Those studies which require reasoning as a means to a proveable issue are of a high order, as regards both profit and pleasure: and boys and girls will be the better through life for whatever mathematical training their parents can procure for them. Be it little or be it much, they will have reason to be grateful as long as they live for what they can obtain. I mention girls, as well as boys, confident that every person able to see the right, and courageous enough to utter it, will sanction what I say. I must declare that on no subject is more nonsense talked, (as it seems to me) than on that of female education, when restriction is advocated. In works otherwise really good, we find it taken for granted that girls are not to learn the dead languages and mathematics, because they are not to exercise professions where these attainments are wanted; and a little further on we find it said that the chief reason for boys and young men studying these things is to improve the quality of their minds. I suppose none of us will doubt that everything possible should be done to improve the quality of the mind of every human being.—If it is said that the female brain is incapable of studies of an abstract nature,—that is not true: for there are many instances of women who have been good mathematicians, and good classical scholars. The plea is indeed nonsense on the face of it; for the brain which will learn French will learn Greek; the brain which enjoys arithmetic is capable of mathematics.—If it is said that women are light-minded and superficial, the obvious answer is that their minds should be the more carefully sobered by grave studies, and the acquisition of exact knowledge.—If it is said that their vocation in life does not require these kinds of knowledge,—that is giving up the main plea for the pursuit of them by boys;—that it improves the quality of their minds.—If it is said that such studies unfit women for their proper occupations,—that again is untrue. Men do not attend the less to their professional business, their counting-house or their shop, for having their minds enlarged and enriched, and their faculties strengthened by sound and various knowledge; nor do women on that account neglect the work-basket, the market, the dairy and the kitchen. If it be true that women are made for these domestic occupations, then of course they will be fond of them. They will be so fond of what comes most naturally to them that no book-study (if really not congenial to their minds) will draw them off from their homely duties. For my part, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that the most ignorant women I have known have been the worst housekeepers; and that the most learned women I have known have been among the best,—wherever they have been early taught and trained to household business, as every woman ought to be. A woman of superior mind knows better than an ignorant one what to require of her servants, how to deal with trades-people, and how to economise time: she is more clear-sighted about the best ways of doing things; has a richer mind with which to animate all about her, and to solace her own spirit in the midst of her labours. If nobody doubts the difference in pleasantness of having to do with a silly and narrow-minded woman and with one who is intelligent and enlightened, it must be clear that the more intelligence and enlightenment there is, the better. One of the best housekeepers I know,—a simple-minded, affectionate-hearted woman, whose table is always fit for a prince to sit down to, whose house is always neat and elegant, and whose small income yields the greatest amount of comfort, is one of the most learned women ever heard of. When she was a little girl, she was sitting sewing in the window-seat while her brother was receiving his first lesson in mathematics from his tutor. She listened, and was delighted with what she heard; and when both left the room, she seized upon the Euclid that lay on the table, ran up to her room, went over the lesson, and laid the volume where it was before. Every day after this, she sat stitching away and listening, in like manner, and going over the lesson afterwards, till one day she let out the secret. Her brother could not answer a question which was put to him two or three times; and, without thinking of anything else, she popped out the answer. The tutor was surprised, and after she had told the simple truth, she was permitted to make what she could of Euclid. Some time after, she spoke confidentially to a friend of the family,—a scientific professor,—asking him, with much hesitation and many blushes, whether he thought it was wrong for a woman to learn Latin. "Certainly not," he said; "provided she does not neglect any duty for it.—But why do you want to learn Latin?" She wanted to study Newton's Principia: and the professor thought this a very good reason. Before she was grown into a woman, she had mastered the Principia of Newton. And now, the great globe on which we live is to her a book in which she reads the choice secrets of nature; and to her the last known wonders of the sky are disclosed: and if there is a home more graced with accomplishments, and more filled with comforts, I do not know such an one. Will anybody say that this woman would have been in any way better without her learning?—while we may confidently say that she would have been much less happy.
As for women not wanting learning, or superior intellectual training, that is more than any one should undertake to say in our day. In former times, it was understood that every woman, (except domestic servants) was maintained by her father, brother or husband; but it is not so now. The footing of women is changed, and it will change more. Formerly, every woman was destined to be married; and it was almost a matter of course that she would be: so that the only occupation thought of for a woman was keeping her husband's house, and being a wife and mother. It is not so now. From a variety of causes, there is less and less marriage among the middle classes of our country; and much of the marriage that there is does not take place till middle life. A multitude of women have to maintain themselves who would never have dreamed of such a thing a hundred years ago. This is not the place for a discussion whether this is a good thing for women or a bad one; or for a lamentation that the occupations by which women might maintain themselves are so few; and of those few, so many engrossed by men. This is not the place for a speculation as to whether women are to grow into a condition of self-maintenance, and their dependence for support upon father, brother and husband to become only occasional. With these considerations, interesting as they are, we have no business at this moment. What we have to think of is the necessity,—in all justice, in all honour, in all humanity, in all prudence,—that every girl's faculties should be made the most of, as carefully as boys'. While so many women are no longer sheltered, and protected, and supported, in safety from the world (as people used to say) every woman ought to be fitted to take care of herself. Every woman ought to have that justice done to her faculties that she may possess herself in all the strength and clearness of an exercised and enlightened mind, and may have at command, for her subsistence, as much intellectual power and as many resources as education can furnish her with. Let us hear nothing of her being shut out, because she is a woman, from any study that she is capable of pursuing: and if one kind of cultivation is more carefully attended to than another, let it be the discipline and exercise of the reasoning faculties. From the simplest rules of arithmetic let her go on, as her brother does, as far into the depths of science, and up to the heights of philosophy as her powers and opportunities permit; and it will certainly be found that the more she becomes a reasoning creature, the more reasonable, disciplined and docile she will be: the more she knows of the value of knowledge and of all other things, the more diligent she will be;—the more sensible of duty,—the more interested in occupations,—the more womanly. This is only coming round to the points we started from; that every human being is to be made as perfect as possible: and that this must be done through the most complete development of all the faculties.
CHAPTER XXII.
INTELLECTUAL TRAINING.—THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTIES.
The young mind is very well entertained for a time by the exercise of its reasoning powers,—if, instead of being baffled, they are encouraged and trained. But, there is a higher set of faculties still which begin to work ere long; and usually in such proportion to the reasoning powers as would seem to indicate some connexion between them. Or it may be that the moral fervour which gives great advantage to the reasoning powers is exactly that which is essential to the development of the highest of human faculties,—the Imagination. Certain it is that the children who most patiently and earnestly search out the reasons of things,—either looking deep into causes, or following them high up to consequences, are those who most strongly manifest the first stirrings of the heavenly power which raises them highest in the ranks of being known to exist. They may, or they may not, have shown a power of Fancy before this time. They may, or they may not, have manifested a strong conceptive faculty; a power of forming images of objects already well known or clearly described; but, if they can so think of unseen things, so compare them and connect them, as to bring truth out at last,—if, in short, they reflect and reason well, the probability is that they will prove to have a good portion of the higher faculty of Imagination. At least, we may be sure that a child of high imaginative faculty has good reasoning powers.
During the first exercise of the reasoning powers a child may, and probably will, become thoughtful. He will look grave at times, and be buried in reflection for awhile: but this gravity does not make him less cheerful; and when he has done thinking about the particular thing his head was full of, he is as merry as ever. But a little later, and his thoughtfulness becomes something quite different from this. If there is some mingling of melancholy with it, the parents must not be uneasy. It is all natural, and therefore right. He is beginning to see and to feel his position in the universe; to see and to feel that by the powers within him he is connected with all that exists, and can conceive of all that may exist: and his new consciousness gives a light to his eye and a meaning to his countenance that were never seen there before. While he was an infant, he was much like any other young animal for his thoughtless and unconscious enjoyment of all the good things that were strewed in his daily path. Then, he began to see deeper,—into the reasons of things, and their connexions; and now he had become higher than other young animals,—for they cannot perceive the truths of numbers, or discover by thought anything not before known in any science. But now, he has become conscious of himself; he can contemplate himself as he can contemplate any other object of thought; and he is occupied in connecting his own thoughts,—his own mind—with every object of thought. It is upon his consciousness and his thoughts united that his imaginative power has to act. By it, he sees everything in a new light, and feels everything with a new depth: and though he often finds this a glorious pleasure, he is sometimes much oppressed by it: and then comes the kind of gentle melancholy before referred to.
See the difference, to the child of dull imagination, or of an age too young for it, and the child superior in years or in faculty,—when they contemplate Nature, or Human Life, or anything whatever;—when they read the History of England, or Conversations on Chemistry, or Shakspere's Plays, or anything you please. Show them the sky as you are coming home at night. The one will learn to know the constellations as easily perhaps as the other, and will show somebody else the next night which is the Great Bear, and which is Orion: but the duller or younger child sees nothing more than what is before its eyes; or, if told that all those stars are worlds, believes it without seeing or feeling anything beyond the mere fact as conveyed in the words. But at the same moment the faculty of Imagination in the other child is kindling up within him,—and kindling all his other powers. He sees, by his mind, far far beyond the bounds of human measurement and the human sight;—sees the universe full of rolling suns; worlds for ever moving in their circles, and never clashing; worlds of which there are myriads vaster than our own globe. All this he sees, not by gazing at the sky; for he sees it better when his head is on his pillow,—or when his hands are busy with some mechanical employment, the next day. If he feels how, with all his busy mind and swelling heart, and whole world of ideas, he is yet but an atom in this great universe, almost too small for notice, is not this enough to make him thoughtful? and if there is a tinge of melancholy in his seriousness, may it not be allowed for? Again, in reading the History of England,—the duller or younger child may remember the kings, and the great men, and the great battles, and the great famine and plague; and perhaps almost all the events told: and, if he has some considerable conceptive faculty, he may have pictures in his mind of the ancient Britons, and then of King Alfred and his people; and then of the Normans coming over and landing, and establishing themselves in our island. But the superior child sees all this, and very much more. The minds of all the people he reads of are as manifest to him as the events of their lives. He feels the wild valour of the old Britons while he reads of them; and his soul melts in reverence, and grief, and pity for King Alfred; and then it glows with courage; and then it grows calm with faith as he sees the courage and faith that were in King Alfred. And so on, through the whole history. And even more than this. He sees more than the individuals of whom he reads could see of themselves. The kingdom and the nation are ideas in his mind, as vivid as his idea of the personages he reads of. He feels when the nation is rising or falling; rejoices when a great and good man,—a sage, or a patriot, or a martyr—arises to bless his race, and burns with indignation and grief when the wicked have their own way. Is there not something here to make him thoughtful? and if there is a tinge of melancholy in his seriousness, may it not be allowed for? Suppose these two to read "Conversations on Chemistry," or "Scientific Dialogues,"—they will see and feel as differently as in the former cases. The inferior child will find some entertainment, and particularly if allowed to try chemical experiments: but these experiments will be to him a sort of cookery;—a putting things together, in order to succeed in producing some result,—amusing or pretty. His smattering of Chemistry is to him now a plaything, whatever it may become when he is wiser. But how different is it with the elder one, whose awakened imagination now silently enters with him into every chamber of his own mind and every scene of nature—opening his vision with a divine touch, and showing him everything in its vastness and its inner truth! He does not want to try chemical experiments. He would rather think quietly of the great agents of Nature, and see them, with the eye of his mind, for ever at their work;—Heat, spreading through all things, and even hiding in the polar ice;—Electricity, darting and streaming through all substances, and being the life of all that lives; and the flowing together and mixing of three airs to make air that we can breathe,—this flowing together and mixing having gone on ever since there were breathing creatures on the globe;—these great images, and those of the forces of the waters, the pressure of the atmosphere, the velocities of motion,—the mechanical action, in short, of the great forces of Nature, occupy and move him more than any outward methods of proof of what has been laid open to him. Or, if he tries experiments, the thing that impresses him is something far higher than amusement:—it is wonder and awe, and perhaps delight that he can put his hand in among the forces of Nature, and take his share, and set Nature to work for him. Is it any wonder that his heart throbs, and his eyes swim or kindle, and that he had rather think than speak? And may he not be left undisturbed at such a moment, till his mind takes a lower tone?
It is this faculty which has produced the highest benefits to the human race that it has ever enjoyed. The highest order of men who have lived are those in whom the power of Imagination has been the strongest, the most disciplined, and the most elevated. The noblest gifts that have been given to men are the ideas which have proceeded from such minds. It is this order of mind alone that creates. Others may discover, and adapt, and improve, and establish: but it is the imaginative order of mankind that creates,—whether it be the majestic steam-engine, or the immortal picture, or the divine poem. It should be a joyful thing to parents,—though it must be a very serious one,—to see clear tokens in any child of the development of this faculty,—the faculty of seeing things invisible,—of "seeing things that are not as though they were." If it is only of average strength, it is a true blessing, inasmuch as it ennobles the views and the life of the individual, if its benefit extends no further in a direct manner. If it appears in any marked degree, the parents' hearts cannot but be elated, though they may be anxious. It is a sign of natural nobility,—of a privilege higher than hereditary or acquired honour: and greater than a monarch can bestow. Through it, if it be rightly trained, its possessor must enjoy the blessings of largeness of heart and wealth of mind, and probably of being a benefactor, more or less, to his race.
Now,—what are the tokens of this endowment? and how should it be treated?
When a young person's views extend beyond the objects immediately presented to him, it is naturally seen in his countenance, manner, speech and habits. The questions he asks, the books he reads, his remarks on what he reads or hears, all show whether his mind is deeply employed. He is probably a great reader; and if he has been religiously brought up, he probably becomes intensely religious about the time of the development of his higher faculties.—He must be treated with great consideration and tenderness. If he is of an open disposition, apt to tell of his day dreams and aspirations, there must be no ridicule,—no disrespect from any part of the household. There ought to be none; for it is pretty certain that any day dreams and aspirations of his are more worthy of respect than any ridicule with which they can be visited. The way to strengthen and discipline his mind is not, as we have often said already, to repress any of its faculties, but to employ them well. In no case is this management more important than in the present.