You are but a learner; it is
not to be expected that you will not make mistakes; all children do.
Have patience.” Just as you would talk to that child, talk to yourself.
Be reconciled to a lot of inevitable imperfection; be content to try
continually, and often to fail. It is the inevitable condition of human
existence, and is to be accepted as such. A patient acceptance of
mortifications and of defeats of our life’s labor, is often more
efficacious for our moral advancement than even our victories.
In the next place, we must school ourselves not to look with restless
desire to degrees of excellence in any department of life which
circumstances evidently forbid our attaining. For a woman with plenty of
money and plenty of well-trained servants to be content to have
fly-specked windows, or littered rooms, or a slovenly-ordered table, is
a sin. But in a woman in feeble health, incumbered with a flock of
restless little ones, and whose circumstances allow her to keep but one
servant, it may be a piece of moral heroism to shut her eyes on many
such things, while securing mere essentials to life and health. It may
be a virtue in her not to push neatness to such lengths as to wear
herself out, or to break down her only servant, and to be resigned to
have her tastes and preferences for order, cleanliness, and beauty
crossed, as she would resign herself to any other affliction. No
purgatory can be more severe to people of a thorough and exact nature
than to be so situated that they can only half do everything they
undertake; yet such is the fiery trial to which many a one is subjected.
Life seems to drive them along without giving them time for anything;
everything is ragged, hasty performance, of which the mind most keenly
sees and feels the raggedness and hastiness. Even one thing done as it
really ought to be done would be a rest and refreshment to the soul; but
nowhere, in any department of its undertakings, is there any such thing
to be perceived.
But there are cases where a great deal of wear and tear can be saved to
the nerves by a considerate making up of one’s mind as to how much in
certain circumstances had better be undertaken at all. Let the
circumstances of life be surveyed, the objects we are pursuing arranged
and counted, and see if there are not things here and there that may be
thrown out of our plans entirely, that others may be better done.
What if the whole care of expensive table luxuries, like cake and
preserves, be thrown out of a housekeeper’s budget, in order that the
essential articles of cookery may be better prepared? What if ruffling,
embroidery, and the entire department of kindred fine arts, be thrown
out of her calculations, in providing for the clothing of a family? Many
a feeble woman has died of too much ruffling, as she patiently sat up
night after night sewing the thread of a precious, invaluable life into
elaborate articles which her children were none the healthier or more
virtuous for wearing.
Ideality is constantly ramifying and extending the department of the
toilette and the needle into a world of work and worry, wherein
distracted women wander up and down, seeing no end anywhere. The
sewing-machine was announced as a relief to these toils; but has it
proved so? We trow not. It only amounts to this,--that now there can be
seventy-two tucks on each little petticoat, instead of fifteen, as
before, and that twice as many garments are made up and held to be
necessary as formerly. The women still sew to the limit of human
endurance; and still the old proverb holds good, that woman’s work is
never done.
In the matter of dress, much wear and tear of spirit and nerves may be
saved by not beginning to go in certain directions, well knowing that
they will take us beyond our resources of time, strength, and money.
There is one word of fear in the vocabulary of women of our time which
must be pondered advisedly,--TRIMMING. In old times a good garment was
enough; now-a-days a garment is nothing without trimming. Everything,
from the first article that the baby wears up to the elaborate dress of
the bride, must be trimmed at a rate that makes the trimming more than
the original article. A dress can be made in a day, but it cannot be
trimmed under two or three days. Let a faithful, conscientious woman
make up her mind how much of all this burden of life she will assume,
remembering wisely that there is no end to ideality in anything, and
that the only way to deal with many perplexing parts of life is to leave
them out altogether.
Mrs. Kirkland, in her very amusing account of her log-cabin experiences,
tells us of the great disquiet and inconvenience she had in attempting
to arrange in her lowly abode a most convenient clothes-press, which was
manifestly too large for the establishment. Having labored with the
cumbersome convenience for a great length of time, and with much
discomfort, she at last resigned the ordering of it to a brawny-armed
damsel of the forest, who began by pitching it out of doors, with the
comprehensive remark, that, “where there wasn’t room for a thing, there
wasn’t.”
The wisdom which inspired the remark of this rustic maiden might have
saved the lives of many matrons who have worn themselves out in vain
attempts to make comforts and conveniences out of things which they had
better have thrown out of doors altogether.
True, it requires some judgment to know what, among objects commonly
pursued in any department, we really ought to reject; and it requires
independence and steadiness to say, “I will not begin to try to do
certain things that others are doing, and that, perhaps, they expect of
me”; but there comes great leisure and quietness of spirit from the gaps
thus made. When the unwieldy clothes-press was once cast out, everything
in the log-cabin could have room.
A mother, who is anxiously trying to reconcile the watchful care and
training of her little ones with the maintenance of fashionable calls
and parties, may lose her life in the effort to do both, and do both in
so imperfect a manner as never to give her a moment’s peace. But on the
morrow after she comes to the serious and Christian resolve, “The
training of my children is all that I _can_ do well, and henceforth it
shall be my _sole_ object,” there falls into her tumultuous life a
Sabbath pause of peace and leisure. It is true that she is still doing a
work in which absolute perfection ever recedes; but she can make
relative attainments far nearer the standard than before.
Lastly, under the head of ideality let us resolve _to be satisfied with
our own past doings, when at the time of doing we used all the light God
gave us, and did all in our power_.
The backward action of ideality is often full as tormenting as its
forward and prospective movements. The moment a thing is done and over,
one would think that good sense would lead us to drop it like a stone in
the ocean; but the morbid idealist cannot cut loose from the past.
“Was that, after all, the _best_ thing? Would it not have been better so
or so?” And the self-tormented individual lies wakeful, during weary
night-hours, revolving a thousand possibilities, and conjuring up a
thousand vague perhapses. “If I had only done _so_ now, perhaps this
result would have followed, or that would not”; and as there is never
any saying but that so it might have turned out, the labyrinth and the
discontent are alike endless.
Now there is grand good sense in the Apostle’s direction, “Forgetting
the things that are behind, press forward.” The idealist should charge
himself, as with an oath of God, to let the past alone as an
accomplished fact, solely concerning himself with the inquiry, “Did I
not do the best I _then_ knew how?”
The maxim of the Quietists is, that, when we have acted according to
the best light we have, we have expressed the will of God under those
circumstances,--since, had it been otherwise, more and different light
would have been given us; and with the will of God done by ourselves as
by Himself, it is our duty to be content.
* * * * *
Having written thus far in my article, and finding nothing more at hand
to add to it, I went into the parlor to read it to Jenny and Mrs.
Crowfield. I found the former engaged in the task of binding sixty yards
of quilling, (so I think she called it,) which were absolutely necessary
for perfecting a dress; and the latter was braiding one of seven little
petticoats, stamped with elaborate patterns, which she had taken from
Marianne, because that virtuous matron was ruining her eyes and health
in a blind push to get them done before October.
Both approved and admired my piece, and I thought of Saint Anthony’s
preaching the fishes:--
The sermon now ended,
Each turned and descended;
The pikes went on stealing,
The eels went on eeling.
Much delighted were they,
But preferred the old way.
THE END.
Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.