Education, what is needed? To demand their aim. Is it relig ion? But religion — misunderstood indeed - condemns all that is taught. Is it domestic happiness? But these talents so laboriously acquired, these talents, which remove the necessity of thinking do not appear in household habits. Is it the prosperity, the glory of the country? Mockery! what mother thinks of that in these days? Thus just as we seek the aim, the whole vanishes. Nothing for individual happiness, nothing for general prosperity! The world remains, and it is to this, in fact, that all efforts tend. The care is to please it, rather than to resist it; the wish is to shine, to reign; vanity, that is the end, to which tender mothers do not cease to point their daughters, and upon which the world, which pushes them on, sees them wrecked with indifference. Vanity in dress! Vanity in fascinating talents! "Be beautiful, be polite, you will be noticed; be gentle, be submissive, you will be heard, says a mother to her daughter; which really means, always substitute the show for the reality. The soul, like the body, has its light embellishments; it is used to them from the cradle; evil is not cured, it is only hid; the character is not changed, it is disguised. Thus vanity covers all; to seem and not to be, constitutes the sum and substance of Education." Book I. chap. 8. The lessons given in religion are mere words, which are contradicted by education and example. The contempt of the world, taught by religion, is not very consistently accompanied by constant instruction in the arts of fascination: "It seems as if the religious life and the worldly life were two champions in a mortal combat; whichever conquers, the man who embraces it is only a mutilated being, incomplete, the deplorable remains of passions or superstitions. "The complete man is he, who lives at the same time a social and religious life; with a powerful hand he ends the combat between the two adversaries, and marking out to each its place, he treads with a firm step the ways of God and according to the lights of reason. "But in order that these lights, now so rare, may be shed abroad in the world, they must shine in our Educations; they cannot reach the multitude, unless mingled with the first emotions of life, and under the irresistible influence of the mother of the family; this is the sacred lamp, which the industrious wife of Virgil lighted by night, for her toil, by the cradle of her child. "In the Paradise Lost, there is a lion whose creation is not yet finished; he is seen coming forth half formed from the earth, which is producing him; his eye shines, his hair is agitated, but his body is only an inert mass, without motion, yet fixed to the soil; impatient, he waits the last spark to burst into life. "Sublime image of mankind! There is no life but in the shead, the rest has no motion; let light penetrate to it! Snatch it from nothingness, and let it take possession of empire!"Book I. chap. 8. Such is the picture of fashionable education in France. It will apply in some measure to America. In many cases, the American picture is less pleasing. In many cases, the adoption of French ideas by American women spoils their true American character, and gives them little of the much sought elegance, except an apish affectation. True domestc worth is often lost, and the fascinations of fashionable society, which, if gained, would be but a poor compensation for the loss, are not attained. Many with whom the "morning is all rehearsal and the evening is all performance," who give to waltzing and music the time, which they owe to solid learning or domestic duties, not only sacrifice utility to show, know little of household economy and useful learning, but after all make indifferent musicians and very sorry waltzers. They are neither French, nor American, but a bad mixture of both. III. This tendency towards a merely showy education has been observed by many judicious minds, and has doubtless been the most cogent of the reasons, why so strong a movement has recently been made towards the opposite extreme, of which we will now briefly speak, as the third idea of female education. Disgusted with the frivolity of too many of the sex, indignant at the insult of rearing immortal beings, as if they were to be only the gilded butterflies of a summer hour, many sturdy spirits have maintained, that women should have an education as solid and severe as that of men. Hence the masculine school of female education. This system has found its principal advocates in England and America. The females in France, who have most ably vindicated their sex from the charge of weakness of intellect, have never advocated the masculine doctrine. A Madame de Staël, though unsurpassed by any of her sex for vigor of intellect, ever prides herself in a woman's heart, and spite of her defiance of Napoleon shows no leaning towards the doctrine of a Wolstoncraft, a Martineau, or a Grimké. Mary Wolstoncraft was the first conspicuous advocate of this system, although there have always been sturdy champions of woman's equality. We read in Bayle's Dictionary of a Lucretia Marinella, a Venetian lady, and Jacquette Guillaume, a French woman, who, about two centuries since, wrote books asserting even the superiority of women over men in every respect. Notwithstanding Mary Wolstoncraft's many sins, much wrong is generally done to her memory in deeming her an utter infidel. Her book on the Rights of Woman is based on the moral worth of the soul and its immortality. Now we can have no quarrel with any doctrine, whether brought forward by Mrs. Godwin, or less objectionably by Miss Martineau and Miss Grimké, which maintains the claims of the sex to a moral and intellectual nature, and their right to as sound an education as man enjoys. But when in union with this doctrine, it is maintained that women should be educated as politicians and orators, and should divide with man the rougher labors of life, we must dissent, not because of their inferiority, but their equality; not because we would close on woman the path of honor, but because her honor is most promoted by excellence in her own sphere, as a wife, a mother, the guardian of the young, mistress of the home, arbiter of society. IV. We have now spoken of the three leading systems of female Education, the old fashioned or domestic, the modern or showy, the masculine. Which of these shall we choose, as best? Neither, by itself, but a union of all. Woman should be skilled in the duties of the household, and yet not be so brought up, as to place the end of her existence in cooking and sewing; she should be accomplished, and yet not so showy, as to be always aiming at effect, and sacrificing substance to seeming; she should be educated intellectually and morally with the utmost thoroughness, and at the same time should never be allowed to forget that her sphere is not that of man. Thus we would advocate a fourth or Eclectic system, that should avoid the defects and comprise the excellencies of the three. This Eclectic system has many distinguished champions, and has the spirit of the age upon its side. It is maintained virtually, although not in precise terms, in the remarkable work under review. The aim of the work is to show the vast influence, which woman may exert in the civilization of the human race; woman, not as an orator or politician, but as a religious mother. The first part treats of the influence of the sex and the need of better education; the second part gives an eloquent outline of the philosophical, moral, and religious studies and opinions, appropriate to women's sphere. Napoleon said one day to Madame Campan; "the old systems of Education are good for nothing; what is wanting to the proper Education of young persons in France?" "Mothers," replied Madame Campan. This expression struck the Emperor, and led him to exclaim: "Ah! that makes the whole system of Education; we need mothers who know how to bring up their children." "This profound remark," says the author, "constitutes the subject of our book. Expecting nothing more from the present generation, hoping nothing more from our systems of public Education, we say in our turn, we need mothers, who know how to educate their children!" Our readers must bear in mind the difference between French and American society, while estimating the wisdom of the work before us. It must be remembered, especially, that what is said of marriage, as freeing the young girl from the slavish restraints of a boarding school or convent, and giving her a boundless and dangerous liberty, has little application to American life. With us, unmarried women are just as free to mingle in society, as the married. Consequently our women carry with them to married life far more practical wisdom, than the French, and are free from many of their dangers. After speaking of the progress of ideas on the subject of female education, and of the prevalent faults regarding it, Aimé Martin thus states the plan of his work. "I have shown the vices of our fashionable modes of Education, and thus far I have proposed no general reformation. ucation of the convent, education of the boarding-school, education in the family, the old method, the new method, no matter which, I take them all; but this first education ended, I take the pupil to myself and mine begins! "The young woman has left the home of her parents; she is a wife, a mother; her anxiety allows her no longer repose. See her perusing and reperusing Fenelon, Rousseau, Madame de Beaumont, Madame Guizot, Madame de Remuzat, and seek ing everywhere new rules and methods; a secret instinct tells her, that to become worthy of the education of her child, she must recommence her own. "The first thought to be given her is the importance of concerning herself less with what she should teach her child, and more with what she should inspire him. Other persons may make him learned, she alone can render him virtuous; good mother! lay hold of the young heart, and thus you will one day guide the mind. "This is the chief point, or rather the sum and substance of the education of mothers. The aim is, in effect, to release women from the narrow circle, in which society restricts them, and to extend their thoughts to all the objects, which can render them better or happier. "A religious, philosophical, and moral world is to be opened to them. It is their mission to introduce our infancy to it, as into a holy temple, where the soul studies and learns itself in the presence of its God. "Let us pause a moment upon so grave a subject. "The thought of man is not confined, like that of the animals, within the limits of this globe. It quits the visible for the invisible, and freeing itself from matter is lost in contemplations of the infinite. There all our grandeur lies, since there alone, we find the principle of our being, the bases of our morality, the last why, the last how, of our fugitive existence. Truth bursts from the immaterial world; it is the torch of the other life, which sheds its light upon this. "Thus is it, that our soul is drawn towards this unknown world by the very necessities of our earthly existence. God places here the sources of truth and virtue with the revelation of a better life! "The study of these great phenomena constitutes what Socrates would have called the important science. It is the subject of this book : "The science of ourselves, which leads to the knowledge of God. "The science of the moral laws of nature, which leads to the knowledge of truth. * * "What a destiny is that of women! equally a prey to all the seductions of pleasure, to all the pangs of grief, as mistress, as wife, as mother, without other weapons, than their weakness; who does not understand how important it is to give them an education broad and profound, which shall provide them with the resource of a virtue mightier than the griefs which await, and the seductions which threaten them? |