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Page 69
1st. The education of accomplishments for shining in society.
2d. Intellectual education, or that of the mental powers.
What are the objects of either? To prepare the young for life; its
subsequent trials; its weighty duties; its inevitable termination? We
will examine the principles on which both these educations are made to
work, and see whether, or how far, they have any relation to those most
called for, by the future and presumed duties of the educated. The
worldly and the intellectual, alternately objects of contempt to each
other, are equally objects of pity to the wise, as mistaken in their
end, and deceived as to the means of attaining that end.
The education of accomplishments, (especially as conducted in this
country,) would be a risible, if it were not a painful subject of
contemplation. Intense labour; immense sums of money; hours, nay, days
of valuable time! What a list of sacrifices! Now for results. Of the
many who thus sacrifice time, health, and property, how few attain even
a moderate proficiency. The love of beauty, the power of self-amusement
(if obtained) might, in some degree, justify these sacrifices; they are
valuable ends in themselves, still more valuable from contingent
advantages. There is a deep influence hidden under these beautiful
arts,--an influence far deeper than the world in its thoughtlessness, or
the worldly student in his vanity, ever can know,--an influence
refining, consoling, elevating: they afford a channel into which the
lofty aspirings, the unsatisfied yearnings of the pure and elevated in
soul may pour themselves. The perception of the beautiful is, next to
the love of our fellow-creatures, the most purely unselfish of all our
natural emotions, and is, therefore, a most powerful engine in the hands
of those who regard selfishness as the giant passion, whose castle must
be stormed before any other conquest can be begun, and in vanquishing
whom all lawful and innocent weapons should, by turns, be employed.
Let us consider how we employ this mighty ally of virtue and loftiness
of soul. Into the cultivation of the arts, disguised under the hackneyed
name of accomplishments, does one particle of intellectuality creep?
Would not many of their ablest professors and most diligent
practitioners stare, with unfeigned wonder, at the supposition, that the
five hours per diem devoted to the piano and the easel had any other
object than to accomplish the fingers? The idea of their influencing the
head would be ridiculous! of their improving the heart, preposterous!
Yet if both head and heart do not combine in these pursuits, how can the
cultivators justify to themselves the devotion of time and labour to
their acquisition: time and labour, in many cases, abstracted from the
performance of present, or preparation for future duties,--this is
especially applicable to the middle classes of society.
Let us now turn to the issues of this education! The accomplishments
acquired at such cost must be displayed. To whom? the possessor has no
delight in them,--her immediate relatives, perhaps, no taste for
them;--to strangers, therefore. It is not necessary to make many
strictures on this subject; the rage for universal exhibition has been
written and talked down: in fact, there are great hopes for the world
in this particular; it has descended so low in the scale of society,
that we trust it will soon be exploded altogether. The fashion,
therefore, need not be here treated of, but the spirit which it has
engendered, and which will survive its parent. This, as influencing the
female character--especially the maternal--bears greatly upon the point
in view;--to live for the applause of the foolish _many_, instead of the
approbation of the well-judging _few_; to rule duty, conscience, morals,
by a low worldly standard; to view worldly admiration as the aim, and
worldly aggrandizement as the end of life; these are a few,--a very few,
indications of this spirit, and these have infected every rank, from the
highest to the middle and lower classes of society. To every thing
gentle or refined, to every thing lofty or dignified in the female
character, this spirit is utterly opposed. Refinement would teach to
shun the vulgar applause which almost insults its object,--dignity would
shrink from displaying before heartless crowds those emotions of the
soul, without which all art is vulgar,--and how can women, who have
neither refinement nor dignity, retail that influence which, rightly
used, is to be so great an engine in the regeneration of society? How
can the vain and selfish exhibitor of paltry acquirements ever mature
into the mother of the Gracchi, the tutelary guardian of the rising
virtues of the commonwealth? It is in vain to hope it.
Before making any strictures on intellectual education, it is necessary
to enter into a short explanation; for it is not denied that
rightly-cultivated mental power is a great good. The kind of cultivation
which is here decried is open to the same objections as the last
mentioned. It is the cultivation of power, with a view, not to the
happiness of the individual, but to her fame; not to her usefulness, but
to her brilliancy. We have only to look round society, and see that
intellect has its vanity as well as beauty or accomplishments, and that
its effects are more mischievous. It has a hardening, deadening kind of
influence; the more so, that the so-called mental cultivation frequently
consists only of a pedantic heaping up of information, valuable indeed
in itself, but wanting the principle of combination to make it useful.
Stones and bricks are valuable things, very valuable; but they are not
beautiful or useful till the hand of the architect has given them a
form, and the cement of the bricklayer has knit them together. It is a
fine expression of Miss Edgeworth, in speaking of the mind of one of her
heroines, "that the stream of literature had passed over it was apparent
only from its fertility." Intellectual cultivation was too long
considered as education, properly so called. The mischief which this
error has produced, is exactly in proportion to the increase of power
thereby communicated to wrong principles.
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