Culture : Part 2

Girls and Women
By Harriet E. Paine

(Page 8 of 19)

Women are seldom specialists however. Their danger is superficiality through trying to do too many things. How can we be broad without being superficial? I have elsewhere said that I believe the school education should include the rudiments of many branches, and that these rudiments should be so thoroughly mastered that the girl should be able to go on with any study by herself. I think the education should be continued along several lines, if possible. These will differ with different women; but whatever they are, it is essential that a balance should be kept between beauty and truth. Music, art, or poetry on the one hand, and science or history on the other, seem to me to give what is most needed.

In Elizabeth Shepherd's books the formula Tonkunst und Arznei - music and medicine - is often quoted, and so we should get the proper balance. I do not think that an ardent girl who loves music art, and poetry, and who hates history and science and mathematics, will ever quite do herself justice if she carries on all three of her favorite studies and ignores the others, even though her favorites are most essential to culture. I think, however, that though mathematics cannot be spared from the foundation of an education, it yields less culture on the whole to students who have no taste for it than any other study, so I do not advocate carrying it far, but history or some science would be a good counterpoise for a mind given to the study of beauty alone.

A friend says we must all be one-sided, so that perhaps our best chance is to have one hobby at a time and ride that to death, and then try another, becoming at last two, three, or four-sided, though never completely rounded. If that be the case, it seems to me a good thing to choose some of our hobbies at least from among the subjects for which we have most taste and talent. Now where the opportunities for culture have been great, it often happens that girls grow discouraged. They see how far away they are from perfection, and they conclude they are good for nothing. Do not yield to such morbid feelings. Make your own estimate of yourself, without regard to your wishes. You do in your heart know what you can do well if you are willing to work.

Make your estimate silently. It will probably be too high, but you will work in the right line. Then let half your work be in the direction in which you think you may make your life outwardly effective; for instance, if you are a Darwin let it be in the line of natural science. Let the other half of your work be constantly varied. Suppose you have chosen history as the study for a life-time, take as a companion study something new every year, - first a science, then art, then literature, then mathematics, then a language, etc., etc.

For the fruit of culture is to be and not to do; and what we are, intellectually at least, depends even more on the breadth of knowledge which helps us to balance conflicting judgments than on special knowledge which gives us accurate judgment in details. Even in the moral world, are not the finest characters those in whom many virtues are balanced rather than those in which one virtue is distorted by being allowed exclusive sway? It is a great thing to be generous, but not to be wasteful; it is great to be gentle, but not to be weak.

The philosophers tell us, however, that all things move in an ascending spiral. We do in order to be. What we are bears unconscious fruit in what we do. A woman who is cultivated in the true sense exerts a constant influence for good. One rich woman says, "I will not live to myself," and gives clothing to ragged children. Another rich woman says the same thing, and studies history and poetry and comes silently to just conclusions about the relative value of clothes and thought. She cannot be unjust to her smartly dressed maid, and her daily life lifts her maid into a new moral atmosphere; or her gently expressed judgments on all things are so unswervingly on the side of truth and love that her father and brother become ashamed of their little tricks in business or politics which they had once thought trifles. True culture does always react on life.

And yet in one direction culture seems to weaken the moral fiber. The kind of courage which leads to quick heroic action in great emergencies is apt to be lost by the habit of balancing arguments for and against action. The gentleness which comes from quiet study often makes one incapable of decision when severity is necessary. I was shocked not long ago by hearing a group of sweet, high-bred girls discussing the scene in "William Tell" where the wife of the hero tries to prevent him from going out with his bow and arrow while Gessler is in the neighborhood.

With one accord the girls thought Tell should have yielded to his wife's wish. It is true she was right in regard to the danger, but Tell's carelessness about it was so clearly the result of his high-minded freedom from suspicion that it seemed as though every heart should beat quicker at his nobleness. These girls have moral courage. I dare say some of them would die at the stake rather than tell a lie. But it would take a sharply defined test like that to rouse them. Too much thought has made it difficult for them to take any risk through unconsciousness of danger. They could not act freely and spontaneously, and they could not even admire such action in others.

How should we train our girls so that they may have just judgments and yet not make them so introspective that the bloom should be brushed off the beauty of every action? Perhaps Emerson's suggestion, that every young person should be encouraged to do what he is afraid to do, would meet the case.

In a city like Boston there is a great temptation to undertake too many lines of study at once. There are free lectures every day in the week from men who have mastered their subjects, and it seems as if one might lie still and drink in all knowledge without effort. There are lectures in private parlors for those who are too delicate to go to a public hall - elementary lectures, and advanced lectures and readings.

Copyright, 1890 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., All rights reserved.