[1] This postponing manoeuvre is admirably calculated to draw from a woman a secret, that does not belong to confession, that she will not tell, her husband's secret, her lover'sreal name, &c., &c. They always get it out of her at last.
[2] This word Molinosism reminds us of an old forgotten system. In practice, it is a thing of all times, an instinct, a blind belief, which is natural to the weak, and which may be thus expressed:—with the strong, everything is right; a saint cannot sin. See the patient, if he is lucky enough to invite his physician to dinner with him: he has recovered his assurance and boldness, and indulges in every dish without being afraid. I believe, moreover, that real Molinosism is always a powerful argument with the simple. A contemporary writer, Llorente, relates (t. iii., ch. 28, article 2, ed. 1817), that when he was secretary to the Inquisition, they brought before that tribunal a capuchin friar, who was director of a community of Beguines, nearly all of whom he had seduced, by persuading them that they were not straying from the road to perfection. He would say to each of them, at the Confessional, that he had received a singular grace from God; "Our Lord," said he, "has deigned to appear to me in the consecrated wafer, and He has said to me, almost all the souls that you direct here are pleasant to Me, but especially such a one (the capuchin named the one he was then speaking to). She is already so perfect that she has overcome every passion, save desire, which is her torment. For this reason, wishing her virtue to be rewarded and that she should serve Me with a quiet mind, I charge you to give her dispensation, but in favour of you; she is to speak of it to no confessor; it would be useless, since with such dispensation she cannot sin." Out of seventeen Beguines, of which the community was composed, this daring capuchin gave dispensation to thirteen, who were discreet for a considerable time; one of them, however, fell ill, expected to die, and revealed all, declaring that she had never been able to believe in the dispensation, but that she had availed herself of it. If the accused party had simply confessed, he would have been let off with a very trifling punishment, the Inquisition being, says Llorente, very lenient towards that kind of offence. But, though he confessed the thing, he maintained that he had acted properly, being empowered by Jesus Christ. "What!" said they, "is it likely that our Lord appeared to you, to exempt you from a precept of the Decalogue." "Why, he exempted Abraham from the fifth commandment, ordering him to kill his son, and the Hebrews from the seventh, ordering them to rob the Egyptians." "Yes, but these were mysteries favourable to religion." "And what then is more favourable to religion than to quiet thirteen virtuous souls, and lead them to a perfect union with the divine essence?" I recollect, says Llorente, saying to him, "But, father, is it not surprising that this singular virtue happened to be precisely in the thirteen young and handsome ones, and never in the four others who were ugly or old?" He replied coldly, "The Holy Spirit inspires as it pleases."
The same author, in the same chapter, though reproaching the Protestants with having exaggerated the corruption of the confessors, avows, "In the sixteenth century, the Inquisition had imposed upon women the obligation of denouncing guilty confessors, but the denunciations were found to be so numerous, that the penitents were declared to be relieved from denouncing." Trials of this description were conducted with closed doors, and condemnations were hushed up in secret littleautodafés. From the number of trials which Llorente extracts from the registers, he compares the morals of the different religious orders, and finds, in figures, a very natural result that might be guessed without the help of arithmetic. They deceived their penitents, just in proportion to the more or less money and liberty they had to seduce others with. Poor and secluded monks were dangerous confessors; friars, who had more liberty, and secular priests, seldom made use of the hazardous means of the Confessional; because they found favourable opportunities elsewhere. They who, as directors, see womentête-à-têteat home, or in their own houses, have no need to corrupt them at the altar.
SCHISM IN FAMILIES.—THE DAUGHTER;—BY WHOM EDUCATED.—IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION, AND THE ADVANTAGE OF THE FIRST INSTRUCTOR.—INFLUENCE OF PRIESTS UPON MARRIAGE, WHICH THEY OFTEN RETAIN AFTER THAT CEREMONY.
The drama which I have endeavoured to sketch does not always, thanks be to God, go so far as the annihilation of the will and personality. One cannot well discern where it stops, owing to the dark cloak of reserve, discretion, and hypocrisy, with which this black community is enveloped. Besides, the clergy have been doubly guarded in their conduct during the present contentions.[1] It is out of the church, in houses, and family circles, that we must seek for what will throw the principal light upon what the Church conceals. Look well; there you see a reflection, unfortunately too clear, of what is passing elsewhere.
We have already said, if you enter a house in the evening, and sit down at the family table, one thing will almost always strike you; the mother and daughters are together, of one and the same opinion, on one side; whilst the father is on the other, and alone.
What does this mean? It means that there is some one more at this table, whom you do not see, to contradict and give the lie to whatever the father may utter. He returns fatigued with the cares of the day, and full of those which are to come; but he finds at home, instead of repose and comfort for the mind, only the struggle with the past.
We must not be surprised at it. By whom are our daughters and wives brought up? We must repeat the expression,—by our enemies, the enemies of the Revolution, and of the future.
Do not cry out here, nor quote me this or that sermon you have preached.
What do I care for the democratical parade which you make in the pulpit, if everything beneath us, and behind us, all your little pamphlets which issue by thousands and millions, your ill-disguised system of instruction, your confessional, the spirit of which now transpires, show us altogether what you are,—the enemies of liberty? You, subjects of a foreign prince; you, who deny the French church, how dare you speak of France?
Six hundred and twenty thousand[2] girls are brought up by nuns under the direction of the priests. These girls will soon be women and mothers, who, in their turn, will hand over to the priests, as far as they are able, both their sons and their daughters.
The mother has already succeeded as far as concerns the daughter; by her persevering importunity, she has, at length, overcome the father's repugnance. A man who, every evening, after the troubles of business and the warfare of the world, finds strife also at home, may certainly resist for a time, but he must necessarily give in at last; or he will be allowed neither truce, cessation, rest, nor refuge. His own house becomes uninhabitable. His wife having nothing to expect at the confessional but harsh treatment, as long as she does not succeed, will wage against him every day and every hour the war they make against her; a gentle one, perhaps; politely bitter, implacable, and obstinate.
She grumbles at the fire-side, is low-spirited at table, and never opens her mouth either to speak or eat; then bed-time, the inevitable repetition of the lesson she has learned, even on the pillow. The same sound of the same bell, for ever and ever; who could withstand it? what is to be done? Give in or become mad!
If the husband were firm, obstinate, and persevering enough to stand this trial, the wife, perhaps, would not resist. "How can I see her so unhappy, pining, uneasy, and ill? She is evidently growing thinner. I had much rather save my wife." Such is the language of the husband. If he be not subdued by his wife, he is by his own heart. The next day the son leaves his college for theChristian college, or the school for the little seminary. The daughter is led triumphantly by her mother to the excellent boarding-school close by, where the good abbé confesses and directs. In less than a year the boarding-school is found to be not quite good enough, being still too worldly; the little girl is then given over to the nuns, whose superior our abbé happens to be, in some convent of his, that is, under his protection and his lock and key.
Good-humoured parent, lie easy and sleep sound. Your daughter is in good hands: you shall be contradicted till your death. Your daughter is really a girl of good sense; and on every subject, having been carefully armed against you, will take, whatever you may say, the opposite side of the question.
What is very singular, the father, generally, is aware that they are bringing up his child against him. Man, you surprise me! what do you expect then? "Oh! she will forget it; time, marriage, and the world will wear away all that." Yes, for a time, but only to re-appear; at the first disappointment in the world it will all return. As soon as she grows somewhat in years, she will return to the habits of the child; the master she now has will be her master then, whether for your contradiction, in your old age, good man, or for the despair and daily damnation of her father and husband. Then will you taste the fruit of this education.
Education! a mere trifle, a weak power, no doubt, which the father may, without danger, allow his enemies to take possession of!
To possess the mind, with all the advantage of the first possessor! To write in this book of blank paper whatever they will! and to write what will last for ever! For, remember well, it will be in vain for you to write upon it hereafter; what has once been indited, cannot be erased. It is the mystery of her young memory to be as weak in receiving impressions as it is strong in keeping them. The early tracing that seemed to be effaced at twenty re-appears at forty or sixty. It is the last and the clearest, perhaps, that old age will retain.
What! will not reading, and the press, the great overruling power of our own days, give a stronger education than the former one? Do not rely on this. The influence of the press partly annuls itself; it has a thousand voices to speak, and a thousand others to answer and destroy what it has said. Education does not make so much noise; it does not talk; it reigns. Look, in that little class, without witness, control, or contradiction, a man is speaking; he is master, an absolute master, invested with the most ample power to punish and chastise. His voice, not his hand, has the power of a rod; the little, trembling, and believing creature, who has just left her mother's apron, receives his weighty words, which enter the soft tablet of her memory, and stick into it, like so many nails of iron.
This is true in speaking of the school, but how much more so as regards the church! especially in the case of the daughter, who is more docile and timid, and certainly retains more faithfully her early impressions. What she heard the first time in that grand church, under those resounding roofs, and the words, pronounced with a solemn voice by that man in black, which then frightened her so, being addressed toherself;—ah! be not afraid of her ever forgetting them. But even if she could forget them, she would be reminded of them every week: woman is all her life at school, finding in the confessional her school-bench, her schoolmaster, the only man she fears, and the only one, as we have said, who, in the present state of our manners, can threaten a woman.
What an advantage has he in being able to take her quite young, in the convent where they have placed her, to be the first to take in hand her young soul, and to be the first to exercise upon her the earliest severity, and also the earliest indulgence which is so akin to affectionate tenderness,[3] to be the father and friend of a child taken so soon from her mother's arms. The confidant of her first thoughts will long be associated with her private reveries. He has had an especial and singular privilege which the husband may envy: what?—why, the virginity of the soul and the first-fruits of the will.
This is the man of whom, young bachelors, you must ask the girl in marriage, before you speak to her parents. Do not deceive yourselves, or you will lose all chance. You shake your heads, proud children of the age; you think you can never be induced to humble yourselves so far. All I hope then is, that you may be able to live single, and wed philosophy; otherwise, I can see you, even now, in spite of all your fine speeches, gliding stealthily, sneaking by twilight into the church, and kneeling down before the priest. There they were lying in wait for you, and there they catch you. You had not foreseen it. Now you are a lover, poor young man, and will do whatever they wish.
I only wish that this girl, bought so dearly, may be really yours. But what with that mother and that priest, the same influence, though diminished for a moment, will soon resume its strength. You will have a wife, minus heart and soul, and you will understand, when it is too late, that he who now gives her away knows well how to keep her.[4]
[1] This circumspection would bear carrying a little farther, if we are to judge of it by the public adventures of the Abbés C. and N., who, by-the-by, will not prosper the less on this account, as two others, of high rank, and known to everybody, have already shown.
[2] M. Louandre gives the figure six hundred and twenty-two thousand girls, in his conscientious statistics.—Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1844.
[3] What is direction generally?—1st,Love before love; it cultivates in the little girl that power which is now awakening, and it cultivates it so well, that on leaving the convent, her parents see the necessity of a speedy marriage to support her, for she is in danger of falling:—2ndly,Love after love. An aged female is, in a layman's estimation, anoldwoman: but according to the priest's, she is awoman: the priest begins where the world ends.
[4] Let us add to this chapter a fact, which (being compared with what we have said about ecclesiastical discipline) inclines us to think that the clergy do not lose sight of the girls who are brought up in the convents under their direction. A friend of mine, whose high position and character render his testimony very important, lately told me that, having placed a young relation of his in a convent, he had heard from the nunsthat they sent to Romethe names of the pupils who distinguished themselves the most. Thecentralizationof such private information, about the daughters of the leading families of the Catholic world, must indeed facilitate many combinations, and be of especial service to Ultramontane politics. The Jesù, if it were so, would be a vast marriage office.
WOMAN.—THE HUSBAND DOES NOT CONSOCIATE WITH HIS WIFE.—HE SELDOM KNOWS HOW TO INITIATE HER INTO HIS THOUGHTS.—WHAT MUTUAL INITIATION WOULD BE.—THE WIFE CONSOLES HERSELF WITH HER SON.—HE IS TAKEN FROM HER.—HER LONELINESS AND ENNUI.—A PIOUS YOUNG MAN.—THE SPIRITUAL AND THE WORLDLY MAN.—WHICH OF THE TWO IS NOW THE MORTIFIED MAN.
Marriage gives the husband a single and momentary opportunity to become in reality the master of his wife, to withdraw her from the influence of another, and make her his own for ever. Does he profit by it? Very rarely. He ought, in the very beginning, when he has much influence over her, to let her participate in the activity of his mind, his business, and ideas, initiate her in his projects, and create an activity in her by means of his own.
To wish and think as he does, both acting with him and suffering with him—this is marriage. The worst that may happen is not that she may suffer, but that she may languish and pine away, living apart, and like a widow. How can we wonder, then, if her affection for him be lessened? Ah! if, in the beginning, he made her his own, by making her share his ambition, troubles, and uneasiness:—if they had watched whole nights together, and been troubled with the same thoughts, he would have retained her affections. Attachment may be strengthened by grief itself; and mutual sufferings may maintain mutual love.
Frenchwomen are superior to those of England or Germany, and, indeed, to any other women, in being able not only to assist man, but to become his companion, his friend, his partner, hisalter ego. None but the commercial classes, generally speaking, are wise enough to profit by this. See, in the shop-keeping quarters, in the dark storehouses of theRue des Lombards, or the Rue de la Verrerie, the young wife, often born of rich parents, who, nevertheless, remains there, in that little glazed counting-house, keeping the books, registering whatever is brought in or taken out, and directing the clerks and porters. With such a partner the house will prosper. The household is improved by it. The husband and wife, separated by their occupations during the day, are the better pleased to unite together in common thought.
Without being able to participate so directly in the husband's activity, the wife might also, in other professions, be able to associate with him in his business, or, at least, in his ideas. What makes this difficult (I have not attempted to disguise it) is the spirit of specialty which goes on increasing in our different professions, as well as in our sciences, and driving us into minute details; whereas woman, being less persevering, and, moreover, less called upon to apply herself with precision, is confined to a knowledge of generalities. The man who will seriously initiate a woman into his own life, can do it safely and completely, if she love him, but he would require to possess both patience and kindness. They have come together, as it were, from the two opposite poles, and prepared by a totally different education. Since it is so, how can you expect that your young wife, intelligent as she is, should understand you at once? If she do not understand you, it is, too frequently, your own fault: this almost always proceeds from the abstract, dry, and scholastic forms which you have imbibed from your education. She, remaining in the sphere of common sense and sentiment, understands nothing of your formulas, and seldom, very seldom, indeed, do you know how to translate them into plain language. This requires address, will, and feeling. You would want, sir, let me tell you, both more sense and more love.
At the first word she does not understand, the husband loses his patience. "She is incapable, she is too frivolous." He leaves her, and all is over. But that day he loses much. If he had persevered, he would gradually have led her along with him; she would have lived his life, and their marriage would have been real. Ah! what a companion he has lost! how sure a confidant! and how zealous an ally! In this person, who, when left to herself, seems to him too trifling, he would have found, in moments of difficulty, a ray of inspiration, and often useful advice.
I am here entering upon a large subject, where I should wish to stop. But I cannot. One word more: the man of modern times, a victim of the division of work, and often condemned to a narrow speciality, in which he loses the sentiment of general life, and becomes a morbid sort of a being, would require to have with him a young and serene mind, more nicely balanced, and less given to specialty than his own, that might lead him from the confined notions of trade, and restore him to the charms of a well-regulated mind. In this age of eager opposition, when the day is taken up with active business, and we return home worn out with toil or disappointment, it is necessary to have a wife at the domestic fire-side to refresh the burning brain of the husband. This workman (what are we all but workmen, each in his own particular line?), this blacksmith, panting with thirst, after beating the iron, would receive from her the living fountain of the beautiful and good, of God and nature; he would drink for a moment of eternal streams. Then he wouldforget, take courage, and breathe freely again. Having been relieved by her, he would in his turn assist her with his powerful hand, lead her into his own world, his own life, his way of progress and new ideas—the way of the future!
Unfortunately this is not the way of the world. I have sought everywhere, but in vain, for this fine exchange of thought, which alone realizes marriage. They certainly try for a moment, in the beginning, to communicate together, but they are soon discouraged: the husband grows dumb, his heart, dried up with the arid influence of interest and business, can no longer find words. At first she is astonished and uneasy: she questions him. But questions annoy him; and she no longer dares to speak to him. Let him be easy; the time is coming when his wife, sitting thoughtful by the fire-side, absent in her turn, and framing her imaginary plans, will leave him in quiet possession of his taciturnity.
First of all, she has a son. It is to him, if he be left to her, that she will devote herself entirely. Should she go out, she gives him her hand, and soon her arm; he is now like a young brother, "a little husband." How tall he has grown already! how quickly time passes; and it is a pity he grows so; for now comes the separation, his Latin and his tears. Must he not become a learned man? Must he not enter, as soon as possible, into the world of violence and opposition, where he will acquire the bad passions which are cultivated so carefully in us, pride, ambition, hatred, and envy? The mother would like to wait longer: "What is the hurry? he is so young, and those schools are so strict! He will learn much better at home, if they will let him remain with her; she will engage masters and superintend his studies herself; she will discontinue going to balls."—"Impossible, madam, impossible! you would make a milksop of him." The fact is, the father, though he likes his son very much, finds, that in a well-regulated house this movement and constant noise and bustle are intolerable. He is unable to support anything of the sort: fatigued, disgusted, and ill-humoured, he wants silence and repose.
Wise husbands, who make so little of the resistance of a mother, do you not perceive that it is also by an instinct of virtue that this woman wishes to keep her son the pure and irreproachable witness, before whom she would always have remained holy? If you knew how useful the presence of the child is to the house, you yourself would desire to keep him. As long as that child remained there, the house was blessed. In his presence how difficult it is to loosen the family tie! What completes marriage and the family? The child, the object of their hopes. Who maintains the family? The child they possess. He is the aim and the end, the mediator—I had almost said the whole.
We cannot repeat it too often, for nothing is more true—woman is alone. She is alone if she has a husband; she is also alone even with a son. Once at school, she sees him only by favour, and often at long intervals. When he leaves school, other prisons await the youth, and other exiles.
A brilliant evening party is given: enter those well-lighted rooms; you see the women sitting in long rows, well-dressed, and entirely alone. Go, about four o'clock, to the Champs-Elysées, and there you will see again the same women, sad and spiritless, on their way to the Bois de Boulogne, each in her own carriage, and alone. These are in a calash, those at the far end of a shop; but all are equally alone.
There is nothing in the life of women, who have the misfortune to have nothing to do, that may not be explained by one single word—loneliness,ennui.Ennui, which is supposed to be a languishing and negative disposition of the mind, is, for a nervous woman, a positive evil impossible to support. It grasps its prey, and gnaws it to the core: whoever suspends the torment for a moment is considered a saviour.
Ennuimakes them receive female friends, whom they know to be inquisitive, envious, slandering enemies.Ennuimakes them endure novels in newspapers, which are suddenly cut short, at the moment of the greatest interest.Ennuicarries them to concerts, where they find a mixture of every kind of music, and where the diversity of styles is fatigue for the ear. Ennui drags them to a sermon, which thousands listen to, but which not one of them could bear to read. Nay, even the sickening half-worldly and half-devout productions, with which the neo-Catholics inundate the Faubourg Saint German, will find readers among these poor women, the martyrs ofennui. Such delicate and sickly forms can support a nauseous dose of musk and incense; which would turn the stomach of any one in health.
One of these young authors explains, in a novel, all the advantage there is in beginning gallantry by gallant devotion. The proceeding is not new. All I wish is, that those who borrowed it from Tartuffe would not give it to us, without its fair portion of wit and humour.
But they have no great need of it. Women listen to their disguised declarations and ambiguous endearments, as a matter of conscience to earn their salvation. The woman, who, with the most sober friend, would be offended at the very first word of friendship, suffers patiently this double-meaning language of the young Levite. The intelligent woman of experience and the world, who has read and seen much, shuts her eyes to the mischief. If he has but little talent, if he is heavy and uninteresting, yet his intentions are so good! Father [Transcriber's note: Rather?] such a one answers for him; he is an excellent young man.
The fact is, that while he pretends devotion, he speaks of love; this is his merit. Even though it be spoken of in a weak and insipid manner, it is still a merit with her who is no longer young. The husband, however distinguished he may be, has the fault of being apositiveman, entirely taken up, as they say, with worldly interests. It is very true he is working for the interest of his family; he provides for the future welfare of his children; he consumes his life to support the luxury in which his wife lives, and beyond his fortune.
Perhaps this husband would be justified in saying that all this, however material may be the result, is also for him a moral interest,an interest of the heart. Perhaps he might add, that in being engaged with worldly interests in our assemblies and tribunals, besides a thousand other different positions for the profit of others, we may show ourselves to be moredisinterested, and consequently more spiritualised, than all thosebrokers of spiritualitywho turn the Church into an exchange.
Let us here point out a contrast which is not sufficiently noticed.
In the middle ages thepriestwas the spiritual andmortified man. By the studies to which he alone devoted himself, by nocturnal prayers and vigils, by the excess of fasting, and by monastic flagellations, he mortified his body. But in these days very little remains of all that; the Church has softened down everything. The priests live as others do: if many pass a mean and pitiful life, it is, at least, generally unattended with risk. We see it, moreover, in the freedom of mind with which they engage the leisure of women with interminable conversations.
Who is the mortified man in the present day, in this time of hard work, eager efforts, and fiery opposition? It is the layman, the worldly man. This man of the world, full of cares, works all day and all night, either for his family, or for the State. Being often engaged in details of business or studies, too thorny to interest his wife and children, he cannot communicate to them what fills his own mind. Even at the hour of rest he speaks little, being always pursuing his idea. Success in business and invention in science are only obtained at a high price—the price that Newton mentions,by ever thinking of it. Solitary among his kindred, he runs the risk, making their glory, or their fortune, to become a stranger to them.
The Churchman, on the contrary, who, in these days, to judge of him by what he publishes, studies little, and invents nothing, and who no longer wages against himself that war of mortifications imposed by the middle ages, coolly and quietly pursue two very different occupations at the same time. By his assiduity and fawning words, he gains over the family of the man of business, at the very moment he hurls down upon him from the pulpit the thunders of his eloquence.
THE MOTHER.—ALONE, FOR A LONG TIME, SHE CAN BRING UP HER CHILD.—INTELLECTUAL NOURISHMENT.—GESTATION, INCUBATION, AND EDUCATION.—THE CHILD GUARANTEES THE MOTHER.—THE MOTHER GUARANTEES THE CHILD.—SHE PROTECTS ITS NATURAL ORIGINALITY.—PUBLIC EDUCATION MUST LIMIT THIS ORIGINALITY.—EVEN THE FATHER LIMITS IT.—THE MOTHER DEFENDS IT.—MATERNAL WEAKNESS.—THE MOTHER WOULD MAKE HER SON A HERO.—THE HEROIC DISINTERESTEDNESS OF MATERNAL LOVE.
We have already said, if you wish your family to resist the foreign influence which dissolves it,keep the child at homeas much as possible. Let themotherbring it up under the father's direction, till the moment when it is claimed for public instruction by its great mother, its native land. If the mother bring up the child, the consequence will be, that she will always remain by her husband's side, needing his advice, and anxious to receive from him fresh supplies of knowledge. The real idea of a family will here be realised, which is for the child to be initiated by the mother, and the mother by the husband.
The mother's instinct is just and true; it deserves to be respected. She wishes to keep her child: forcibly separated from him at the moment of birth, she is ever seeking to rejoin that part of herself which a cruel violence snatched from her, but which has its root in her heart. When they take it from her to bring it up at a distance, it is a second separation. The mother and the child weep in common, but their tears are disregarded. This is not right. These tears, in which we think we see only weakness, ought not to be disregarded. They show that the child needs her still. Nursing is not yet finished. Intellectual nourishment, like physical food, ought in the beginning to be administered to the child under the form, as it were, of milk, fluid, tepid, mild, and full of life. Woman alone can so give it. Men expect too much at once of this new-born babe, whose teeth, scarcely formed, are painful. They want to give it bread, and they beat it if it does not bite. In God's name give him more milk: he will drink willingly.
Who will believe some future day that men have thus undertaken to nurse and feed these sucklings? Ah! leave them alone to women! A lovely sight to see a child rocked in the arms of a man! Take care, awkward idiot! It is fragile; handling it in your clownish hands you may break it.
This is the dispute between the master and child: man imparts science by methods proper to man, in a state of fixed rules by very precise classifications, with angular, and, as it were, crystallised forms. Well! these crystal prisms, as luminous as they may be, wound by their angles and sharp points. The child, in a soft and tender state, cannot, for a long time, receive anything which has not the fluidity of life. The master grows angry and impatient at the slowness of the pupil, and knows not how to succeed with him. There is but one person in the world who has the delicate perception of the careful management which the child requires, and this one person is she who has borne it, and who forms for ever with it an identical whole. Gestation, incubation, and education, are three words which are long synonymous.
Much longer than people would believe. The influence of the mother over the child, whose faculties are developing, is greater and more decisive than that which she exercised over the suckling infant. I do not know whether it be indispensable for the mother to feed it from her breast; but I am very sure it is necessary that she should nourish it from her heart. Chivalry was perfectly aware that love was the most powerful motive for education. That alone did more in the middle ages to advance humanity than all the disputes of school-divinity have been able to do to retard it.
We also have our school-divinity, the spirit of empty abstractions and verbal disputes: we shall be able to combat its influence only by prolonging that of the mother, associating her with education, and by giving the child a well-beloved teacher. Love, they say, is a great master. This is especially true of the greatest, the deepest, and the purest of all affections.
How blind and imprudent we are! We take the child from its mother at a time when it was most necessary to her. We deprive her of the dear occupation for which God had formed her; and we are afterwards surprised if this woman, cruelly separated, now languishing and idle, give herself up to vain musings; suffer anew the yoke she formerly bore; and, if, as is often the case, fancying herself to remain faithful, she listen to the tempter, who speaks to her in the name of God.
Be prudent, be wise; leave her her son. Woman must ever be loving. Leave her rather the lover whom nature gives her; him whom she would have preferred to all others, whilst you are occupied with your business (with your passions perhaps). Leave on her arm the tall and slender youth, and she will be proud and happy. You fear, lest, having been kept too long by his mother, he may become effeminate. But, on the contrary, if you left her her son, she would become masculine. Try her, she will change, and you will be astonished yourself. Little excursions on foot, and long ones on horseback—no trouble will be too much for her. She begins bravely and heartily the exercises of the young man; she makes herself of his own age, and is born again in thisvita nuova; even you on your return will think, when you see your Rosalind, that you have two sons.
It is a general rule to which, at least, I have hardly ever seen any exception, that superior men are all thesons of their mother. She has stamped upon them, and they reproduce her moral as well as her physical features.
I am about to surprise you. I will tell you that without her he will never be a man. The mother alone is patient enough to develope the young creature, by taking proper care of his liberty. We must be on our guard, and take especial care not to place the child, still too weak and pliable, in the hands of strangers. People of the best intentions, by pressing too much upon him, run the risk of so crushing his faculties, that he will never be able to enjoy the free use of them again. The world is full of men, who remain bondsmen all their lives, from having borne a heavy load too soon. A too solid and too precocious education has injured something within them; their originality, thegeniusandingegno, which is the prime part of man.
Who respects in these days the original and free ingenuity of character, that sacred genius which we receive at our birth? This is almost always the part which offends and gets blamed; it is the reason why "this boy is not like everybody else." Hardly does his young nature awake, and flourish in its liberty, than they are all astonished, and all shake their heads: "What is this? we never saw the like."—Shut him up quickly—stifle this living flower. Here are the iron cages.—Ah! you were blooming, and displaying your luxuriant foliage in the sun. Be wise and prudent, O flower! become dry, and shut up your leaves.
But this poor little flower, against which they are all leagued—what is it, I pray you, but the individual, special, and original element by which this being would have distinguished itself from others, and added a new feature to the great variety of human characters—a genius, perhaps, to the series of great minds. The sterile spirit is almost always that plant which, having been tied too fast to the dead wood which serves to support it, has dried upon it, and gradually become like it; there it is, very regular, and well fastened up, you may fear nothing eccentric from it; the tree is, however,dead, and will never bear leaf more.
What do I mean? that the support is useless, and that we must leave the plant to itself? Nothing is further from my thoughts. I believe in the necessity of both educations, that of the family and that of the country. Let us distinguish their influence.
The latter, our public education, which is certainly better in our days than it ever was—what does it require? What is its end and aim? It wishes to harmonise the child with his native land, and with that great country the world. This is what constitutes its legitimacy and necessity. It purposes especially to give him a fund of ideas common to all, to make him a reasonable being, and prevent him from being out of tune with what surrounds him; it hinders him from jarring in the great concert where he is going to take his part, and it checks what may be too irregular in his lively sallies.
So far for public education. Family life is liberty. Yet even here there are obstacles and shackles to his original moral activity. The father regulates this activity: his uneasy foresight imposes on him the duty to bring early this wild young colt to the furrow, where he must soon toil. It too often happens that the father makes a mistake, consults, first of all, his own conveniences, and seeks the profitable and ready traced career, rather than that to which his young and powerful colt was called by nature.
The triumphs of the courser have frequently been lost in the trammels of the riding-school.
Poor liberty! Who then will have eyes to see thee, or a heart to cherish thee? Who will have the patience, the infinite indulgence required to support thy first wanderings, and encourage occasionally what fatigues the stranger, the indifferent person, nay, the father himself? God alone, who has made this creature, and who, having made him, knows him well enough to see and love what is good in him, even in what is bad, God, I say, and with God the mother: for here it is one and the same thing.
When we reflect that ordinary life is so short, and that so many die very young, we hesitate to abridge this first, this best period of life, when the child, free under its mother's protection, lives in Grace, and not in the Law. But if it be true, as I think, that this time, which people believe lost, is precisely the only precious and irreparable period, in which among childish games sacredgeniustries its first flight, the season when, becoming fledged, the young eagle tries to fly—ah! pray do not shorten it. Do not banish the youth from the maternal paradise before his time; give him one day more; to-morrow, all well and good; God knows it will be soon enough! To-morrow, he will bend to his work and crawl along the furrow. But to-day, leave him there, let him gain full strength and life, and breathe with an open heart the vital air of liberty. An education which is too zealous and restless, and which exacts too much, is dangerous for children. We are ever increasing the mass of study and science, and such exterior acquisitions; but the interior suffers for it. The one is nothing but Latin, the next shines in Mathematics; but where is theman, I pray you? And yet it was theman, precisely, that was loved and taken care of by the mother. It was man she respected in the wanderings of the child. She seemed to depress her own influence, and even her superintendence, in order that he might act and be both free and strong; but, at the same time, she ever surrounded him as if with an invisible embrace.
There is a peril, I am well aware of it, in this education of love. What love wishes and desires more than all, is to sacrifice itself, and everything else—interests, conveniences, habits, and even life, if necessary. The object of this self-sacrifice may, in his own childish egotism, receive all the sacrifices as a thing due, allow himself to be treated as an inert, motionless idol, and become the more incapable of action, the more they do for him.
This danger is real, but it is counterbalanced by the ardent ambition of the maternal heart, which places, almost always, her best hopes upon her child, and burns to realise them. Every mother of any value, has one firm belief, which is, that her son is destined to be a hero, in action or in science, no matter which. All that has disappointed her expectations in her sad experience of this world will now be realised by this infant. The miseries of the present are already redeemed by the prospect of this splendid future: everything is miserable now; but only lethimgrow, and everything will be prosperous! O poetry! O hope! where are the limits of maternal thought? "I am only a woman, but here is a man: I have given a man to the world." Only one thing perplexes her: will her child be a Bonaparte, a Voltaire, or a Newton?
If, in order to be so, he absolutely must leave her—well! let him go, let him depart from her; she consents to it: if she must tear her own heart-strings, she will. Love is capable of doing everything, even of sacrificing love itself. Yes, let him depart, follow his high destiny, and accomplish the grand dream she had when she bore him in her bosom, or upon her knees. And then, a miracle: this fearful woman, who just before durst not see him walk alone, without fearing he might fall, is become so brave, that she launches him forth in the most dangerous career, on the ocean, or else to that bloody war in Africa. She trembles, she is dying of uneasiness, and yet she persists. What can support her? Her belief that her child cannot perish, since he is destined to be a hero.
He returns. How much he is changed! What! is this fierce soldier my son? He departed a child, and he comes back a man: he seeks to be married. This is another sacrifice, which is not less serious. He loves another! And his mother, in whose heart he is, and ever will be the first, will possess the second place in his affections—alas! a very small place in the moments of his passion. She seeks for, and chooses her own rival: she loves her on his account; she adorns her; she becomes her attendant, and leads her to the altar; and all she asks for there is, that the mother may not be forgotten in the wife!
LOVE.—LOVE WISHES TO RAISE, NOT TO ABSORB.—THE FALSE THEORY OF OUR ADVERSARIES, AND THEIR DANGEROUS PRACTICE.—LOVE WISHES TO FORM FOR ITSELF AN EQUAL WHO MAY LOVE FREELY.—LOVE IN THE WORLD, AND IN THE CIVIL WORLD.—LOVE IN FAMILIES.—LITTLE UNDERSTOOD BY THE MIDDLE AGES.—FAMILY RELIGION.