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Page 71
FOOTNOTES:
[108] Aim� Martin.
[109] Ibid.
LOVE--MARRIAGE.
The conventual and monastic origin of all systems of education has had a
very injurious influence, on that of women especially, because the
conventual spirit has been longer retained in it.
If no education be good which does not bear upon the future duties of
the educated, it follows that the systematic exclusion of any one
subject connected with, or bearing upon, future duties, must be an evil.
The wisdom of employing those who had renounced the world to form the
minds of those who were to mix in it, to be exposed in all its
allurements, to share in all its duties, was doubtful indeed; and the
danger was enhanced by the fact, that the majority of recluses were any
thing but indifferent to the world which they had renounced. The convent
was too often the refuge of disappointed worldliness, the grave of
blasted hopes, or the prison of involuntary victims; a withering
atmosphere this in which to place warm young hearts, and expect them to
expand and flourish. The evil effects would be varied according to the
different characters submitted to its influence. The sensitive entered
upon life oppressed with fears and terrors; with a conscience morbid,
not enlightened; bewildered by the impossibility of reconciling
principles and duties. The ardent and sanguine, longing to escape from
restraint, pictured to themselves, in these unknown and untried
regions, delights infinite and unvaried; and, seeing the incompatibility
of inculcated principles and worldly pleasures, discarded principle
altogether. It is needless to pursue this subject further, because a
universal assent will (in this country, at least,) await the remarks
here made; their applicability to what follows may not at first be so
apparent. The conventual spirit has survived conventual
institutions,--in the department of female education especially.
In the first place, the instructors of female youth are considered
respectable and trustworthy only in proportion as they cease to be
young, or at least in proportion as they appear to forget that they ever
were so. Any touch of sympathy for the follies of childhood, or the
indiscretions of youth, would blast the prospects of a candidate for
that honourable office, and, in the opinion of many, render her unfit
for its fulfilment. The unfitness is attached to the opposite
disposition; for the very fact of its existence is as effectual an
obstacle to her being a good trainer of youth, as if she had taken a vow
never to see the world but through an iron grating. Experience can never
benefit youth, except when combined with indulgence. The instructor who,
from the heights of past temptations and subdued passion, looks down
with cool watchfulness on the struggles of his youthful pupil, will see
him lie floundering in the mire, or perishing in the deep water. He must
retrace his own steps, take him by the hand, and sustain him, till he is
passed the dangerous and slippery paths of youth. He must become as a
little child to the young and frail being committed to his care, and
whose welfare and safety depend (in great measure) upon him. A cold and
unloving admiration never will produce imitation: it is like the
hopeless love of poor Helena:--
'Twere all as one as I should love a bright particular star!
Here, then, the conventual spirit has been in injurious operation;--no
less so on other points.
This conventual prejudice has banished from our school-rooms the name of
love, and presented to their youthful inmates fragments instead of
books, cramped and puny publications instead of the works of
master-spirits, lest the mind should be contaminated by any allusion to
that passion contained in them. The wisdom of such a proceeding is much
upon a par with that which devoted the feet to stocks and the shoulders
to backboards, in order to make them elegant, and denied them heaven's
air and active exercise through care for their health. The result, in
the one case as in the other, is disease and distortion. Nature will
assert her rights over the beings she has made; and she avenges, by the
production of deformity, all attempts to force or shackle her
operations. The golden globe could not check the expansive force of
water; equally useless is it to attempt any check on the expansive force
of mind,--it will ooze out! We ought long ago to have been convinced
that the only power allowed to us is the power of direction. If one-half
the amount of effort expanded to useless endeavours to cramp and check,
had been turned towards this channel, how different would be the
results! It is true that it is easier to check than to guide,--to fetter
than to restrain; and that to attempt to remove evil by the
first-occurring remedy is a natural impulse. But a pause should by made,
lest in applying the remedy a worse evil be not engendered. Distorted
spines and "pale consumptions," the result of the one mistake, are
trifling evils, when compared with the moral evils resulting from the
other. For if, as is affirmed, no education can be good which does not
bear upon future duties, how can that be wise which keeps love and its
temptations, maternity and its responsibilities, out of view? Who would
believe that this love, so denounced, so guarded against, so carefully
banished from the minds of young women, is the one principle on which
their future happiness may be founded or wrecked? It is sure to seek
them, (most of them, at least,) like death in the fable, to find them
unprepared,--too often to leave them wretched.
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