|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 16
But refuse to give him this higher teaching and training; go on, as so
many mothers have done, blankly ignoring the whole subject, because it
is so difficult to speak to one's boys,--as if everything worth having
in this life were not difficult!--leave him to the teaching of dirty
gossip, of unclean classical allusions in his school-books, of scraps of
newspaper intelligence, possibly of bad companions whom he may pick up
at school or business, and be sure of it, as this side of his nature is
awakened--in his search after gratified curiosity or pleasurable
sensation, in utter ignorance of what he is doing, through your fault,
not through his--he will use his imagination and his will to strengthen
the animal instincts. What ought to have been kept on a higher plane of
being will be used to stimulate functions just coming into existence,
and pre-eminently needing to be let alone on their own plane to mature
quietly and unconsciously. Thus dwelt upon and stimulated, these
functions become in a measure disordered and a source of miserable
temptation and difficulty, even if no actual wrong-doing results. If you
only knew what those struggles are, if you only knew what miserable
chains are forged in utter helpless ignorance, you would not let any
sense of difficulty or shrinking timidity make you refuse to give your
boy the higher teaching which would have saved him.
It is told of the beautiful Countess of Dufferin, by her son and
biographer, Lord Dufferin, that when the surgeons were consulting round
her bedside which they should save--the mother or the child--she
exclaimed, "Oh, never mind me; save my baby!" If you knew the facts as I
know them, I am quite sure you would exclaim, in the face of any
difficulties, any natural shrinking on your part, "Oh, never mind me,
let me save my boys!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: _The Study of Sociology_, by Herbert Spencer (International
Scientific Series), p. 270, fifth edition, 1876.]
[Footnote 6: I quote here at some length from a White Cross paper called
_Per Augusta ad Augusta_, in which I summarized and applied Dr.
Martineau's teaching, as I do not think I can do it more clearly or in
more condensed form. By some mistake it came out, not under my name, but
under the initials of the writer of _True Manliness_ and several others
of the White Cross Series. I only mention the mistake now to safeguard
my own intellectual honesty.]
[Footnote 7: _Hours of Thought_, by Dr. Martineau, vol. i., p. 35, third
edition.]
CHAPTER V
EARLY BOYHOOD
Having now laid down the general principles which we have to recognize
in the moral training of the young, let me endeavor to make some
practical suggestions how these principles may be carried out,
suggestions which, as a matter of fact, I have found to be helpful to
educated mothers in the great and responsible task of training the men
of the future generation.
All I would earnestly ask you to remember is, that in offering these
suggestions I am in no way venturing to dictate to you, only endeavoring
to place a wide experience at your service. Doubtless you will often
modify and, in some cases, very possibly reverse my conclusions. All I
ask is that you should weigh them thoughtfully and prayerfully and with
an open and unprejudiced mind before you finally reject them.
Let us, therefore, begin with the nursery. It is in the nursery that the
roots of the evil we have to contend with are often first planted, and
this in more senses than one. In the more obvious sense all experienced
mothers know what I mean. But I am quite sure that there are a large
number of young wives who become mothers without the smallest knowledge
of the dangers to which even infant boys may be exposed. This ignorance
is painfully shown by the frequent application for nursemaids from our
penitentiaries. At one house where I held a small meeting my young
hostess, an intelligent literary woman, came into my room after the
household had retired to rest to ask me about some curious actions which
she had noticed in her baby boy at night. There could not be a doubt or
a question that her nurse was corrupting her little child before that
hapless young mother's eyes, and forming in him habits which could only
lead to misery hereafter, and only too possibly to idiocy and death; and
that young mother was too ignorant to save her own baby boy! Indeed, I
know of no greater instance of the cruelty of "the conspiracy of
silence" than the fact that in all the orthodox medical manuals for
young mothers the necessary knowledge is withheld.[8] But more
marvellous still is the fact that women should ever have placidly
consented to an ignorance which makes it impossible for them to save
even baby boys from a corrupt nursemaid, who by some evil chance may
have found her way into their service through a false character or under
some other specious disguise, not seeing at once that the so-called
delicacy which shrinks from knowing everything that is necessary in
order to save is not purity but prurience.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|