But if she is conscientious and true, really seeking her child's best good, instead of the indulgence of the hour, she will be more likely to err on the side of too much care than too little.
Even in such cases, she should seek more a positive than a negative care; striving rather to brace and fortify her daughter against the ills of life, than to shield her from them. “Remember,” said wise Dr. Jackson, “the danger is in staying in the house.”
For this reason, books especially written for the instruction of girls are often very pernicious. They emphasize certain topics in their relation to woman, and so excite disgust and produce abnormal excitement, where the simple teachings of science, reverently enforced, would produce only a sacred respect for law. The great responsibility of the transmission of hereditary qualities, may be early taught without any mental excitement. A little girl of twelve years old said to her teacher one day: “When you told me to brush my teeth, I thought, why should I—of what consequence will it be, fifty years hence, whether I do so or not; and then I thought that if I ever had a child, if I had bad teeth, she would be more likely to—wouldn't she?” “Yes,” replied the teacher with deep seriousness; “and that is a most sacred reason for guarding your own health and strength.”
Perhaps no subject has been more fully dwelt upon than the danger of great intellectual activity for girls at this youthful period of life, and it has come to be thought that an idle brain insures a healthy body. But nothing can be more false. The brain, as the ruling organ of the body, requires a healthy, rich development; and this can only be secured by regular exercise and training, fully using but not overstraining its powers.
The usual accompaniments of intellectual study are the cause of this false prejudice. Close school-rooms, late hours of study, restless excitement from over-stimulated ambition, have no necessary connection with intellectual progress. Much of the evil effect of schools comes not from too much intellectual activity, but from too little; from listless hours spent over lessons which under good conditions could be learned in half the time. Mental action, continued after the brain is weary, or when it is not nourished by fresh blood, or under any disadvantages of physical condition which prevent it from being easy and delightful, will injure the system; and will prove a waste of mental power as well as of physical health. The greatest lesson that we have to learn in our mental life, is to value quality of work more and quantity less. Everybody knows how much more exhilaration and less fatigue is experienced from a brisk walk, than from standing listlessly around for double the length of time; and it is just so with mental effort. We want neither feverish, excited work, nor lazy work; but earnest, hard, vigorous effort, ceasing when the brain is weary or the object is accomplished.[30]
I have yet to see the first proof in man or woman, that well-regulated activity of the brain injures the health. I have known many instances where vigor of body was restored by earnest mental life; and I believe that more young women sink into invalidism, or die prematurely, from the want of adequate thorough mental training, than from any other one physical or mental cause.
For we must remember that the brain craves thought, as the stomach does food; and where it is not properly supplied it will feed on garbage. Where a Latin, geometry, or history lesson would be a healthy tonic, or nourishing food, the trashy, exciting story, the gossiping book of travels, the sentimental poem, or, still worse, the coarse humor or thin-veiled vice of the low romance, fills up the hour—and is at best but tea or slops, if not as dangerous as opium or whisky. Lord Bacon says most truly: “Too much bending breaks the bow; too much unbending, the mind.” After labor, rest is sweet and healthful; but all rest is as dangerous as all labor.
One great trouble in women's intellectual life is that it is too much mere study, too little work with a purpose. It is all income without an outlet, and that, we know, always produces congestion and disease. Mental dyspepsia might be the diagnosis of many an irritable, unhappy woman. She has eaten, but for want of exercise she cannot digest the intellectual food she has received. An active pursuit, an earnest purpose, is to the mind what out-door air and exercise are to the body. But in our present social system, where it is still considered out of place for a lady to work for her living, it is the hardest problem for a mother to solve, how to supply this most important need of her daughter. Mental and moral influences are as real active agents in hygienic life as material ones. The reaction from asceticism, which despised the body and made it only a hindrance, or, at best, a slave to the soul, is in danger of going so far as to forget the rightful supremacy and control of the mental powers. A high purpose is often the best of tonics, as an agreeable amusement is the most refreshing of sedatives. A determination to live and work has kept many a person from the grave. But it must be a strong, calm, persistent purpose that will have this good effect, not the feverish ambition of an hour. The girl who works to gain a prize or to rush through school in less than the usual time, will doubtless exhaust her nervous system, and bring on disease or feebleness; but she who looks forward to a life of noble usefulness will learn to husband her powers, and make the future secure by wise forbearance in the present.
When circumstances do not supply the needed stimulus to use of the mental faculties, by a demand for present work, the mother may keep before the mind of her daughter the great duty of preparation for contingencies that may arise, and show her how the rapid changes now taking place in our social system may at any time bring her new duties and responsibilities, for which she will need all her physical and mental powers.
When Harriet Beecher was the leading spirit in a girls' society for mental improvement, she did not know that the intellectual gifts there developed would enable her to strike the keenest blow that slavery ever received in this country. When Maria Mitchell studied astronomy with her father she could not tell that a professorship at Vassar College awaited her, and that her thorough fitness for it would prove a tower of strength to the cause of higher education for women throughout the country. Keep the sword bright, keen, and well tempered, and opportunity will come to use it in defense of truth and right.