INSTINCTS UNCHECKED
A third son is apparently the darling of the gods; he is full of charm. But, fearing that the gambling propensities of his second brother should come out in him also, his parents keep him with special strictness and very short of money. The same absence of all explanations of the meaning of things has been his portion as well as that of his brothers and sisters. He has never been enlightened as to the possible workings of heredity, and shown how that as the vice of gambling is in the blood it will require special will-power to overcome it. None of these things has been pointed out to him, and so, being restive at restraint and worried for money, he soon slips into easy ways, and often allows women to help him in his difficulties. Uncle Billy’s instincts and his own father’s have combined in him. Both could have been checked and diverted into sane channels with loving foresight and knowledge and sympathy.
The fourth son goes early into the Navy, and the discipline and the inheritance of his mother’s more level qualities turn him into a splendid fellow; but this is mere chance, and cannot be counted as accruing from his mother’s care.
Here is a case where every outward circumstance seemed to be propitious, and where both parents were good and respected members of their class and race. But neither had the intelligence to realise an end, or consciously to keep it in view; they were solely ruled by tradition and what seemed to them—especially the mother—to be the proper and well-established religious methods for the bringing up of their children. So the remorseless laws of cause and effect rolled on their Juggernaut car and crushed the victims.
Now, if this mother had had the end—that of her children’s happiness and welfare—really in view, she would have questioned herself as to the best methods of obtaining that end, and would not have been content just to go on with the narrow ideas which had held sway in her own day, and which had perhaps then succeeded very well, because, as I said before, they were aided by the two forces now stultified—namely, a tremendous discipline and a spirit of the age which brought no suggestion of a struggle for personal liberty to young minds. Had she thought out all these things, she would have understood the responsibilities of motherhood in their real sense, and not only in the sense which the outward appearance judges good. She would have poured love and sympathy on each one of her children separately and individually, since she was the half-cause of their coming to earth. She would have studied each one’s character, and with determined concentration have inculcated the necessary pride in fine actions in them, knowing what their pitfalls would be likely to be. She would have taught the simple religion of respect for the loan God has made in giving their bodies a soul, and she would have watched for possible signs of ill, and would finally have guided each one through the dangerous age on to the time when every man and woman must answer for himself and herself.
Heredity is sometimes stronger than even the wisest bringing up; but who can say how many families might not have been saved and kept together by a prudent and understanding mother’s love?
There is a story, which exactly illustrates the point of the importance of keeping the end in view, told of the Iron Duke in the Peninsular War. I cannot remember the exact details, and they are of no consequence. The point is this: There was a certain tremendously obstinate Spanish general whom the Duke (then Sir Arthur Wellesley) found very difficult to lead. The moment had arrived when it was absolutely necessary for success that this general should move his troops to a certain position. He was a man filled with his own importance, and he refused huffily to do so unless the English chief went down upon his knees to him!
The Iron Duke is reported to have replied to this message in some such words as these: “Good Lord! the winning of the day is the essential thing, not the resisting of the man’s vanity! I’ll go down upon my knees with pleasure if that will make him move his troops!” He did, and the Spanish general conceded the request and the day was won.
The great commander and astute Englishman had the end in view, you see, whereas the lesser brain of the Spaniard would have sacrificed the battle for a personal whim, having lost sight, in his vanity, of the importance of the main issue.
How many parents do this day after day and year after year, clinging to obsolete methods, trying to rule by worn-out precepts, all because—when you come to analyse it—their own sense of importance really matters to them more than their children’s welfare, and no one has opened their eyes to see themselves and their actions in the true light.
Although the case which I have just given of the seemingly good mother was drawn from the highest class, and so at first sight might not be said to apply to lesser grades, yet I want to show that this is not so, but that the same principle applies to the most modest little family.
Every mother should study how best she can develop and elevate the souls which by her own part-action she has brought into being, and make that aim her first thought—for surely the satisfaction of the feeling that one has succeeded in training one’s own children to high ideals and the attainment of happiness would be greater in old age than any gratification from the acquirement of social supremacy or realised personal ambitions.
I would implore every mother, of any class, ruthlessly to reject all the rules which she has been taught for the guidance of her family, unless she has proved with common sense that they can be profitably applied to each particular case. I would ask her to keep to no transmitted axiom, unless it comes up to the requirements of the ever-changing and ever-advancing day. There is only one unchangeable and immutable command which we should follow, and this is that we should not soil our souls, or render them up to God degraded and smirched when we go hence upon that journey from whence no man returneth.
In summing up both my articles upon the responsibility of motherhood, I find that in this second one I have made two statements which might read as contradictions. Firstly, I spoke of young people requiring personal gain to be held out to them as a reason for committing, or refraining from committing, certain actions; and then, a paragraph or two afterwards, I gave the illustration of the little girls’ good behaviour to their mother as being only caused by the fact that it was more to their advantage so to behave. What I meant to show was that while boys are young and full of the rising impulses of nature they very rarely can have acquired sufficient spiritual belief to make them refrain from indulging in certain pleasures—or what seem pleasures to them—merely because they have been told these pleasures are wrong. For instance, on the subject of smoking. What boy will stop smoking by being told it is wrong and that he is sinning by his disobedience? But there are many intelligent ones who will not indulge in it if it is explained to them that smoking will stop their growth and make them less likely to succeed in the cricket eleven, or, later, in the college eight. At that period the mind cannot look into unseen worlds, and is mainly occupied with realities from day to day, and therefore is more likely to be influenced by a simple explanation of what physical harm or what good in the immediate future will be the result of actions.
The little girls’ behaviour to their mother is really an example of this same rule, only the principle for their action was not good, being merely temporary and strictly limited gain, and not that they should, as in the case of the boys, grow into fine, strong and healthy people, more able to enjoy life in the future.
There is another statement which I have constantly made which possibly might be twisted or misunderstood, and that is the one of the importance of the end. There are people who would turn it into the Jesuitical motto of “The end justifies the means.” That is not what I wished to convey at all, but that if an end is good—and the main object, admittedly, is to obtain it—then there is no use in using methods which once might have accomplished this, but which no longer are practical because of the changed conditions, and if continued in will only lose all possibility of success.
How many fathers and mothers in past days have driven their offspring to disgrace and even death by adhering to harsh, Puritanical systems, out of date even at that time! And how many more to-day let them slip into the same abysses by their too indulgent rule!
As I have said, over and over again, the proof of any pudding is in the eating of it; so let every mother examine her methods with her children by this standard: Are the children developing in moral and physical welfare by those which she is using, or are they retrogressing? Is she employing tact to guide their young fierce spirits, or is she trying to crush them by old-fashioned rules?
Questions such as these ought to be honestly asked by each mother of herself, and if the answer proves that retrogression is in progress, then she should not be so incredibly stupid as to continue in her old lines, but should examine herself and see how she can find the right new ones for her particular cases. La Rochefoucauld was wise when he said that vanity was at the root of most human mistakes. If a woman is not willing to undertake the true responsibility of motherhood, then she had far better be that sad thing which is a growing quantity in modern civilisation, namely, a childless wife devoted to dogs. Hundreds of selfish, neurotic females show the utmost unselfish devotion to wretched little pet animals, when the slightest self-denial asked of them for little human atoms is more than they can accord. What does this mean? Is it a writing upon the wall?