CHAPTER
IX
OF THE PERNICIOUS EFFECTS WHICH ARISE FROM THE
UNNATURAL DISTINCTIONS ESTABLISHED IN SOCIETY
From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned
fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such
a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. For it is in the most
polished society that noisome reptiles and venomous serpents lurk
under the rank herbage; and there is voluptuousness pampered by the
still sultry air, which relaxes every good disposition before it
ripens into virtue.
One class presses on another, for all are aiming to procure respect
on account of their property; and property once gained will procure
the respect due only to talents and virtue. Men neglect the duties
incumbent on man, yet are treated like demigods. Religion is also
separated from morality by a ceremonial veil, yet men wonder that
the world is almost, literally speaking, a den of sharpers or
oppressors.
There is a homely proverb, which speaks a shrewd truth, that
whoever the devil finds idle he will employ. And what but habitual
idleness can hereditary wealth and titles produce? For man is so
constituted that he can only attain a proper use of his faculties
by exercising them, and will not exercise them unless necessity of
some kind first set the wheels in motion. Virtue likewise can only
be acquired by the discharge of relative duties; but the importance
of these sacred duties will scarcely be felt by the being who is
cajoled out of his humanity by the flattery of sycophants. There
must be more equality established in society, or morality will
never gain ground, and this virtuous equality will not rest firmly
even when founded on a rock, if one-half of mankind be chained to
its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it
through ignorance or pride.
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree
independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of
natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers.
Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be
cunning, mean, and selfish; and the men who can be gratified by the
fawning fondness of spaniel-like affection have not much delicacy,
for love is not to be bought; in any sense of the words, its silken
wings are instantly shrivelled up when anything beside a return in
kind is sought. Yet whilst wealth enervates men, and women live, as
it were, by their personal charms, how can we expect them to
discharge those ennobling duties which equally require exertion and
self-denial? Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the
unfortunate victims to it--if I may so express myself--swathed from
their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind,
and thus viewing everything through one medium, and that a false
one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness
consist. False, indeed, must be the light when the drapery of
situation hides the man, and makes him stalk in masquerade,
dragging from one scene of dissipation to another the nerveless
limbs that hang with stupid listlessness, and rolling round the
vacant eye, which plainly tells us that there is no mind at home.
I mean therefore to infer that the society is not properly
organised which does not compel men and women to discharge their
respective duties by making it the only way to acquire that
countenance from their fellow-creatures, which every human being
wishes some way to attain. The respect consequently which is paid
to wealth and mere personal charms is a true north-east blast that
blights the tender blossoms of affection and virtue. Nature has
wisely attached affections to duties to sweeten toil, and to give
that vigour to the exertions of reason which only the heart can
give. But the affections which is put on merely because it is the
appropriated insignia of a certain character, when its duties are
not fulfilled, is one of the empty compliments which vice and folly
are obliged to pay to virtue and the real nature of things.
To illustrate my opinion, I need only observe that when a woman is
admired for her beauty, and suffers herself to be so far
intoxicated by the admiration she receives as to neglect to
discharge the indispensable duty of a mother, she sins against
herself by neglecting to cultivate an affection that would equally
tend to make her useful and happy. True happiness--I mean all the
contentment and virtuous satisfaction that can be snatched in this
imperfect state--must arise from well-regulated affections, and an
affection includes a duty. Men are not aware of the misery they
cause, and the vicious weakness they cherish, by only inciting
women to render themselves pleasing; they do not consider that they
thus make natural and artificial duties clash by sacrificing the
comfort and respectability of a woman's life to voluptuous notions
of beauty, when in nature they all harmonise.
Cold would be the heart of a husband, were he not rendered
unnatural by early debauchery, who did not feel more delight at
seeing his child suckled by its mother than the most artful wanton
tricks could ever raise, yet this natural way of cementing the
matrimonial tie, and twisting esteem with fonder recollections,
wealth leads women to spurn. To preserve their beauty, and wear the
flowery crown of the day, which gives them a kind of right to reign
for a short time over the sex, they neglect to stamp impressions on
their husbands' hearts that would be remembered with more
tenderness when the snow on the head began to chill the bosom than
even their virgin charms. The maternal solicitude of a reasonable
affectionate woman is very interesting, and the chastened dignity
with which a mother returns the caresses that she and her child
receive from a father who has been fulfilling the serious duties of
his station is not only a respectable, but a beautiful sight. So
singular, indeed, are my feelings--and I have endeavoured not to
catch factitious ones--that after having been fatigued with the
sight of insipid grandeur and the slavish ceremonies that with
cumbrous pomp supplied the place of domestic affections, I have
turned to some other scene to relieve my eye by resting it on the
refreshing green everywhere scattered by Nature. I have then viewed
with pleasure a woman nursing her children, and discharging the
duties of her station with perhaps merely a servant-maid to take
off her hands the servile part of the household business. I have
seen her prepare herself and children, with only the luxury of
cleanliness, to receive her husband, who, returning weary home in
the evening, found smiling babes and a clean hearth. My heart has
loitered in the midst of the group, and has even throbbed with
sympathetic emotion when the scraping of the well-known foot has
raised a pleasing tumult.
Whilst my benevolence has been gratified by contemplating this
artless picture, I have thought that a couple of this description,
equally necessary and independent of each other, because each
fulfilled the respective duties of their station, possessed all
that life could give. Raised sufficiently above abject poverty not
to be obliged to weigh the consequence of every farthing they
spend, and having sufficient to prevent their attending to
a frigid system of economy which narrows both mind, I declare, so
vulgar are my conceptions, that I know not what is wanted to render
this the happiest as well as the most respectable situation in the
world, but a taste for literature, to throw a little variety and
interest into social converse, and some superfluous money to give
to the needy and to buy books. For it is not pleasant when the
heart is opened by compassion, and the head active in arranging
plans of usefulness, to have a prim urchin continually twitching
back the elbow to prevent the hand from drawing out an almost empty
purse, whispering at the same time some prudential maxim about the
priority of justice.
Destructive, however, as riches and inherited honours are to the
human character, women are more debased and cramped, if possible,
by them than men, because men may still in some degree unfold their
faculties by becoming soldiers and statesmen. As soldiers, I grant
they can now only gather for the most part vain-glorious laurels,
whilst they adjust to a hair the European balance, taking especial
care that no bleak northern nook or sound incline the beam. But the
days of true heroism are over, when a citizen fought for his
country like a Fabricius or a Washington, and then returned to his
farm to let his virtuous fervour run in a more placid, but not a
less salutary, stream. No, our British heroes are oftener sent from
the gaming-table than from the plough; and their passions have been
rather inflamed by hanging with dumb suspense on the turn of a die,
than sublimated by panting after the adventurous march of virtue in
the historic page.
The statesman, it is true, might with more propriety quit the faro
bank, or card-table, to guide the helm, for he has still but to
shuffle and trick--the whole system of British politics, if system
it may courteously be called, consisting in multiplying dependents
and contriving taxes which grind the poor to pamper the rich. Thus
a war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase,
a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister. whose chief merit is
the art of keeping himself in place. It is not necessary then that
he should have bowels for the poor, so he can secure for his family
the odd trick. or should some show of respect, for what is termed
with ignorant ostentation an Englishman's birthright, be expedient
to bubble the gruff mastiff that he has to lead by the nose, he can
make an empty show, very safely, by giving his single voice, and
suffering his light squadron to file off to the other side. And
when a question of humanity is agitated, he may dip a sop in the
milk of human kindness to silence Cerberus, and talk of the
interest which his heart takes in an attempt to make the earth no
longer cry for vengeance as it sucks in its children's blood,
though his cold hand may at the very moment rivet their chains, by
sanctioning the abominable traffic. A minister is no longer a
minister, than while he can carry a point, which he is determined
to carry. Yet it is not necessary that a minister should feel like
a man, when a bold push might shake his seat.
But, to have done with these episodical observations, let me return
to the more specious slavery which chains the very soul of woman,
keeping her for ever under the bondage of ignorance.
The preposterous distinctions of rank, which render civilisation a
curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning
envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people,
because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the
relative duties of life, but to the station, and when the duties
are not fulfilled the affections cannot gain sufficient strength to
fortify the virtue of which they are the natural reward. Still
there are some loop-holes out of which a man may creep, and dare to
think and act for himself; but for a woman it is an herculean task,
because she has difficulties peculiar to her sex to overcome, which
require almost superhuman powers.
A truly benevolent legislator always endeavours to make it the
interest of each individual to be virtuous; and thus private virtue
becoming the cement of public happiness, an orderly whole is
consolidated by the tendency of all the parts towards a common
centre. But the private or public virtue of woman is very
problematical, for Rousseau, and a numerous list of male writers,
insist that she should all her life be subjected to a severe
restraint, that of propriety. Why subject her to propriety--blind
propriety--if she be capable of acting from a nobler spring, if she
be an heir of immortality? Is sugar always to be produced by vital
blood? Is one half of the human species, like the poor African
slaves, to be subject to prejudices that brutalise them, when
principles would be a surer guard, only to sweeten the cup of man?
Is not this indirectly to deny woman reason? for a gift is a
mockery, if it be unfit for use.
Women are, in common with men, rendered weak and luxurious by the
relaxing pleasures which wealth procures; g but added to this they
are made slaves to their persons, and must render them alluring
that man may lend them his reason to guide their tottering steps
aright. or should they be ambitious, they must govern their tyrants
by sinister tricks, for without rights there cannot be any
incumbent duties. The laws respecting woman, which I mean to
discuss in a future part, make an absurd unit of a man and his
wife; and then by the easy transition of only considering him as
responsible, she is reduced to a mere cipher.
The being who discharges the duties of its station is independent;
and, speaking of women at large, their first duty is to themselves
as rational creatures, and the next, in point of importance, as
citizens, is that, which includes so many, of a mother. The rank in
life which dispenses with their fulfilling this duty, necessarily
degrades them by making them mere dolls. or should they turn to
something more important than merely fitting drapery upon a smooth
block, their minds are only occupied by some soft platonic
attachment; or the actual management of an intrigue may keep their
thoughts in motion; for when they neglect domestic duties, they
have it not in their power to take the field and march and
counter-march like soldiers, or wrangle in the senate to keep their
faculties from rusting.
I know that, as a proof of the inferiority of the sex, Rousseau has
exultingly exclaimed, How can they leave the nursery for the camp!
And the camp has by some moralists been proved the school of the
most heroic virtues; though I think it would puzzle a keen casuist
to prove the reasonableness of the greater number of wars that have
dubbed heroes. I do not mean to consider this question critically;
because, having frequently viewed these freaks of ambition as the
first natural mode of civilisation, when the ground must be torn
up, and the woods cleared by fire and sword, I do not choose to
call them pests; but surely the present system of war has little
connection with virtue of any denomination, being rather the school
of finesse and effeminacy than of fortitude.
Yet, if defensive war, the only justifiable war, in the present
advanced state of society, where virtue can show its face and ripen
amidst the rigours which purify the air on the mountain's top, were
alone to be adopted as just and glorious, the true heroism of
antiquity might again animate female bosoms. But fair and softly,
gentle reader, male or female, do not alarm thyself, for though I
have compared the character of a modern soldier with that of a
civilised woman, I am not going to advise them to turn their
distaff into a musket, though I sincerely wish to see the bayonet
concerted into a pruning-hook. I only re-created an imagination,
fatigued by contemplating the vices and follies which all proceed
from a feculent stream of wealth that has muddied the pure rills of
natural affection, by supposing that society will some time or
other be so constituted, that man must necessarily fulfil the
duties of a citizen, or be despised, and that while he was employed
in any of the departments of civil life, his wife, also an active
citizen, should be equally intent to manage her family, educate her
children, and assist her neighbours.
But to render her really virtuous and useful, she must not, if she
discharge her civil duties, want individually the protection of
civil laws; she must not be dependent on her husband's bounty for
her subsistence during his life, or support after his death; for
how can a being be generous who has nothing of its own? or virtuous
who is not free? The wife, in the present state of things, who is
faithful to her husband, and neither suckles nor educates her
children, scarcely deserves the name of a wife, and has no right to
that of a citizen. But take away natural rights, and duties become
null.
Women then must be considered as only the wanton solace of men,
when they become so weak in mind and body that they cannot exert
themselves unless to pursue some frothy pleasure, or to invent some
frivolous fashion. What can be a more melancholy sight to a
thinking mind, than to look into the numerous carriages that drive
helter-skelter about this metropolis in a morning full of
pale-faced creatures who are flying from themselves! I have often
wished, with Dr. Johnson, to place some of them in a little shop
with half a dozen children looking up to their languid countenances
for support. I am much mistaken, if some latent vigour would not
soon give health and spirit to their eyes, and some lines drawn by
the exercise of reason on the blank cheeks, which before were only
undulated by dimples, might restore lost dignity to the character,
or rather enable it to attain the true dignity of its nature.
Virtue is not to be acquired even by speculation, much less by the
negative supineness that wealth naturally generates.
Besides, when poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not
morality cut to the quick? Still to avoid misconstruction, though
I consider that women in the common walks of life are called to
fulfil the duties of wives and mothers, by religion and reason, I
cannot help lamenting that women of a superior cast have not a road
open by which they can pursue more extensive plans of usefulness
and independence. I may excite laughter, by dropping an hint, which
I mean to pursue, some future time, for I really think that women
ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily
governed without having any direct share allowed them in the
deliberations of government.
But, as the whole system of representation is now, in this country,
only a convenient handle for despotism, they need not complain, for
they are as well represented as a numerous class of hard-working
mechanics, who pay for the support of royalty when they can
scarcely stop their children's mouths with bread. How are they
represented whose very sweat supports the splendid stud of an
heir-apparent, or varnishes the chariot of some female favourite
who looks down on shame? Taxes on the very necessaries of life,
enable an endless tribe of idle princes and princesses to pass with
stupid pomp before a gaping crowd, who almost worship the very
parade which costs them so dear. This is mere gothic grandeur,
something like the barbarous useless parade of having sentinels on
horseback at Whitehall, which I could never view without a mixture
of contempt and indignation.
How strangely must the mind be sophisticated when this sort of
state impresses it! But, till these monuments of folly are levelled
by virtue, similar follies will leaven the whole mass. For the same
character, in some degree, will prevail in the aggregate of
society; and the refinements of luxury, or the vicious repinings of
envious poverty, will equally banish virtue from society,
considered as the characteristic of that society, or only allow it
to appear as one of the stripes of the harlequin coat, worn by the
civilised man.
In the superior ranks of life, every duty is done by deputies, as
if duties could ever be waived, and the vain pleasures which
consequent idleness forces the rich to pursue, appear so enticing
to the next rank, that the numerous scramblers for wealth sacrifice
everything to tread on their heels. The most sacred trusts are then
considered as sinecures, because they were procured by interest,
and only sought to enable a man to keep good company. Women, in
particular, all want to be ladies. Which is simply to have nothing
to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they
cannot tell what.
But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but to loiter
with easy grace; surely you would not condemn them all to suckle
fools and chronicle small beer! No. Women might certainly study the
art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. And midwifery,
decency seems to allot to them, though I am afraid, the word
midwife, in our dictionaries, will soon give p]ace to accoucheur,
and one proof of the former delicacy of the sex be effaced from the
language.
They might also study politics, and settle their benevolence on the
broadest basis; for the reading of history will scarcely be more
useful than the perusal of romances, if read as mere biography; if
the character of the times, the political improvements, arts, etc.,
be not observed. In short, if it be not considered as the history
of man; and not of particular men, who filled a niche in the temple
of fame, and dropped into the black rolling stream of time, that
silently sweeps all before it into the shapeless void
called--eternity.--For shape, can it be called, "that shape hath
none"?
Business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue, if they were
educated in a more orderly manner, which might save many from
common and legal prostitution. Women would not then marry for a
support, as men accept of places under Government, and neglect the
implied duties; nor would an attempt to earn their own subsistence,
a most laudable one! sink them almost to the level of those poor
abandoned creatures who live by prostitution. For are not milliners
and mantua-makers reckoned the next class? The few employments open
to women, so far. from being liberal, are menial; and when a
superior education enables them to take charge of the education of
children as governesses, they are not treated like the tutors of
sons, though even clerical tutors are not always treated in a
manner calculated to render them respectable in the eyes of their
pupils, to say nothing of the private comfort of the individual.
But as women educated like gentlewomen, are never designed for the
humiliating situation which necessity sometimes forces them to
fill; these situations are considered in the light of a
degradation; and they know little of the human heart, who need to
be told, that nothing so painfully sharpens sensibility as such a
fall in life.
Some of these women might be restrained from marrying by a proper
spirit of delicacy, and others may not have had it in their power
to escape in this pitiful way from servitude; is not that
Government then very defective, and very unmindful of the happiness
of one-half of is members, that does not provide for honest,
independent women, by encouraging them to fill respectable
stations? But in order to render their private virtue a public
benefit, they must have a civil existence in the State, married or
single; else we shall continually see some worthy woman, whose
sensibility has been rendered painfully acute by undeserved
contempt, droop like "the lily broken down by a plowshare."
It is a melancholy truth; yet such is the blessed effect of
civilisation! the most respectable women are the most oppressed;
and, unless they have understandings far superior to the common run
of understandings, taking in both sexes, they must, from being
treated like contemptible beings, become contemptible. How many
women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have
practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and
stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging
their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes
the beauty to which it at first gave lustre; nay, I doubt whether
pity and love are so near akin as poets feign, for I have seldom
seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless
they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the soft handmaid of love,
or the harbinger of lust.
How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by
fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty!--beauty did
I say!--so sensible am I of the beauty of moral-loveliness, or the
harmonious propriety that attunes the passions of a well-regulated
mind, that I blush at making the comparison; yet I sigh to think
how few women aim at attaining this respectability by withdrawing
from the giddy whirl of pleasure, or the indolent calm that
stupefies the good sort of women it sucks in.
Proud of their weakness, however, they must always be protected,
guarded from care, and all the rough toils that dignify the mind.
If this be the fiat of fate, if they will make themselves
insignificant and contemptible, sweetly to waste "life away," let
them not expect to be valued when their beauty fades, for it is the
fate of the fairest flowers to be admired and pulled to pieces by
the careless hand that plucked them. In how many ways do I wish,
from the purest benevolence, to impress this truth on my sex; yet
I fear that they will not listen to a truth that dear bought
experience has brought home to many an agitated bosom, nor
willingly resign the privileges of rank and sex for the privileges
of humanity, to which those have no claim who do not discharge its
duties.
Those writers are particularly useful, in my opinion, who make man
feel for man, independent of the station he fills, or the drapery
of factitious sentiments. I then would fain convince reasonable men
of the importance of some of my remarks; and prevail on them to
weigh dispassionately the whole tenor of my observations. I appeal
to their understandings; and, as a fellow-creature, claim, in the
name of my sex, some interest in their hearts. I entreat them to
assist to emancipate their companion, to make her a helpmeet for
them.
Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with
rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find
us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more
faithful wives, more reasonable mothers--in a word, better
citizens. We should then love them with true affection, because we
should learn to respect ourselves; and the peace of mind of a
worthy man would not be interrupted by the idle vanity of his wife,
nor the babes sent to nestle in a strange bosom, having never found
a home in their mother's.
CHAPTER X
PARENTAL AFFECTION
Parental affection is, perhaps, the blindest modification of
perverse self-love; for we have not, like the French,[1] two terms
to distinguish the pursuit of a natural and reasonable desire, from
the ignorant calculations of weakness. Parents often love their
children in the most brutal manner, and sacrifice every relative
duty to promote their advancement in the world. To promote, such is
the perversity of unprincipled prejudices, the future welfare of
the very beings whose present existence they embitter by the most
despotic stretch of power. Power, in fact, is ever true to its
vital principle, for in every shape it should reign without control
or inquiry. Its throne is built across a dark abyss, which no eye
must dare to explore, lest the baseless fabric should totter under
investigation. obedience, unconditional obedience, is the catchword
of tyrants of every description, and to render "assurance doubly
sure," one kind of despotism supports another. Tyrants would have
cause to tremble if reason were to become the rule of duty in any
of the relations of life, for the light might spread till perfect
day appeared. And when it did appear, how would men smile at the
sight of the bugbears at which they started during the night of
ignorance, or the twilight of timid inquiry.
Parental affection, indeed, in many minds, is but a pretext to
tyrannise where it can be done with impunity, for only good and
wise men are content with the respect that will bear discussion.
Convinced that they have a right to what they insist on, they do
not fear reason, or dread the sifting of subjects that recur to
natural justice: because they firmly believe that the more
enlightened the human mind becomes the deeper root will just and
simple principles take. They do not rest in expedients, or grant
that what is metaphysically true can be practically false; but
disdaining the shifts of the moment they calmly wait till time,
sanctioning innovation, silences the hiss of selfishness or envy.
If the power of reflecting on the past, and darting the keen shall
more eye of contemplation into futurity, be the grand privilege of
man, it must be granted that some people enjoy this prerogative in
a very limited degree. Everything new appears to them wrong; and
not able to distinguish the possible from the monstrous, they fear
where no fear should find a place, running from the light of
reason, as if it were a firebrand; yet the limits of the possible
have never been defined to stop the sturdy innovator's hand.
Woman, however, a slave in every situation to prejudice, seldom
exerts enlightened maternal affection; for she either neglects her
children, or spoils them by improper indulgence. The affection of
some women for their children is, as I have before termed it,
frequently very brutish: for it eradicates every spark of humanity.
Justice, truth, everything is sacrificed by these Rebekahs, and for
the sake of their own children they violate the most sacred duties,
forgetting the common relationship that binds the whole family on
earth together. Yet, reason seems to say, that they who suffer one
duty, or affection, to swallow up the rest, have not sufficient
heart or mind to fulfil that one conscientiously. It then loses the
venerable aspect of a duty, and assumes the fantastic form of a
whim.
As the care of children in their infancy is one of the grand duties
annexed to the female character by nature, this duty would afford
many forcible arguments for strengthening the female understanding,
if it were properly considered.
The formation of the mind must be begun very early, and the temper,
in particular, requires the most judicious attention--an attention
which woman cannot pay who only love their children because they
are their children, and seek no further for the foundation of their
duty, than in the feelings of the moment. It is this want of reason
in their affections which makes women so often run into extremes,
and either be the most fond or most careless and unnatural mothers.
To be a good mother, a woman must have sense, and that independence
of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely
on their husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers;
wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in
secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow. When
chastisement is necessary, though they have offended the mother,
the father must inflict the punishment; he must be the judge in all
disputes; but fully discuss this subject when I treat of private
education. I now only mean to insist, that unless the understanding
of woman be enlarged, and her character rendered more firm, by
being allowed to govern her own conduct, she will never have
sufficient sense or command of temper to manage her children
properly. Her parental affection, indeed, scarcely deserves the
name, when it does not lead her to suckle her children, because the
discharge of this duty is equally calculated to inspire maternal
and filial affection: and it is the indispensable duty of men and
women to fulfil the duties which give birth to affections that are
the surest preservatives against vice. Natural affection, as it is
termed, I believe to be a very faint tie, affections must grow out
of the habitual exercise of a mutual sympathy; and what sympathy
does a mother exercise who sends her babe to a nurse, and only
takes it from a nurse to send it to a school?
In the exercise of their maternal feelings Providence has furnished
women with a natural substitute for love, when the lover becomes
only a friend, and mutual confidence takes place of overstrained
admiration--a child then gently twists the relaxing cord, and a
mutual care produces a new mutual sympathy. But a child, though a
pledge of affection, will not if both father and mother be content
to transfer to hirelings; for they who do their duty by proxy
murmur if they miss the reward of duty--parental affection produces
filial duty.
NOTES
[1] L'amour propre. L'amour de soi meme.
CHAPTER XI
DUTY TO PARENTS
There seems to be an indolent propensity in man to make
prescription always take place of reason, and to place every duty
on an arbitrary foundation. The rights of kings are deduced in a
direct line from the King of kings, and that of parents from our
first parent.
Why do we thus go back for principles that should always rest on
the same base, and have the same weight to-day that they had a
thousand years ago--and not a jot more ? If parents discharge their
duty they have a strong hold and sacred claim on the gratitude of
their children, but few parents are willing to receive the
respectful affection of their offspring on such terms. They demand
blind obedience, because they do not merit a reasonable service:
and to render these demands of weakness and ignorance more binding,
a mysterious sanctity is spread round the most arbitrary principle;
for what other name can be given to the blind duty of obeying
vicious or weak beings merely because they obeyed a powerful
instinct?
The simple definition of the reciprocal duty which naturally
subsists between parent and child may be given in a few words. The
parent who pays proper attention to helpless infancy has a right to
require the same attention when the feebleness of age comes upon
him. But to subjugate a rational being to the mere will of another,
after he is of age to answer to society for his own conduct, is a
most cruel and undue stretch of- power, and perhaps as injurious to
morality as those religious systems which do not allow right and
wrong to have any existence, but in the Divine will.
I never knew a parent who had paid more than common attention to
his children disregarded.[1] on the contrary, the early habit of
relying almost implicitly on the opinion of a respected parent is
not easily shook, even when matured reason convinces the child that
his father is not the wisest man in the world. This weakness--for
a weakness it is, though the epithet amiable may be tacked to it--a
reasonable man must steel himself against; for the absurd duty, too
often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being
a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish
submission to any power but reason.
I distinguish between the natural and accidental duty due to
parents.
The parent who sedulously endeavours to form the heart, and enlarge
the understanding of his child, has given that dignity to the
discharge of a duty, common to the whole animal world, that only
reason can give. This is the parental affection of humanity, and
leaves instinctive natural affection far behind. Such a parent
acquires all the rights of the most sacred friendship, and his
advice, even when his child is advanced in life, demands serious
consideration.
With respect to marriage, though after one-and-twenty a parent
seems to have no right to withhold his consent on any account, yet
twenty years of solicitude call for a return, and the son ought at
least to promise not to marry for two or three years, should the
object of his choice not entirely meet with the approbation of his
first friend.
But respect for parents is, generally speaking, a much more
debasing principle; it is only a selfish respect for property. The
father who is blindly obeyed is obeyed from sheer weakness, or from
motives that degrade the human character.
A great proportion of the misery that wanders in hideous forms
around the world is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents;
and still these are the people who are most tenacious of what they
term a natural right, though it be subversive of the birthright of
man, the right of acting according to the direction of his own
reason.
I have already very frequently had occasion to observe that vicious
or indolent people are always eager to profit by enforcing
arbitrary privileges, and generally in the same proportion as they
neglect the discharge of the duties which alone render the
privileges reasonable. This is at the bottom a dictate of common
sense, or the instinct of self-defence, peculiar to ignorant
weakness, resembling that instinct which makes a fish muddy the
water it swims in to elude its enemy, instead of boldly facing it
in the clear stream.
From the clear stream of argument indeed the supporters of
prescription of every denomination fly; and taking refuge in the
darkness, which, in the language of sublime poetry, has been
supposed to surround the throne of omnipotence, they dare to demand
that implicit respect which is only due to His unsearchable ways.
But let me not be thought presumptuous; the darkness which hides
our God from us only respects speculative truths. It never obscures
moral ones; they shine clearly, for God is light, and never, by the
constitution of our nature, requires the discharge of a duty, the
reasonableness of which does not beam on us when we open our eyes.
The indolent parent of high rank may, it is true, extort a show of
respect from his child, and females on the Continent are
particularly subject to the views of their families, who never
think of consulting their inclination, or providing for the comfort
of the poor victims of their pride. The consequence is notorious:
these dutiful daughters become adulteresses, and neglect the
education of their children, from whom they, in their turn, exact
the same kind of obedience.
Females, it is true, in all countries are too much under the
dominion of their parents; and few parents think of addressing
their children in the following manner, though it is in this
reasonable way that Heaven seems to command the whole human
race:--It is your interest to obey me till you can judge for
yourself; and the Almighty Father of all has implanted an affection
in me to serve as a guard to you whilst your reason is unfolding;
but when your mind arrives at maturity, you must only obey me, or
rather respect my opinions, so far as they coincide with the light
that is breaking in on your own mind.
A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind; and
Mr. Locke very judiciously observes, that "if the mind be curbed
and humbled too much in children; if their spirits be abased and
broken much by too strict an hand over them, they lose all their
vigour and industry." This strict hand may in some degree account
for the weakness of women; for girls, from various causes, are more
kept down by their parents, in every sense of the word, than boys.
The duty expected from them is, like all the duties arbitrarily
imposed on women, more from a sense of propriety, more out of
respect for decorum, than reason; and thus taught slavishly to
submit to their parents, they are prepared for the slavery of
marriage. I may be told that a number of women are not slaves in
the marriage state. True, but they then become tyrants; for it is
not rational freedom, but a lawless kind of power, resembling the
authority exercised by the favourites of absolute monarchs, which
they obtain by debasing means. I do not likewise dream of
insinuating that either boys or girls are always slaves. I only
insist that when they are obliged to submit to authority blindly
their faculties are weakened, and their tempers rendered imperious
or abject. I also lament that parents, indolently availing
themselves of a supposed privilege, damp the first faint glimmering
of reason, rendering at the same time the duty, which they are so
anxious to enforce, an empty name; because they will not let it
rest on the only basis on which a duty can rest securely; for
unless it be founded on knowledge, it cannot gain sufficient
strength to resist the squalls of passion, or the silent sapping of
self-love. But it is not the parents who have given the surest
proof of their affection for their children, or, to speak more
properly. who, by fulfilling their duty, have allowed a natural
parental affection to take root in their hearts, the child of
exercised sympathy and reason, and not the overweening offspring of
selfish pride, who most vehemently insist on their children
submitting to their will merely because it is their will. On the
contrary, the parent who sets a good example, patiently lets that
example work, and it seldom fails to produce its natural
effect--filial reverence.
Children cannot be taught too early to submit to reason-- the true
definition of that necessity which Rousseau insisted on, without
defining it; for to submit to reason is to submit to the nature of
things, and to that God who formed them so, to promote our real
interest.
Why should the minds of children be warped as they just begin to
expand, only to favour the indolence of parents who insist on a
privilege without being willing to pay the price fixed by Nature?
I have before had occasion to observe that a right always includes
a duty, and I think it may likewise fairly be inferred that they
forfeit the right who do not fulfil the duty.
It is easier, I grant, to command than reason; but it does not
follow from hence that children cannot comprehend the reason why
they are made to do certain things habitually: for from a steady
adherence to a few simple principles of conduct flows that salutary
power which a judicious parent gradually gains over a child's mind.
And this power becomes strong indeed, if tempered by an even
display of affection brought home to the child's heart. For, I
believe, as a general rule, It must be allowed that the affection
which we inspire always resembles that we cultivate; so that
natural affections, which have been supposed almost distinct from
reason, may be found more nearly connected with judgment than is
commonly allowed. Nay, as another proof of the necessity of
cultivating the female understanding, it is but just to observe,
that the affections seem to have a kind of animal capriciousness
when they merely reside in the heart.
It is the irregular exercise of parental authority that first
injures the mind, and to these irregularities girls are more
subject than boys. The will of those who never allow their will to
be disputed, unless they happen to be in a good humour, when they
relax proportionally, is almost always unreasonable. To elude this
arbitrary authority girls very early learn the lessons which they
afterwards practise on their husbands; for I have frequently seen
a little sharp-faced miss rule a whole family, excepting that now
and then mamma's anger will burst out of some accidental
cloud;--either her hair was ill-dressed,[2] or she had lost more
money at cards, the night before, than she was willing to own to
her husband; or some such moral cause of anger.
After observing sallies of this kind, I have been led into a
melancholy train of reflection respecting females, concluding that
when their first affection must lead them astray, or make their
duties clash till they rest on mere whims and customs, little can
be expected from them as they advance in life. How, indeed, can an
instructor remedy this evil? for to teach them virtue on any solid
principle is to teach them to despise their parents. Children
cannot, ought not, to be taught to make allowance for the faults of
their parents, because every such allowance weakens the force of
reason in their minds, and makes them still more indulgent to their
own. It is one of the most sublime virtues of maturity that leads
us to be severe with respect to ourselves, and forbearing to
others; but children should only be taught the simple virtues, for
if they begin too early to make allowance for human passions and
manners, they wear off the fine edge of the criterion by which they
should regulate their own, and become unjust in the same proportion
as they grow indulgent.
The affections of children, and weak people, are always selfish;
they love their relatives, because they are beloved by them, not on
account of their virtues. Yet, till esteem and love are blended
together in the first affection, and reason made the foundation of
the first duty, morality will stumble at the threshold. But, till
society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will
still insist on being obeyed, because they will be obeyed, and
constantly endeavour to settle that power on a Divine right which
will not bear the investigation of reason.
NOTES
[1] Dr. Johnson makes the same observation.
[2] I myself heard a little girl once say to a servant, "My mamma
has been scolding me finely this morning, because her hair was not
dressed to please her." Though this remark was pert, it was just.
And what respect could a girl acquire for such a parent without
doing violence to reason?
CHAPTER XII
ON NATIONAL EDUCATION
The good effects resulting from attention to private education will
ever be very confined, and the parent who really puts his own hand
to the plough, will always, in some degree, be disappointed, till
education becomes a grand national concern. A man cannot retire
into a desert with his child, and if he did he could not bring
himself back to childhood, and become the proper friend and
playfellow of an infant or youth. And when children are confined to
the society of men and women, they very soon acquire that kind of
premature manhood which stops the growth of every vigorous power of
mind or body. In order to open their faculties they should be
excited to think for themselves; and this can only be done by
mixing a number of children together, and making them jointly
pursue the same objects.
A child very soon contracts a benumbing indolence of mind, which he
has seldom sufficient vigour afterwards to shake off, when he only
asks a question instead of seeking for information, and then relies
implicitly on the answer he receives. With his equals in age this
could never be the case, and the subjects of inquiry, though they
might be influenced, would not be entirely under the direction of
men, who frequently damp, if not destroy, abilities, by bringing
them forward too hastily: and too hastily they will infallibly be
brought forward, if the child be confined to the society of a man,
however sagacious that man may be.
Besides, in you the seeds of every affection should be sown, and
the respectful regard, which is felt for a parent, is very
different from the social affections that arc to constitute the
happiness of life as it advances. Of these equality is the basis,
and an intercourse of sentiments unclogged by that observant
seriousness which prevents disputation, though it may not enforce
submission. Let a child have ever such an affection for his parent,
he will always languish to play and prattle with children; and the
very respect he feels, for filial esteem always has a dash of fear
mixed with it, will, if it do not teach him cunning, at least
prevent him from pouring out the little secrets which first open
the heart to friendship and confidence, gradually leading to more
expansive benevolence. Added to this, he will never acquire that
frank ingenuousness of behaviour, which young people can only
attain by being frequently in society where they dare to speak what
they think; neither afraid of being reproved for their presumption,
nor laughed at for their folly.
Forcibly impressed by the reflections which the sight of schools,
as they are at present conducted, naturally suggested, I have
formerly delivered my opinion rather warmly in favour of a private
education; but further experience has led me to view the subject in
a different light. I still, however, think schools, as they are now
regulated, the hot-beds of vice and folly, and the knowledge of
human nature, supposed to be attained there, merely cunning
selfishness.
At school boys become gluttons and slovens, and, instead of
cultivating domestic affections, very early rush into the
libertinism which destroys the constitution before it is formed;
hardening the heart as it weakens the understanding.
I should, in fact, be averse to boarding-schools, if it were for no
other reason than the unsettled state of mind which the expectation
of the vacations produces. on these the children's thoughts are
fixed with eager anticipating hopes, for, at least, to speak with
moderation, half of the time, and when they arrive they are spent
in total dissipation and beastly indulgence.
But, on the contrary, when they are brought up at home, though they
may pursue a plan of study in a more orderly manner than can be
adopted when near a fourth part of the year is actually spent in
idleness, and as much more in regret and anticipation; yet they
there acquire too high an opinion of their own importance, from
birth, allowed to tyrannise over servants, and from the anxiety
expressed by most mothers, on the score of manners, who, eager to
teach the accomplishments of a gentleman, stifle, in their birth,
the virtues of a man. Thus brought into company when they ought to
be seriously employed, and treated like men when they are still
boys, they become vain and effeminate.
The only way to avoid two extremes equally injurious to morality
would be to contrive some way of combining a public and private
education. Thus to make men citizens two natural steps might be
taken, which seem directly to lead to the desired point; for the
domestic affections, that first open the heart to the various
modifications of humanity, would be cultivated, whilst the children
were nevertheless allowed to spend great part of their time, on
terms of equality, with other children.
I still recollect, with pleasure, the country day-school; where a
boy trudged in the morning, wet or dry, carrying his books, and his
dinner, if it were at a considerable distance; a servant did not
then lead master by the hand, for, when he had once put on coat and
breeches, he was allowed to shift for himself, and return alone in
the evening to recount the feats of the day close at the parental
knee. His father's house was his home, and was ever after fondly
remembered; nay, I appeal to many superior men, who were educated
in this manner, whether the recollection of some shady lane where
they conned their lesson; or, of some stile, where they sat making
a kite, or mending a bat, has not endeared their country to them?
But, what boy ever recollected with pleasure the years he spent in
close confinement, at an academy near London? unless, indeed, he
should, by chance, remember the poor scarecrow of an usher, whom he
tormented; or, the tartman, from whom he caught a cake, to devour
it with a cattish appetite of selfishness At boarding-schools of
every description, the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief;
and of the senior, vice. Besides, in great schools, what can be
more prejudicial to the moral character than the system of tyranny
and abject slavery which is established amongst the boys, to say
nothing of the slavery to forms, which makes religion worse than a
farce? For what good can be expected from the youth who receives
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, to avoid forfeiting half a
guinea, which he probably afterwards spends in some sensual manner?
Half the employment of the youths is to elude the necessity of
attending public worship; and well they may, for such a constant
repetition of the same thing must be a very irksome restraint on
their natural vivacity. As these ceremonies have the most fatal
effect on their morals, and as a ritual performed by the lips, when
the heart and mind are far away, is not now stored up by our Church
as a bank to draw on for the fees of the poor souls in purgatory,
why should they not be abolished?
But the fear of innovation, in this country, extends to everything.
This is only a covert fear, the apprehensive timidity of indolent
slugs, who guard, by sliming it over, the snug place, which they
consider in the light of an hereditary estate; and eat, drink, and
enjoy themselves, instead of fulfilling the duties, excepting a few
empty forms, for which it was endowed. These are the people who
most strenuously insist on the will of the founder being observed,
crying out against all reformation, as ;f it were a violation of
justice. I am now alluding particularly to the relics of Popery
retained in our colleges, when the Protestant members seem to be
such sticklers for the Established Church; but their zeal never
makes them lose sight of the spoil of ignorance, which rapacious
priests of superstitious memory have scraped together. No, wise in
their generation, they venerate the prescriptive right of
possession, as a stronghold, and still let the sluggish bell tinkle
to prayers, as during the days when the elevation of the host was
supposed to atone for the sins of the people, lest one reformation
should lead to another, and the spirit kill the letter. These
Romish customs have the most baneful effect on the morals of our
clergy; for the idle vermin who two or three times a day perform in
the most slovenly manner a service which they think useless, but
call their duty, soon lose a sense of duty. At college, forced to
attend or evade public worship, they acquire an habitual contempt
for the very service, the performance of which is to enable them to
live in idleness. It is mumbled over as an affair of business, as
a stupid boy repeats his talk, and frequently the college cant
escapes from the preacher the moment after he has left the pulpit,
and even whilst he is eating the dinner which he earned in such a
dishonest manner.
Nothing, indeed, can be more irreverent than the cathedral service
as it is now performed in this country, neither does it contain a
set of weaker men than those who are the slaves of this childish
routine. A disgusting skeleton of the former state is still
exhibited; but all the solemnity that interested the imagination,
if it did not purify the heart, is stripped off. The performance of
high mass on the Continent must impress every mind, where a spark
of fancy glows, with that awful melancholy, that sublime
tenderness, so near akin to devotion. I do not say that these
devotional feelings are of more use, in a moral sense, than any
other emotion of taste; but I contend that the theatrical pomp
which gratifies our senses, is to be preferred to the cold parade
that insults the understanding without reaching the heart.
Amongst remarks on national education, such observations cannot be
misplaced, especially as the supporters of these establishments,
degenerated into puerilities, affect to be the champions of
religion. Religion, pure source of comfort in this vale of tears!
how has thy clear stream been muddied by the dabblers, who have
presumptuously endeavoured to confine in one narrow channel, the
living waters that ever flow towards God--the sublime ocean of
existence! What would life be without that peace which the love of
God, when built on humanity, alone can impart? Every earthly
affection turns back, at intervals, to prey upon the heart that
feeds it; and the purest effusions of benevolence, often rudely
damped by man, must mount as a free-will offering to Him who gave
them birth, whose bright image they faintly reflect.
In public schools, however, religion, confounded with irk- some
ceremonies and unreasonable restraints, assumes the most ungracious
aspect: not the sober austere one that commands respect whilst it
inspires fear; but a ludicrous cast, that serves to point a pun.
For, in fact, most of the good stories and smart things will
enliven the spirits that have been concentrated at whist, are
manufactured out of the incidents to which the very men labour to
give a droll turn who countenance the abuse to live on the spoil.
There is not, perhaps, in the kingdom, a more dogmatical, or
luxurious set of men, than the pedantic tyrants who reside in
colleges and preside at public schools. The vacations are equally
injurious to the morals of the masters and pupils, and the
intercourse, which the former keep up with the nobility, introduces
the same vanity and extravagance into their families, which banish
domestic duties and comforts from the lordly mansion, whose state
is awkwardly aped. The boys, who live at a great expense with the
masters and assistants, are never domesticated, though placed there
for that purpose; for, after a silent dinner, they swallow a hasty
glass of wine, and retire to plan some mischievous trick, or to
ridicule the person or manners of the very people they have just
been cringing to, and. whom they ought to consider as the
representatives of their parents.
Can it then be a matter of surprise that boys become selfish and
vicious who are thus shut out from social converse? or that a mitre
often graces the brow of one of these diligent pastors?
The desire of living in the same style, as the rank just above
them, infects each individual and every class of people, and
meanness is the concomitant of this ignoble ambition; but those
professions are most debasing whose ladder is patronage; yet, out
of one of these professions the tutors of youth are, in general,
chosen. But, can they be expected to inspire independent
sentiments, whose conduct must be regulated by the cautious
prudence that is ever on the watch for preferment?
So far, however, from thinking of the morals of boys, I have heard
several masters of schools argue, that they only undertook to teach
Latin and Greek; and that they had fulfilled their duty, by sending
some good scholars to college.
A few good scholars, I grant, may have been formed by emulation and
discipline; but, to bring forward these clever boys, the health and
morals of a number have been sacrificed. The sons of our gentry and
wealthy commoners are mostly educated at these seminaries, and will
anyone pretend to assert that the majority, making every allowance,
come under the description of tolerable scholars?
It is not for the benefit of society that a few brilliant men
should be brought forward at the expense of the multitude. It is
true, that great men seem to start up, as great revolutions occur,
at proper intervals, to restore order, and to blow aside the clouds
that thicken over the face of truth; but let more reason and virtue
prevail in society, and these strong winds would not be necessary.
Public education, of every denomination, should be directed to form
citizens; but if you wish to make good citizens, you must first
exercise the affections of a son and a brother. This is the only
way to expand the heart; for public affections, as well as public
virtues, must ever grow out of the private character, or they are
merely meteors that shoot athwart a dark sky, and disappear as they
are gazed at and admired.
Few, I believe, have had much affection for mankind, who did not
first love their parents, their brothers, sisters, and even the
domestic brutes, whom they first played with. The exercise of
youthful sympathies forms the moral temperature; and it is the
recollection of these first affections and pursuits that gives life
to those that are afterwards more under the direction of reason. In
youth, the fondest friendships are formed, the genial juices
mounting at the same time, kindly mix; or, rather the heart,
tempered for the reception of friendship, is accustomed to seek for
pleasure in something more noble than the churlish ratification of
appetite.
In order then to inspire a love of home and domestic pleasures,
children ought to be educated at home for riotous holidays only
make them fond of home for their own sakes. Yet, the vacations,
which do not foster domestic affections, continually disturb the
course of study, and render any plan of improvement abortive which
includes temperance; still, were they abolished, children would be
entirely separated from their parents, and I question whether they
would become better citizens by sacrificing the preparatory
affections, by destroying the force of relationships that render
the marriage state as necessary as respectable. But, if a private
education produce self-importance, or insulate a man in his family,
the evil is only shifted, not remedied.
This train of reasoning brings me back to a subject, on which mean
to dwell, the necessity of establishing proper day-schools.
But, these should be national establishments, for whilst
schoolmasters are dependent on the caprice of parents, little
exertion can be expected from them, more than is necessary to
please ignorant people. Indeed, the necessity of a master's giving
the parents some sample of the boy's abilities, which during the
vacation is shown to every visitor,[1] is productive of more
mischief than would at first be supposed. For it is seldom done
entirely, to speak with moderation, by the child itself; thus the
master countenances falsehood, or winds the poor machine up to some
extraordinary exertion, that injures the wheels, and stops the
progress of gradual improvement. The memory is loaded with
unintelligible words, to make a show of, without the
understanding's acquiring any distinct ideas: but only that
education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of mind,
which teaches young people how to begin to think. The imagination
should not be allowed to debauch the understanding before it gained
strength, or vanity will become the forerunner of vice: for every
way of exhibiting the acquirements of a child is injurious to its
moral character.
How much time is lost in teaching them to recite what they do not
understand? whilst, seated on benches, all in their best array, the
mammas listen with astonishment to the parrot like prattle, uttered
in solemn cadences, with all the pomp of ignorance and folly. Such
exhibitions only serve to strike the spreading fibres of vanity
through the whole mind; for they neither teach children to speak
fluently, nor behave gracefully. So far from it, that these
frivolous pursuits might comprehensively be termed the study of
affectation; for we now rarely see a simple, bashful boy, though
few people of taste were ever disgusted by that awkward
sheepishness so natural to the age which schools and an early
introduction into society, have changed into impudence and apish
grimace.
Yet, how can these things be remedied whilst schoolmaster depend
entirely on parents for a subsistence; and, when so many rival
schools hang out their lures, to catch the attention of vain
fathers and mothers, whose parental affection only leads them to
wish that their children should outshine those of their neighbours?
Without great good luck, a sensible, conscientious man, would
starve before he could raise a school, if he disdained to bubble
weak parents by practising the secret tricks of the craft.
In the best regulated schools, however, where swarms are not
crammed together, many bad habits must be acquired; but, at common
schools, the body, heart, and understanding, are equally stunted,
for parents are often only in quest of the cheapest school, and the
master could not live, if he did not take a much greater number
than he could manage himself; nor will the scanty pittance, allowed
for each child, permit him to hire ushers sufficient to assist in
the discharge of the mechanical part of the business. Besides,
whatever appearance the house and garden may make, the children do
not enjoy the comfort of either, for they are continually reminded
by irksome restrictions that they are not at home, and the
state-rooms, garden, etc., must be kept in order for the recreation
of the parents; who, of a Sunday, visit the school, and are
impressed by the very parade that renders the situation of their
children uncomfortable.
With what disgust have I heard sensible women, for girls are more
restrained and cowed than boys, speak of the wearisome confinement,
which they endured at school. Not allowed, perhaps, to step out of
one broad walk in a superb garden, and obliged to pace with steady
deportment stupidly backwards and forwards, holding up their heads
and turning out their toes, with shoulders braced back, instead of
bounding, as nature directs to complete her own design, in the
various attitudes so conducive to health.[2] The pure animal
spirits, which make both mind and body shoot out, and unfold the
tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour, and vented in vain wishes
or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and spoil the
temper; else they mount to the brain, and sharpening the
understanding before it gains proportionable strength, produce that
pitiful cunning which disgracefully characterises the female mind--
and I fear will ever characterise it whilst women remain the slaves
of power!
The little respect paid to chastity in the male world is, I am
persuaded, the grand source of many of the physical and moral evils
that torment mankind, as well as of the vices and follies that
degrade and destroy women; yet, at school, boys infallibly lose
that decent bashfulness, which might have ripened into modesty, at
home.
And what nasty indecent tricks do they not also learn from each
other, when a number of them pig together in the same bedchamber,
not to speak of the vices, which render the body weak, whilst they
effectually prevent the acquisition of any delicacy of mind. The
little attention paid to the cultivation of modesty, amongst men,
produces great depravity in all the relationships of society; for,
not only love--love that ought to purify the heart, and first call
forth all the youthful powers, to prepare the man to discharge the
benevolent duties of life, is sacrificed to premature lust; but,
all the social affections are deadened by the selfish
gratifications, which very early pollute the mind, and dry up the
generous juices of the heart. In what an unnatural manner is
innocence often violated; and what serious consequences ensue to
render private vices a public pest. Besides, an habit of personal
order, which has more effect on the moral character, than is, in
general, supposed, can only be acquired at home, where that
respectable reserve is kept up which checks the familiarity that,
sinking into beastliness, undermines the affection it insults.
I have already animadverted on the bad habits which females acquire
when they are shut up together; and, I think, that the observation
may fairly be extended to the other sex, till the natural inference
is drawn which I have had in view throughout--that to improve both
sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public
schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of
society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or
the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of
fellowship, nor will women ever fulfil the peculiar duties of their
sex, till they become enlightened citizens, till they become free
by being enabled to earn their own subsistence, independent of men;
in the same manner, I mean, to prevent misconstruction, as one man
is independent of another. Nay, marriage will never be held sacred
till women, by being brought up with men, are prepared to be their
companions rather than their mistresses; for the mean doublings of
cunning will ever render them contemptible, whilst oppression
renders them timid. So convinced am I of this truth, that I will
venture to predict that virtue will never prevail in society till
the virtues of both sexes are founded on reason; and, till the
affections common to both are allowed to gain their due strength by
the discharge of mutual duties.
Were boys and girls permitted to pursue the same studies together,
those graceful decencies might early be inculcated which produce
modesty without those sexual distinctions that taint the mind.
Lessons of politeness, and that formulary of decorum, which treads
on the heels of falsehood, would be rendered useless by habitual
propriety of behaviour. Not indeed put on for visitors, like the
courtly robe of politeness, but the sober effect of cleanliness of
mind. Would not this simple elegance of sincerity be a chaste
homage paid to domestic affections, far surpassing the
meretricious compliments that shine with false lustre in the
heartless intercourse of fashionable life? But till more
understanding preponderates in society, there will ever be a want
of heart and taste, and the harlot's rouge will supply the place of
that celestial suffusion which only virtuous affections can give
to the face. Gallantry, and what is called love, may subsist
without simplicity of character but the main pillars of friendship
are respect and confidence--esteem is never founded on it cannot
tell what!
A taste for the fine arts requires great cultivation, but not more
than a taste for the virtuous affections, and both suppose that
enlargement of mind which opens so many sources of mental pleasure.
Why do people hurry to noisy scenes and crowded circles? I should
answer, because they want activity of mind, because they have not
cherished the virtues of the heart. They only therefore see and
feel in the gross, and continually pine after variety, finding
everything that is simple insipid.
This argument may be carried further than philosophers are rare of,
for if nature destined woman, in particular, for the discharge of
domestic duties, she made her susceptible of the attached
affections in a great degree. Now women are notoriously fond of
pleasure, and naturally must be so according to my definition,
because they cannot enter into the minutia of domestic taste,
lacking judgment, the foundation of all taste; for the
understanding, in spite of sensual cavillers, reserves to itself
the privilege of conveying pure joy to the heart.
With what a languid yawn have I seen an admirable poem thrown down
that a man of true taste returns to again and again with rapture;
and whilst melody has almost suspended respiration, a lady has
asked me where I bought my gown. I have seen also an eye glanced
coldly over a most exquisite picture rest, sparkling with pleasure,
on a caricature rudely sketched; and whilst some terrific feature
in nature has spread a sublime stillness through my soul, I have
been desired to observe the pretty tricks of a lap-dog that my
perverse fate forced me to travel with. Is it surprising that such
a tasteless being should rather caress this dog than her children?
Or that she should prefer the rant of flattery to the simple
accents of sincerity?
To illustrate this remark I must be allowed to observe that men of
the first genius and most cultivated minds have appeared to have
the highest relish for the simple beauties of nature; and they must
have forcibly felt, what they have so well described, the charm
which natural affections and unsophisticated feelings spread round
the human character. It is this power of looking into the heart,
and responsively vibrating with each emotion, that enables the poet
to personify each passion, and the painter to sketch with a pencil
of fire.
True taste is ever the work of the understanding employed in
observing natural effects; and till women have more understanding,
it is vain to expect them to possess domestic taste. Their lively
senses will ever be at work to harden their hearts, and the
emotions struck out of them will continue to be vivid and
transitory, unless a proper education store their mind with
knowledge.
It is the want of domestic taste, and not the acquirement of
knowledge, that takes women out of their families, and tears the
smiling babe from the breast that ought to afford it nourishment.
Women have been allowed to remain in ignorance and slavish
dependence many, very many, years, and still we hear of nothing but
their fondness of pleasure and sway, their preference of rakes and
soldiers, their childish attachment to toys, and the vanity that
makes them value accomplishments more than virtues.
History brings forward a fearful catalogue of the crimes which
their cunning has produced, when the weak slaves nave had
sufficient address to overreach their masters. In France, and in
how many other countries, have men been the luxurious despots, and
women the crafty ministers? Does this prove that ignorance and
dependence domesticate them? Is not their folly the byword of the
libertines, who relax in their society? and do not men of sense
continually lament that an immoderate fondness for dress and
dissipation carries the mother of a family for ever from home?
Their hearts have not been debauched by knowledge, or their minds
led away by scientific pursuits, yet they do not fulfil the
peculiar duties which, as women, they are called upon by Nature to
fulfil. On the contrary, the state of warfare which subsists
between the sexes makes them employ those wiles that often
frustrate the more open designs of force.
When therefore I call women slaves, I mean in a political and civil
sense; for indirectly they obtain too much power, and are debased
by their exertions to obtain illicit sway.
Let an enlightened nation [3] then try what effect reason would
have to bring them back to nature, and their duty; and allowing
them to share the advantages of education and government with man,
see whether they will become better, as they grow wiser and become
free. They cannot be injured by the experiment, for it is not in
the power of man to render them more insignificant than they are at
present.
To render this practicable, day-schools for particular ares should
be established by Government, in which boys and girls might be
educated together. The school for the younger children, from five
to nine years of age, ought to be absolutely free and open to all
classes.[4] A sufficient number of masters should also be chosen by
a select committee in each parish, to whom any complaint of
negligence, etc., might be made, if signed by six of the children's
parents.
Ushers would then be unnecessary; for I believe experience will
ever prove that this kind of subordinate authority is particularly
injurious to the morals of youth. What, indeed, can tend to deprave
the character more than outward submission and inward contempt? Yet
how can boys be expected to treat an usher with respect, when the
master seems to consider him in the light of a servant, and almost
to countenance the ridicule which becomes the chief amusement of
the boys during the play hours?
But nothing of this kind could occur in an elementary day school,
where boys and girls, the rich and poor, should meet together. And
to prevent any of the distinctions of vanity, they should be
dressed alike, and all obliged to submit to the same discipline, or
leave the school. The schoolroom ought to be surrounded by a large
piece of ground, in which the children might be usefully exercised,
for at this age they should not be confined to any sedentary
employment for more than an hour at a time. But these relaxations
might all be rendered a part of elementary education, for many
things improve and amuse the senses, when introduced as a kind of
show, to the principles of which, dryly laid down, children would
turn a deaf ear. For instance, botany, mechanics, and astronomy;
reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, and some simple
experiments in natural philosophy, might fill up the day; but these
pursuits should never encroach on gymnastic plays in the open air.
The elements of religion, history, the history of man, and
politics, might also be taught by conversations in the Socratic
form.
After the age of nine, girls and boys, intended for domestic
employments, or mechanical trades, ought to be removed to other
schools, and receive instruction in some measure appropriated to
the destination of each individual, the two sexes being still
together in the morning; but in the afternoon the girls should
attend a school, where plain work, mantua-making, millinery, etc.,
would be their employment.
The young people of superior abilities, or fortune, might now be
taught, in another school, the dead and living languages, the
elements of science, and continue the study of history and
politics, on a more extensive scale, which would not exclude polite
literature.
Girls and boys still together? I hear some readers ask. Yes. And I
should not fear any other consequence than that some early
attachment might take place; which, whilst it had the best effect
on the moral character of the young people, might not perfectly
agree with the views of the parents, for it will be a long time, I
fear, before the world will be so far enlightened that parents,
only anxious to render their children virtuous, shall allow them to
choose companions for life themselves.
Besides, this would be a sure way to promote early marriages, from
early marriages the most salutary physical and moral effects
naturally flow. What a different character does a married citizen
assume from the selfish coxcomb, who lives but for himself, and who
is often afraid to marry lest he should not be able to live in a
certain style. Great emergencies excepted, which would rarely occur
in a society of which equality was the basis, a man can only be
prepared to discharge the duties of public life, by the habitual
practice of those inferior ones which form the man.
In this plan of education the constitution of boys would not be
ruined by the early debaucheries, which now make men so selfish, or
girls rendered weak and vain, by indolence, and frivolous pursuits.
But, I presuppose, that such a degree of equality should be
established between the sexes as would shut out gallantry and
coquetry, yet allow friendship and love to temper the heart for the
discharge of higher duties.
These would be schools of morality--and the happiness of man,
allowed to flow from the pure springs of duty and affection, what
advances might not the human mind make? Society can only be happy
and free in proportion as it is virtuous; but the present
distinctions, established in society, corrode all private, and
blast all public virtue.
I have already inveighed against the custom of confining girls to
their needle, and shutting them out from all political and civil
employments; for by thus narrowing their minds they are rendered
unfit to fulfil the peculiar duties which Nature has assigned them.
Only employed about the little incidents of the day, they
necessarily grow up cunning. My very soul has often sickened at
observing the sly tricks practised by women to gain some foolish
thing on which their silly hearts were set. Not allowed to dispose
of money, or call anything their own, they learn to turn the market
penny; or, should a husband offend, by staying from home, or give
rise to some emotions of jealousy--a new gown, or any pretty
bauble, smooths Juno's angry brow.
But these littlenesses would not degrade their character, if women
were led to respect themselves, if political and moral subjects
were opened to them; and, I will venture to affirm, that this is
the only way to make them properly attentive to their domestic
duties. An active mind embraces the whole circle of its duties, and
finds time enough for all. It is not, I assert, a bold attempt to
emulate masculine virtues; it is not the enchantment of literary
pursuits, or the steady investigation of scientific subjects,
that leads women astray from duty. No, it is indolence and
vanity--the love of pleasure and the love of sway, that will reign
paramount in an empty mind. I say empty emphatically, because the
education which women now receive scarcely deserves the name. For the
little knowledge that they are led to acquire, during the important
years of youth, is merely relative to accomplishments; and accomplishments
without a bottom, for unless the understanding be cultivated, superficial and
monotonous is every grace. Like the charms of a made-up face, they
only strike the senses in a crowd; but at home, wanting mind, they
want variety. The consequence is obvious; in gay scenes of
dissipation we meet the artificial mind and face, for those who fly
from solitude dread, next to solitude, the domestic circle; not
having it in their power to amuse or interest, they feel their own
insignificance, or find nothing to amuse or interest themselves.
Besides, what can be more indelicate than a girl's coming out in
the fashionable world? Which, in other words, is to bring to market
a marriageable miss, whose person is taken from one public place to
another, richly caparisoned. Yet, mixing in the giddy circle under
restraint, these butterflies long to flutter at large, for the
first affection of their souls is their own persons, to which their
attention has been called with the most sedulous care whilst they
were preparing for the period that decides their fate for life.
Instead of pursuing this idle routine, fighting for tasteless show,
and heartless state, with what dignity would the youths of both
sexes form attachments in the schools that I have cursorily pointed
out; in which, as life advanced, dancing, music, and drawing) might
be admitted as relaxations, for at these schools young people of
fortune ought to remain, more or less, till they were of age. Those
who were designed for particular professions might attend, three or
four mornings in the week, the schools appropriated for their
immediate instruction.
I only drop these observations at present, as hints; rather,
indeed, as an outline of the plan I mean, than a digested one; but
I must add, that I highly approve of one regulation mentioned in
the pamphlet [5] already alluded to, that of making the children
and youths independent of the masters respecting punishments. They
should be tried by their peers, which would be an admirable method
of fixing sound principles of justice in the mind, and might have
the happiest effect on the temper, which is very early soured or
irritated by tyranny, till it becomes peevishly cunning, or
ferociously overbearing.
My imagination darts forward with benevolent fervour to greet these
amiable and respectable groups, in spite of the sneering of cold
hearts, who are at liberty to utter, with frigid self-importance,
the damning epithet--romantic; the force of which I shall endeavour
to blunt by repeating the words of an eloquent moralist: "I know
not whether the allusions of a truly humane heart, whose zeal
renders everything easy, be not preferable to that rough and
repulsing reason, which always finds an indifference for the public
good, the first obstacle to whatever would promote it."
I know that libertines will also exclaim, that woman would be
unsexed by acquiring strength of body and mind, and that beauty,
soft bewitching beauty! would no longer adorn the daughters of men.
I am of a very different opinion, for I think that, on the
contrary, we should then see dignified beauty and true grace; to
produce which, many powerful physical and moral causes would
concur. Not relaxed beauty, it is true, or the graces of
helplessness; but such as appears to make us respect the human body
as a majestic pile fit to receive a noble inhabitant, in the relics
of antiquity.
I do not forget the popular opinion that the Grecian statues were
not modelled after nature. I mean, not according to the proportion
of a particular man; but that beautiful limbs and features were
selected from various bodies to form an harmonious whole. This
might, in some degree, be true. The fine ideal picture of an
exalted imagination might be superior to the materials which the
statuary found in nature, and thus it might with propriety be
termed rather the model of mankind than of a man. It was not,
however, the mechanical selection of limbs and features; but the
ebullition of an heated fancy that burst forth, and the fine senses
and enlarged understanding the artist selected the solid matter,
which he drew into this glowing focus.
I observed that it was not mechanical because a whole was
produced--a model of that grand simplicity, of those concurring
energies, which arrest our attention and command our reverence. For
only insipid lifeless beauty is produced by a servile copy of even
beautiful nature. Yet, independent of these observations, I believe
that the human form must have been far more beautiful than it is at
present, because extreme indolence, barbarous ligatures, and many
causes, which forcibly act on it, in our luxurious state of
society, did not retard its expansion, or render it deformed.
Exercise and cleanliness appear to be not only the surest means of
preserving health, but of promoting beauty, the physical causes
only considered; yet this is not sufficient, moral ones must
concur, or beauty will be merely of that rustic kind which blooms
on the innocent, whole some countenances of some country people,
whose minds have not been exercised. To render the person perfect,
physical and moral beauty ought to be attained at the same time;
each lending and receiving force by the combination. Judgment must
reside on the brow, affection and fancy beam in the eye, and
humanity curve the cheek, or vain is the sparkling of the finest
eye or the elegantly turned finish of the fairest features; whilst
in every motion that displays the active limbs and well-knit
joints, grace and modesty should appear. But this fair assemblage
is not to be brought together by chance; it is the reward of
exertions calculated to support each other; for judgment can only
be acquired by reflection, affection by the discharge of duties,
and humanity by the exercise of compassion to every living
creature.
Humanity to animals should be particularly inculcated as a part of
national education, for it is not at present one of our national
virtues. Tenderness for their humble dumb domestics, amongst the
lower class, is oftener to be found in a savage than a civilised
state. For civilisation prevents that intercourse which creates
affection in the rude hut, or mud hovel, and leads uncultivated
minds who are only depraved by the refinements which prevail in the
society, where they are trodden under foot by the rich, to domineer
over them to revenge the insults that they are obliged to bear from
their superiors.
This habitual cruelty is first caught at school, where it is one of
the rare sports of the boys to torment the miserable brutes that
fall in their way. The transition, as they grow up, from barbarity
to brutes to domestic tyranny over wives, children, and servants,
is very easy. Justice, or even benevolence, will not be a powerful
spring of action unless it extend to the whole creation; nay, I
believe that it may be delivered as an axiom, that those who can
see pain, unmoved, will soon learn to inflict it.
The vulgar are swayed by present feelings, and the habits which
they have accidentally acquired; but on partial feelings much
dependence cannot be placed, though they be just; for, when they
are not invigorated by reflection, custom weakens them, till they
are scarcely perceptible. The sympathies of our nature are
strengthened by pondering cogitations, and deadened by thoughtless
use. Macbeth's heart smote him more for one murder, the first, than
for a hundred subsequent ones, which were necessary to back it.
But, when I used the epithet vulgar, I did not mean to confine my
remark to the poor, for partial humanity, founded on present
sensations, or whim, is quite as conspicuous, if not more so,
amongst the rich.
The lady who sheds tears for the bird starved in a snare, and
execrates the devils in the shape of men, who goad to madness the
poor ox, or whip the patient ass, tottering under a burden above
its strength, will nevertheless keep her coachman and horses whole
hours waiting for her, when the sharp frost bites, or the rain
beats against the well-closed windows which do not admit a breath
of air to tell her how roughly the wind blows without. And she who
takes her dogs to bed, and nurses them with a parade of
sensibility, when sick. will suffer her babes to grow up crooked in
a nursery. This illustration of my argument is drawn from a matter
of fact. The woman whom I allude to was handsome, reckoned very
handsome, by those who do not miss the mind when the face is plump
and fair; but her understanding had not been led from female duties
by literature, nor her innocence debauched by knowledge. No, she
was quite feminine, according to the masculine acceptation of the
word; and, so far from loving these spoiled brutes that filled the
place which her children ought to have occupied, she only lisped
out a pretty mixture of French and English nonsense, to please the
men who flocked round her. The wife, mother, and human creature,
were all swallowed up by the factitious character which an improper
education and the selfish vanity of beauty had produced.
I do not like to make a distinction without a difference, and I own
that I have been as much disgusted by the fine lady who took her
lap-dog to her bosom instead of her child; as by the ferocity of a
man, who, beating his horse, declared, that he knew as well when he
did wrong, as a Christian.
This brood of folly shows how mistaken they are who, if they allow
women to leave their harems, do not cultivate their understandings,
in order to plant virtues in their hearts. For had they sense, they
might acquire that domestic taste which would lead them to love
with reasonable subordination their whole family, from their
husband to the house dog; nor would they ever insult humanity in
the person of the most menial servant by paying more attention to
the comfort of a brute, than to that of a fellow-creature.
My observations on national education are obviously hints; but I
principally wish to enforce the necessity of educating the sexes
together to perfect both, and of making children sleep at home that
they may learn to love home; yet to make private support, instead
of smothering, public affections, they should be sent to school to
mix with a number of equals, for only by the jostlings of equality
can we form a just opinion of ourselves.
To render mankind more virtuous, and happier of course, both sexes
must act from the same principle; but how can that be expected when
only one is allowed to see the reasonableness of it? To render also
the social compact truly equitable, and in order to spread those
enlightening principles, which alone can ameliorate the fate of
man, women must be allowed to found their virtue on knowledge,
which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same
pursuits as men. For they are now made so inferior by ignorance and
low desires, as not to deserve to be ranked with them; or, by the
serpentine wrigglings of cunning, they mount the tree of knowledge,
and only acquire sufficient to lead men astray.
It is plain from the history of all nations, that women cannot be
confined to merely domestic pursuits, for they will not fulfil
family duties, unless their minds take a wider range, and whilst
they are kept in ignorance they become in the same proportion the
slaves of pleasure as they are the slaves of man. Nor can they be
shut out of great enterprises, though the narrowness of their minds
often make them mar, what they are unable to comprehend.
The libertinism, and even the virtues of superior men, will always
give women, of some description, great power over them; and these
weak women, under the influence of childish passions and selfish
vanity, will throw a false light over the objects which the very
men view with their eyes, who ought to enlighten their judgment.
Men of fancy, and those sanguine characters who mostly hold the
helm of human affairs, in general, relax in the society of women;
and surely I need not cite to the most superficial reader of
history the numerous examples of vice and oppression which the
private intrigues of female favourites have produced; not to dwell
on the mischief that naturally arises from the blundering
interposition of well-meaning folly.
For in the transactions of business it is much better to have to
deal with a knave than a fool, because a knave adheres to some
plan; and any plan of reason may be seen through much sooner than
a sudden flight of folly. The power which vile and foolish women
have had over wise men, who possessed sensibility, is notorious; I
shall only mention one instance.
Whoever drew a more exalted female character than Rousseau? though
in the lump he constantly endeavoured to degrade the sex. And why
was he thus anxious? Truly to justify to himself the affection
which weakness and virtue had made him cherish for that fool
Theresa. He could not raise her to the common level of her sex; and
therefore he laboured to bring woman down to hers. He found her a
convenient humble companion, and pride made him determine to find
some superior virtues in the being whom he chose to live with; but
did not her conduct during his life, and after his death, clearly
show how grossly he was mistaken who called her a celestial
innocent? Nay, in the bitterness of his heart, he himself laments
that when his bodily infirmities made him no longer treat her like
a woman, she ceased to have an affection for him. And it was very
natural that she should, for having so few sentiments in common,
when the sexual tie was broken, what was to hold her? To hold her
affection whose sensibility was confined to one sex, nay, to one
man, it requires sense to turn sensibility into the broad channel
of humanity. Many women have not mind enough to have an affection
for a woman, or a friendship for a man. But the sexual weakness
that makes woman depend on a man for a subsistence, produces a kind
of cattish affection, which leads a wife to purr about her husband
as she would about any man who fed and caressed her.
Men are, however, often gratified by this kind of fondness, which
is confined in a beastly manner to themselves; but should they ever
become more virtuous, they will wish to converse at their fireside
with a friend after they cease to play with a mistress.
Besides, understanding is necessary to give variety and interest to
sensual enjoyments, for low indeed in the intellectual scale is the
mind that can continue to love when neither virtue nor sense give
a human appearance to an animal appetite. will always preponderate;
and if women be not, in general, brought more on a level with men,
some superior like the Greek courtesans, will assemble the men of
abilities around them, and draw from their families many citizens,
who would have stayed at home had their wives had more sense, or
the graces which result from the exercise of the understanding and
fancy, the legitimate parents of taste. A woman of talents, if she
be not absolutely ugly, will always obtain great power--raised by
the weakness of her sex; and in proportion as men acquire virtue
and delicacy, by the exertion of reason, they will look for both in
women, but they can only acquire them in the same way that men do.
In France or Italy, have the women confined themselves to domestic
life? Though they have not hitherto had a political existence, yet
have they not illicitly had great sway, corrupting themselves and
the men with whose passions they played? In short, in whatever
light I view the subject, reason and experience convince me that
the only method of leading women to fulfil their peculiar duties is
to free them from all restraint by allowing them to participate the
inherent rights of mankind.
Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as
men become more so, for the improvement must be mutual, or the
injustice which one-half of the human race are obliged to submit to
retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of man will be worm-eaten
by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.
Let men take their choice. Man and woman were made for each other,
though not to become one being; and if they will not improve women,
they will deprave them.
I speak of the improvement and emancipation of the whole sex, for
I know that the behaviour of a few women, who, by accident, or
following a strong bent of nature, have acquired a portion of
knowledge superior to that of the rest of their sex, has often been
overbearing; but there have been instances of women who, attaining
knowledge, have not discarded modesty, nor have they always
pedantically appeared to despise the ignorance which they laboured
to disperse in their own minds. The exclamations then which any
advice respecting female learning commonly produces, especially
from pretty women, often arise from envy. When they chance to see
that even the lustre of their eyes, and the flippant sportiveness
of refined coquetry, will not always secure them attention during
a whole evening, should a woman of a more cultivated understanding
endeavour to give a rational turn to the conversation, the common
source of consolation is that such women seldom get husbands. What
arts have I not seen silly women use to interrupt by flirtation--a
very significant word to describe such a manoeuvre--a rational
conversation, which made the forget that they were pretty women.
But, allowing what is very natural to man, that the possession of
rare abilities is really calculated to excite over-weening pride,
disgusting in both men and women, in what a state of inferiority
must the female faculties have rusted when such a small portion of
knowledge as those women attained, who have sneeringly been termed
learned women, could be singular?-- sufficiently so to puff up the
possessor, and excite envy in her contemporaries, and some of the
other sex. Nay, has not a little rationality exposed many women to
the severest censure? I advert to well-known facts, for I have
frequently heard women ridiculed, and every little weakness
exposed, only because they adopted the advice of some medical men,
and deviated from the beaten track in their mode of treating their
infants. I have actually heard this barbarous aversion to
innovation carried still further, and a sensible woman stigmatised
as an unnatural mother, who has thus been wisely solicitous to
preserve the health of her children, when in the midst of her care
she has lost one by some of the casualties of infancy, which no
prudence can ward off. Her acquaintance have observed that this was
the consequence of new-fangled notions--the new-fangled notions of
ease and cleanliness. And those who pretending to experience,
though they have long adhered to prejudices that have, according to
the opinion of the most sagacious physicians, thinned the human
race, almost rejoiced at the disaster that gave a kind of sanction
to prescription.
Indeed, if it were only on this account, the national education of
women is of the utmost consequence, for what a number of human
sacrifices are made to that Moloch prejudice! And in how many ways
are children destroyed by the lasciviousness of man? The want of
natural affection in many women, who are drawn from their duty by
the admiration of men, and the ignorance of others, render the
infancy of man a much more perilous state than that of brutes; yet
men are unwilling to place women in situations proper to enable
them to acquire sufficient understanding to know how even to nurse
their babes.
So forcibly does this truth strike me that I would rest the whole
tendency of my reasoning upon it, for whatever tends to
incapacitate the maternal character, takes woman out of her sphere.
But it is vain to expect the present race of weak mothers either to
take that reasonable care of a child's body, which is necessary to
lay the foundation of a good constitution, supposing that it do not
suffer for the sins of its fathers; or to manage its temper so
judiciously that the child will not have, as it grows up, to throw
off all that its mother, its first instructor directly or
indirectly taught; and unless the mind have uncommon vigour,
womanish follies will stick to the character throughout life. The
weakness of the mother will be visited on the children. And whilst
women are educated to rely on their husbands for judgment, this
must ever be the consequence, for there is no improving an
understanding by halves, nor can any being act wisely from
imitation, because in every circumstance of life there is a kind of
individuality, which requires an exertion of judgment to modify
general rules. The being who can think justly in one track will
soon extend its intellectual empire; and she who has sufficient
judgment to manage her children will not submit, right or wrong, to
her husband, or patiently to the social laws which make a nonentity
of a wife.
In public schools women, to guard against the errors of ignorance,
should be taught the elements of anatomy an medicine, not only to
enable them to take proper care of their own health, but to make
them rational nurses of their infants, parents, and husbands; for
the bills of mortality are swelled by the blunders of self-willed
old women, who give nostrums of their own without knowing anything
of the human frame. It is likewise proper, only in a domestic view,
to make women acquainted with the anatomy of the mind, by allowing
the sexes to associate together in every pursuit, and by leading
them to observe the progress of the human understanding in the
improvement of the sciences and arts--never forgetting the science
of morality, or the study of the political history of mankind.
A man has been termed a microcosm, and every family might also be
called a state. States, it is true, have mostly been governed by
arts that disgrace the character of man, and the want of a just
constitution and equal laws have so perplexed the notions of the
worldly wise, that they more than question the reasonableness of
contending for the rights of humanity. Thus morality, polluted in
the national reservoir, sends off streams of vice to corrupt the
constituent parts of the body politic; but should more noble, or
rather more just, principles regulate the laws, which ought to be
the government of society, and not those who execute them, duty
might become the rule of private conduct.
Besides, by the exercise of their bodies and minds women would
acquire that mental activity so necessary in the maternal
character, united with the fortitude that distinguishes steadiness
of conduct from the obstinate perverseness of weakness. For it is
dangerous to advise the indolent to be steady, because they
instantly become rigorous, and to save themselves trouble, punish
with severity faults that the patient fortitude of reason might
have prevented.
But fortitude presupposes strength of mind, and is strength of mind
to be acquired by indolent acquiescence? by asking advice instead
of exerting the judgment? by obeying through fear, instead of
practising the forbearance which we all stand in need of ourselves?
The conclusion which I wish to draw is obvious. Make women rational
creatures and free citizens, and they will quickly become good
wives and mothers--that is, if men do not neglect the duties of
husbands and fathers.
Discussing the advantages which a public and private education
combined, as I have sketched, might rationally be expected to
produce, I have dwelt most on such as are particularly relative to
the female world, because I think the female world pressed; yet the
gangrene, which the vices engendered by oppression have produced,
is not confined to the morbid part, but pervades society at large;
so that when I wish to see my sex become more like moral agents, my
heart bounds with the anticipation of the general diffusion of that
sublime contentment which only morality can diffuse.
NOTES
[1] I now particularly allude to the numerous academies in and
about London, and to the behaviour of the trading part of this
city.
[2] I remember a circumstance that once came under my own
observation, and raised my indignation. I went to visit a little
boy at a school where young children were prepared for a large one.
The master took me into the schoolroom, etc., but whilst I walked
down a broad gravel walk, I could not help observing that the grass
grew very luxuriantly on each sie of me. I immediately asked the
child some questions, and found that the poor boys were not allowed
to stir off the walk, and that the master sometimes permitted sheep
to be turned in to crop the untrodden grass. The tyrant of this
domain used to sit by a window that overlooked the prison yard, and
one nook turning from it, where the unfortunate babes could sport
freely, he enclosed, and planted it with potatoes. The wife
likewise was equally anxious to keep the children in order, lest
they should dirty or tear their clothes.
[3] France.
[4] Treating this part of the subject, I have borrowedsome hints
from a very sensible pamphlet, written by the late Bishop of Autun,
on "Public Education."
[5] The Bishop of Autun's.
CHAPTER XIII
SOME INSTANCES OF THE FOLLY WHICH THE IGNORANCE
OF WOMEN GENERATES; WITH CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS ON
THE MORAL IMPROVEMENT THAT A REVOLUTION IN FEMALE
MANNERS MIGHT NATURALLY BE EXPECTED TO PRODUCE
There are many follies in some degree peculiar to women--sins
against reason of commission as well as of omission--but all
flowing from ignorance or prejudice. I shall only point out such as
appear to be particularly injurious to their moral character. And
in animadverting on them, I wish especially to prove that the
weakness of mind and body, which men have endeavoured, impelled by
various motives, to perpetuate, prevents their discharging the
peculiar duty of their sex; for when weakness of body will not
permit them to suckle their children, and weakness of mind makes
them spoil their tempers, is woman in a natural state?
Section I
One glaring instance of the weakness which proceeds from ignorance
first claims attention, and calls for severe reproof. In this
metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain a
subsistence by practising on the credulity of women, pretending to
cast nativities, to use the technical phrase; and many females who,
proud of their rank and fortune, look down on the vulgar with
sovereign contempt, show by this credulity that the distinction is
arbitrary, and that they have not sufficiently cultivated their
minds to rise above vulgar prejudices. Women, because they have not
been led to consider the knowledge of their duty as the one thing
necessary to know, or to live in the present moment by the
discharge of it, are very anxious to peep into futurity to learn
what they have to expect to render life interesting, and to break
the vacuum of ignorance.
I must be allowed to expostulate seriously with the ladies who
follow these idle inventions; for ladies, mistresses of families,
are not ashamed to drive in their own carriages to door of the
cunning man.[1] And if any of them should use this work, I entreat
them to answer to their own hearts the following questions, not
forgetting that they are in presence of God:
Do you believe that there is but one God, and that He is powerful,
wise, and good?
Do you believe that all things were created by Him, and that all
beings are dependent on Him?
Do you rely on His wisdom, so conspicuous in His works, and your
own frame, and are you convinced that He has ordered things which
do not come under the cognisance of your senses, in the same
perfect harmony, to fulfil His designs?
Do you acknowledge that the power of looking into futurity, I
seeing things that are not, as if they were, is an attribute of the
Creator? And should He, by an impression on the minds His
creatures, think fit to impart to them some event hid the shades of
time yet unborn, to whom would the secret revealed by immediate
inspiration? The opinion of ages will answer this question--to
reverend old men, to people distinguished for eminent piety.
The oracles of old were thus delivered to the service of the God
who was supposed to inspire them. The glare of worldly pomp which
surrounded these impostors, the respect paid to them by artful
politicians, who knew how to avail themselves of this useful engine
to bend the necks of the strong under the dominion of the cunning,
spread a sacred mysterious veil of sanctity over their lies and
abominations. Impressed by such solemn devotional parade, a Greek
or Roman lady might be excused, if she inquired of the oracle, when
she was anxious to pry into futurity, or inquire about some dubious
event, and her inquiries, however contrary to reason, could not be
reckoned impious. But can the professors of Christianity ward off
that imputation? Can a Christian suppose that the favourites of the
Most High, the highly favoured, would be obliged to lurk in
disguise, and practise the most dishonest tricks to cheat silly
women out of the money, which the poor cry for in vain?
Say not that such questions are an insult to common sense, it is
your own conduct, O ye foolish women! which throws an odium on your
sex. And these reflections should make you shudder at your
thoughtlessness and irrational devotion. For I do not suppose that
all of you laid aside your religion, such as it is, when you
entered those mysterious dwellings. Yet, as I have throughout
supposed myself talking to ignorant women--for ignorant ye are in
the most emphatical sense of the word--it would be absurd to reason
with you on the egregious folly of desiring to know what the
Supreme Wisdom has concealed.
Probably you would not understand me were I to attempt to show you
that it would be absolutely inconsistent with the grand purpose of
life, that of rendering human creatures wise and virtuous; and
that, were it sanctioned by God, it would disturb the order
established in creation; and if it be not sanctioned by God, do you
expect to hear truth? Can events be foretold, events which have not
yet assumed a body to become subject to mortal inspection, can they
be foreseen by a vicious worldling, who pampers his appetites by
preying on the foolish ones?
Perhaps, however, you devoutly believe in the devil, and imagine,
to shift the question, that he may assist his votaries; but, if
really respecting the power of such a being, an enemy to goodness
and to God, can you go to church after having been under such an
obligation to him?
From these delusions to those still more fashionable deceptions,
practised by the whole tribe of magnetisers, the transition is very
natural. With respect to them, it is equally proper to ask women a
few questions.
Do you know anything of the construction of the human frame? if
not, it is proper that you should be told what every child ought to
know, that when its admirable economy has been disturbed by
intemperance or indolence, I speak not of violent disorders, but of
chronical diseases, it must be brought into a healthy state again,
by slow degrees, and if the functions of life have not been
materially injured, regimen, another word for temperance, air,
exercise, and a few medicines, prescribed by persons who have
studied the human body, are the only human means, yet discovered,
of recovering that inestimable blessing health, that will bear
investigation.
Do you then believe that these magnetisers, who, by hocus pocus
tricks, pretend to work a miracle, are delegated by God, or
assisted by the solver of all these kind of difficulties--the
devil?
Do they, when they put to flight, as it is said, disorders that
have baffled the powers of medicine, work in conformity to the
light of reason? or, do they effect these wonderful cures by
supernatural aid?
By a communication, an adept may answer, with the world of spirits.
A noble privilege, it must be allowed. Some of the ancients mention
familiar demons, who guarded them from danger by kindly intimating,
we cannot guess in what manner, when any danger was nigh; or,
pointed out what they ought to undertake. Yet the men who laid
claim to this privilege, out of the order of nature, insisted that
it was the reward, or consequence, of superior temperance and
piety. But the present workers of wonders are not raised above
their fellows by superior temperance or sanctity. They do not cure
for the love of God, but money. These are the priests of quackery,
though it is true they have not the convenient expedient of selling
masses for souls in purgatory, or churches where they can display
crutches, and models of limbs made sound by a touch or a word.
I am not conversant with the technical terms, or initiated into the
arcana, therefore I may speak improperly; but it is clear that men
who will not conform to the law of reason, and earn a subsistence
in an honest way, by degrees, are very fortunate in becoming
acquainted with such obliging spirits. We cannot, indeed, give them
credit for either great sagacity or goodness, else they would have
chosen more noble instruments, when they wished to show themselves
the benevolent friends of man.
It is, however, little short of blasphemy to pretend to such
powers!
From the whole tenor of the dispensations of Providence, it appears
evident to sober reason, that certain vices produce certain
effects; and can anyone so grossly insult the wisdom of God, as to
suppose that a miracle will be allowed to disturb His general laws,
to restore to health the intemperate and vicious, merely to enable
them to pursue the same course with impunity? Be whole, and sin no
more, said Jesus. And, are greater miracles to be performed by
those who do not follow His footsteps, who healed the body to reach
the mind?
The mentioning of the name of Christ, after such vile impostors,
may displease some of my readers--I respect their warmth; but let
them not forget that the followers of these delusions bear His
name, and profess to be the disciples of Him, who said, by their
works we should know who were the children of God or the servants
of sin. I allow that it is easier to touch the body of a saint, or
to be magnetised, than to restrain our appetites or govern our
passions; but health of body or mind can only be recovered by these
means, or we make the Supreme Judge partial and revengeful.
Is He a man that He should change, or punish out of resentment?
He--the common father, wounds but to heal, say reason, and our
irregularities producing certain consequences, we are forcibly
shown the nature of vice: that thus learning to know good from
evil, by experience, we may hate one and love the other, in
proportion to the wisdom which we attain. The poison contains the
antidote; and we either reform our evil habits and cease to sin
against our own bodies, to use the forcible language of Scripture,
or a premature death, the punishment of sin, snaps the thread of
life.
Here an awful stop is put to our inquiries. But, why should I
conceal my sentiments? Considering the attributes of God, I believe
that whatever punishment may follow, will tend, like the anguish of
disease, to show the malignity of vice, for the purpose of
reformation. Positive punishment appears so contrary to the nature
of God, discoverable in all His works, and in our own reason, that
I could sooner believe that the Deity paid no attention to the
conduct of men, than that He punished without the benevolent design
of reforming.
To suppose only that an all-wise and powerful Being, as good as He
is great, should create a being foreseeing, that after fifty or
sixty years of feverish existence, it would be plunged into
never-ending woe--is blasphemy. On what will the worm feed that is
never to die? on folly, on ignorance, say ye--I should blush
indignantly at drawing the natural conclusion could I insert it,
and wish to withdraw myself from the wing of my God! On such a
supposition, I speak with reverence, He would be a consuming fire.
We should wish, though vainly, to fly from His presence when fear
absorbed love, and darkness involved all His counsels!
I know that many devout people boast of submitting to the will of
God blindly, as to an arbitrary sceptre or rod, on the same
principle as the Indians worship the devil. In other words, like
people in the common concerns of life, they homage to power, and
cringe under the foot that can crush them. Rational religion, on
the contrary, is a submission to the will of a being so perfectly
wise, that all he wills must be directed by the proper motive--must
be reasonable.
And, if thus we respect God, can we give credit to mysterious
insinuations, which insult His laws? can we believe, though it
should stare us in the face, that He would work a miracle to
authorise confusion by sanctioning an error? Yet we must either
allow these impious conclusions, or treat with contempt every
promise to restore health to a diseased body by supernatural means,
or to foretell the incidents that can only be foreseen by God.
SECTION II
Another instance of that feminine weakness of character, often
produced by a confined education, is a romantic twist of the mind,
which has been very properly termed sentimental.
Women subjected by ignorance to their sensations, and only taught
to look for happiness in love, refine on sensual feelings and adopt
metaphysical notions respecting that passion, which lead them
shamefully to neglect the duties of life, and frequently in the
midst of these sublime refinements they plump into actual vice.
These are the women who are amused by the reveries of the stupid
novelists, who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale
tales, and describe meretricious scenes, all retailed in a
sentimental jargon, which equally tend to corrupt the taste, and
draw the heart aside from its daily duties. I do not mention the
understanding, because never having been exercised, its slumbering
energies rest inactive, like the lurking particles of fire which
are supposed universally to pervade matter.
Females, in fact, denied all political privileges, and not allowed,
as married women, excepting in criminal cases, a civil existence,
have their attention naturally drawn from the interest of the whole
community to that of the minute parts, though the private duty of
any member of society must be very imperfectly performed when not
connected with the general good. The mighty business of female life
is to please, and restrained from entering into more important
concerns by political and civil oppression, sentiments become
events, and reflection deepens what it should, and would have
effaced, if the understanding had been allowed to take a wider
range.
But, confined to trifling employments, they naturally imbibe
opinions which the only kind of reading calculated to interest an
innocent frivolous mind inspires. Unable to grasp anything great,
is it surprising that they find the reading of history a very
dry task, and disquisitions addressed to the understanding
intolerably tedious, and almost unintelligible? Thus are they
necessarily dependent on the novelist for amusement. Yet, when I
exclaim against novels, I mean when contrasted with those works
which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination. For
any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a
blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and
obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking
powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to
the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross
gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade
of delicacy.
This observation is the result of experience; for I have known
several notable women, and one in particular, who was a very good
woman--as good as such a narrow mind would allow her to be, who
took care that her daughters (three in number) should never see a
novel. As she was a woman of fortune and fashion, they had various
masters to attend them, and a sort of menial governess to watch
their footsteps. From their masters they learned how tables,
chairs, etc., were called in French and Italian; but as the few
books thrown in their way were far above their capacities, or
devotional, they neither acquired ideas nor sentiments, and passed
their time, when not compelled to repeat words, in dressing,
quarrelling with each other, or conversing with their maids by
stealth, till they were brought into company as marriageable.
Their mother, a widow, was busy in the meantime in keeping up her
connections, as she termed a numerous acquaintance, lest her girls
should want a proper introduction into the great world. And these
young ladies, with minds vulgar in every sense of the word, and
spoiled tempers, entered life puffed up with notions of their own
consequence, and looking down with contempt on those who could not
vie with them in dress and parade.
With respect to love, Nature, or their Nurses, had taken care to
teach them the physical meaning of the word; and, as they had few
topics of conversation, and fewer refinements of sentiment, they
expressed their gross wishes not in very delicate phrases, when
they spoke freely, talking of matrimony.
Could these girls have been injured by the perusal of novels? I
almost forgot a shade in the character of one of them; she affected
a simplicity bordering on folly, and with a simper would utter the
most immodest remarks and questions, the full meaning of which she
had learned whilst secluded from the world, and to speak in her
mother's presence, who governed with a hand; they were all
educated, as she prided herself, in a most exemplary manner, and
read their chapters before breakfast, never touching a silly novel.
This only one instance; but I recollect many other women not led by
degrees to proper studies, and not permitted to choose for
themselves, have indeed been overgrown children; or have obtained,
by mixing in the world, a little of what is termed common sense;
that is, a distinct manner of seeing common occurrences, as they
stand detached; but what deserves name of intellect, the power of
gaining, general or abstract, or even intermediate ones, was out of
the question. Their minds were quiescent, and when they were not
roused by sensible objects and employments of that kind, they were
spirited, would cry, or go to sleep.
When, therefore, I advise my sex not to read such flimsy works, it
is to induce them to read something superior; for I coincide in
opinion with a sagacious man, who, having a daughter and niece
under his care, pursued a very different with each.
The niece, who had considerable abilities, had, before she left to
his guardianship, been indulged in desultory reading. Her he
endeavoured to lead, and did lead to history and moral essays; but
his daughter, whom a fond weak mother had indulged, and who
consequently was averse to everything like fornication, he allowed
to read novels; and used to justify his conduct by saying, that if
she ever attained a relish for reading them, he should have some
foundation to work upon; and that erroneous opinions were better
than none at all.
In fact, the female mind has been so totally neglected, that
knowledge was only to be acquired from this muddy source, till from
reading novels some women of superior talents learned to despise
them.
The best method, I believe, that can be adopted to correct a
fondness for novels is to ridicule them: not indiscriminately, for
then it would have little effect; but, if a judicious person, with
some turn for humour, would read several to a young girl and point
out both by tones, and apt comparisons with pathetic incidents and
heroic characters in history, how foolishly and ridiculously they
caricatured human nature, just opinions might substituted instead
of romantic sentiments.
In one respect, however, the majority of both sexes resemble,
and equally show a want of taste and modesty. Ignorant women,
forced to be chaste to preserve their reputation, allow their
imagination to revel in the unnatural and meretricious scenes
sketched by the novel writers of the day, slighting as insipid the
sober dignity, and matron graces of history,[2] whilst men carry
the same vitiated taste into life, and fly for amusement to the
wanton, from the unsophisticated charms of virtue, and the grave
respectability of sense.
Besides, the reading of novels makes women, and particularly ladies
of fashion, very fond of using strong expressions and superlatives
in conversation; and, though the dissipated artificial life which
they lead prevents their cherishing any strong legitimate passion,
the language of passion in affected tones slips for ever from their
glib tongues, and every trifle produces those phosphoric bursts
which only mimic in the dark the flame of passion.
SECTION III
Ignorance and the mistaken cunning that nature sharpens in weak
heads as a principle of self-preservation, render women very fond
of dress, and produce all the vanity which such a fondness may
naturally be expected to generate, to the exclusion of emulation
and magnanimity.
I agree with Rousseau that the physical part of the art of pleasing
consists in ornaments, and for that very reason I should guard
girls against the contagious fondness for dress so common to weak
women, that they may not rest in the physical part. Yet, weak are
the women who imagine that they can long please without the aid of
the mind, or, in other words, without the moral art of pleasing.
But the moral art, if it be not a profanation to use the word art,
when alluding to the grace which is an effect of virtue, and not
the motive of action, is never to be found with ignorance; the
sportiveness of innocence, so pleasing to refined libertines of
both sexes, is widely different in its essence from this superior
gracefulness.
A strong inclination for external ornaments ever appears in
barbarous states, only the men not the women adorn themselves; for
where women are allowed to be so far on a level with men, society
has advanced, at least, one step in civilisation.
The attention to dress, therefore, which has been thought a sexual
propensity, I think natural to mankind. But I ought to express
myself with more precision. When the mind is not sufficiently
opened to take pleasure in reflection, the body will be adorned
with sedulous care; and ambition will appear in tattooing or
painting it.
So far is this first inclination carried, that even the hellish
yoke of slavery cannot stifle the savage desire of admiration which
the black heroes inherit from both their parents, for all the
hardly earned savings of a slave are commonly expended in a little
tawdry finery. And I have seldom known a good male or female
servant that was not particularly fond of dress. Their clothes were
their riches; and, I argue from analogy, that the fondness for
dress, so extravagant in females, arises from the same cause--want
of cultivation of mind. When men meet they converse about business,
politics, or literature; but, says Swift, "how naturally do women
apply their hands to each other's lappets and ruffles." And very
natural is it--for they have not any business to interest them,
have not a taste for literature, and they find politics dry,
because they have not acquired a love for mankind by turning their
thoughts to the grand pursuits that exalt the human race, and
promote general happiness.
Besides, various are the paths to power and fame which by accident
or choice men pursue, and though they jostle against each other,
for men of the same profession are seldom friends, yet there is a
much greater number of their fellow-creatures with whom they never
clash. But women are very differently situated with respect to each
other--for they are all rivals.
Before marriage it is their business to please men; and after, with
a few exceptions, they follow the same scene with all the
persevering pertinacity of instinct. Even virtuous women never
forget their sex in company, for they are for ever trying to make
themselves