But if you fail, you will fail like all who fail,—not from lack of knowledge, but from lack of conduct; for the burden which in the end bears us down is that of our moral delinquencies. All else we may endure, but that is a sinking and giving way of the source of life itself. It is better, in every way, that you should be true Christian men than that you should do deeds which will make your names famous. And if you could believe this with all your heart, you would find peace and freedom of spirit, even though your labors should seem vain and your lives of little moment. The more reason and conscience are brought to bear upon you, the more will you be lifted into the high and abiding world, where truth and love and holiness are recognized to be man's proper and imperishable good. Become all it is possible for you to become. What this is you can know only by striving day by day, from youth to age, even unto the end; leaving the issue with God and His master-workman, Time.
CHAPTER IV.
WOMAN AND EDUCATION.
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone;
Not God's and not the beasts'; God is, they are;
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.—Browning.
The partialness of man's life, the low level on which the race has been content to dwell, is attributable, in no small measure, to the injustice done to woman. It was assumed she was inferior, and to make the assumption true, she was kept in ignorance, dwarfed and treated as a means rather than as an end.
The right to grow is the primal right; it is the right to live, to unfold our being on every side in the ceaseless striving for truth and love and beauty. In comparison with this, purely political and civil rights are unimportant. And in a free state this fundamental right must not only be acknowledged and defended, but a public opinion must be created which shall declare it to be the most sacred and inviolable. The principle is universal, and is as applicable to woman as to man.
There is not a religion, a philosophy, a science, an art for man and another for woman. Consequently there is not, in its essential elements at least, an education for man and another for woman. In souls, in minds, in consciences, in hearts, there is no sex. What is the best education for woman? That which will best help her to become a perfect human being, wise, loving, and strong. What is her work? Whatever may help her to become herself. What is forbidden her? Nothing but what degrades or narrows or warps. What has she the right to do? Any good and beautiful and useful thing she is able to do without hurt to her dignity and worth as a human being.
Between her and man the real question is not of more and less, of inferiority and superiority, but of unlikeness. Chastity is woman's great virtue; truthfulness, which is the highest form of courage, is man's; yet men and women are equally bound to be chaste and truthful. Mildness and sweet reasonableness are woman's subtlest charms; wisdom and valor, man's; yet women should be wise and brave, and men should be mild and reasonable. The spiritual endowment of the sexes is much the same, but they are not equally interested in the same things. Man prefers thought; woman, sentiment; he reaches his conclusions through analysis and argument; she, through feeling and intuition. He has greater power of self-control; she, of self-sacrifice. He is guided by law and principle; she, by insight and tact; he demands justice; she, equity. He wishes to be honored for wealth and position; she, for herself. For him what he possesses is a means; for her, something to which she holds and is attached. He asks for power; she, for affection. He derives his idea of duty from reason; she, from faith and love. He prefers science and philosophy; she, literature and art. His religion is a code of morality; hers, faith and hope and love and imagination. For her, things easily become persons; for him, persons are little more than things. She has greater power of self-effacement, forgetting herself wholly in her love. Whether she marry or become a nun, she abandons her name, the symbol of her identity, in proof that she is dedicate to the race and to God. The arguments of infidels have less weight with her than with man, for her sense of religion is more genuine, her faith more inevitable. She passes over objections as a chaste mind passes over what is coarse or impure. She more easily finds complacency in her appearance and surroundings, but she has less pride and conceit than man. She is more grateful, too, because she loves more, and the heart makes memory true. If her greater fondness for jewelry and showy adornment proves her to be more barbarous, her greater refinement and chastity prove her to be more civilized than man. And does not her delight in dress come of her care for beauty, which in a world of coarse and ugly creatures is a virtue as fair as the face of spring? Why should the flowers and the fields, the hills and the heavens, be beautiful, and man hideous, and the cities where he abides dismal? Are we but cattle to be stalled and fed? Are corn and beef and iron the only good and useful things? Are we not human because we think and admire, and are exalted in the presence of what is infinitely true and divinely fair?
Faith, hope, and love are larger and more enduring powers for woman than for man. She feeds the sacred fire which never dies on the altars of home and religion and country. She lives a more interior life, and more easily retains consciousness of the soul's reality and of God's presence. If she speaks less of patriotism in peaceful times, in the hour of danger the white light flashes from her soul. It is this that makes brave men think of their mothers and wives and sisters when they march to battle. They know that those sweet hearts, however keen the pangs they suffer, would rather have them dead than craven. When woman shall grow to the full measure of her endowments, a purer flame will glow upon the hearth, and love of country will be a more genuine passion.