because it allows ample scope for the development of their mental and
moral faculties; banishing from their minds all that chaotic
bewilderment into which dependence on inconsistent persons throws them.
It is advantageous to them in another, and more important way,--it
prepares them for a belief in virtue; a trust in others, which it is
easy to train up into a veneration for the source of all virtue; a trust
in the origin of all truth. There can be no clearness of moral
perception in the governed, where there is no manifestation of a moral
rule of right in the governor. In speaking of moral perception, I do not
mean to say that children have, properly speaking, a moral perception of
inconsistency; but it affects their comfort and well-being,
nevertheless. There is, in the nature of man, as great a perception of
moral, as of physical order and proportion; and the absence of the moral
produces pain and disgust to the soul, as the absence of the physical
does to the senses. This state of pain and disgust is felt, though it
can never be expressed, by children, who are under the management of
inconsistent persons,--that is, persons whose conduct is guided solely
by feeling, (good or bad,) by caprice, or impulse; and how injurious it
is to them, we may easily conceive. If, however, their present comfort
only were endangered by it, the evil would be of comparatively small
magnitude; but it affects their character for life. They cease to trust,
and they cease to venerate; now, trust is the root of faith, and
veneration of piety:--and when the root is destroyed, how can the plant
flourish? Perhaps we may remark that the effect here produced upon
children is the same as that which long intercourse with the world
produces in men: only that the effect differs in proportion to their
differing intellectual faculties. The child is annoyed, and knows not
the cause of annoyance; the man is annoyed, and endeavours to lose the
sense of discomfort in a universal skepticism as to human virtue, and a
resolving of all actions into one principle, self-interest. He thus
seeks to create a principle possessing the stability which he desires,
but seeks in vain to find; for, be it remembered, our love of moral
stability is precisely as great as our love of physical change;--another
of the mysteries of our being. The effects on the man are the same as on
the child,--he ceases to believe, and he ceases to venerate; and the end
is the most degrading of all conditions,--the abnegation of all abstract
virtue, generosity, or love. Now, into this state children are brought
by the inconsistency of parents,--that is, these young and innocent
creatures are placed in a condition, moral and intellectual, which we
consider an evil, even when produced by long contact with a selfish and
unkind world. And thus they enter upon life, prepared for vice in all
its forms,--and skepticism, in all its heart-withering tendencies. How
can parents bear this responsibility? There is something so touching in
the simple faith of childhood,--its utter dependence,--its willingness
to believe in the perfection of those to whom it looks for
protection--that to betray that faith, to shake that dependence, seems
almost akin to irreligion.
The value of principle, then, in itself so precious, is enhanced tenfold
by constancy in its manifestations, and therefore consistency, as a
source of influence, can never be too much insisted upon.
Consistency of principle is brought to the test in every daily, hourly
occurrence of woman's life, and if she have been brought up without an
abiding sense of duty and responsibility, she is of all beings most
unfortunate; influences the most potent are committed to her care, and
from her they issue like the simoom of the desert, breathing moral
blight and death. I have endeavoured, in some degree, to enforce the
power of indirect influences on the minds of _children_: they are very
powerful in the other relations of life; in the conjugal, the truth is
too well known and attested by tale and song to need additional
corroboration here--and this book is principally, though not wholly,
dedicated to woman in her maternal character.
The extreme importance of the manifestation of consistency in mothers
may be argued from this fact, that it is of infinite importance to
children to see the daily operation of an immutable and consistent rule
of right, in matters sufficiently small to come within the sphere of
childish observation, and, therefore, if called upon to give a
definition of the peculiar mission of woman, and the peculiar source of
her influence, I should say it is the application of large principles to
small duties,--the agency of comprehensive intelligence on details. That
largeness of mental vision, which, while it can comprehend the vast, is
too keen to overlook the little, is especially to be cultivated by
women. It is a great mistake to suppose the two qualities are
incompatible; and the supposition that they are so, has done much
mischief; the error arises not from the extent, but from the narrowness
of our capacity, _To aspire_ is our privilege, and a privilege which we
are by no means slack to use, without considering that the operations of
infinitude are even more incomprehensible in their minuteness than in
their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the
minute towards the vast, is only a proof of the finite nature of our
present capacity. The loftiest intellect may, without abasement, be
employed on the minutest domestic detail, and in all probability will
perform it better than an inferior one: it is the motive and end of an
action which makes it either dignified or mean. In the homely words of
old Herbert
All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which, with this tincture, _for thy sake_
Will not grow bright and clean.
It is then in the minutiæ of daily life and conduct that this
consistency has its most beneficial operation, and it must derive its
power from the personal character for this reason, that no virtues but
indigenous ones are capable of the sort of moral transfusion here
mentioned. It is rare to see a parent, eminently distinguished by any
moral virtue, unsuccessful in the transmitting that virtue to children,
simply because, being an integral part of character, it is consistent in
its mode of operation; so virtues originating in effort, or practised
for the sake of example, are seldom transferable; the same consistency
cannot be expected in the exercise of them, and this may explain the
small success of pattern mothers, _par excellence_ so called, and whose
good intentions and sacrifices ought not to be objects of derision; the
very appearance of effort mars the effect of all effort.
The world is sometimes surprised to see extraordinary proofs of moral
influence exercised by persons who never planned, never aimed, to obtain
such influence,--nay, whose conduct is never regulated by any fixed aim
for its attainment; the fact is, that those characters are composed of
truth and love;--truth, which prevents the assumption even of virtues
which are not natural, thereby adding to the influence of such as are;
love, the most contagious of all moral contagions, the regenerating
principle of the world!
The virtue which mainly contributes to the support of
consistency--without which, in fact, consistency cannot exist--is
simplicity: consistency of conduct can never be maintained by characters
in any degree double or sophisticated, for it is not of simplicity as
opposed to craft, but of simplicity as opposed to sophistication, that I
would here speak, and rather as the Christian virtue, single-mindedness;
the desire to _be_, opposed to the wish to _appear_. We have seen how
rarely influence can be gained where no faith can be yielded; now an
unsimple character can never inspire faith or trust. People do not
always analyze mental phenomena sufficiently to know the reason of this
fact, but no one will dispute the fact itself. It is true there are
persons who have the power of conciliating confidence of which they are
unworthy, but it is only because (like Castruccio Castrucciani) they are
such exquisite dissemblers, that their affection of simplicity has
temporarily the effect of simplicity itself. This power of successful
assumption is, fortunately, confined to very few, and the pretenders to
unreal virtues and the utterer of assumed sentiments are only ill-paid
labourers, working hard to reap no harvest-fruits.
An objection slightly advanced before, may here naturally occur again,
and may be answered more fully, viz. the opposition of the conventional
forms of society to entire simplicity of thought and action, and
consequently to influence. The influence which conventionalism has over
principle is to be utterly disclaimed, but its having an injurious
influence over manner is far more easily obviated; so easily, indeed,
that it may be doubted whether there be not more simplicity in
compliance than in opposition. Originality, either of thought or
behaviour, is most uncommon, and only found in minds above, or in minds
below, the ordinary standard; neither is this peculiar feature of
society in itself a blame-worthy one: it arises out of the constitution
of man, naturally imitative, gregarious, and desirous of approbation.
Nothing would be gained by the abolition of these forms, for they are
representatives of a good spirit; the spirit, it is true, is too often
not there, but it would be better to call it back than to abolish the
form. We have an opportunity of judging how far it would be convenient
or agreeable to do so, in the conduct of some _soi-disant_ contemners of
forms; we perceive that such contempt is equally the offspring of
selfishness with slavish regard: it is only the exchange of the
selfishness of vanity for the selfishness of indolence and pride, and
the world is the loser by the exchange. Hypocrisy has been said to be
the homage which vice pays to virtue. Conventional forms may, with
justice, be called the homage which selfishness pays to benevolence.
How then is simplicity of character to be preserved without violating
conventionalism, to which it seems so much at variance, and yet, which
it ought not to oppose? By the cultivation of that spirit of which
conventional forms are only the symbol, by training children in the
early exercise of the kind the benevolent affections, and by exacting in
the domestic circle all those observances which are the signs of
good-will in society, so that they may be the emanations of a benevolent
heart, instead of the gloss of artificial politeness. Conventionalism
will never injure the simplicity of such characters as these, nay, it
may greatly add to their influence, and secure for their virtues and
talents the reception that they deserve; it is a part of benevolence to
cultivate the graces that may persuade or allure men to the imitation of
what is right. "Stand off, I am holier than thou," is not more foreign
to true piety, than "Stand off, I am wiser than thou," is to true
benevolence, as relates to those "things indifferent," in which we are
told that we may be all things to all men.
The cultivation of domestic politeness is a subject not nearly enough
attended to, yet it is the sign, and ought to be the manifestation, of
many beautiful virtues--affection, self-denial, elegance, are all called
into play by it; and it has a potent recommendation in its being an
excellent preservative against affectation, which generally arises from
a great desire to please, joined to an ignorance of the means of
pleasing successfully. It is to be hoped that these remarks will not be
deemed trifling or irrelevant in a chapter on the means of securing
personal influence. Powers of pleasing are a very great source of that
influence, and there is no telling how great might be the benefit to
society, if all on whom they are bestowed (and how lavishly they are
bestowed on woman!) would be persuaded to use them, not as a means of
selfish gratification, but as an engine for the promotion of good.[113]
Such powers are as sacred a trust from the Creator as any other gift,
and ought to be equally used for his glory and the advancement of moral
good. Virtue, indeed, in itself is venerable, but it must be attractive
in order to be influential. And how attractive it might be, if the
powers of pleasing, which can cover and even recommend the deformity of
vice, were conscientiously excited in its behalf! This is the peculiar
province of women, and they are peculiarly fitted for it by Nature.
Their personal loveliness, their versatile powers, and lively fancy,
qualify them in an eminent degree to adorn, and by adorning to
recommend, virtue and religion.
Cosi all' egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi
Di soare licor gli orli del vaso.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] It was a beautiful idea in the mythology of the ancients, which
identified the Graces with the Charities of social life.