"What is that long word you used, Hester?"
"Now, papa, how provoking you are! Have you not yourself taught me to cultivate every faculty to perfection, as a duty? Have you not often said that the world has yet to learn the results of an equipoised, many-sided development? That hitherto too strong a bias has been given, and that a one-sided training has made a one-sided character?"
"I have said this. Hester, but what is this to the purpose?"
"Why, perfectibility must mean the tendency toward perfection produced by this equipoised, by this many-sided development; and woman must be the chief operator in effecting this equipoised development, because woman is the exclusive educator of the young of either sex; and it is when young, when very young, that the germs are laid of ideas which perish not. Physiologists say that though character is modified afterward, the form is, for the most part, given ere the seventh year has been attained."
"It may be so, but what of that?" asked the father.
"Why, I think, then, that woman's especial vocation is to the study of this perfectibility: that is, how to procure a due development—how to teach the race to aspire. It seems to me that, generally speaking, the aims of the world are very grovelling and sensual. If we could once fire the race with the desire of reaching the utmost perfection of which there nature is capable, methinks a glorious work would be begun, and after ages might be brought almost to doubt of the misery that now exists, their own position would be so different."
"It is a glorious project," said the father turning to the animated girl, "but a difficult one; the world is large, and every one thinks his own ideas the right ones."
"I know it; but I know, too that that thought must not check an inspiration. Individuals have changed the face of nations before now. Had they suffered their enthusiasm to be checked by dwelling on how little one [{475}] person can do, nothing would ever have been done. An individual who feels an intense interest in any subject, and a full conviction that such a subject is likely to benefit his co-patriots, is bound to carry forward his views to the utmost of his power."
"You may be right—nay, the principle is right; but what can my little Hester do?"
"She can study and think and experimentalize and observe and have the benefit of her father's advice through all, if only he will give it her, if only he will put it out of his head that every girl is born to be married, and that a girl cannot think and act for herself, and cherish ideas of philanthropy and work for the public good."