Even if these trashy books, which we find everywhere, not excepting the Sunday-school libraries, be not actually exciting and immoral in tone and sentiment, they are so vapid, so utterly without purpose or object, so devoid of any healthy vigor and life, that they are simply dissipating to the power of thought, and hence weakening to the will. No one needs to be told how great is the influence of the will over physical health, and any weakening of it tends inevitably to a slackening of all the vital forces, by which alone we preserve health, or even life itself.
All such books can be kept out of a house, and their entrance should be guarded against far more vigorously than we oppose the entrance of noxious gases, or even of draughts of pure air. Some of us, many of us, have reason to be grateful that in our fathers' houses no such books were to be found. Poets were there, novelists were there in abundance, but of such poisonous and weakening literature, no trace; and as we are grateful to our parents for the care and simple regimen which preserved our physical health for us, we thank them also for the care which kept out of our way the mental food which they knew to be injurious, and for which they themselves had been too well educated to have any taste.
The possession, through the instrumentality of education, of simple and healthy appetite and taste, physical and mental, is the most valuable gift that the father, that the mother, can give their children, a gift in comparison with which a legacy of millions of dollars sinks into utter insignificance. And a tithe of the thought and care which are expended in accumulating and investing property on the part of the one, a tithe of the care and thought used on dress on the part of the other, would serve to secure it!
The exclusively American habit of taking young girls to fashionable resorts for the summer should also be alluded to here. No custom could be more injurious than this in the influences of food, clothing and sleep, which it almost inevitably brings; and added to these, girls in idleness, and left to amuse themselves, are often in such places thrown into contact with persons of both sexes, whose conversation is the worst possible in its effect on mind and body.[12]
But, according to the general principle of education, we must not repress imagination in one direction without furnishing it some rational food in another; for education, as has been said, consists not in destroying but in training the natural man, and any system which aims at destroying any natural impulse only defeats its own end. For this purpose, and at this period of life, it were well to draw the imagination to “the enjoyment of the beautiful through an actual contemplation of it, and for this purpose the study of painting and sculpture is of pre-eminent value. * * * * * Through their means the allurement which the wholly or especially the half-undraped form has for us, becomes softened and purified. The enjoyment of beauty itself is the enjoyment of something divine; and it is only through a coarse, indecent, and already infected imagination, belonging to a general sensuality, that it degenerates into excitement.”[13] “Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace, amid fair sights and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will meet the sense like a breeze, and insensibly draw the soul, even in childhood, into harmony with the beauty of Reason.”[14]
There is another matter which can scarcely be passed over in silence in this discussion, but the evil effects of which are seldom recognized. There are many men in middle life against whose character no whisper has ever dared to raise itself, men of culture and power, men of strong personal “magnetism”—I use the term because no other will express exactly what I mean—who often attract the almost idolatrous admiration of young girls and young women. They may do this at first unconsciously; but they are pleased by it finally, and seem to enjoy being surrounded, as it were, by a circle of young incense-bearers, and they seem to see no harm in, to say the least, passively permitting this excessive, sentimental, and unnatural admiration. No harm is done? But harm is done, and that of the most insidious character. There is a time in the life of a majority of girls and boys when the half-conscious and just awakening spirit is, as it were, casting around in every direction for a some one, they know not who;[15] and if at this time the young girl comes under the influence of one of these men, she is likely to fall into a most unnatural and morbid state; and the man, whoever he be, that shows himself pleased by such adoration and devotion, who does not by the force of loyalty to the simple Right, persistently and quietly repel, and effectually repel, all such tribute, is responsible for much harm, and must answer for much unhappiness. The remedy would lie in an education for these girls which should be sound and healthful; in ample, active employment of the thought in other directions. The safeguard, however, lies in the mother's hands. No mother who holds the unquestioned confidence of her daughter need ever fear for her in this or any other way. So long as the girl knows that she can go fearlessly to her mother with all her thoughts and fancies, foolish though they be, so long as she is never repelled or shut up within herself by ridicule or want of comprehension, so long she is as safe, wherever she may be and into whatever companionship fallen, as if fenced about with triple walls of steel. But let that perfect confidence which should subsist between mother and daughter be once lost or disturbed; let the girl once fear to think aloud to her mother, and the charm is broken, and dangers encompass her around. No thoughtful woman can see a girl, thus alone, carried away by her impulsive feeling, devoting herself to the worship of some prominent man who dares to encourage or permit such tribute, without longing to step between and defend her, as Spenser's Britomart did the innocent Amoret from what she knows is the unseen, unfelt, and yet real danger.
As to direct physical care of themselves, American girls between fourteen and twenty-one are to be ruled only through their own convictions on the side of prudence, for they will not, as has been before said, blindly obey what seem to them arbitrary rules, as the girls of some other nations can be easily made to do. The American mother is not so likely to say to her daughter, “You must not go to this party,” as, “Do you think you had better go?” If a girl, then, is made to know that when any organ is in a congested and softened state it is much more likely to be injured than at other times, she will not, while this is the case, if previously properly educated on the will side, draw her dress tightly around her yielding form, and stand or dance at a party for hours together; she will not skate for hours; she will probably not ride for hours on a trotting horse; she will not take long walks; she will not race violently upstairs, or plunge violently down, because she has been taught to believe that no one can with impunity array her individual will against the laws of nature; and thus two of the most frequent causes of trouble, which are displacements or the bending forward of any organ, will be avoided. If she persists in trying experiments, she will not be obliged to experiment for a very long time in order to satisfy herself that the wisdom of ancient tradition is of more value than her individual opinion; but the girl who has been properly educated for fourteen years has already made this discovery. However, if, after all advice, any one should persist in so unreasonable a course, she is, when fully grown, a rational and responsible being, and, as such, is answerable alone to herself and to her Creator for the marring of his workmanship. What folly, what worse than folly, should we think it in the managers of a steamship to intrust the care of the machinery to an engineer who knew nothing of its construction, or of the way in which the parts act upon one another; and yet, the mother who leaves her daughter in ignorance, and then does not carefully guard her herself, is guilty of worse than this; and when the evil is done, the advice of the wisest physician can only be the enjoinment of the very sanitary rules which she herself should have long before enforced; for “the true method of Sexual Education must remain that which has been always hitherto spoken of, that of correct living.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mrs. E. M. King, Contemporary Review, Dec., 1873, in an article on “Coöperative Housekeeping.”
[2] Principles of Political Economy, Mill. American Ed., D. Appleton & Co., Vol. I., p. 551.