What an excellent counsellor would a man not find in a wife, if only she could think—a counsellor, after all, whose interests, apart from one single object, and one which does not last beyond the morning of life, are exactly identical with his own!
One of the finest prerogatives of the mind is that it provides old age with consideration. See how the arrival of Voltaire in Paris makes the Royal majesty pale. But poor women! so soon as they have no longer the brilliance of youth, their one sad happiness is to be able to delude themselves on the part they take in society.
The ruins of youthful talents become merely ridiculous, and it were a happiness for our women, such as they actually are, to die at fifty. As for a higher morality—the clearer the mind, the surer the conviction that justice is the only road to happiness. Genius is a power; but still more is it a torch, to light the way to the great art of being happy.
Most men have a moment in their life when they are capable of great things—that moment when nothing seems impossible to them. The ignorance of women causes this magnificent chance to be lost to the human race. Love, nowadays, at the very most will make a man a good horseman or teach him to choose his tailor.
I have no time to defend myself against the advances of criticism. If my word could set up systems, I should give girls, as far as possible, exactly the same education as boys. As I have no intention of writing a book about everything and nothing, I shall be excused from explaining in what regards the present education of men is absurd. But taking it such as it is (they are not taught the two premier sciences, logic and ethics), it is better, I say, to give this education to girls than merely to teach them to play the piano, to paint in water-colours and to do needlework.
Teach girls, therefore, reading, writing and arithmetic by the monitorial[(44)] system in the central convent schools, in which the presence of any man, except the masters, should be severely punished. The great advantage of bringing children together is that, however narrow the masters may be, in spite of them the children learn from their little comrades the art of living in the world and of managing conflicting interests. A sensible master would explain their little quarrels and friendships to the children, and begin his course of ethics in this way rather than with the story of the Golden Calf.[5]
No doubt some years hence the monitorial system will be applied to everything that is learnt; but, taking things as they actually are, I would have girls learn Latin like boys. Latin is a good subject because it accustoms one to be bored; with Latin should go history, mathematics, a knowledge of the plants useful as nourishment or medicine; then logic and the moral sciences, etc. Dancing, music and drawing ought to begin at five.
At sixteen a girl ought to think about finding a husband, and get from her mother right ideas on love, marriage, and the want of honesty that exists among men.[6]
Tu es Petrus, and super hanc petram
Ædificabo Ecclesiam meam.
(See M. de Potter, Histoire de l'Église.)