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Page 70
What, then, is the true object of female education? The best answer to
this question is, a statement of future duties; for it must never be
forgotten, that if education be not a training for future duties, it is
nothing. The ordinary lot of woman is to marry. Has any thing in these
educations prepared her to make a wise choice in marriage? To be a
mother! Have the duties of maternity,--the nature of moral
influence,--been pointed out to her? Has she ever been enlightened as
to the consequent unspeakable importance of personal character as the
source of influence? In a word, have any means, direct or indirect,
prepared her for her duties? No! but she is a linguist, a pianist,
graceful, admired. What is that to the purpose? The grand evil of such
an education is the mistaking means for ends; a common error, and the
source of half the moral confusion existing in the world. It is the
substitution of the part for a whole. The time when young women enter
upon life, is the one point to which all plans of education tend, and at
which they all terminate: and to prepare them for that point is the
object of their training. Is it not cruel to lay up for them a store of
future wretchedness, by an education which has no period in view but
one; a very short one, and the most unimportant and irresponsible of the
whole of life? Who that had the power of choice would choose to buy the
admiration of the world for a few short years with the happiness of a
whole life? the temporary power to dazzle and to charm, with the growing
sense of duties undertaken only to be neglected, and responsibilities
the existence of which is discovered perhaps simultaneously with that of
an utter inability to meet them? Even if the mischief stopped here, it
would be sufficiently great; but the craving appetite for applause once
roused, is not so easily lulled again. The moral energies, pampered by
unwholesome nourishment,--like the body when disordered by luxurious
dainties,--refuse to perform their healthy functions, and thus is
occasioned a perpetual strife and warfare of internal principles; the
selfish principle still seeking the accustomed gratification, the
conjugal and maternal prompting to the performance of duty. But duty is
a cold word; and people, in order to find pleasure in duty, must have
been trained to consider their duties as pleasures. This is a truth at
which no one arrives by inspiration! And in this moral struggle, which,
like all other struggles, produces lassitude and distaste of all things,
the happiness of the individual is lost, her usefulness destroyed, her
influence most pernicious. For nothing has so injurious an effect on
temper and manners, and consequently on moral influence, as the want of
that internal quiet which can only arise from the accordance of duty
with inclination. Another most pernicious effect is, the deadening
within the heart of the feeling of love, which is the root of all
influence; for it is an extraordinary fact, that vanity acts as a sort
of refrigerator on all men--on the possessor of it, and on the observer.
Now, if conscientiousness and unselfishness be the two main supports of
women's beneficial influence, how can any education be good which has
not the cultivation of these qualities for its first and principal
object? The grand objects, then, in the education of women, ought to be,
the conscience, the heart, and the affections; the development of those
moral qualities which Providence has so liberally bestowed upon them,
doubtless with a wise and beneficent purpose. Originators of
conscientiousness, how can they implant what they have never cultivated,
nor brought to maturity in themselves? Sovereigns of the affections, how
can they direct the kingdom whose laws they have not studied, the
springs of whose government are concealed from them? The conscience and
the affections being primarily enlightened, all other cultivation, as
secondary, is most valuable. Intelligence, accomplishments, even
external elegance, become objects of importance, as assisting the
influence which women have, and exert too often for unworthy ends, but
which in this case could not fail to be beneficial. Let the light of
intellect and the charm of accomplishments be the willing handmaids of
cultivated and enlightened conscience. Cultivate the intellect with
reference to the conscience, that views of duty may be comprehensive, as
well as just; cultivate the imagination still with reference to the
conscience, that those inward aspirations which all indulge, more or
less, may be turned from the gauds of an idle and vain imagination, and
shed over daily life and daily duty the halo of a poetic influence;
cultivate the manners, that the qualities of heart and head may have an
additional auxiliary in obtaining that influence by which a mighty
regeneration is to be worked. The issues of such an education will
justify the claims made for women in these pages; then the spirit of
vanity will yield to the spirit of self-devotion: that spirit
confessedly natural to Women, and only perverted by wrong education.
Content with the sphere of usefulness assigned her by Nature and
Nature's God, viewing that sphere with the piercing eye of intellect,
and gilding it with the beautiful colours of the imagination, she will
cease the vain and almost impious attempt to wander from it. She will
see and acknowledge the beauty, the harmony of the arrangement which has
made her physical inferiority (the only inferiority which we
acknowledge) the very root from which spring her virtues and their
attendant influences. Removed from the actual collision of political
contests, and screened from the passions which such engender, she brings
party questions to the test of the unalterable principles of reason and
religion; she is, so to speak, the guardian angel of man's political
integrity, liable at the best to be warped by passion or prejudice, and
excited by the rude clashing of opinions and interests. This is the true
secret of woman's political influence, the true object of her political
enlightenment. Governments will never be perfect till all distinction
between private and public virtue, private and public honour, be done
away! Who so fit an agent for the operation of this change as
enlightened, unselfish woman? Who so fit, in her twofold capacity of
companion and early instructor, to teach men to prefer honour to gain,
duty to ease, public to private interests, and God's work to man's
inventions? And shall it be said that women have no political existence,
no political influence, when the very germs of political regeneration
may spring from them alone, when the fate of nations yet unborn may
depend upon the use which they make of the mighty influences committed
to their care? The blindness which sees not how these influences would
be lessened by taking her out of the sphere assigned by Providence, if
voluntary, is wicked--if real, is pitiable. As well might we desire the
earth's beautiful satellite to give place to a second sun, thereby
producing the intolerable and glaring continuity of perpetual day. Those
who would be the agents of Providence must observe the workings of
Providence, and be content to work also in that way, and by those means,
which Almighty wisdom appoints. There is infinite littleness in
despising small things. It seems paradoxical to say that there are no
small things; our littleness and our aspiration make things appear
small. There are, morally speaking, no small duties. Nothing that
influences human virtue and happiness can be really trifling,--and what
more influences them than the despised, because limited, duties assigned
to woman? It is true, her reward (her task being done) is not of this
world, nor will she wish it to be--enough for her to be one of the most
active and efficient agents in her heavenly Father's work of man's
regeneration,--enough for her that generations yet unborn shall rise up
and call her blessed.
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