"Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made cheerful,
and bloom as the lily; and the barren places of Jordan shall run wild
with wood."--ISAIAH xxxv, i. (Septuagint.)
It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the sequel of one
previously given, that I should shortly state to you my general
intention in both. The questions specially proposed to you in the
first, namely, How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one,
which it was my endeavor to make you propose earnestly to yourselves,
namely, _Why_ to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever
advantages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of education
and of literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when we have
apprehended clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to
teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed moral training and
well-chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the
ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in
the truest sense, _kingly_; conferring indeed the purest kingship that
can exist among men: too many other kingships (however distinguished by
visible insignia or material power) being either spectral, or
tyrannous;--Spectral--that is to say, aspects and shows only of
royalty, hollow as death, and which only the "Likeness of a kingly
crown have on"; or else tyrannous--that is to say, substituting their
own will for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule.
52. There is, then, I repeat--and as I want to leave this idea with
you, I begin with it, and shall end with it--only one pure kind of
kingship; an inevitable and external kind, crowned or not: the
kingship, namely, which consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer
thoughtful state, than that of others; enabling you, therefore, to
guide, or to raise them. Observe that word "State"; we have got into a
loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and stability
of a thing; and you have the full force of it in the derived word
"statue"--"the immovable thing." A king's majesty or "state," then,
and the right of his kingdom to be called a state, depends on the
movelessness of both:--without tremor, without quiver of balance;
established and enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which
nothing can alter, nor overthrow.
53. Believing that all literature and all education are only useful so
far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, and _therefore_
kingly, power--first, over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over all
around us, I am now going to ask you to consider with me farther, what
special portion or kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble
education, may rightly be possessed by women; and how far they also are
called to a true queenly power. Not in their households merely, but
over all within their sphere. And in what sense, if they rightly
understood and exercised this royal or gracious influence, the order
and beauty induced by such benignant power would justify us in speaking
of the territories over which each of them reigned, as "Queens'
Gardens."
54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far deeper question,
which--strange though this may seem--remains among many of us yet quite
undecided, in spite of its infinite importance.
We cannot determine what the queenly power of women should be, until we
are agreed what their ordinary power should be. We cannot consider how
education may fit them for any widely extending duty, until we are
agreed what is their true constant duty. And there never was a time
when wilder words were spoken, or more vain imagination permitted,
respecting this question--quite vital to all social happiness. The
relations of the womanly to the manly nature, their different
capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never to have been yet
estimated with entire consent. We hear of the "mission" and of the
"rights" of Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission
and the rights of Man;--as if she and her lord were creatures of
independent kind, and of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is
wrong. And not less wrong--perhaps even more foolishly wrong (for I
will anticipate thus far what I hope to prove)--is the idea that woman
is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a
thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her
weakness, by the preëminence of his fortitude.
This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was
made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively
by a shadow, or worthily by a slave!
55. I.--Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear and
harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it is true) of what womanly
mind and virtue are in power and office, with respect to man's; and how
their relations rightly accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, and
honor, and authority of both.
And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last lecture: namely,
that the first use of education was to enable us to consult with the
wisest and the greatest men on all points of earnest difficulty. That
to use books rightly, was to go to them for help: to appeal to them,
when our own knowledge and power of thought failed: to be led by them
into wider sight--purer conception--than our own, and receive from them
the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our
solitary and unstable opinion.
Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest, the wisest, the
purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in any wise on this point: let us
hear the testimony they have left respecting what they held to be the
true dignity of woman, and her mode of help to man.