REASONING AND ORIGINALITY
Females not expected to be reasoners. Effects of modern education on
the reasoning powers. Education of former days, illustrated by an
anecdote of as octogenarian. Extracts from her correspondence.
Difficulty in getting the ears of mankind. The reasoning powers in man
susceptible of cultivation indefinitely. Reflections on the importance
of maternal effort and female education.
I know not why a young woman should not reason correctly as well as a
young man. And yet I must confess that, some how or other, a masculine
seems to be often attached to the thought of strong reasoning powers in
the female sex. To say of such or such a young woman, She is a bold and
powerful reasoner--would it not be a little uncommon? Would it be
received as a compliment? Would it not be regarded as a little out of
the way--and, to coin a term, as rather unfeminine?
Perhaps the habit of boldly tracing effects up to their causes, and of
reasoning upon them, is a little more uncommon among the young misses
of our boarding schools and our more fashionable families, both of city
and country, than among those of the plainer sort of people. Certain it
is, at all events, that the former would be regarded as reasoning
persons with much more reluctance than the latter. And yet the former
has probably been taught mathematics, and all those sciences which are
supposed to develope and strengthen the mental faculties, and give
energy to the reasoning powers.
For myself, I have many doubts whether we are really--whether the sex
themselves are, I mean--so much the gainers by the superficial
knowledge of modern days, which tends to the exclusion, in the result,
of that good old fashioned education to house-work, which was given by
the mothers of New England, in the days of her primitive beauty and
glory. Then were our young women, for the times, reasoning women; then
were they good for something. A few of those precious relics of a
comparatively golden age, have come down nearly to our own times. I
have even seen several of them since the beginning of the nineteenth
century. There is one of this description, more than eighty years of
age, now living with a son of hers in one of the Middle States. Her
sphere of action, however, in the days of her activity, lay not there,
but on one of those delightful hills which are found at the termination
of the Green Mountain range, in New England. There, in her secluded
country residence, among plain people, and with only plain means, with
her husband absent much of the time, she educated--not instructed,
merely, nor brought up at school, but educated--a large family of
children, most of whom live to bless her memory and the world. So
devoted was this woman to her household duties, and to the right
education of her family, that for eleven of the first and _hardest_
years of her life, she never for once left the hill on which she
dwelt--a mile or so in extent.
And yet this female was a woman of reasoning powers superior to those
of most men. She understood, thoroughly, every ordinary topic of
conversation, and could discuss well any subject which came within her
grasp. She has been for a few years past, one of my most regular and
most valued correspondents; and nothing but her great age and great
reluctance to put pen to paper, would, I presume, prevent her from
writing more frequently than she is accustomed to do. As a specimen of
her style, I venture to insert a paragraph or two from her letters. The
first was written when she was in her eightieth year.
"I am glad to find you in the enjoyment of health--able to be busily
and usefully employed for this and coming generations. I would like, if
it was God's will, to be usefully employed in _such_ ways, too; but
though I am so greatly favored as to be able to _think_ as well as
ever, I cannot work with my wonted facility and despatch. I cannot
'labor with my hands,' so as to have 'to give to him that needeth,'
because my hands are weak and lame. Once I could fill six sheets of
letter paper in a day, without weariness; but now, if I can fill this
sheet, decently, in _two_ days, I am ready to boast of it, as an
achievement. When I look back and see my former activity, I wonder if
that _was myself_, and am almost ready to doubt my identity. But every
thing in its course; first rising into life, then decaying. The world
itself is not to stand forever; and of course the things animate and
inanimate which are upon it, must partake of its transitoriness."
Again, when she was within a few weeks of eighty years of age, (which
was in January, 1838,) she wrote to me in the following vein of
playfulness:
"As I can invent nothing new, I must utter such truisms as I have
picked up by the way, in almost eighty years; for you say to me,
_write_--and of course I obey, and scribble on. Now I say to _you_--and
may I say it to Mrs. A. too?--WRITE. Write very sensibly, by the way;
for old as I am, I am a sharp critic. I read in my early days Lord
Kaimes' Elements, and I have been working up these elements ever since;
and if I cannot _invent_, I can understand what is fairly presented to
me: so you will receive this as a caution. But don't be afraid! I'll
tell you another thing, of which perhaps you are not aware: I had
rather have one letter warm from the heart, than a dozen from the head."
"I was delighted to think you were pleased with my philosophy--for I
never dreamed I uttered any. As to my politics, I was pretty well
drilled in the school of Washington, after seeing through the
revolutionary struggle; and that was no mean school, I assure you.
Washington was a statesman! I see but _few_ now; but when I do see one,
I make him my best courtesy. And as to my theology, I learned that from
the pilgrim fathers."
Now whether those of my younger readers of a new generation, who,
perhaps, almost despise both letter writing and reasoning,--whether any
of these, I say, will see either form or comeliness--any thing
inviting--in these paragraphs, I cannot say. But I can tell them, at
once, that _I_ do; and it sometimes seems to me, that no greater human
benefaction could be offered to mankind, than the application of those
principles and methods of female education, in family and school, which
would produce such minds and bodies as those of which we have, in the
case of this aged woman, an example!
Perhaps, however, it is almost useless to hope for better times, at
present, for reasons, among others, which are given in another place by
my aged correspondent. "The mischief now-a-days," she says, "is, that
every one is on a railroad, impelled by steam power, and cannot stop;
so all speak at once, and none hear. What a state is this! But it is
true of the world in general. I see but few who are self-possessed. I
wonder when I see any one who is so; and I wonder if I am so myself."
But we are not only unwilling to stay to hear--we are unwilling to stay
to teach. It would be no hard matter for parents and
teachers--especially by beginning early--to establish in the young of
both sexes, habits of right reasoning. I am afraid, however, that
parents and teachers themselves do not perceive the value of such a
habit, and that they are not likely to do so for some time to come.
All, however, which remains for me to do, I must do. This is, to press
upon the few whose ear I can gain, the importance of this part of
self-education. Do not despise the idea of reasoning on subjects which
come before you; nor think it masculine or old fashioned. Not only
accustom yourselves to reason, but to reason on every thing. There is
almost as great a difference between a young woman who takes all things
upon trust, scarcely knowing that she can use her own powers in the
investigation of truth, and one who has been, like my worthy and
venerable correspondent, in the habit of observing and reasoning
seventy or eighty years, as there is between a Sam Patch and a
Bowditch--or a Hottentot and a Newton. Would that our young women knew
this, and would conduct themselves accordingly!
There is nothing in the wide field of human improvement which better
repays the labor of cultivation, than the reasoning powers. Nor is
there any thing which does more to perfect and adorn the human being.
With the highest and noblest rational powers, the human
family--especially the female part of it--seems to me to accomplish
least happily the great work for which they were created, than any
other earthly existences. The little all of knowledge which pertains to
the lower animals, "flows in at once," says Dr. Young; whereas, "were
man to live coeval with the sun, the patriarch pupil might be learning
still, yet dying, leave his lessons half unlearnt." And yet the former
fill, happily, the sphere which God in nature assigned them; while the
latter, with all his capacities and powers of reason, conscience, &c.,
wanders incessantly from his orbit, and must be a most unsightly
spectacle to God and holy angels, and all other high and noble
intelligences. When will man return to his native sphere, and the moral
and intellectual world move in due harmony and happiness, like the
physical? When will each moral creation of the Divine Architect, move
round its great spiritual centre, with the same beauty, and majesty,
and glory, which is manifest in the motions of the physical world?
Never, I am sure, till mothers and teachers, who are, as it seems, the
authors alike of human happiness and human misery, come up to their
appropriate work; and never will there be such mothers, till young
women are better trained. And the latter will never be better trained,
till the work of education, especially of self-education, is undertaken
with much better views of its objects and ends, and with a thousand
times more earnestness and perseverance, and I might even say
_enthusiasm_, than has as yet been manifested.