Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

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

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Such being the natural position of woman, we hold it as a self-evident
truth, that she should be educated deeply, thoroughly, solidly; that the
first work of every reformer, every philanthropist, every statesman,
every Christian, is to help and urge onward the education of woman.

I. The dwelling-place of the human mind, the instrument of its actions
in its world-sphere, is the body. Between the mind and body there is an
intimate, mysterious, and wonderful relation. They act and react upon
each other. The condition of each one affects the condition of the
other: a diseased body tends to produce a diseased condition of mind; a
disturbed mind wears upon the body; a nervous hot-blooded body is a
constant irritation and flame to the mind; a passionate, restless mind
gives no peace to the body.

Thus they act and react upon each other in all their multiform
movements, conditions, and activities. No action or condition of the one
is negative to the other. The state of the body, then, is important to
the mind, to its free and easy action, to its natural growth and ready
culture. This is a fact criminally overlooked by the great mass of
mankind, and especially by women. It is overlooked by many teachers, and
in our general system of mental education.

To train the body is our first care. To develop its strength, to secure
and preserve proper tone, to make it harmonious, active, and beautiful,
to plant in its vitality the roses of health and sow in its blood the
seeds of enduring life and activity, is our first and imperious duty. To
neglect the body is to neglect the mind. To abuse the body is to abuse
the mind. To enervate, irritate, or corrupt the body is to produce a
like effect upon the mind. To beat, bruise, and shatter the house in
which we live is to do violence to the dweller therein. Every pain in
the body, every weakness, every injury done to it, does a harm to the
mind. In ordinary life we do not receive this as true; yet in all severe
cases we know it is so. But there can be no doubt that it is true the
world over and life through. The mind is our principal care. And we are
to nurture our bodies as the present instrument of mental action. If the
instrument is shattered and diseased, the action of the mind will be
correspondingly imperfect and weak. The body is the instrument on which
the mind makes the music of life; and if we would have that music
harmonious and sweet, we must have a good instrument and keep it in good
tune. The wonderful genius of Ole Bull, whose strains seem almost
divine, and full of the mysterious and infinite depths of meaning that
belong to music in its highest power, could never make the notes of woe
or joy dance at his will like things of life, from the strings of a
broke and rickety instrument. He must have an instrument alive in every
nerve, sound in every limb, perfect in every part, sensitive to the
touch of the sounding bow, before his genius can revel in the melody of
music and charm the souls of others in the ecstasies of musical delight.
So it is with our bodies. They must be perfect in all their wonderfully
and fearfully made parts before the minds which use them can make
harmonious the music of life. This is no idle dream. It is the language
of philosophy, the utterings of experience, the voice of reason. A
sickly body will never do well the biddings of the mind.

It is so; it must be so; virtue can never be all she may be and ought to
be, in a sickly and fevered body. Reason can never wield her grandest
scepter of power on a shattered and trembling throne. Love can never be
that pure, constant, heavenly flame which is a proper symbol of divine
affection in a bosom racked with pain or oppressed with weakness. The
divine energies of humanity can never urge the soul to a realization of
its highest ideals of excellency in a frame overcome with disease,
relaxed with dissipation, or oppressed with unnatural burdens. Yes, the
body must be sound, healthy, perfect, to realize the highest mental
states of which we are capable. Feeble and sickly is the best culture we
can give to a mind locked in a feeble and tormented body. No proposition
is clearer then, than that we should nurture, cherish, and invigorate
our bodies with the most watchful care and rigid and healthful
discipline. It is wicked to neglect or abuse them. We violate the most
sacred principles of duty when we harm the dwelling-places of our souls.
To carelessly expose ourselves to any physical danger, to engage in any
species of dissipation or intemperance, to ruthlessly waste in any way
the physical energies which God has given us, to recklessly weaken,
sicken, mar, or injure our bodies is as much a sin as to violate the
commands of the Decalogue, or deny in practice the principles of the
moral law. God will not hold such an offender guiltless. The visitation
of His retribution is and will be upon such transgressors. It is our
duty to be healthy, to obey the physical laws of our being, to possess
sound and active bodies. Every pain, fever, sickness, is a retributive
evidence of a violation of these laws; and for every such violation we
not only suffer physical evil, but we suffer mentally, morally,
socially, and spiritually. We belittle ourselves in the sight of God and
men, bemean ourselves in the presence of the moral law, and stay more or
less our progress in the great educational work of life. If we would be
eminently pious, benevolent, and good, we must be healthy. If we would
be endowed with wisdom, virtue, and love, we must be healthy. If we
would win men's deepest confidence and God's highest approval, we must
be healthy. If we would develop most vigorously all our powers of mind
and heart, and give the richest possible culture to our souls, we must
be sound in body. If we would impart the greatest possible intellectual
and moral vigor to the generation to come, we must obey the laws of
health. If we would progress most rapidly in the divine life, and win
the brightest laurels for our spiritual brows, we must cultivate well
our physical powers. Life's attainments and heaven's joys are not a
little affected by our physical conditions. We are of those who believe
that we have no right to abuse our bodies, no right to be the puny,
feeble, sickly things the most of us are; no right to carry about
consuming disease and cankering maladies that eat out our joys and waste
our powers. We have no right to make our bodies pestiferous hospitals to
bear about the seeds of disease, weakness, and misery. Our physical
education is the very first thing to be attended to. In childhood and
youth it is a matter of great moment. Every child should be thoroughly
instructed in his physical duties, and every youth should make himself
wise in all matters pertaining to life and health. I deem this subject
of vast importance to young women. Their usefulness and happiness depend
in no small degree upon it. Their progress in the arts of life, their
influence on the generations to come, their degree of culture and power,
depend much upon their obedience to the laws of health. If they would be
the women they ought to be, noble, high-minded, matronly women,
impressed with a lofty sense of their duty and high and generous
conceptions of womanhood, it is imperatively important that they
cultivate judiciously the greatest possible strength and activity of
body. What a sickly womanhood grows up in a nervous, feeble, neuralgic,
splenetic female body!

How is it with our young women? Are they vigorous and healthy? Can they
eat well, sleep well, work well, walk well, bear well the changes of
climate, endure heat and cold, toil and fatigue, trial and study? Are
their forms full of life and health, their muscles full of strength and
activity, their chests well expanded, their lungs full and free, their
hearts large and strong, sending out the currents of life ladened with
their stores of well-formed nutriment? Ah, would it were so! But we know
it is not. Our young women are sickly house-plants, that a chill wind
will shake or an untimely frost nip and wither. They are pet-birds, with
no strength of wing to bear life's long, brave flight. Colds and coughs,
aches and pains, weaknesses and diseases innumerable prey upon them.
They faint at the sight of a spider and scream at the far-off hiss of a
serpent. They are full of weaknesses and pains that wear out life and
enervate all their mental and spiritual powers. The women of our day
grow old in their youth. They often have all the marks of fifty years of
age at twenty-five--decayed teeth, sallow skins, sunken cheeks, wrinkled
faces, nervous debility, and a whole crowd of female ailments. Our
grandmothers at sixty years were stouter and more capable of endurance
than our young women at twenty-five. Why is it so? Simply because our
girls and their mothers have neglected to cultivate their physical
powers. They have been shut up in tight rooms, bound up in bandages, fed
on sweetmeats and spices, doctored with poisons, dressed in whalebones
and death-cords, petted like house-plants, steeped in tea and coffee,
till they are nothing but bundles of shattered nerves and diseased
muscles. There may be noble exceptions, but this is the general rule.
Our men and women are all too weak and sickly. But we know that our men
are by far the most healthy. And well it may be so. Our boys are turned
out to stretch their limbs and try their muscles, while the girls are
compelled to look at them through the windows. It is a burning shame to
imprison all the little girls in the country, to shut them in from the
fresh air and the life-giving sun, from the green fields and the flowing
water-brooks, from the woods and hills where health is breathing in
every gale and strength is made at every bounding step. All the girls
should wear good, tight boots, loose, flowing short-dresses, open
sun-bonnets, and then run, and shout, and laugh in natural out-of-doors
glee. They should sleep in cool, well-ventilated rooms; eat simple,
coarse, plain food; exercise much in health-giving work and play; drink
pure, cold water, and bathe in it daily; be taught to practice
temperate, prudent, and regular habits; learn the laws of health and how
to obey them, the physiology of their own bodies, and what is demanded
for health and strength. Such a course of early physical training will
impart beauty, vivacity, cheerfulness, amiability, strength of mind,
warmth of heart, and moral stability, more surely and rapidly than can
otherwise be done. Girls thus trained will possess a higher and nobler
womanhood, exert a wider and deeper influence in their families and
spheres, impart firmer bodies and richer minds to their children than
those who are rocked through girlhood in luxury and dress and shut up
in confined air and more confined dresses. We are pampering our women to
death. We are killing them with tenderness, not with enlightened moral
and affectionate tenderness, but with the tenderness of folly, fashion,
luxury, idleness, with the tenderness of vicious habits of life.

My advice to all young women is, that they learn the laws of health and
strength as soon as possible, and obey them to the very best of their
ability; that they study the physiology of their own systems, and know
how fearfully and wonderfully they are made, and what conditions of life
are necessary to the fullest and most perfect physical development; that
they live with the resolute determination that they will be well, and
that not a pain or weakness shall be felt without tracing it immediately
to its real cause and applying the proper remedy at once; that health
shall be deemed a condition of happiness and its maintenance a religious
duty; that sickness shall be considered a sin and pain, a just
chastisement of God for it. When our young women are thus physically
trained, they will be prepared to bless the world as it never has been
blessed; they will usher in a period of moral and intellectual grandeur
such as the world has never witnessed; they will exert a strong
woman-influence in every sphere of thought and action which will be at
once refining, ennobling, and redeeming; they will so establish correct
habits of living, so sanctify the altars of home, so adorn the walks of
social life, that the very heart of the great body of society will throb
anew with fresh impulse of life and send out its currents of health and
strength to the remotest parts.

II. With such a physical preparation, we are ready for intellectual
action, for the education of mind.

Woman has not had a fair chance for the culture of her mind. She has
been continually anathematized and tormented with the idea that she is
the "weaker vessel." Her father, her brother, and her husband have
always told her that her mind was weak and small, and that it could not
comprehend great things nor do great works. Sometimes her mother and
sister are joined in this wholesale slander of the female mind. When a
little girl she has been paralyzed with the thought of her inferiority.
All through her youth it has been a dead weight on her mental activity.
Through her life it has ever muffled the harp of her heart and weighed
down the wings of her aspirations. It has been an incubus of
discouragement in all intellectual pursuits. How could woman be any
thing with the whole world against her? with even those she loved best,
and in whose judgment she most confided, all the time reminding her of
her mental weakness and inferiority? And as it has been, so it is. Woman
is still believed intellectually inferior to man, by ninety-nine one
hundredths of mankind. Poor, weak, silly, drunken, half-idiotic men,
whose wives have to support them, will tell you in conscious pride of
sex of woman's weakness of mind. I have heard little Lilliputian men,
whose minds were as small as a baby's rattle-box, always harping on this
worn-out string of woman's weakness of mind. It is an idea not peculiar
to enlightened people. The savages believe it, and many of them believe
that she is only a pretty beast without a soul that is given to man to
bear his burdens. Among savage, barbarous, and half-civilized people,
woman's inferiority is never questioned. The idea is entertained in its
bald usurpation and black injustice without a questioning thought. Among
us it is covered over a little with cotton beauty and rolled up in
sugar-plum sweetness so the woman will bear it a little better. Our
women are tickled with the idea that they are the _beauty_. Our public
speakers, lecturers, papers, speak of the audiences of _intelligence_
and _beauty_, meaning by _intelligence_ the men and by _beauty_ the
women; a deep insult to the woman-mind.

I freely admit that the mass of men in our country do possess more
intelligence than the women; but the reason is not because of woman's
inferiority, but because of her oppression and want of opportunity. She
has not had half a chance. She has been shut out from almost every field
of intellectual labor, barred from every position of trust and profit,
laughed at by baby men and silly women if she attempted to devote her
life to intellectual pursuits, opposed with the most barbarous legal
disabilities and the still more barbarous incubus of public opinion. Yet
notwithstanding all this oppression and want of opportunity, she has
shown a quickness of perception, an intuitive acumen, a sharpness of
forecast and solidity of judgment that among nearly all married men has
made her opinion a matter of great importance. Few are the married men
that are willing to risk a disrespect of their wives' judgment in any
important matter. An eminent lawyer of Virginia once told me that but
twice in his married life had he acted counter to his wife's advice, and
in both instances his judgment failed and hers was right. Many men have
found their wives' intuitive judgment so correct that they dare not
resist it, as though it were the utterings of an oracle. It is well
known that such men as Bonaparte and Jackson have relied with great
confidence upon their wives' opinions. So universal is this opinion
among men, that all our best moralists and most sage philosophers advise
all married men to consult their wives on all important matters, and to
be very cautious about resisting the settled convictions of woman, not
as a matter of courtesy or policy, but because of the accurate
perceptions and sound judgments of woman's mind.

This is not all fustian for the flattery of women; it is the deliberate
conviction of our best and wisest minds. And yet a great majority of
these same minds can not get rid of the idea that woman's intellect is
inferior.

Though the mass of women of all countries have been intellectually
undeveloped, we have instances enough to show that the woman-mind is as
powerful, close-sighted, and active as man's. Women have ruled the
mightiest nations, mastered the abstruse sciences, led vigorous armies
to victory, written powerful books, made vigorous and brilliant
achievements in eloquence, commanded vessels, conducted complicated
commercial relations, edited influential journals and papers, sat in
chairs of learning and done every thing necessary to show that the
female mind is not wanting in power. Yet if the female mind were weaker,
it is not an argument against its education. Mind should be educated,
whether little or much, weak or strong. And woman's natural position is
such, that all the mind she has should be developed and richly
cultivated.

We talk much about female education; we have female schools and
colleges; and one might think, to read of them, that we educated the
female mind. But it is a sad mistake. The greater part of our female
seminaries and colleges are mere shams. They do not develop mind. They
do not train its muscles to hard work; they do not discipline its nerves
to close application and vigorous research; they do not harden its hands
to the toil of thinking, nor strengthen its arms to battle with the
intricacies of science nor the problems of metaphysics. They are mere
gilding shops, whitewashing establishments, paint factories, where girls
are polished to order with the etiquette of boarding-school finish.

We send our girls to these schools to be educated; but educated for
what? Why, nothing in particular; but to be educated because it is
fashionable; to go home and sit in the parlor _educated ladies_; to talk
about novels and poetry with the gentlemen that come in; to go into
ecstasies over some boy's _last_; to set up for a professional husband.
It is to go _over_, not _through_, some of the sciences, but do it
because it is fashionable; recite and write and go through all the forms
of school training, just because it sounds well and will give a lady
social position, not literary standing or scientific character,
intellectual influence, or dignity of thought and life; and go through
it all and graduate with diploma in hand at fourteen or sixteen years of
age. Here again women are cheated with a bauble. Little girls are told
that they are educated at this tender age, and to prove it are referred
to their diplomas, announcing to the world that they have been through a
regular course of study at such an institution. Only think of it--a
finished education at sixteen! Why, the majority of our young men can
not get ready for college till they are twenty or twenty-five. There
they spend four years in hard study and the most vigorous mental
discipline, delving in the deep mines of science and untombing the rich
archives of history and human thought; then study three years the
masters of their professions. And even then they are but boys in thought
and action, and must meet the hard discipline of active life before we
award to them intellectual manhood. We compare these educated girls with
these educated young men, and wonder at the weakness of the female mind!
The girls went to school because it was fashionable; the boys at the
call of an honorable ambition. The girls studied to appear well in
society; the boys to tread life's highway with honor and win laurels
from the hand of the world in the duties of useful professions. The
girls were stimulated by nothing that was great and noble in action; the
boys were fired by all that can stir up human ambition. True, the innate
glory of cultivated minds was before them both, but that alone in our
present sensuous life has seldom been found a sufficient stimulus to
vigorous intellectual discipline. I should be glad to see a class of our
strongest young women go through Dartmouth, Yale, and Cambridge colleges
with the same preparation and stimulants that our young men possess. If
I mistake not, they would graduate with honors, and be heard from in the
high field of intellectual life.

But as this can not be at present, our young women must make the best of
the opportunities they have. What education they do get should be
thorough, practical, and from proper motives. They must fill woman's
place, and they ought to prepare for it as thoroughly as possible. They
have an intellectual life to live and intellectual duties to perform.
How poorly they will live that life and perform those duties without a
preparation. Many young women can not attend school and enjoy the common
routine of mental discipline; but they may read and study at home; they
may cultivate their minds by the fireside; in the lecture-room, in the
church, and in the intellectual circle. The midnight hour may impart
strength to their minds, and the morning dawn may find them storing them
with useful knowledge. The world is full of good books, and from them
they may glean invaluable treasures. Every young woman spends time
enough in idle gossip and foolish flirtation to educate herself well.
Schools are not necessary--they are only helps to education. Many great
minds have been educated without them. To educate is to learn to think.
The way to learn to think is to practice thinking; "Practice makes
perfect." The archer practices with his bow; the artist with his brush
or chisel; the writer with his pen; the mechanic with his tool; the
lawyer with his brief. So the student should practice with his
mind--practice thinking, reasoning, investigating, analyzing, comparing,
and illustrating. This is the practice our young female minds want. They
do not think enough. They do not dig for thought, search for ideas,
investigate for truth. They are too light, frivolous, and giddy. They
will run by a great thought to trifle with a silly whim. They will leave
a rich intellectual lecture for a giddy party. They will turn away from
a mental feast to enjoy an idle gossip; I mean too many of them will.

How beautiful, how truly captivating, is an intellectual woman! We have
many such among us, and their number is increasing. The female mind is
awakening from its long slumber. In ten years we shall have many more.
Our present female education will soon be too superficial. These surface
students will soon be left in the shade. Woman is hearing the voice of
God which commands her to use well her talents. Soon He will call for
them, and she must answer for their use. It is an omen of good that
woman is rising and putting on her strength. She has a rich mind, and I
am glad that she is becoming aware of it.

Young women, heed the voice which asks you to educate. If you heed it
not, you may look meagre and antiquated by-and-by. In that "good time
coming" how sad a thing will be an uneducated woman, one whose mind is
barren of thought! You are to live, or ought to live, through two
generations. If you live only for to-day, you will be minus to-morrow.
If you live for to-morrow, you will be bright lights in your day and
generation. There is a work for you to do. You must sanctify the thought
of the world. Our men are too worldly and sensual in their
intellectuality. You are to redeem their minds from this baseness. We
want more pure thought, more sanctified mind, more looking upward toward
goodness, heaven, and God. And with your assistance we may be redeemed
from this downward tendency. I have often said it: the world wants more
woman's thought. It is too masculine, hard, inflexible. Our men think
too much by rules of logic. Educated women would be more intuitive,
spontaneous, religious. You may remedy this evil. Much responsibility
rests upon the young women of to-day. Let them know it, and lay aside
their folly and lightness and put on the garments of wisdom and truth.

Lecture Seven.

MORAL AND SOCIAL CULTURE.

Woman Judges by Impressions--Mental Powers should Harmonize--Effects
of Different Culture--Male and Female Minds Differ--The Female Mind
Analyzed--Feminine Purity--Woman's Benevolence--The Sentiment of
Duty--Integrity in Woman--Cultivate Regard for Truth--Piety the
Crown of Moral Virtues--Cultivation of Piety Urged--Development of
Social Nature--Friendship and Love.

Few subjects can be more interesting to high-minded young women than
those which are the theme of this Lecture--MORAL and SOCIAL Culture.
Concerning the moral and social deportment of women's nature there can
be no difference of opinion. I am happy in knowing that although men
differ about woman's intellectual capacities, they agree in ascribing to
her the highest order of moral and social qualities. All admit that
woman is the morality and religion, the love and sociality, of humanity.
In these developments of human attainments, she is the queen without a
peer. These are at present woman's peculiar fields of power. Society has
measurably shut her out from the intellectual arena of life. But if it
has cut short her operations in this, it has extended them in the field
of social life. Wide and grand are her opportunities here. Man is not so
deficient in gallantry as he is in generosity and judgment. In what man
has oppressed woman, it is more the fault of his head than his heart; it
is more a weakness of conscience than of affection. He is prouder of his
judgment than he ought to be. His judgment often fails because it is not
sanctified by conscience. His intellect is often deceived because its
vision is not extended and widened by a deep affection and a broad
benevolence. In this, woman has the advantage of him in the present
relations of the sexes. Her moral sense consecrates her intellect, and
her heart quickens it, thus making her judgment more intuitive and
ready, more comprehensive and sure. She _feels_ that a thing is so; he
_reasons_ that it is so. She judges by _impression_ when facts are
stated; he by _logic_. Her impressions she can not always explain,
because her intellect has not been sufficiently cultivated; his logic
often fails him, because it is not sufficiently imbued with the moral
element. The light of the conscience and the heart does not shine upon
it with sufficient strength. This we understand to be the present
difference between the male and female mind. It is more than a
difference in growth and culture, in inherent constitution. We do not
believe that the relation between the different departments of the human
mind naturally differ in men and women; that is, we do not believe that
man is more intelligent and less moral, and women more moral and less
intellectual. A perfect male mind is an equal strength of the several
departments of mind; that is, an equal strength of the intellectual,
moral, social, and energetic portions of the mind, a balance among its
several powers. The same is true of the female mind.

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