Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

G >> George Sumner Weaver >> Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

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I would awaken young women to these things. They have their individual
interests, both temporal and eternal. They have their characters and
life-connections to form. They have great and stirring interests to hold
in their hands. They have examples to set and lives to live And they
have a mighty influence to exert in their day both upon the present and
coming generations, both upon this and the future world. The subject of
this essay is one of inexpressible interest to them. Woman is too much
in chains. She wants more freedom. And she will never have it till she
takes it herself. She should covet and seek a higher life. She should
claim her full equality with her brother, man, and strive to show
herself worthy. In woman and her life are wrapped up some of the
greatest interests and issues of humanity. O that each individual woman
could feel it, and live as realizing the solemn fact!

Lecture Five.

EDUCATION.

Life a School--Education a Work of Progress--Schools of Vice--Every
Circumstance a Teacher--Kinds of Education--Female Education--True
Womanly Ambition--Improve your Opportunities--Principles should be
Understood--Time Trifled Away--Some Excuses--Society Needs Woman's
Influence--Education as it is--Girls should have Something to Live
For.

"Life is real, life is earnest." To make life grand is the end of
living. God has a great purpose in every human soul; that purpose is its
_truthful education_. Life is God's school. He is its great
superintendent; his Son is prime instructor. The world is His primary
school-house, or, rather, our primary school-house built by him. Here we
learn the alphabet of things; and learn to spell and read a little from
the great book of God. Here we sit in our places and learn our first
lessons; stand in our classes and recite them. Here we get ready for
that college which God has built for us on the spiritual Mount Zion. In
this lower school we prepare for the department above. Our position in
that department must be determined by our dutifulness and progress in
this. Oh, solemn thought! We must be measured by our merit; we must
stand in our lot; "every man in his own order." The deeds done in the
body shall tell upon the life of the spirit. What we make for ourselves
now, shall be ours in the college-hall above. Wisdom gained in life
shall not be lost in death. It will live a halo of brightness, a crown
of glory, when "death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed." God did not
ask us whether we would come into this primary school or not; whether we
would take this lower-world life. Neither will He ask us whether we will
go into the higher department; whether we will take the upper-world
life. He gave the one; he will give the other. But the _use_ we make of
these lives He has put not a little into our own hands. What will be in
these lives He has left not a little with us. Our standings we are to
choose to a certain extent. Our characters are the workmanship of our
own hands. Our worth is of our own making. Our _Education_ is a personal
matter. God has given us minds, a school, a study-room, teachers, all
the books of nature, experience, revelation, reason, duty, affection,
and now commands us to _educate_ ourselves, promising to be with us and
assist us as our kind Superintendent in this grand work of life.

Education, strictly speaking, covers the whole area of life. It is the
word which means all God asks of us, all we owe to him, the world, and
ourselves--that great word which expresses the sum total of human duty.
Nor is it confined to this present period of life. To educate is the
work of Heaven. Time and eternity are the school periods of
intelligence. Reason may have an eternal growth. Conscience may widen
its powers and deepen its sanctities in heaven. Affection may grow in
beauty and fervor through immortal ages. Mind may expand and intensify
through eternity. To educate is to develop mind; to expand its
capacities; to strengthen its energies; to deepen its affections; to
elevate its aspirations; to sharpen its perceptions; to quicken its
actions; to intensify its emotions; to harmonize its powers; to empower
its will, and magnify its sweep of action.

Education is a work of progress. It begins in life and has no end. Death
does not terminate it. We learn the elements of things below. Above we
shall study their essences. We progress in proportion to our own
efforts. Education may be good or bad, right or wrong. Reason may grow
strong in error, may revel in falsities. The will may be mighty for
evil. The heart may grow in vice, and the passions expand in misrule.
The mind may be educated into terrible confusion, so that its passions
will clash in battle array, and its powers war with each other like
exterminating demons. The din of mental warfare and the clash of
spiritual arms are heard in almost every soul. Terrible conflicts are
within us. And whole fields of slaughtered virtues are swept over by
their death-dealing siroccos. Like nations of the earth our mental
powers are grouped together, and group confronts group like embattled
armies, sending their hissing arrows of fiery death into each other's
ranks. Power strikes at power, like single combatants on the field of
strife. Such is the awful sight seen by God in many a human soul. And
such to a greater or less extent is what He sees in each one of us; so
direful are the results of bad Education.

Few of us have been educated altogether aright. We have gained much
mental strength in wicked conflict. Our passions have expanded in
lawless riot. Our mental arms have grown strong in corrupting labors.
Our energies have been made vigorous in vicious employments. Our feet
have been made active in the dance of folly and the race of mammon. We
have risen to power in the service of a tyrant master. We have done the
bidding of sin, and made our soldiers broad to bear its Atlas burdens.
But Education has made us mighty in evil. Giants in vice stalk about us
daily who were sweet and beautiful in their babyhood as ever smiled in a
mother's face. On every hand we meet with the graduates of some school
of vice, in whom the powers of darkness are mighty for evil. Some come
out from the dark holes of intemperance; some from the luxurious saloons
of gambling; some from the gilded halls of fashion; some from those dark
places where virtue dies a bleeding sacrifice to sensuality. These are
the schools in which the mighty in wickedness are educated. And then we
have lesser schools all about us in which the young take lessons in
vice: schools on the street, schools at home, schools at the toilet,
schools in pleasure circles, schools in the market and counting-room,
where they take lessons in deception, slander, folly, anger, backbiting,
sensuality, and vice. Our schools for Education in evil are numerous,
and their teachers are legion. I believe much more in evil Education
than in innate depravity. The little cherubs that come into our arms
right from the hands of Deity are innocent and pure. The skies above us
and the flowers around us are not purer and sweeter than they. Their
little souls are immaculate. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." I can
not believe in depraved babyhood; but I must believe in depraved youth
and manhood. All about me are the sinful wrecks of once pure souls. It
is wrong Education that has made them the sad, pitiable things they are.
Oh, what wretched contortions of God's beautiful handiwork have men made
of themselves! Of all the things that God has made, the human soul is
most perfect and beautiful. The flower and trees and fields are
beautiful. The flashing aurora, the golden clouds, the sapphire sky, are
beautiful. The circling planets, the blazing sun, the starry canopy, are
beautiful. But what are they compared to a human soul? What is an
ephemeral flower or an age-lasting star compared with glorious reason,
with eternal love, with deathless benevolence, and conscience? What were
the material universe with all its sublime grandeur and awe-inspiring
magnificence with no soul to gaze upon it? And yet perfect and beautiful
as were our souls when God gave them to us, what unsightly, miserable,
demoniac things we have made of them! It is evil Education that has done
it all. We have trained our minds in wrong schools. We have educated our
powers at the feet of evil teachers. We have taken lessons in the
science of wickedness. We have followed bad examples and copied corrupt
manners. And we still do so. These things have made us what we are.

Our Education is not all got in our organized schools. Our hired
teachers and printed books are not all that act on our powers to develop
them. Life is one grand school, and its every circumstance a teacher.
Society pours in its influences upon us like the thousand streams that
flood the ocean. Scholastic men and women may speak of book Education;
it is mine to speak of life Education. Life is my field and my theme;
that great common arena where men and women do battle with the forces
about them.

We are educating all the time, and the question with us should be, How
do we educate ourselves? What manner of men and women do we make of
ourselves? The great question of life is an educational one. We all get
an Education; but the _kind_ is the point for us to determine. Some are
educated in vice, some in folly, some in selfishness, some in deception,
some in sensuality, some in nothing in particular and every thing in
general, some in goodness, some in truth and right, some in theology,
and some in religion. Our kinds of Education are legion. We can not live
without being educated some way. Every day gives us many lessons in
life. Every thought leaves its impression on the mind. Every feeling
weaves a garment for the spirit. Every passion plows a furrow into the
soul. All is motion in that mysterious, wonder-working house in which we
ourselves live--the mind.

Every hour of life has solemn, fearful results. The question should hang
all the time written in blazing capitals in the firmament of each soul,
"How am I educating?" It is wicked to let the crazy world educate us as
it will. It is awfully hazardous to yield ourselves up, as most people
do, to the circumstances of society about us. It is a fearful risk to
plunge into the stream of popular custom and float on like a dead sponge
drinking in its turbid water. Most people are like mocking-birds and
monkeys, repeating all they hear and mimicking all they see. Our duty
is to educate ourselves as we should.

Having hinted these general principles of Education, we may now address
ourselves especially to young women, and apply them to their life. The
daily life-education of the mass of young women is not what it should
be. It is much like the life-education of the mass of young men. It is
the Education of circumstances, custom, society, etc. Young women live,
think, and act just as society dictates. They wear what fashion says
shall be worn; they say what etiquette say is proper; they do what
custom dictates; their ideas of gracefulness, propriety, and life are
molded in the common mint of popular sentiment. They float on the stream
of society mere automatons in the great hand of the world. They do not
direct their own Education as though they had any object in life. They
seem to lay helpless in the hands of the world, the pets or playthings
of the day. These remarks are not very inapplicable to young men also.
There is a great body of young men who float on the stream of life with
no self-direction. Ask one of them what he lives for, and he will tell
you, "to chew tobacco, swear, be a man;" and his idea of being a man is
to be able to do these things with grace and dignity. To ask any one of
the mass of young women what she lives for, and if you can get her to
say it out, she will tell you, "to get married." Now it is certainly
right to get married, and to live with this object in view. But there is
a grand educational preparation needed for this. And this preparation is
the very thing most neglected. Every young woman should have some noble
purpose in life, some grand aim, grand in its character. She should, in
the first place, know what she is, what powers she possesses, what
influences are to go out from her, what position in life she was
designed to fill, what duties are resting upon her, what is she capable
of being, what fields of profit and pleasure are open to her, how much
joy and satisfaction she may find in a true life of womanly activity.
When she has duly considered these things, she should then form the high
purpose of being a true woman, and of making every circumstance bend to
her will for the accomplishment of this noble purpose. There is no
higher thing beneath the bending heavens than a true woman. There is no
nobler attainment this side of the spirit-land than lofty womanhood.
There is no purer ambition than that which craves this crown for her
mortal brow. To be a genuine woman, full of womanly instincts and power,
possessing the intuitive genius of her penetrating soul and the subduing
authority of her gentle, yet resolute will, is to be a peer of earth's
highest intelligence. All young women have this noble prize before them.
They may all put on the glorious crown of womanhood. They may make their
lives grand in womanly virtue. There is in every woman-child the seed of
womanhood. She may water and nourish that seed till it shall blossom in
her soul and make her spiritually beautiful. Woman has a power, a
woman-power, something peculiarly her own in her moral influences,
which, when duly developed, makes her queen over a wide realm of spirit.
This she can not exert only as her powers are cultivated. It is
cultivated woman that wields the scepter of authority among men.
Wherever cultivated woman dwells, there is refinement, intellectual and
moral power, life in its highest form. To be a cultivated woman, one
must commence early and make this the grand aim of her life. Whether she
work or play, travel or remain at home, converse with friends or study
books, gaze at flowers or toil in the kitchen, visit the pleasure party
or the sanctuary of God, she should keep her object before her mind and
tax all her powers for its attainment. She must learn to make the most
of opportunities. One fault with our young women is, that opportunities
avail them but little. They see much and perceive but little, talk much
and think but little, hear much and learn but little, read much and
acquire but little.

I suppose almost every young woman has seen many steamboats, yet it may
be doubtful whether one understands the mechanical principle by which
they are propelled and directed. They have seen the flowers and
vegetation, birds and beasts, of our region of country, and yet they
doubtless are about as ignorant of them as of the products of the torrid
zone. They live under our form of government, yet how many know wherein
it differs from other governments! They have heard or read of almost
every science, yet how little acquainted are they with the commonest
principles of science! They have all had their countenances
daguerreotyped, yet who knows how it is done? They all wear silk,
cotton, linen, yet who knows the history of either one of these articles
of apparel? They have bodies "fearfully and wonderfully made," yet how
little they know of their structure, laws, and uses! They have minds,
beautiful and immortal gifts of divine wisdom and goodness, yet how
little attention have they given to learn their principles of action!
All around them are little worlds of every-day things upon which they
have never bestowed a passing thought, things which are full of
interest; yet the common habit of seeing much and thinking little has
led them into this same superficial habit. It is like the young man of
whom I was told a few days since, who had traveled all over the world,
rode on every sea and ocean, and visited every principal seaport, and
yet knew nothing of any of them. It is a sad fault with us all, and
especially with women--we don't _think_ enough. The mass of young women
trifle a great portion of their life away on the smallest imaginable
things. They chatter like birds and gabble like geese, without the
trouble of _thinking_. The things they see and hear every day awaken no
consecutive thought. The stars shine above them, and they call them
pretty things, but never ask the astronomic story of their magnificence.
The world beats its great march of life around them, but they seek not
to know the rich lessons of human activity therein. I know that society
does not hold out so great inducements for woman to think and educate
herself as it ought. I know woman is oppressed with legal and customic
disabilities. I know she is shut out from many fields of activity and
industry for which she is eminently fitted by her natural endowments. I
know that her labor is not half rewarded, that her ambition is cramped
into a narrow field. I know that by custom and law she is the slave of
man, who holds her person, children, and property in his custody. I know
that men think they must be silly and simpering in woman's presence,
because they suppose she can appreciate and enjoy nothing higher. I know
that many men have an awful horror of "strong-minded women," really
educated women. I know that any thing beyond housewifery or parlor
gracefulness by many is considered unwomanly; yet woman may overcome all
the obstacles in her way if she will educate herself to _think_, and
think soundly and forcibly. She must be her own deliverer from these
barbaric customs and laws, and her own _thought_ must be the instrument
of delivery. Let women everywhere become solid thinkers so far as their
capacities will admit, instead of triflers; let their life-education be
deep, useful, and practical, instead of superficial and theoretical; let
them be as well acquainted with the principles of society as they are
with those of fashion; let them be as much interested in human progress
as they are in dress and gossip; let them take into their hands the keys
of knowledge and unlock the storehouses of practical wisdom all about
them, and go in and lay hold of the treasures, and human society would
soon blossom as the rose. The great thing needed now by our society is
more woman-influence--more woman-thought, character, and power. Our
female Education is too superficial, trifling, babyish. Our girls are
not half developed. Our young women do not exhibit one half their real
strength and beauty. Their minds are robbed of much of their natural
vigor. They are dwarfed by their delicate nutriment.

As soon as a little girl begins to be a young lady she must be shut up
in the house; talked to as though she did not know much; read novels; be
dressed up; go to parties; have suitors; take lessons in music; have a
dancing master; visit the theater; go a term or two to the young ladies'
seminary to practice calisthenics; study Botany without seeing a flower,
Astronomy without looking at a star or planet, Geology without stepping
into the dirt or putting her hand upon a rock; write a half-dozen
compositions on friendship, mother, and home; daub a little in
water-paints; receive a diploma, and then set up for matrimony. This is
female Education--without an object, without ambition, without point or
force, without strength, depth, or breadth. It is simply a little
outside polish. It does not teach how to _think_; it does not develop
mind; it does not confer power; it does not form character; it does not
fix the will, direct the life, establish opinion, deepen sentiment, or
do any thing to make a true woman.

Our young women want a more vigorous, practical, and useful Education,
one that shall develop strength, character and resolution; one that
shall give growth to the mind, power to the will, and efficiency to the
life; one that shall enable any woman to be independent, true to
herself, to entertain and maintain her own opinions, to get her own
living, to mark out her own course in life, to count one in any position
she may choose to occupy, to be all that may belong to a free,
independent, accountable, intelligent creature. They want to be educated
so they will know their own powers, understand their own duties, and
comprehend the value of life too well to waste it on trifles. They want
to be able to _know_ the world in which they move, to take an active
part in all life's duties, to converse intelligently upon all ordinary
subjects, and make a useful figure in the circles in which they move.

Woman's powers are eminently practical. She has a strong judgment, a
rich store of practical good sense, an ample fund of tact, skill,
shrewdness, inventiveness, and management. Women are the best managers
in the world so far as they have had experience and a field of action.
Not one whit behind are they in every department of life to which they
have had access.

Now if our girls were reared to the practical duties of life, trained to
some great and good end, taught to live for something, have some grand
and noble purpose in life, and live to that purpose, how much richer in
all that embellishes life and magnifies humanity would be our world!

Our boys have something to live for. Each one says, "I'll be this or
that; I'll do so and so when I'm a man. The world must know that I live.
I must hew out my way, make me a mark, tell a story that my fellows
shall hear." And so each one educates himself into his purpose. But how
is it with our girls? What do they live for? What do they expect to be
and do when they are women? They have powers equal to the boys--can play
as well, run as fast, learn as readily, manage as skillfully, perceive
as quickly, are as dutiful, useful, and efficient. Why should the boys
grow up with a great and good purpose before them, while the girls grow
up for nothing? See what a woman has to do, and what mighty springs of
action and influence she holds in her hands. She sits on a throne of
power at the very fountain of life. She is goddess of all the springs
and little rivulets of humanity. She makes men and trains them. As
mother, wife, and friend she wields a triune scepter of vast power. She
rears the twigs that grow into the oaks of the world. She may bend them
at her will. If woman was rightly educated, who could tell what a race
of men would grow up to people the coming ages? How can the woman-mind,
undeveloped, untrained, uninspired with great aims, grand and brave
resolutions and actions, impress the minds of the generation to come
with strength, power, activity, intellectual and moral vigor? It can
not. Oh, it is a burning shame that our women are not educated to a
greater vigor of body and mind! They should be strong in will thought,
action, love, resolution. They should be stout-hearted, high-souled,
brave-purposed, yet always womanly. If the world were mine, and I could
educate but one sex, it should be the girls. I could make a greater and
better world of the next generation by educating the girls of this. It
is not half so important that our legislators be wise, as that our
mothers be so. It is not half so important that our men be brave, as
that our women be so. Strengthen the women-heart, and you strengthen the
world. Give me a nation of noble women, and I will give you a noble
nation. Cultivate the woman-mind if you would cultivate the race.

Lecture Six.

PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.

Natural Position of Woman--Relations of Body and Mind--Sound Minds
only in Sound Bodies--To be Healthy is a Duty--Physical Laws
Obligatory--Penalties for Violation--Girls and their
Grandmothers--Causes of Difference--Physiological Studies
Advised--Women the 'Weaker Vessel;' Why?--Intelligence and
Beauty--Woman's Sound Judgment--Woman's Mind not Powerless--Finished
Educations--Education at Home--Schools only Helps to
Education--Woman's Thought Wanted.

We have treated the subject of education in its widest and most general
sense. We propose now to treat the same general subject more definitely
in relation to _Physical and Intellectual Development_.

Such is the natural position of woman in human society, that the welfare
and progress of that society depends in no small degree upon her
culture. She presides over the fountains of life, all life--both male
and female. She impregnates every human being with the qualities of her
soul. She images herself in all men's being. Into the very woof of
existence she weaves the shreds of her own being. Woman's soul colors,
forms, molds, modifies, endows the soul of humanity. It is so. It must
be so. The infant-mind sleeps in the mother-mind till all its powers are
set and their tendencies established. The child-being is subject to
every mood of mind and state of body which exists in the mother-being.
Then the early twig is nurtured and the early blossom unfolded on
woman's bosom. Woman performs the first work of culture, imparts the
first ideas, awakens the first thoughts, aspirations, and emotions,
stirs the first tides of feeling, and wields the first scepter in the
minds of all men. In a secondary sense, she is the maker of all men.
This being the primary fact of human existence, her education is the
first work in human progress. To cultivate her is to cultivate the race.
To elevate and dignify her is to elevate and dignify the world. As she
goes up she bears every thing human with her. Depress her, and the world
sinks. If you would ennoble and dignify the world, do this for its
women, and the work is done. If you legislate for the world, legislate
for woman. If you would educate the world, educate woman. If you would
give freedom to the world, give it to woman. If you would redeem the
world, redeem woman. The world lies in her arms. She nurtures it on her
bosom; she rocks it in her cradle; she breathes into it the breath of
its mental life. Above her it can not rise. She is the fountain, and the
stream rises not above it. What woman is in any nation or age, the
people of that nation or age will be. Noble women give nobility to the
sphere of action and influence in which they move. Genius, worth, mental
and moral power, owe more to woman than to all things else. If I wished
to bless the world, I should bless woman. If I wished to sweeten a
stream, I should mingle the sweet in its fountain. If I wished to make
an oak strong, I would put water and nourishment at its roots. If I
wished to rear me a noble horse, I should take care that its mother
possessed the strength and qualities I wished in the animal. It is clear
to my mind, if we would do a good thing for mankind, we must do it for
woman. Woman should be unshackled, her soul set free, her ambition
awakened, her nobility developed, her strength nurtured, her mind
educated, her normal sense quickened, her consciences sanctified, her
affections taught to wind their tendrils about all that is noble.

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