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

by Anonymous

During your hours of study, it is of the utmost importance that no page should ever be perused without carefully subjecting its contents to the thinking process of which I have spoken: unless your intellect is actively employed while you are professedly studying, your time is worse than wasted, for you are acquiring habits of idleness, that will be most difficult to lay aside.

You should always be engaged in some work that affords considerable exercise to the mind—some book over the sentences of which you are obliged to pause, to ponder—some kind of study that will cause the feeling of almost physical fatigue; when, however, this latter sensation comes on, you must rest; the brain is of too delicate a texture to bear the slightest over-exertion with impunity.[74] Premature decay of its powers, and accompanying bodily weakness and suffering, will inflict upon you a severe penalty for any neglect of the symptoms of mental exhaustion.[75] Your mind, however, like your body, ought to be exercised to the very verge of fatigue; you cannot otherwise be certain that there has been exercise sufficient to give increased strength and energy to the mental or physical powers.

The more vigorous such exercise is, the shorter will be the time you can support it. Perhaps even an hour of close thinking would be too much for most women; the object, however, ought not to be so much the quantity as the quality of the exercise. If your peculiarly delicate and sensitive organization cannot support more than a quarter of an hour's continuous and concentrated thought, you must content yourself with that. Experience will soon prove to you that even the few minutes thus employed will give you a great superiority over the six-hours-a-day readers of your acquaintance, and will serve as a solid and sufficient foundation for all the lighter superstructure which you will afterwards lay upon it. This latter, in its due place, I should consider as of nearly as much importance as the foundation itself; for, keeping steadily in view that usefulness is to be the primary object of all your studies, you must devote much more time and attention to the embellishing, because refining branches of literature, than would be necessary for those whose office is not so peculiarly that of soothing and pleasing as woman's is. Even these lighter studies, however, must be subjected to the same reflective process as the severer ones, or they will never become an incorporate part of the mind itself: they will, on the contrary, if this process is neglected, stand out, as the knowledge of all uneducated people does, in abrupt and unharmonizing prominence.

It is not to be so much your object to acquire the power of quoting poetry or prose, or to be acquainted with the names of the authors of celebrated fictions and their details, as to be imbued with the spirit of heroism, generosity, self-sacrifice,—in short, the practical love of the beautiful which every universally-admired fiction, whether it have a professedly moral tendency or not, is calculated to excite. The refined taste, the accurate perceptions, the knowledge of the human heart, and the insight into character, which intellectual culture can highly improve, even if it cannot create, are to be the principal results as well as the greatest pleasures to which you are to look forward. In study, as in every other important pursuit, the immediate results—those that are most tangible and encouraging to the faint and easily disheartened—are exactly those which are least deserving of anxiety. A couple of hours' reading of poetry in the morning might qualify you to act the part of oracle that very evening to a whole circle of inquirers; it might enable you to tell the names, and dates, and authors of a score of remarkable poems: and this, besides, is a species of knowledge which every one can appreciate. It is not, however, comparable in kind to the refinement of mind, the elevation of thought, the deepened sense of the beautiful, which a really intellectual study of the same works would impart or increase. I do not wish to depreciate the good offices of the memory; it is very valuable as a handmaid to the higher powers of the intellect. I have, however, generally observed that where much attention has been devoted to the recollection of names, facts, dates, &c., the higher species of intellectual cultivation have been neglected: attention to them, on the other hand, would never involve any neglect of the advantages of memory; for a cultivated intellect can suggest to itself a thousand associative links by which it can be assisted and rendered much more extensively useful than a mere verbal memory could ever be. The more of these links (called by Coleridge hooks-and-eyes) you can invent for yourself, the more will your memory become an intellectual faculty. By such means, also, you can retain possession of all the information with which your reading may furnish you, without paying such exclusive attention to those tangible and immediate results of study as would deprive you of the more solid and permanent ones. These latter consist, as I said before, in the improvement of the mind itself, and not in its furniture. A modern author has remarked, that the improvement of the mind is like the increase of money from compound interest in a bank, as every fresh increase, however trifling, serves as a new link with which to connect still further acquisitions. This remark is strikingly illustrative of the value of an intellectual kind of memory. Every new idea will serve as a "hook-and-eye," with which you can fasten together the past and the future; every new fact intellectually remembered will serve as an illustration of some formerly-established principle, and, instead of burdening you with the separate difficulty of remembering itself, will assist you in remembering other things.

It is a universal law, that action is in inverse proportion to power; and therefore the deeply-thinking mind will find a much greater difficulty in drawing out its capabilities on short notice, and arranging them in the most effective position, than a mind of mere cleverness, of merely acquired, and not assimilated knowledge. This difficulty, however, need not be permanent, though at first it is inevitable. A woman's mind, too, is less liable to it; as, however thoughtful her nature may be, this thoughtfulness is seldom strengthened by habit. She is seldom called upon to concentrate the powers of her mind on any intellectual pursuits that require intense and long-continuous thought. The few moments of intense thought which I recommend to you will never add to your thoughtfulness of nature any habits that will require serious difficulty to overcome. It is also, unless a man be in public life, of more importance to a woman than to him to possess action, viz. great readiness in the use and disposal of whatever intellectual powers she may possess. Besides this, you must remember that a want of quickness and facility in recollection, of ease and distinctness in expression, is quite as likely to arise from desultory and wandering habits of thought as from the slowness referable to deep reflection. Most people find difficulty in forcing their thoughts to concentrate themselves on any given subject, or in afterwards compelling them to take a comprehensive glance of every feature of that subject. Both these processes require much the same habits of mind: the latter, perhaps, though apparently the more discursive in its nature, demands a still greater degree of concentration than the former.

When the mind is set in motion, it requires a stronger exertion to confine its movements within prescribed limits than when it is steadily fixed on one given point. For instance, it would be easier to meditate on the subject of patriotism, bringing before the mind every quality of the heart and head that this virtue would have a tendency to develop, than to take in, at one comprehensive glance,[76] the different qualities of those several individuals who have been most remarked for the virtue. Unless the thoughts were under strong and habitual control, they would infallibly wander to other peculiarities of these same individuals, unconnected with the given subject, to curious facts in their lives, to contemporary characters, &c.; thus loitering by the way-side in amusing, but here unprofitable reflection: for every exercise of thought like that which I have described is only valuable in proportion to the degree of accuracy with which we can contemplate with one instantaneous glance, laid out upon a map as it were, those features only belonging to the given subject, and keeping out of view all foreign ones. There is perhaps no faculty of the mind more susceptible of evident, as it were tangible, improvement than this: besides, the exercise of mind which it procures us is one of the highest intellectual pleasures; you should therefore immediately and perseveringly devote your efforts and attention to seek out the best mode of cultivating it. Even the reading of books which require deep and continuous thought is only a preparation for this higher exercise of the faculties—a useful, indeed a necessary preparation, because it promotes the habit of fixing the attention and concentrating the powers of the mind on any given point. In assimilating the thoughts of others, however, with your own mind and memory, the mind itself remains nearly passive; it is as the wax that receives the impression, and must for this purpose be in a suitable state of impressibility. In exact proportion to the suitableness of this state are the clearness and the beauty of the impression; but even when most true and most deep, its value is extrinsic and foreign: it is only when the mind begins to act for itself and weaves out of its own materials a new and native manufacture, that the real intellectual existence can be said to commence. While, therefore, I repeat my advice to you, to devote some portion of every day to such reading as will require the strongest exertion of your powers of thought, I wish, at the same time, to remind you that even this, the highest species of reading, is only to be considered as a means to an end: though productive of higher and nobler enjoyments than the unintellectual can conceive, it is nothing more than the stepping-stone to the genuine pleasures of pure intellect, to the ennobling sensation of directing, controlling, and making the most elevated use of the powers of an immortal mind.

To woman, the power of abstracted thought, and the enjoyment derived from it, is even more valuable than to man. His path lies in active life; and the earnest craving for excitement, for action, which is the characteristic of all powerful natures, is in man easily satisfied: it is satisfied in the sphere of his appointed duty; "he must go forth, and resolutely dare." Not so the woman, whose scene of action is her quiet home: her virtues must be passive ones; and with every qualification for successful activity, she is often compelled to chain down her vivid imagination to the most monotonous routine of domestic life. When she is entirely debarred from external activity, a restlessness of nature, that can find no other mode of indulgence, will often invent for itself imaginary trials and imaginary difficulties: hence the petty quarrels, the mean jealousies, which disturb the peace of many homes that might have been tranquil and happy if the same activity of thought and feeling had been early directed into right channels. A woman who finds real enjoyment in the improvement of her mind will neither have time nor inclination for tormenting her servants and her family; an avocation in which many really affectionate and professedly religious women exhaust those superfluous energies which, under wise direction, might have dispensed peace and happiness instead of disturbance and annoyance. A woman who has acquired proper control over her thoughts, and can find enjoyment in their intellectual exercise, will have little temptation to allow them to dwell on mean and petty grievances. That admirable Swedish proverb, "It is better to rule your house with your head than with your heels," will be exemplified in all her practice. Her well-regulated and comprehensive mind (and comprehensiveness of mind is as necessary to the skilful management of a household as to the government of an empire) will be able to contrive such systems of domestic arrangement as will allot exactly the suitable works at the suitable times to each member of the establishment: no one will be over-worked, no one idle; there will not only be a place for every thing, and every thing in its place, but there will also be a time for every thing, and every thing will have its allotted time. Such a system once arranged by a master-mind, and still superintended by a steady and intelligent, but not incessant inspection, raises the character of the governed as well as that of her who governs: they are never brought into collision with each other; and the inferior, whose manual expertness may far exceed that to which the superior has even the capability of attaining, will nevertheless look up with admiring respect to those powers of arrangement, and that steady and uncapriciously-exerted authority, which so facilitate and lighten the task of obedience and dependence. This mode of managing a household, even if they found it possible, would of course be disliked by those who, having no higher resources, would find the day hang heavy on their hands unless they watched all the details of household work, and made every action of every servant result from their own immediate interference, instead of from an enlarged and uniformly operating system.

This subject has brought me back to the point from which I began,—the practical utility of a cultivated intellect, and the additional power and usefulness it confers,—raising its possessor above all the mean and petty cares of daily life, and enabling her to impart ennobling influences to its most trifling details.

The power of thought, which I have so earnestly recommended you to cultivate, is even still more practical, and still more useful, when considered relatively to the most important business of life—that of religion. Prayer and meditation, and that communion with the unseen world which imparts a foretaste of its happiness and glory, are enjoyed and profited by in proportion to the power of controlling the thoughts and of exercising the mind. Having a firm trust, that to you every other object is considered subordinate to that of advancement in the spiritual life, it must be a very important consideration whether, and how far, the self-education you may bestow on yourself will help you towards its attainment. In this point of view there can be no doubt that the mental cultivation recommended in this letter has a much more advantageous influence upon your religious life than any other manner of spending your time. Besides the many collateral tendencies of such pursuits to favour that growth in grace which I trust will ever remain the principal object of your desires, experience will soon show you that every improvement in the reflective powers, every additional degree of control over the movements of the mind, may find an immediate exercise in the duties of religion.

The wandering thoughts which are habitually excluded from your hours of study will not be likely to intrude frequently or successfully during your hours of devotion; the habit of concentrating all the powers of your mind on one particular subject, and then developing all its features and details, will require no additional effort for the pious heart to direct it into the lofty employments of meditation on eternal things and communion with our God and Saviour: at the same time, the employments of prayer and meditation will in their turn react upon your merely secular studies, and facilitate your progress in them by giving you habits of singleness of mind and steadiness of mental purpose.