It is unquestionable that the highest qualities of woman are displayed in her relationship to others, through the medium of her affections. She is the nurse whom nature has given to all humankind. She takes charge of the helpless, and nourishes and cherishes those we love. She is the presiding genius of the fireside, where she creates an atmosphere of serenity and contentment suitable for the nurture and growth of character in its best forms. She is by her very constitution compassionate, gentle, patient, and self-denying. Loving, hopeful, trustful, her eye sheds brightness everywhere. It shines upon coldness and warms it, upon suffering and relieves it, upon sorrow and cheers it:—
"Her silver flow
Of subtle-paced counsel in distress,
Right to the heart and brain, though undescried,
Winning its way with extreme gentleness
Through all the outworks of suspicion's pride."
Woman has been styled "the angel of the unfortunate." She is ready to help the weak, to raise the fallen, to comfort the suffering. It was characteristic of woman, that she should have been the first to build and endow an hospital. It has been said that wherever a human being is in suffering, his sighs call a woman to his side. When Mungo Park, lonely, friendless, and famished, after being driven forth from an African village by the men, was preparing to spend the night under a tree, exposed to the rain and the wild beasts which there abounded, a poor negro woman, returning from the labours of the field, took compassion upon him, conducted him into her hut, and there gave him food, succour, and shelter. [201]
But while the most characteristic qualities of woman are displayed through her sympathies and affections, it is also necessary for her own happiness, as a self-dependent being, to develope and strengthen her character, by due self-culture, self-reliance, and self-control. It is not desirable, even were it possible, to close the beautiful avenues of the heart. Self-reliance of the best kind does not involve any limitation in the range of human sympathy. But the happiness of woman, as of man, depends in a great measure upon her individual completeness of character. And that self-dependence which springs from the due cultivation of the intellectual powers, conjoined with a proper discipline of the heart and conscience, will enable her to be more useful in life as well as happy; to dispense blessings intelligently as well as to enjoy them; and most of all those which spring from mutual dependence and social sympathy.
To maintain a high standard of purity in society, the culture of both sexes must be in harmony, and keep equal pace. A pure womanhood must be accompanied by a pure manhood. The same moral law applies alike to both. It would be loosening the foundations of virtue, to countenance the notion that because of a difference in sex, man were at liberty to set morality at defiance, and to do that with impunity, which, if done by a woman, would stain her character for life. To maintain a pure and virtuous condition of society, therefore, man as well as woman must be pure and virtuous; both alike shunning all acts impinging on the heart, character, and conscience—shunning them as poison, which, once imbibed, can never be entirely thrown out again, but mentally embitters, to a greater or less extent, the happiness of after-life.
And here we would venture to touch upon a delicate topic. Though it is one of universal and engrossing human interest, the moralist avoids it, the educator shuns it, and parents taboo it. It is almost considered indelicate to refer to Love as between the sexes; and young persons are left to gather their only notions of it from the impossible love-stories that fill the shelves of circulating libraries. This strong and absorbing feeling, this BESOIN D'AIMER—which nature has for wise purposes made so strong in woman that it colours her whole life and history, though it may form but an episode in the life of man—is usually left to follow its own inclinations, and to grow up for the most part unchecked, without any guidance or direction whatever.
Although nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs of love, it might at all events be possible to implant in young minds such views of Character as should enable them to discriminate between the true and the false, and to accustom them to hold in esteem those qualities of moral purity and integrity, without which life is but a scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its name. "Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term, is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness, is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence. The sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration engendered by it, all prove its claim to a high moral influence. It is the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish part of our nature."
It is by means of this divine passion that the world is kept ever fresh and young. It is the perpetual melody of humanity. It sheds an effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo round age. It glorifies the present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by the beams it casts forward. The love which is the outcome of esteem and admiration, has an elevating and purifying effect on the character. It tends to emancipate one from the slavery of self. It is altogether unsordid; itself is its only price. It inspires gentleness, sympathy, mutual faith, and confidence. True love also in a measure elevates the intellect. "All love renders wise in a degree," says the poet Browning, and the most gifted minds have been the sincerest lovers. Great souls make all affections great; they elevate and consecrate all true delights. The sentiment even brings to light qualities before lying dormant and unsuspected. It elevates the aspirations, expands the soul, and stimulates the mental powers. One of the finest compliments ever paid to a woman was that of Steele, when he said of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, "that to have loved her was a liberal education." Viewed in this light, woman is an educator in the highest sense, because, above all other educators, she educates humanly and lovingly.
It has been said that no man and no woman can be regarded as complete in their experience of life, until they have been subdued into union with the world through their affections. As woman is not woman until she has known love, neither is man man. Both are requisite to each other's completeness. Plato entertained the idea that lovers each sought a likeness in the other, and that love was only the divorced half of the original human being entering into union with its counterpart. But philosophy would here seem to be at fault, for affection quite as often springs from unlikeness as from likeness in its object.
The true union must needs be one of mind as well as of heart, and based on mutual esteem as well as mutual affection. "No true and enduring love," says Fichte, "can exist without esteem; every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any noble human soul." One cannot really love the bad, but always something that we esteem and respect as well as admire. In short, true union must rest on qualities of character, which rule in domestic as in public life.