CHAPTER LV(43)OBJECTIONS TO THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN

... a woman always knows enoughIf but her range of understanding reachesTo telling one from t'other, coat and breeches.(Les Femmes Savantes, Act II, Scene VII.)[Translation of C. H. Page, New York, 1908.]

At Paris, this is the highest praise for a young girl of a marriageable age: "There is so much that's sweet in her character, and she's as gentle as a lamb." Nothing has more effect on the idiots looking out for wives. But see them two years later, lunchingtête-à-têtewith their wives some dull day, hats on and surrounded by three great lackeys!

We have seen a law carried in the United States, in 1818, which condemns to thirty-four strokes of the cat anyone teaching a Virginian negro to read.[1]Nothing could be more consequent and more reasonable than a law of this kind.

Were the United States of America themselves more useful to the motherland when they were her slaves or since they have become her equals? If the work of afree man is worth two or three times that of a man reduced to slavery, why should not the same be true of that man's thought?

If we dared, we would give girls the education of a slave; and the proof of this is that if they know anything useful, it is against our wish we teach it them.

"But they turn against us the little education which unhappily they get hold of," some husbands might say. No doubt; and Napoleon was also quite right not to give arms to the National Guard; and the reactionaries are also quite right to proscribe the monitorial system(44). Arm a man, and then continue to oppress him, and you will see that he can be so perverse as to turn his arms against you, as soon as he can.

Even if it were permissible to bring girls up like idiots, onAve Mariasand lewd songs, as they did in the convents of 1770, there would still be several little objections:—

1. In the case of the husband's death, they are called upon to manage the young family.

2. As mothers, they give their male children, the young tyrants of the future, their first education, that education which forms the character, and accustoms the soul to seek happiness by this route rather than by that—and the choice is always an accomplished fact by four or five.

3. In spite of all our pride, the advice of the inevitable partner of our whole life has great influence on those domestic affairs on which our happiness depends so particularly; for, in the absence of passion, happiness is based on the absence of small everyday vexations. Not that we would willingly accord this advice the least influence, but she may repeat the same thing to us for twenty years together. Whose is the spirit of such Roman fortitude as to resist the same idea repeated throughout a whole lifetime? The world is full of husbands who let themselves be led, but it is from weaknessand not from a feeling for justice and equality. As they yield perforce, the wife is always tempted to abuse her power, and it is sometimes necessary to abuse power in order to keep it.

4. Finally, in love, and during a period which, in southern countries, often comprises twelve or fifteen years, and those the fairest of our life, our happiness is entirely in the hands of the woman we love. One moment of untimely pride can make us for ever miserable, and how should a slave raised up to a throne not be tempted to abuse her power? This is the origin of women's false refinement and pride. Of course, there is nothing more useless than these pleas: men are despots and we see what respect other despots show to the wisest counsels. A man who is all-powerful relishes only one sort of advice, the advice of those that tell him to increase his power. Where are poor young girls to find a Quiroga or a Riego(45)to give the despots, who oppress them, and degrade them the better to oppress them, that salutary advice, whose just recompense are favours and orders instead of Porlier's(45)gallows?

If a revolution of this kind needs several centuries, it is because, by a most unlucky chance, all our first experiences must necessarily contradict the truth. Illuminate a girl's mind, form her character, give her, in short, a good education in the true sense of the word—remarking sooner or later her own superiority over other women, she becomes a pedant, that is to say, the most unpleasant and the most degraded creature that there is in the world. There isn't one of us who wouldn't prefer a servant to asavante, if we had to pass our life with her.

Plant a young tree in the midst of a dense forest, deprived of air and sun by the closeness of the neighbouring trees: its leaves will be blighted, and it will get an overgrown and ridiculous shape—notits natural shape. We ought to plant the whole forest at once. What woman is there who is proud of knowing how to read?

Pedants have repeated to us for two thousand years that women were more quick and men more judicious, women more remarkable for delicacy of expression and men for stronger powers of concentration. A Parisian simpleton, who used once upon a time to take his walk in the gardens of Versailles, similarly concluded from all he saw that trees grow ready clipped.

I will allow that little girls have less physical strength than little boys: this must be conclusive as regards intellect; for everyone knows that Voltaire and d'Alembert were the first boxers of their age! Everyone agrees, that a little girl of ten is twenty times as refined as a little boy of the same age. Why, at twenty, is she a great idiot, awkward, timid, and afraid of a spider, while the little boy is a man of intellect?

Women only learn the things we do not wish to teach them, and only read the lessons taught them by experience of life. Hence the extreme disadvantage it is for them to be born in a very rich family; instead of coming into contact with beings who behave naturally to them, they find themselves surrounded by maidservants and governesses, who are already corrupted and blighted by wealth.[2]There is nothing so foolish as a prince.

Young girls soon see that they are slaves and begin to look about them very early; they see everything, but they are too ignorant to see properly. A woman of thirty in France has not the acquired knowledge of a small boy of fifteen, a woman of fifty has not the reason of a man of twenty-five. Look at Madame de Sévigné admiring Louis XIV's most ridiculous actions. Look at the puerility of Madame d'Épinay's reasonings.[3]

"Women ought to nurse and look after their children." I deny the first proposition, I allow the second. "They ought, moreover, to keep their kitchen accounts."—Andso have not time to equal a small boy of fifteen in acquired knowledge! Men must be judges, bankers, barristers, merchants, doctors, clergymen, etc., and yet they find time to read Fox's speeches and theLusiadof Camoëns.

The Pekin magistrate, who hastens at an early hour to the law courts in order to find the means of imprisoning and ruining, in perfect good faith, a poor journalist who has incurred the displeasure of an Under-Secretary of State, with whom he had the honour of dining the day before, is surely as busy as his wife, who keeps her kitchen accounts, gets stockings made for her little daughter, sees her through her dancing and piano lessons, receives a visit from the vicar of the parish who brings her theQuotidienne, and then goes to choose a hat in the Rue de Richelieu and take a turn in the Tuileries.

In the midst of his noble occupations this magistrate still finds time to think of this walk his wife is taking in the Tuileries, and, if he were in as good odour with the Power that rules the universe as with that which rules the State, he would pray Heaven to grant women, for their own good, eight or ten hours more sleep. In the present condition of society, leisure, which for man is the source of all his happiness and all his riches, is for women so far from being an advantage as to rank among those baneful liberties, from which the worthy magistrate would wish to help deliver us.

[1]I regret to be unable to find in the Italian manuscript the quotation of an official source for this fact; I hope it may be found possible to deny it.[2]Memoirs of Madame de Staël, Collé, Duclos, the Margrave of Bayreuth.[3]The first volume.

[1]I regret to be unable to find in the Italian manuscript the quotation of an official source for this fact; I hope it may be found possible to deny it.

[2]Memoirs of Madame de Staël, Collé, Duclos, the Margrave of Bayreuth.

[3]The first volume.

"But women are charged with the petty labours of the household." The Colonel of my regiment, M. S——, has four daughters, brought up on the best principles, which means that they work all day. When I come, they sing the music of Rossini, that I brought them from Naples. For the rest, they read the Bible of Royaumont, they learn what's most foolish in history, that is to say, chronological tables and the verses of Le Ragois; they know a great deal of geography, embroider admirably—and I expect that each of these pretty little girls could earn, by her work, eight sous a day. Taking three hundred days, that means four hundred and eighty francs a year, which is less than is given to one of their masters. It is for four hundred and eighty francs a year that they lose for ever the time, during which it is granted to the human machine to acquire ideas.

"If women read with pleasure the ten or twelve good volumes that appear every year in Europe, they will soon give up the care of their children."—'Tis as if we feared, by planting the shore of the ocean with trees, to stop the motion of the waves. It is not in this sense that education is all-powerful. Besides, for four hundred years the same objection has been offered to every sort of education. And yet a Parisian woman has more good qualities in 1820 than she ever had in 1720, the age of Law's system and the Regency, and at that time the daughter of the richest farmer-general had a less good educationthan the daughter of the pettiest attorney gets to-day. Are her household duties less well performed as a result? Certainly not. And why? Because poverty, illness, shame, instinct, all force her to fulfil them. It is as if you said of an officer who is becoming too sociable, that he will forget how to handle his horse; you have to remember that he'll break his arm the first time he's slack in the saddle.

Knowledge, where it produces any bad effects at all, does as much mischief to one sex as to the other. We shall never lack vanity, even in the completest absence of any reason for having it—look at the middle class in a small town. Why not force it at least to repose on real merit, on merit useful or agreeable to society?

Demi-fools, carried away by the revolution that is changing everything in France, began twenty years ago to allow that women are capable of something. But they must give themselves up to occupations becoming their sex:educate flowers, make friendships with birds, and pick up plants. These are called innocent amusements.

These innocent pleasures are better than idleness. Well! let's leave them to stupid women; just as we leave to stupid men the glory of composing verses for the birthday of the master of the house. But do men in good faith really mean to suggest to Madame Roland or to Mistress Hutchinson[1]that they should spend their time in tending a little Bengal rose-bush?

All such reasoning can be reduced to this: a man likes to be able to say of his slave: "She's too big a fool to be a knave."

But owing to a certain law calledsympathy—a law of nature which, in truth, vulgar eyes never perceive—the defects in the companion of your life are not destructive of your happiness by reason only of the direct ill theycan occasion you. I would almost prefer that my wife should, in a moment of anger, attempt to stab me once a year, than that she should welcome me every evening with bad spirits.

Finally, happiness is contagious among people who live together.

Let your mistress have passed the morning, while you were on parade or at the House of Commons, in painting a rose after a masterpiece of Redouté, or in reading a volume of Shakespeare, her pleasure therein will have been equally innocent. Only, with the ideas that she has got from her rose she will soon bore you on your return, and, indeed, she will crave to go out in the evening among people to seek sensations a little more lively. Suppose, on the contrary, she has read Shakespeare, she is as tired as you are, she has had as much pleasure, and she will be happier to give you her arm for a solitary walk in the Bois de Vincennes than to appear at the smartest party. The pleasures of the fashionable world are not meant for happy women.

Women have, of course, all ignorant men for enemies to their instruction. To-day they spend their time with them, they make love to them and are well received by them; what would become of them if women began to get tired of Boston? When we return from America or the West Indies with a tanned skin and manners that for six months remain somewhat coarse, how would these fellows answer our stories, if they had not this phrase: "As for us, the women are on our side. While you were at New York the colour of tilburies has changed; it's grey-black that's fashionable at present." And we listen attentively, for such knowledge is useful. Such and such a pretty woman will not look at us if our carriage is in bad taste.

These same fools, who think themselves obliged, in virtue of the pre-eminence of their sex, to have more knowledge than women, would be ruined past all hope, ifwomen had the audacity to learn something. A fool of thirty says to himself, as he looks at some little girls of twelve at the country house of one of his friends: "It's in their company that I shall spend my life ten years from now." We can imagine his exclamations and his terror, if he saw them studying something useful.

Instead of the society and conversation of effeminate men, an educated woman, if she has acquired ideas without losing the graces of her sex, can always be sure of finding among the most distinguished men of her age a consideration verging on enthusiasm.

"Women would become the rivals instead of the companions of man." Yes, as soon as you have suppressed love by edict. While we are waiting for this fine law, love will redouble its charms and its ecstasy. These are the plain facts: the basis on which crystallisation rests will be widened; man will be able to take pleasure in all his ideas in company of the woman he loves; nature in all its entirety will in their eyes receive new charms; and as ideas always reflect some of the refinements of character, they will understand each other better and will be guilty of fewer imprudent acts—love will be less blind and will produce less unhappiness.

Thedesire of pleasing secures all that delicacy and reserve which are of such inestimable value to womenfrom the influence of any scheme of education. 'Tis as though you feared teaching the nightingales not to sing in the spring-time.

The graces of women do not depend on their ignorance; look at the worthy spouses of our village bourgeois, look at the wives of the opulent merchants in England. Affectation is a kind of pedantry; for I call pedantry the affectation of letting myself talk out of season of a dress by Leroy or a novel by Romagnesi, just as much as the affectation of quoting Fra Paolo(46)and the Council of Trentà proposof a discussion on our own mild missionaries. It is the pedantry of dress and good form, itis the necessity of saying exactly the conventional phrase about Rossini, which kills the graces of Parisian women. Nevertheless, in spite of the terrible effects of this contagious malady, is it not in Paris that exist the most delightful women in France? Would not the reason be that chance filled their heads with the most just and interesting ideas? Well, it is these very ideas that I expect from books. I shall not, of course, suggest that they read Grotius of Puffendorf, now that we have Tracy's(47)commentary on Montesquieu.

Woman's delicacy depends on the hazardous position in which she finds herself so early placed, on the necessity of spending her life in the midst of cruel and fascinating enemies.

There are, perhaps, fifty thousand females in Great Britain who are exempted by circumstances from all necessary labour:but without work there is no happiness. Passion forces itself to work, and to work of an exceedingly rough kind—work that employs the whole activity of one's being.

A woman with four children and ten thousand francs income works by making stockings or a frock for her daughter. But it cannot be allowed that a woman who has her own carriage is working when she does her embroidery or a piece of tapestry. Apart from some faint glow of vanity, she cannot possibly have any interest in what she is doing. She does not work.

And thus her happiness runs a grave risk.

And what is more, so does the happiness of her lord and master, for a woman whose heart for two months has been enlivened by no other interest than that of her needlework, may be so insolent as to imagine that gallant-love, vanity-love, or, in fine, even physical love, is a very great happiness in comparison with her habitual condition.

"A woman ought not to make people speak abouther." To which I answer once more: "Is any woman specially mentioned as being able to read?"

And what is to prevent women, while awaiting a revolution in their destiny, from hiding a study which forms their habitual occupation and furnishes them every day with an honourable share of happiness. I will reveal a secret to them by the way. When you have given yourself a task—for example, to get a clear idea about the conspiracy of Fiescho(48), at Genoa in 1547—the most insipid book becomes interesting. The same is true, in love, of meeting someone quite indifferent, who has just seen the person whom you love. This interest is doubled every month, until you give up the conspiracy of Fiescho.

"The true theatre for a woman is the sick-chamber." But you must be careful to secure that the divine goodness redoubles the frequency of illnesses, in order to give occupation to our women. This is arguing from the exceptional.

Moreover, I maintain that a woman ought to spend three or four hours of leisure every day, just as men of sense spend their hours of leisure.

A young mother, whose little son has the measles, could not, even if she would, find pleasure in reading Volney's Travels in Syria, any more than her husband, a rich banker, could get pleasure out of meditating on Malthus in the midst of bankruptcy.

There is one, and only one, way for rich women to distinguish themselves from the vulgar: moral superiority. For in this there is a natural distinction of feeling.[2]

"We do not wish a lady to write books." No, but does giving your daughter a singing-master engage you to make her into an opera-singer? If youlike, I'll say that a woman ought only to write, like Madame de Staël (de Launay), posthumous works to be published after her death. For a woman of less than fifty to publish is to risk her happiness in the most terrible lottery: if she has the good fortune to have a lover, she will begin by losing him.

I know but one exception: it is that of a woman who writes books in order to keep or bring up her family. In that case she ought always to confine herself to their money-value when talking of her own works, and say, for example, to a cavalry major: "Your rank gives you four thousand francs a year, and I, with my two translations from the English, was able last year to devote an extra three thousand five hundred francs to the education of my two boys."

Otherwise, a woman should publish as Baron d'Holbach or Madame de la Fayette did; their best friends knew nothing of it. To print a book can only be without inconvenience for a courtesan; the vulgar, who can despise her at their will for her condition, will exalt her to the heavens for her talent, and even make a cult of it.

Many men in France, among those who have an income of six thousand francs, find their habitual source of happiness in literature, without thinking of publishing anything; to read a good book is for them one of the greatest pleasures. At the end of ten years they find that their mind is enlarged twofold, and no one will deny that, in general, the larger the mind the fewer will be its passions incompatible with the happiness of others.[3]I don't suppose anyone will still deny that the sons of a woman who reads Gibbon and Schiller will have more genius than the children of one who tells her beads and reads Madame de Genlis.

A young barrister, a merchant, an engineer can belaunched on life without any education; they pick it up themselves every day by practising their profession. But what resources have their wives for acquiring estimable or necessary qualities? Hidden in the solitude of their household, for them the great book of life necessarily remains shut. They spend always in the same way, after discussing the accounts with their cook, the threelouisthey get every Monday from their husbands.

I say this in the interest of the tyrant: the least of men, if he is twenty and has nice rosy cheeks, is a danger to a woman with no knowledge, because she is wholly a creature of instinct. In the eyes of a woman of intellect he will produce as much effect as a handsome lackey.

The amusing thing in present-day education is that you teach young girls nothing that they won't have to forget as soon as they are married. It needs four hours a day, for six years, to learn to play the harp well; to paint well in miniature or water-colours needs half that time. Most young girls do not attain even to a tolerable mediocrity—hence the very true saying: "Amateur means smatterer."[4]

And even supposing a young girl has some talent; three years after she is married she won't take up her harp or her brushes once a month. These objects of so much study now only bore her—unless chance has given her the soul of an artist, and this is always a rarity and scarcely helpful in the management of a household.

And thus under the vain pretext of decency you teach young girls nothing that can give them guidance in the circumstances they will encounter in their lives. You do more—you hide and deny these circumstances in order to add to their strength, through the effect (i) of surprise, and (ii) of mistrust; for education, oncefound deceitful, must bring mistrust on education as a whole.[5]I maintain that one ought to talk of love to girls who have been well brought up. Who will dare suggest in good faith that, in the actual state of our manners, girls of sixteen do not know of the existence of love? From whom do they get this idea so important and so difficult to give properly? Think of Julie d'Étanges deploring the knowledge that she owes to la Chaillot, one of the maidservants. One must thank Rousseau for having dared be a true painter in an age of false decency.

The present-day education of women being perhaps the most delightful absurdity in modern Europe, strictly speaking the less education they have, the better they are.[6]It is for this reason perhaps that in Italy and Spain they are so superior to the men, and I will even say so superior to the women of other countries.

[1]See the Memoirs of these admirable women. I could find other names to quote, but they are unknown to the public, and moreover one cannot even point to living merit.[2]See Mistress Hutchinson refusing to be of use to her family and her husband, whom she adored, by betraying certain of the regicides to the ministers of the perjured Charles II. (Vol. II, p. 284.)[3]It is this that gives me great hopes for the rising generation among the privileged classes. I also hope that any husbands who read this chapter will be milder despots for three days.[4]The contrary of this proverb is true in Italy, where the loveliest voices are heard among amateurs who have no connection with the theatre.[5]The education given to Madame d'Épinay. (Memoirs, Vol. I.)[6]I make an exception as regards education in manners: a woman enters a drawing-room better in Rue Verte than in Rue St. Martin.

[1]See the Memoirs of these admirable women. I could find other names to quote, but they are unknown to the public, and moreover one cannot even point to living merit.

[2]See Mistress Hutchinson refusing to be of use to her family and her husband, whom she adored, by betraying certain of the regicides to the ministers of the perjured Charles II. (Vol. II, p. 284.)

[3]It is this that gives me great hopes for the rising generation among the privileged classes. I also hope that any husbands who read this chapter will be milder despots for three days.

[4]The contrary of this proverb is true in Italy, where the loveliest voices are heard among amateurs who have no connection with the theatre.

[5]The education given to Madame d'Épinay. (Memoirs, Vol. I.)

[6]I make an exception as regards education in manners: a woman enters a drawing-room better in Rue Verte than in Rue St. Martin.

In France all our ideas about women are got from a twopence-halfpenny catechism. The delightful part of it is that many people, who would not allow the authority of this book to regulate a matter of fifty francs, foolishly follow it word for word in that which bears most nearly on their happiness. Such is the vanity of nineteenth-century ways!

There must be no divorce because marriage is a mystery—and what mystery? The emblem of the union of Jesus Christ with the Church. And what had become of this mystery, if the Church had been given a name of the masculine gender?[1]But let us pass over prejudices already giving way,[2]and let us merely observe this singularspectacle: the root of the tree sapped by the axe of ridicule, but the branches continuing to flower.

Now to return to the observation of facts and their consequences.

In both sexes it is on the manner in which youth has been employed that depends the fate of extreme old age—this is true for women earlier than for men. How is a woman of forty-five received in society? Severely, or more often in a way that is below her dignity. Women are flattered at twenty and abandoned at forty.

A woman of forty-five is of importance only by reason of her children or her lover.

A mother who excels in the fine arts can communicate her talent to her son only in the extremely rare case, where he has received from nature precisely the soul for this talent. But a mother of intellect and culture will give her young son a grasp not only of all merely agreeable talents, but also of all talents that are useful to man in society; and he will be able to make his own choice. The barbarism of the Turks depends in great part on the state of moral degradation among the beautiful Georgians. Two young men born at Paris owe to their mothers the incontestable superiority that they show at sixteen over the young provincials of their age. It is from sixteen to twenty-five that the luck turns.

The men who invented gunpowder, printing, the art of weaving, contribute every day to our happiness, and the same is true of the Montesquieus, the Racines and the La Fontaines. Now the number of geniuses produced by a nation is in proportion to the number of men receiving sufficient culture,[3]and there is nothing to prove to me that my bootmaker has not the soul to write likeCorneille. He wants the education necessary to develop his feelings and teach him to communicate them to the public.[4]

Owing to the present system of girls' education, all geniuses who are born women are lost to the public good. So soon as chance gives them the means of displaying themselves, you see them attain to talents the most difficult to acquire. In our own days you see a Catherine II, who had no other education but danger and ...; a Madame Roland; an Alessandra Mari, who raised a regiment in Arezzo and sent it against the French; a Caroline, Queen of Naples, who knew how to put a stop to the contagion of liberalism better than all our Castlereaghs and our Pitts. As for what stands in the way of women's superiority in works of art, see thechapter on Modesty, article 9. What might Miss Edgeworth not have done, if the circumspection necessary to a young English girl had not forced her at the outset of her career to carry the pulpit into her novel?

What man is there, in love or in marriage, who has the good fortune to be able to communicate his thoughts, just as they occur to him, to the woman with whom he passes his life? He may find a good heart that will share his sorrows, but he is always obliged to turn his thoughts into small change if he wishes to be understood, and it would be ridiculous to expect reasonable counsel from an intellect that has need of such a method in order to seize the facts. The most perfect woman, according to the ideas of present-day education, leaves her partner isolated amid the dangers of life and soon runs the risk of wearying him.

What an excellent counsellor would a man not find in a wife, if only she could think—a counsellor, after all, whose interests, apart from one single object, and one which does not last beyond the morning of life, are exactly identical with his own!

One of the finest prerogatives of the mind is that it provides old age with consideration. See how the arrival of Voltaire in Paris makes the Royal majesty pale. But poor women! so soon as they have no longer the brilliance of youth, their one sad happiness is to be able to delude themselves on the part they take in society.

The ruins of youthful talents become merely ridiculous, and it were a happiness for our women, such as they actually are, to die at fifty. As for a higher morality—the clearer the mind, the surer the conviction that justice is the only road to happiness. Genius is a power; but still more is it a torch, to light the way to the great art of being happy.

Most men have a moment in their life when they are capable of great things—that moment when nothing seems impossible to them. The ignorance of women causes this magnificent chance to be lost to the human race. Love, nowadays, at the very most will make a man a good horseman or teach him to choose his tailor.

I have no time to defend myself against the advances of criticism. If my word could set up systems, I should give girls, as far as possible, exactly the same education as boys. As I have no intention of writing a book about everything and nothing, I shall be excused from explaining in what regards the present education of men is absurd. But taking it such as it is (they are not taught the two premier sciences, logic and ethics), it is better, I say, to give this education to girls than merely to teach them to play the piano, to paint in water-colours and to do needlework.

Teach girls, therefore, reading, writing and arithmetic by the monitorial(44)system in the central conventschools, in which the presence of any man, except the masters, should be severely punished. The great advantage of bringing children together is that, however narrow the masters may be, in spite of them the children learn from their little comrades the art of living in the world and of managing conflicting interests. A sensible master would explain their little quarrels and friendships to the children, and begin his course of ethics in this way rather than with the story of the Golden Calf.[5]

No doubt some years hence the monitorial system will be applied to everything that is learnt; but, taking things as they actually are, I would have girls learn Latin like boys. Latin is a good subject because it accustoms one to be bored; with Latin should go history, mathematics, a knowledge of the plants useful as nourishment or medicine; then logic and the moral sciences, etc. Dancing, music and drawing ought to begin at five.

At sixteen a girl ought to think about finding a husband, and get from her mother right ideas on love, marriage, and the want of honesty that exists among men.[6]

[1]Tu es Petrus, and super hanc petramÆdificabo Ecclesiam meam.(See M. de Potter,Histoire de l'Église.)[2]Religion is a matter between each man and the Divinity. By what right do you come and place yourself between my God and me? I accept a proctor appointed by the social contract only in those matters which I cannot do myself.Why should not a Frenchman pay his priest like his baker? If we have good bread in Paris, the reason is that the State has not yet ventured to declare the provision of bread gratuitous and put all the bakers at the charge of the Treasury.In the United States every man pays his own priest. These gentry are compelled to have some merit, and my neighbour does not see good to make his happiness depend on submitting me to his priest. (Letters of Birkbeck.)What will happen if I have the conviction, as our fathers did, that my priest is the intimate ally of my bishop? Without a Luther, there will be no more Catholicism in France in 1850. That religion could only be saved in 1820 by M. Grégoire(49): see how he is treated.[3]See the Generals of 1795.[4]As regards the arts, here we have the great defect of a reasonable government as well as the sole reasonable eulogy of monarchyà laLouis XIV. Look at the literary sterility of America. Not a single romance like those of Robert Burns or the Spaniards of the thirteenth century. See the admirable romances of the modern Greeks, those of the Spaniards and Danes of the thirteenth century, and still better, the Arabic poetry of the seventh century.[5]My dear pupil, your father loves you; this makes him give me forty francs a month to teach you mathematics, drawing—in a word, how to earn your living. If you were cold, because your overcoat was too small, your father would be unhappy. He would be unhappy because he would sympathise, etc., etc. But when you are eighteen, you yourself will have to earn the money needed to buy your overcoat. Your father, I have heard, has an income of twenty-five thousand francs, but there are four of you children; therefore you will have to accustom yourself to do without the carriage you enjoy while you live with your father, etc., etc.[6]Yesterday evening I listened to two charming little girls of four years old singing very gay love-songs in a swing which I was pushing. The maidservants teach them these songs and their mother tells them that "love" and "lover" are words without any meaning.

[1]Tu es Petrus, and super hanc petramÆdificabo Ecclesiam meam.(See M. de Potter,Histoire de l'Église.)

[1]

Tu es Petrus, and super hanc petramÆdificabo Ecclesiam meam.(See M. de Potter,Histoire de l'Église.)

[2]Religion is a matter between each man and the Divinity. By what right do you come and place yourself between my God and me? I accept a proctor appointed by the social contract only in those matters which I cannot do myself.Why should not a Frenchman pay his priest like his baker? If we have good bread in Paris, the reason is that the State has not yet ventured to declare the provision of bread gratuitous and put all the bakers at the charge of the Treasury.In the United States every man pays his own priest. These gentry are compelled to have some merit, and my neighbour does not see good to make his happiness depend on submitting me to his priest. (Letters of Birkbeck.)What will happen if I have the conviction, as our fathers did, that my priest is the intimate ally of my bishop? Without a Luther, there will be no more Catholicism in France in 1850. That religion could only be saved in 1820 by M. Grégoire(49): see how he is treated.

Why should not a Frenchman pay his priest like his baker? If we have good bread in Paris, the reason is that the State has not yet ventured to declare the provision of bread gratuitous and put all the bakers at the charge of the Treasury.

In the United States every man pays his own priest. These gentry are compelled to have some merit, and my neighbour does not see good to make his happiness depend on submitting me to his priest. (Letters of Birkbeck.)

What will happen if I have the conviction, as our fathers did, that my priest is the intimate ally of my bishop? Without a Luther, there will be no more Catholicism in France in 1850. That religion could only be saved in 1820 by M. Grégoire(49): see how he is treated.

[3]See the Generals of 1795.

[4]As regards the arts, here we have the great defect of a reasonable government as well as the sole reasonable eulogy of monarchyà laLouis XIV. Look at the literary sterility of America. Not a single romance like those of Robert Burns or the Spaniards of the thirteenth century. See the admirable romances of the modern Greeks, those of the Spaniards and Danes of the thirteenth century, and still better, the Arabic poetry of the seventh century.

[5]My dear pupil, your father loves you; this makes him give me forty francs a month to teach you mathematics, drawing—in a word, how to earn your living. If you were cold, because your overcoat was too small, your father would be unhappy. He would be unhappy because he would sympathise, etc., etc. But when you are eighteen, you yourself will have to earn the money needed to buy your overcoat. Your father, I have heard, has an income of twenty-five thousand francs, but there are four of you children; therefore you will have to accustom yourself to do without the carriage you enjoy while you live with your father, etc., etc.

[6]Yesterday evening I listened to two charming little girls of four years old singing very gay love-songs in a swing which I was pushing. The maidservants teach them these songs and their mother tells them that "love" and "lover" are words without any meaning.

The fidelity of married women, where love is absent, is probably something contrary to nature.[1]

Men have attempted to obtain this unnatural result by the fear of hell and sentiments of religion; the example of Spain and Italy shows how far they have succeeded.

In France they have attempted to obtain it by public opinion—the one dyke capable of resistance, yet it has been badly built. It is absurd to tell a young girl: "You must be faithful to the husband of your choice," and then to marry her by force to a boring old dotard.[2]

"But girls are pleased to get married." Because, under the narrow system of present-day education, the slavery that they undergo in their mother's house is intolerably tedious; further, they lack enlightenment; and, lastly, there are the demands of nature. There is but one way to obtain more fidelity among married women: it is to give freedom to girls and divorce to married people.

A woman always loses the fairest days of her youth in her first marriage, and by divorce she gives fools the chance of talking against her.

Young women who have plenty of lovers have nothing to get from divorce, and women of a certain age, who have already had them, hope to repair their reputation—in France they always succeed in doing so—by showing themselves extremely severe against the errors which have left them behind. It is generally some wretched young woman, virtuous and desperately in love, who seeks a divorce, and gets her good name blackened at the hands of women who have had fifty different men.

[1]Not probably—but certainly. With love there, one has no taste for any water but that of the beloved fount. So far fidelity is natural.In the case of marriage without love, in less than two years the water of this fountain becomes bitter. Now the desire for water always exists in nature. Habits may conquer nature, but only when it can be conquered in an instant: the Indian wife who burns herself (October 21st, 1821), after the death of the old husband whom she hated; the European girl who barbarously murders the innocent child to whom she has just given life. But for a very high wall the monks would soon leave the monastery.[2]Even down to details, with us everything that regards the education of women is comic. For example, in 1820, under the rule of these very nobles who have proscribed divorce, the Home Office sends to the town of Lâon a bust and a statue of Gabrielle d'Estrées. The statue is to be set up in the public square, apparently to spread love of the Bourbons among the young girls and to exhort them, in case of need, not to be cruel to amorous kings and to give scions to this illustrious family.But, in return, the same office refuses the town of Lâon a bust of Marshal Serrurier, a brave man who was no gallant, and moreover had been so vulgar as to begin his career by the trade of private soldier. (Speech of General Foy,Courrierof 17th June, 1820. Dulaure, in his curiousHistory of Paris, Amours of Henry IV.)

[1]Not probably—but certainly. With love there, one has no taste for any water but that of the beloved fount. So far fidelity is natural.

In the case of marriage without love, in less than two years the water of this fountain becomes bitter. Now the desire for water always exists in nature. Habits may conquer nature, but only when it can be conquered in an instant: the Indian wife who burns herself (October 21st, 1821), after the death of the old husband whom she hated; the European girl who barbarously murders the innocent child to whom she has just given life. But for a very high wall the monks would soon leave the monastery.

[2]Even down to details, with us everything that regards the education of women is comic. For example, in 1820, under the rule of these very nobles who have proscribed divorce, the Home Office sends to the town of Lâon a bust and a statue of Gabrielle d'Estrées. The statue is to be set up in the public square, apparently to spread love of the Bourbons among the young girls and to exhort them, in case of need, not to be cruel to amorous kings and to give scions to this illustrious family.But, in return, the same office refuses the town of Lâon a bust of Marshal Serrurier, a brave man who was no gallant, and moreover had been so vulgar as to begin his career by the trade of private soldier. (Speech of General Foy,Courrierof 17th June, 1820. Dulaure, in his curiousHistory of Paris, Amours of Henry IV.)

But, in return, the same office refuses the town of Lâon a bust of Marshal Serrurier, a brave man who was no gallant, and moreover had been so vulgar as to begin his career by the trade of private soldier. (Speech of General Foy,Courrierof 17th June, 1820. Dulaure, in his curiousHistory of Paris, Amours of Henry IV.)

Myself, I honour with the name of virtue the habit of doing painful actions which are of use to others.

St. Simon Stylites, who sits twenty-two years on the top of a column beating himself with a strap, is in my eyes, I confess, not at all virtuous; and it is this that gives this essay a tone only too unprincipled.

I esteem not a bit more the Chartreux monk who eats nothing but fish and allows himself to talk only on Thursday. I own I prefer General Carnot, who, at an advanced age, puts up with the rigours of exile in a little northern town rather than do a base action.

I have some hope that this extremely vulgar declaration will lead the reader to skip the rest of this chapter.

This morning, a holiday, at Pesaro (May 7th, 1819), being obliged to go to Mass, I got hold of a Missal and fell upon these words:—

Joanna, Alphonsi quinti Lusitaniae regis filia, tanta divini amoris flamma praeventa fuit, ut ab ipsa pueritia rerum caducarum pertaesa, solo coelestis patriae desiderio flagraret.

The virtue so touchingly preached by the very beautiful words of theGénie du Christianisme(50)is thus reduced to not eating truffles for fear of a stomach-ache. It is quite a reasonable calculation, if you believe in hell; but it is a self-interested calculation, the most personal and prosaic possible. That philosophic virtue, which so well explains the return of Regulus to Carthage, and which was responsible for some similar incidents in ourown Revolution,[1]proves, on the contrary, generosity of soul.

It is merely in order not to be burned in the next world, in a great caldron of boiling oil, that Madame de Tourvel resists Valmont. I cannot imagine how the idea, with all its ignominy, of being the rival of a caldron of boiling oil does not drive Valmont away.

How much more touching is Julie d'Étanges, respecting her vows and the happiness of M. de Wolmar.

What I say of Madame de Tourvel, I find applicable to the lofty virtue of Mistress Hutchinson. What a soul did Puritanism steal away from love!

One of the oddest peculiarities of this world is that men always think they know whatever it is clearly necessary for them to know. Hear them talk about politics, that very complicated science; hear them talk of marriage and morals.

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