The Young Lady's Mentor / A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends

by Anonymous

There must, besides, be much danger in a habit of mind that leads you to attribute to your own superiority those very unpleasantnesses which would have no existence if that superiority were more complete. For, in truth, if your spiritual nature asserted its due authority over the animal, you would habitually exercise the power which is freely offered you, of supreme control over the hidden movements of your heart as well as over the outward expression of the lips.

I would strongly urge you to consider every evidence of your isolation—of your want of sympathy with others—as marks of moral inferiority; then, from your conscientiousness of mind, you would seek anxiously to discover the causes of such isolation, and you would endeavour to remove them.

Nothing is more difficult than the perpetual self-control necessary for this purpose. Constant watchfulness is required to subdue every feeling of superiority in the contemplation of your own character, and constant watchfulness to look upon the words and actions of others through, as it were, a rose-coloured medium. The mind of man has been aptly compared to cut glass, which reflects the very same light in various colours as well as different shapes, according to the forms of the glass. Display then the mental superiority of which you are justly conscious, by moulding your mind into such forms as will represent the words and actions of others in the most favourable point of view. The same illustration will serve to suggest the best manner of making allowances for those whose minds are unmanageable, because uneducated and undisciplined. They cannot see things in the same point of view that you do; how unreasonable then is it of you to expect that they should form the same estimate of them.

Let us now enter into the more minute details of this subject, and consider the many opportunities for self-control which may arise in the course of even this one day. I will begin with moral evil.

You may hear falsehoods asserted, you may hear your friend traduced, you may hear unfair and exaggerated statements of the conduct of others, given to the very people with whom they are most anxious to stand well. These are trials to which you may be often exposed, even in domestic life; and their judicious management, the comparative advantages to one's friends or one's self of silence or defence, will require your calmest judgment and your soundest discretion; qualities which of course cannot be brought into action without complete self-control. I can hardly expect, or, indeed, wish that you should hear the falsehoods of which I have spoken without some risings of indignation; these, however, must be subdued for your friend's sake as well as your own. You would think it right to conquer feelings of anger and revenge if you were yourself unjustly accused, and though the other excitement may bear the appearance of more generosity, you must on reflection admit that it is equally your duty to subdue such feelings when they are aroused by the injuries inflicted on a friend. The happy safeguard, the instinctive test, by which the well-regulated and comparatively innocent mind may safely try the right or the wrong of every indignant feeling is this: so far as the feeling is painful, so far is it tainted with sin. To "be angry and sin not,"[58] there must be no pain in the anger: pain and sin cannot be separated: there may indeed be sorrow, but this is to be carefully distinguished from pain. The above is a test which, after close examination and experience, you will find to be a safe and true one. Whenever they are thus safe and true, our instinctive feelings ought to be gratefully made use of; thus even our animal nature may be made to come to the assistance of our spiritual nature, against which it is too often arrayed in successful opposition.

I have spoken of the exceeding difficulty of exercising self-control under such trying circumstances as those above described, and this difficulty will, I candidly confess, be likely to increase in proportion to your own honesty and generosity. Be comforted, however, by this consideration, that, conflict being the only means of forming the character into excellence, and your natural amiability averting from you many of the usual opportunities for exercising self-control, you would be in want of the former essential ingredient in spiritual discipline did not your very virtues procure it for you.

While, however, I allow you full credit for these virtues, I must insist on a careful distinction between a mere virtue and a Christian grace. Every virtue becomes a vice the moment it overpasses its prescribed boundaries, the moment it is given free power to follow the bent of animal nature, instead of being, even though a virtue, kept under the strict control of religious principle.

I must now suggest to you some means by which I have known self-control to be successfully exhibited and perpetuated, with especial reference to that annoyance which we have last considered. Instead, then, of dwelling on the deviations from truth of which I have spoken, even when they are to the injury of a friend, try to banish the subject from your mind and memory; or, if you are able to think of it in the very way you please, try to consider how much the original formation of the speaker's mind, careless habits, and want of any disciplining education, may each and all contribute to lessen the guilt of the person who has annoyed you. No one knows better than yourself that tho original nature of the mind, as well as its implanted habits, modifies every fact presented to its notice. Still further, the point of view from which the fact or the character has been seen may have been entirely different from yours. These other persons may absolutely have seen the thing spoken of in a position so completely unlike your mental vision of it, that they are as incapable of understanding your view as you may be of understanding theirs. If sincere in your wish for improvement, you had better prove the truth of the above assertion by the following process. Take into your consideration any given action, not of a decidedly honourable nature—one which, perhaps, to most people would appear of an indifferent nature,—but to your lofty and refined notions deserving of some degree of reprehension. You have a sufficiently metaphysical head to be able to abstract yourself entirely from your own view of the case, and then you can contemplate it with a total freedom from prejudice. Such a contemplation can only be attempted when no feeling is concerned,—feeling giving life to every peculiarity of moral sentiment, as the heat draws out those characters which would otherwise have passed unknown and unnoticed. I would then have you examine carefully into all the considerations which might qualify and alter, even your own view of the case. Dwell long and carefully upon this part of the process. It is astonishing (incredible indeed until it is tried) how much our opinions of the very same action may alter if we determinately confine ourselves to the favourable aspect in which it may be viewed, keeping the contrary side entirely out of sight.

As soon as this has been carried to the utmost, you must further (that my experiment may be fairly tried) endeavour to throw yourself, in imagination, not only into the position, but also into the natural and acquired mental and moral perceptions of the person whose action you are taking into your consideration. For this purpose you must often imagine—natural dimness of perception, absence of acute sensibility, indifference to wounding the feelings of others from mere carelessness and want of reflective powers, little natural conscientiousness, an entire absence of the taste or the power of metaphysical examination into the effect produced by our actions. All these natural deficiencies, you must further consider, may in this case be increased by a totally neglected education,—first, by the want of parental discipline, and afterwards of that more important self-education which few people have sufficient strength of character to subject themselves to. Lastly, I would have you consider especially the moral atmosphere in which they have habitually breathed: according to the nature of this the mental health varies as certainly as the physical strength varies in a bracing or relaxing air. A strong bodily constitution may resist longer, and finally be less affected by a deleterious atmosphere than a weak or diseased frame; and so it is with the mental constitution. Minds insensibly imbibe the tone of the atmosphere in which they most frequently dwell; and though natural loftiness of character and natural conscientiousness may for a very long period resist such influences, it cannot be expected that inferior natures will be able to do so.

You are then to consider whether the habits of mind and conversation among those who are the constant associates of the persons you blame have been such as to cherish or to deaden keen and refined perceptions of moral excellence and nobility of mind; still further, whether their own literary tastes have created around them an even more penetrating atmosphere; whether from the elevated inspirations of appreciated poetry, from the truthful page of history, or from the stirring excitements of romantic fiction, their heart and their imagination have received those lofty lessons for which you judge them responsible, without knowing whether they have ever received them.