FEMALE EDUCATION.
BY REV. SAMUEL W. FISHER.
The nature of female education, its influence, its field of action, comprehending a wide range of the noblest topics, render it utterly impossible to do justice to the entire theme in the brief limits here assigned to it. Indeed it seems almost a superfluous effort, were it not expected, nay, demanded, to discuss the subject of education in a work like this.
Thanks to our Father in Heaven, who, in the crowning work of his creation, gave woman to man, made weakness her strength, modesty her citadel, grace and gentleness her attributes, affection her dower, and the heart of man her throne. With her, toil rises into pleasure, joy fills the breast with a larger benediction, and sorrow, losing half its bitterness, is transmitted into an element of power, a discipline of goodness. Even in the coarsest life, and the most depressing circumstances, woman hath this power of hallowing all things with the sunshine of her presence. But never does it unfold itself so finely as when education, instinct with religion, has accomplished its most successful work. It is only then that she reveals all her varied excellence, and develops her high capacities. It only unfolds powers that were latent, or develops those in harmony and beauty which otherwise would push themselves forth in shapes grotesque, gnarled and distorted. God creates the material, and impresses upon it his own laws. Man, in education, simply seeks to give those laws scope for action. The uneducated person, by a favorite figure of the old classic writers, has often been compared to the rough marble in the quarry; the educated to that marble chiselled by the hand of a Phidias into forms of beauty and pillars of strength. But the analogy holds good in only a single point. As the chisel reveals the form which the marble may be made to assume, so education unfolds the innate capacities of men. In all things else how poor the comparison! how faint the analogy! In the one case you have an aggregation of particles crystallized into shape, without organism, life or motion. In the other, you have life, growth, expansion. In the first you have a mass of limestone, neither more nor less than insensate matter, utterly incapable of any alteration from within itself. In the second, you have a living body, a mind, affections instinct with power, gifted with vitality, and forming the attributes of a being allied to and only a little lower than the angels. These constitute a life which, by its inherent force, must grow and unfold itself by a law of its own, whether you educate it or not. Some development it will make, some form it will assume by its own irrepressible and spontaneous action. The question, with us, is rather what that form shall be; whether it shall wear the visible robes of an immortal with a countenance glowing with the intelligence and pure affection of cherub and seraph, or through the rags and sensual impress of an earthly, send forth only occasional gleams of its higher nature. The great work of education is to stimulate and direct this native power of growth. God and the subject, co-working, effect all the rest.
In the wide sense in which it is proposed to consider the subject of education, three things are pre-supposed—personal talents, personal application, and the divine blessing. Without capacities to be developed, or with very inferior capacities, education is either wholly useless, or only partially successful. As it has no absolute creative power, and is utterly unable to add a single faculty to the mind, so the first condition of its success is the capacity for improvement in the subject. An idiot may be slightly affected by it, but the feebleness of his original powers forbids the noblest result of education. It teaches men how most successfully to use their own native force, and by exercise to increase it, but in no case can it supply the absence of that force. It is not its province to inspire genius, since that is the breath of God in the soul, bestowed as seemeth to him good, and at the disposal of no finite power. It is enough if it unfold and discipline, and guide genius in its mission to the world. We are not to demand that it shall make of every man a Newton, a Milton, a Hall, a Chalmers, a Mason, a Washington; or of every woman a Sappho, a De Stael, a Roland, a Hemans.
The supposition that all intellects are originally equal, however flattering to our pride, is no less prejudicial to the cause of education than false in fact. It throws upon teachers the responsibility of developing talents that have scarcely an existence, and securing attainments within the range of only the very finest powers, during the period usually assigned to this work. To the ignorant it misrepresents and dishonors education, when it presents for their judgment a very inferior intellect, which all the training of the schools has not inspired with power, as a specimen of the result of liberal pursuits. Such an intellect can never stand up beside an active though untutored mind—untutored in the schools, yet disciplined by the necessities around it. It is only in the comparison of minds of equal original power, but of different and unequal mental discipline, that the result of a thorough education reveal themselves most strikingly. The genius that, partially educated, makes a fine bar-room politician, a good county judge, a respectable member of the lower house in our State Legislature, or an expert mechanic and shrewd farmer, when developed by study and adorned with learning, rises to the foremost rank of men. Great original talents will usually give indication of their presence amidst the most depressing circumstances. But when a mind of this stamp has been allowed to unfold itself under the genial influence of large educational advantages, how will it grow in power, outstripping the multitude, as some majestic tree, rooted in a soil of peculiar richness rises above and spreads itself abroad over the surrounding forest? Our inquiry, however, at present, is not exclusively respecting individuals thus highly gifted.
Geniuses are rare in our world; sent occasionally to break up the monotony of life, impart new impulses to a generation, like comets blazing along the sky, startle the dosing mind, no longer on the stretch to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge, and rouse men to gaze on visions of excellence yet unreached. Happily, the mass of mankind are not of this style of mind. Uniting by the process of education the powers which God has conferred upon them, with those of a more brilliant order which are occasionally given to a few, the advancement of the world in all things essential to its refinement, and purity, and exaltation, is probably as rapid and sure as it would be under a different constitution of things. Were all equally elevated, it might still be necessary for some to tower above the rest, and by the sense of inequality move the multitude to nobler aspirations. But while it is not permitted of God that all men should actually rise to thrones in the realm of mind, yet such is the native power of all sane minds, and such their great capacity of improvement, that, made subject to a healthful discipline they may not only qualify us for all the high duties of life on earth, but go on advancing in an ever-perfecting preparation for the life above.
The second thing pre-supposed in education is personal application. There is no thorough education that is not self-education. Unlike the statue which can be wrought only from without, the great work of education is to unfold the life within. This life always involves self-action. The scholar is not merely a passive recipient. He grows into power by an active reception of truth. Even when he listens to another's utterances of knowledge, what vigor of attention and memory are necessary to enable him to make that knowledge his own? But when he attempts himself to master a subject of importance, when he would rise into the higher region of mathematics, philosophy, history, poetry, religion, art; or even when he would prepare himself for grappling with the great questions of life, what long processes of thought! what patient gathering together of materials! what judgment, memory, comparison, and protracted meditation are essential to complete success? The man who would triumph over obstacles and ascend the heights of excellence in the realm of mind, must work with the continuous vigor of a steamship on an ocean voyage. Day by day the fire must burn, and the revolve in the calm and in the gale—in the sunshine and the storm. The innate excellency of genius or talents can give no exemption to its possessor from this law of mental growth. An educated mind is neither an aggregation of particles accreted around a center, as the stones grow, nor a substance, which, placed in a turner's lathe, comes forth an exquisitely wrought instrument. The mere passing through an academy or college, is not education. The enjoyment of the largest educational advantages by no means infers the possession of a mind and heart thoroughly educated; since there is an inner work to be performed by the subject of those advantages before he can lay claim to the possession of a well-disciplined and richly-stored intellect and affections. The phrase, "self-made men" is often so used as to convey the idea that the persons who have enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education, are rather made by their instructors. The supposition is in part unjust.
The outward means of education stimulate the mind, and thus assist the process of development; but it is absolutely essential to all growth in mental or moral excellence, that the person himself should be enlisted vigorously in the work. He must work as earnestly as the man destitute of his faculties. The difference between the two consists not in the fact that one walks and the other rides, but that the one is obliged to take a longer road to reach the same point. Teachers, books, recitations and lectures facilitate our course, direct us how most advantageously to study, point out the shortest path to the end we seek, and tend to rouse the soul to the putting forth of its powers; but neither of these can take the place of, or forestall intense personal application. The man without instructors, like a traveler without guide-boards, must take many a useless step, and often retrace his way. He may, after this experimental traveling, at length reach the same point with the person who has enjoyed superior literary aids, but it will cost the waste of many a precious hour, which might have been spent in enlarging the sphere of his vision and perfecting the symmetry of his intellectual powers. In cases of large attainments and ripe character, in either sex, the process of growth is laborious. Thinking is hard work. All things most excellent are the fruits of slow, patient working. The trees grow slowly, grain by grain; the planets creep round their orbits, inch by inch; the river hastens to the ocean by a gentle progress; the clouds gather the rain-drop from the invisible air, particle by particle, and we are not to ask that this immortal mind, the grandest thing in the world, shall reach its perfection by a single stride, or independently of the most early, profound and protracted self-labor. It is enough for us that, thankfully accepting the assistance of those who have ascended above us, we give ourselves to assiduous toil, until our souls grow up to the stature of perfect men.
The third thing pre-supposed in education is the divine benediction. In all spheres of action, we recognize the over-ruling providence of God working without us, and his Spirit commissioned to work within us. Nor is there any work of mortal life in which we need to allay unto ourselves the wisdom and energy of Jehovah, as an essential element of success than is this long process where truth, affection, decision, judgment, and perseverance in the teacher, are to win into the paths of self-labor minds of every degree of ability, and dispositions of every variety. When God smiles upon us, then this grand work of moulding hearts and intellects for their high destiny moves forward without friction, and the young heart silently and joyously comes forth into the light.