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Page 67
It is astonishing and humiliating to perceive how frequently human
wisdom, especially argumentative wisdom, is at fault as to results,
while accident, prejudices, or common sense seem to light upon truths
which reason feels after without finding. It appears as though _�
priori_ reasoning, human nature being the subject, is like a skilful
piece of mechanism, carefully and scientifically put together, but which
some perverse and occult trifle will not permit to act. This is
eminently true of many questions regarding education, and precisely the
state of the argument concerning the position and duties of women. The
facts of moral and intellectual equality being established, it seems
somewhat irrational to condemn women to obscurity and detail for their
field of exertion, while men usurp the extended one of public
usefulness. And a good case may be made out on this very point. Yet the
conclusions are false and pernicious, and the prejudices which we now
smile at as obsolete are truths of nature's own imparting, only wanting
the agency of comprehensive intelligence to make them valuable, by
adapting them to the present state of society. For, as one atom of
falsehood in first principles nullifies a whole theory, so one
principle, fundamentally true, suffices to obviate many minor errors.
This fundamentally true principle, I am prepared to show, exists in the
established opinions concerning the true sphere of women, and that,
whether originally dictated by reason, or derived from a sort of
intuition, they are right, and for this cause: the one quality on which
woman's value and influence depend is the renunciation of self; and the
old prejudices respecting her inculcated self-renunciation. Educated in
obscurity, trained to consider the fulfilment of domestic duties as the
aim and end of her existence, there was little to feed the appetite for
fame, or the indulgence of self-idolatry. Now, here the principle
fundamentally bears upon the very qualities most desirable to be
cultivated, and those most desirable to be avoided. A return to the
practical part of the system is by no means to be recommended, for, with
increasing intellectual advantages, it is not to be supposed that the
perfection of the conjugal character is to consult a husband's palate
and submit to his ill-humour--or of the maternal, to administer in due
alternation the sponge and the rod. All that is contended for is, that
the fundamental principle is right--"that women were to live for
others;" and, therefore, all that we have to do is to carry out this
fundamentally right principle into wider application. It may easily be
done, if the cultivation of intellectual powers be carried on with the
same views and motives as were formerly the knowledge of domestic
duties, for the benefit of immediate relations, and for the fulfilment
of appointed duties. If society at large be benefited by such
cultivation, so much the better; but it ought to be no part of the
training of women to consider, with any personal views, what effect they
shall produce in or on society at large. The greatest benefit which they
can confer upon society is to be what they ought to be in all their
domestic relations; that is, to be what they ought to be, in all the
comprehensiveness of the term, as adapted to the present state of
society. Let no woman fancy that she can, by any exertion or services,
compensate for the neglect of her own peculiar duties as such. It is by
no means my intention to assert that women should be passive and
indifferent spectators of the great political questions which affect
the well-being of community; neither can I repeat the old adage, that
"women have nothing to do with politics." They have, and ought to have
much to do with politics. But in what way? It has been maintained that
their public participation in them would be fatal to the best interests
of society. How, then, are women to interfere in politics? As moral
agents; as representatives of the moral principle; as champions of the
right in preference to the expedient; by their endeavours to instil into
their relatives of the other sex the uncompromising sense of duty and
self-devotion, which ought to be _their_ ruling principles! The immense
influence which women possess will be most beneficial, if allowed to
flow in its natural channels, viz. domestic ones,--because it is of the
utmost importance to the existence of influence, that purity of motive
be unquestioned. It is by no means affirmed that women's political
feelings are always guided by the abstract principles of right and
wrong; but they are surely more likely to be so, if they themselves are
restrained from the public expression of them. Participation in scenes
of popular emotion has a natural tendency to warp conscience and
overcome charity. Now, conscience and charity (or love) are the very
essence of woman's beneficial influence; therefore every thing tending
to blunt the one and sour the other is sedulously to be avoided by her.
It is of the utmost importance to men to feel, in consulting a wife, a
mother, or a sister, that they are appealing _from_ their passions and
prejudices, and not _to_ them, as imbodied in a second self: nothing
tends to give opinions such weight as the certainty that the utterer of
them is free from all petty or personal motives. The beneficial
influence of woman is nullified if once her motives, or her personal
character, come to be the subject of attack; and this fact alone ought
to induce her patiently to acquiesce in the plan of seclusion from
public affairs.
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