576. Philosophical Spirit.—That which is not less remarkable is the philosophical character of her reflections. She believes in liberty and in conscience. It is conscience which she purposes to substitute, as a moral rule, “for despotic and superficial caprices.” It is no longer by the imperative term, you must, but by the obligatory term, you ought, that the mother should lead and govern her daughter.
“On every occasion let these words, I ought, re-appear in the conversation of the mother.”
This is saying that the child ought to be treated as a free being. The end, and at the same time the most efficient means, of education, is the wise employment of liberty. While keeping the oversight of the child, he must be left to take care of himself, and on many occasions to follow the course that he will. By this means his will will be developed, and his character strengthened; and this is an essential point according to Madame de Rémusat.
“If under Louis XIV.,” she says, “the education of woman’s mind was grave and often substantial, that of her character remained imperfect.”
577. Madame Guizot (1773-1827).—Madame Guizot first became known under her maiden name, Pauline de Meulan. In the closing years of the eighteenth century she had written several romances, and had contributed to the review of Suard, the Publiciste. In 1812 she married Guizot, the future author of the law of 1833, who had just founded the Annals of Education.[245] From this period, all her ideas and all her writings were directed almost exclusively towards ethics and education. She published in succession, Children (1812), Raoul and Victor (1821), and, finally, her masterpiece, the Family Letters on Education (1826).
578. The Letters on Education.—To give at once an idea of the merit of this book,[246] we shall quote the opinion of Sainte-Beuve:—
“The work of Madame Guizot will survive the Émile, marking in this line the progress of the sound, temperate, and refined reason of our times, over the venturesome genius of Rousseau, just as in politics the Démocratie of De Tocqueville is an advance over the Contrat Social. Essential to meditate upon, as advice, in all education which would prepare strong men for the difficulties of our modern society, this book also contains, in the way of exposition, the noblest moral pages, the most sincere and the most convincing, which, with a few pages from Jouffroy, have been suggested to the philosophy of our age by the doctrines of a spiritualistic rationalism.”
579. Psychological Optimism.—The philosophical spirit is not lacking in the Letters on Education. The whole of Letter XII. is a plea in behalf of the relative innocence of the child. That which is bad in the disorderly inclination, says the author, is not the inclination, but the disorder:—
“The inclinations of a sentient being are in themselves what they ought to be. It has been said that a man could not be virtuous if he did not conquer his inclinations; hence, his inclinations are evil. This is an error. No more could the tree produce good fruit, if, in pruning it, the disorderly flow of the sap were not arrested. Does this prove that the sap is harmful to the tree?”