The Young Lady's Mentor by A Lady

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It is to save you from any such dangers that I earnestly press upon you
the deliberate choice and immediate adoption of a course of life in
which the systematic, conscientious improvement of your mind should
serve as an efficacious preservation from all dangerously exciting
occupations. You should prepare yourself for this deliberate choice by
taking a clear and distinct view of your object and your motives. Can
you say with sincerity that they are such as the following,--that of
acquiring influence over your fellow-creatures, to be employed for the
advancement of their eternal interests--that of glorifying God, and of
obtaining the fulfilment of that promise, "They that turn many to
righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever."[73] If this
be the case, your choice must be a right and a noble one; and you will
never have reason to repent of it, either in this world or the next.
Among the collateral results of this conscientious choice will be a
certain enjoyment of life, more independent of either health or external
circumstances than any other can be, and the lofty self-respect arising
from a consciousness of never having descended to unworthy methods of
amusement and excitement.

To attain, however, to the pleasures of intellectual pursuits, and to
acquire from them the advantages of influence and respect, is quite a
distinct thing from the promiscuous and ill-regulated habits of reading
pursued by most women. Women who read at all, generally read more than
men; but, from the absence of any intellectual system, they neither
acquire well-digested information, nor, what is of far more importance,
are the powers of their mind strengthened by exercise. I have known
women read for six hours a day, and, after all, totally incapable of
enlightening the inquirer upon any point of history or literature; far
less would they be competent to exercise any process of reasoning, with
relation either to the business of life or the occurrences of its social
intercourse. How many difficulties and annoyances in the course of
every-day life might be avoided altogether if women were early exercised
in the practice of bringing their reasoning powers to bear upon the
small duties and the petty trials that await every hour of our
existence! Their studies are altogether useless, unless they are pursued
with the view of acquiring a sounder judgment, and quicker and more
accurate perceptions of the every-day details of business and duty. That
knowledge is worse than useless which does not lead to wisdom. To
women, more especially, as their lives can never be so entirely
speculative as those of a few learned men may justifiably be, the great
object in study is the manner in which they can best bring to bear each
acquisition of knowledge upon the improvement of their own character or
that of others. The manner in which they may most effectually promote
the welfare of their fellow-creatures, and how, as the most effectual
means to that end, they can best contribute to their daily and hourly
happiness and improvement,--these, and such as these, ought to be the
primary objects of all intellectual culture. Mere reading would never
accomplish this; mere reading is no more an intellectual employment than
worsted-work or purse-netting. It is true that none of these latter
employments are without their uses; they may all occupy the mind in some
degree, and soothe it, if it were only by creating a partial distraction
from the perpetual contemplation of petty irritating causes of disquiet.
But while we acknowledge that they are all good in their way for people
who can attain nothing better, we must be careful not to fall into the
mistake of confounding the best of them, viz. _mere_ reading, with
intellectual pursuits: if we do so, the latter will be involved in the
depreciation that often falls upon the former when it is found neither
to improve the mind or the character, nor to provide satisfactory
sources of enjoyment.

There is a great deal of truth in the well-known assertion of Hobbes,
however paradoxical it may at first appear: "If I had read as much as
others, I should be as ignorant." One cannot but feel its applicability
in the case of some of our acquaintance, who have been for years mere
readers at the rate of five or six hours a day. One of these same hours
daily well applied would have made them more agreeable companions and
more useful members of society than a whole life of their ordinary
reading.

There must be a certain object of attainment, or there will be no
advance: unless we have decided what the point is that we desire to
reach, we never can know whether the wind blows favourably for us or
not.

In my next letter, I mean to enter fully into many details as to the
best methods of study; but during the remainder of this, I shall confine
myself to a general view of the nature of that foundation which must
first be laid, before any really valuable or durable superstructure can
be erected.

The first point, then, to which I wish your attention to be directed is
the improvement of the mind itself,--point of far more importance than
the furniture you put into it. This improvement can only be effected by
exercising deep thought with respect to all your reading, assimilating
the ideas and the facts provided by others until they are blended into
oneness with the forms of your own mind.

During your hours of study, it is of the utmost importance that no page
should ever be perused without carefully subjecting its contents to the
thinking process of which I have spoken: unless your intellect is
actively employed while you are professedly studying, your time is worse
than wasted, for you are acquiring habits of idleness, that will be most
difficult to lay aside.

You should always be engaged in some work that affords considerable
exercise to the mind--some book over the sentences of which you are
obliged to pause, to ponder--some kind of study that will cause the
feeling of almost physical fatigue; when, however, this latter sensation
comes on, you must rest; the brain is of too delicate a texture to bear
the slightest over-exertion with impunity.[74] Premature decay of its
powers, and accompanying bodily weakness and suffering, will inflict
upon you a severe penalty for any neglect of the symptoms of mental
exhaustion.[75] Your mind, however, like your body, ought to be
exercised to the very verge of fatigue; you cannot otherwise be certain
that there has been exercise sufficient to give increased strength and
energy to the mental or physical powers.

The more vigorous such exercise is, the shorter will be the time you can
support it. Perhaps even an hour of close thinking would be too much for
most women; the object, however, ought not to be so much the quantity as
the quality of the exercise. If your peculiarly delicate and sensitive
organization cannot support more than a quarter of an hour's continuous
and concentrated thought, you must content yourself with that.
Experience will soon prove to you that even the few minutes thus
employed will give you a great superiority over the six-hours-a-day
readers of your acquaintance, and will serve as a solid and sufficient
foundation for all the lighter superstructure which you will afterwards
lay upon it. This latter, in its due place, I should consider as of
nearly as much importance as the foundation itself; for, keeping
steadily in view that usefulness is to be the primary object of all your
studies, you must devote much more time and attention to the
embellishing, because refining branches of literature, than would be
necessary for those whose office is not so peculiarly that of soothing
and pleasing as woman's is. Even these lighter studies, however, must be
subjected to the same reflective process as the severer ones, or they
will never become an incorporate part of the mind itself: they will, on
the contrary, if this process is neglected, stand out, as the knowledge
of all uneducated people does, in abrupt and unharmonizing prominence.

It is not to be so much your object to acquire the power of quoting
poetry or prose, or to be acquainted with the names of the authors of
celebrated fictions and their details, as to be imbued with the spirit
of heroism, generosity, self-sacrifice,--in short, the practical love of
the beautiful which every universally-admired fiction, whether it have a
professedly moral tendency or not, is calculated to excite. The refined
taste, the accurate perceptions, the knowledge of the human heart, and
the insight into character, which intellectual culture can highly
improve, even if it cannot create, are to be the principal results as
well as the greatest pleasures to which you are to look forward. In
study, as in every other important pursuit, the immediate
results--those that are most tangible and encouraging to the faint and
easily disheartened--are exactly those which are least deserving of
anxiety. A couple of hours' reading of poetry in the morning might
qualify you to act the part of oracle that very evening to a whole
circle of inquirers; it might enable you to tell the names, and dates,
and authors of a score of remarkable poems: and this, besides, is a
species of knowledge which every one can appreciate. It is not, however,
comparable in kind to the refinement of mind, the elevation of thought,
the deepened sense of the beautiful, which a really intellectual study
of the same works would impart or increase. I do not wish to depreciate
the good offices of the memory; it is very valuable as a handmaid to the
higher powers of the intellect. I have, however, generally observed that
where much attention has been devoted to the recollection of names,
facts, dates, &c., the higher species of intellectual cultivation have
been neglected: attention to them, on the other hand, would never
involve any neglect of the advantages of memory; for a cultivated
intellect can suggest to itself a thousand associative links by which it
can be assisted and rendered much more extensively useful than a mere
verbal memory could ever be. The more of these links (called by
Coleridge hooks-and-eyes) you can invent for yourself, the more will
your memory become an intellectual faculty. By such means, also, you can
retain possession of all the information with which your reading may
furnish you, without paying such exclusive attention to those tangible
and immediate results of study as would deprive you of the more solid
and permanent ones. These latter consist, as I said before, in the
improvement of the mind itself, and not in its furniture. A modern
author has remarked, that the improvement of the mind is like the
increase of money from compound interest in a bank, as every fresh
increase, however trifling, serves as a new link with which to connect
still further acquisitions. This remark is strikingly illustrative of
the value of an intellectual kind of memory. Every new idea will serve
as a "hook-and-eye," with which you can fasten together the past and the
future; every new fact intellectually remembered will serve as an
illustration of some formerly-established principle, and, instead of
burdening you with the separate difficulty of remembering itself, will
assist you in remembering other things.

It is a universal law, that action is in inverse proportion to power;
and therefore the deeply-thinking mind will find a much greater
difficulty in drawing out its capabilities on short notice, and
arranging them in the most effective position, than a mind of mere
cleverness, of merely acquired, and not assimilated knowledge. This
difficulty, however, need not be permanent, though at first it is
inevitable. A woman's mind, too, is less liable to it; as, however
thoughtful her nature may be, this thoughtfulness is seldom strengthened
by habit. She is seldom called upon to concentrate the powers of her
mind on any intellectual pursuits that require intense and
long-continuous thought. The few moments of intense thought which I
recommend to you will never add to your thoughtfulness of nature any
habits that will require serious difficulty to overcome. It is also,
unless a man be in public life, of more importance to a woman than to
him to possess action, viz. great readiness in the use and disposal of
whatever intellectual powers she may possess. Besides this, you must
remember that a want of quickness and facility in recollection, of ease
and distinctness in expression, is quite as likely to arise from
desultory and wandering habits of thought as from the slowness referable
to deep reflection. Most people find difficulty in forcing their
thoughts to concentrate themselves on any given subject, or in
afterwards compelling them to take a comprehensive glance of every
feature of that subject. Both these processes require much the same
habits of mind: the latter, perhaps, though apparently the more
discursive in its nature, demands a still greater degree of
concentration than the former.

When the mind is set in motion, it requires a stronger exertion to
confine its movements within prescribed limits than when it is steadily
fixed on one given point. For instance, it would be easier to meditate
on the subject of patriotism, bringing before the mind every quality of
the heart and head that this virtue would have a tendency to develop,
than to take in, at one comprehensive glance,[76] the different
qualities of those several individuals who have been most remarked for
the virtue. Unless the thoughts were under strong and habitual control,
they would infallibly wander to other peculiarities of these same
individuals, unconnected with the given subject, to curious facts in
their lives, to contemporary characters, &c.; thus loitering by the
way-side in amusing, but here unprofitable reflection: for every
exercise of thought like that which I have described is only valuable in
proportion to the degree of accuracy with which we can contemplate with
one instantaneous glance, laid out upon a map as it were, those features
_only_ belonging to the given subject, and keeping out of view all
foreign ones. There is perhaps no faculty of the mind more susceptible
of evident, as it were tangible, improvement than this: besides, the
exercise of mind which it procures us is one of the highest intellectual
pleasures; you should therefore immediately and perseveringly devote
your efforts and attention to seek out the best mode of cultivating it.
Even the reading of books which require deep and continuous thought is
only a preparation for this higher exercise of the faculties--a useful,
indeed a necessary preparation, because it promotes the habit of fixing
the attention and concentrating the powers of the mind on any given
point. In assimilating the thoughts of others, however, with your own
mind and memory, the mind itself remains nearly passive; it is as the
wax that receives the impression, and must for this purpose be in a
suitable state of impressibility. In exact proportion to the
suitableness of this state are the clearness and the beauty of the
impression; but even when most true and most deep, its value is
extrinsic and foreign: it is only when the mind begins to act for itself
and weaves out of its own materials a new and native manufacture, that
the real intellectual existence can be said to commence. While,
therefore, I repeat my advice to you, to devote some portion of every
day to such reading as will require the strongest exertion of your
powers of thought, I wish, at the same time, to remind you that even
this, the highest species of _reading_, is only to be considered as a
means to an end: though productive of higher and nobler enjoyments than
the unintellectual can conceive, it is nothing more than the
stepping-stone to the genuine pleasures of pure intellect, to the
ennobling sensation of directing, controlling, and making the most
elevated use of the powers of an immortal mind.

To woman, the power of abstracted thought, and the enjoyment derived
from it, is even more valuable than to man. His path lies in active
life; and the earnest craving for excitement, for action, which is the
characteristic of all powerful natures, is in man easily satisfied: it
is satisfied in the sphere of his appointed duty; "he must go forth, and
resolutely dare." Not so the woman, whose scene of action is her quiet
home: her virtues must be passive ones; and with every qualification for
successful activity, she is often compelled to chain down her vivid
imagination to the most monotonous routine of domestic life. When she is
entirely debarred from external activity, a restlessness of nature, that
can find no other mode of indulgence, will often invent for itself
imaginary trials and imaginary difficulties: hence the petty quarrels,
the mean jealousies, which disturb the peace of many homes that might
have been tranquil and happy if the same activity of thought and feeling
had been early directed into right channels. A woman who finds real
enjoyment in the improvement of her mind will neither have time nor
inclination for tormenting her servants and her family; an avocation in
which many really affectionate and professedly religious women exhaust
those superfluous energies which, under wise direction, might have
dispensed peace and happiness instead of disturbance and annoyance. A
woman who has acquired proper control over her thoughts, and can find
enjoyment in their intellectual exercise, will have little temptation to
allow them to dwell on mean and petty grievances. That admirable Swedish
proverb, "It is better to rule your house with your head than with your
heels," will be exemplified in all her practice. Her well-regulated and
comprehensive mind (and comprehensiveness of mind is as necessary to the
skilful management of a household as to the government of an empire)
will be able to contrive such systems of domestic arrangement as will
allot exactly the suitable works at the suitable times to each member of
the establishment: no one will be over-worked, no one idle; there will
not only be a place for every thing, and every thing in its place, but
there will also be a time for every thing, and every thing will have its
allotted time. Such a system once arranged by a master-mind, and still
superintended by a steady and intelligent, but not _incessant_
inspection, raises the character of the governed as well as that of her
who governs: they are never brought into collision with each other; and
the inferior, whose manual expertness may far exceed that to which the
superior has even the capability of attaining, will nevertheless look up
with admiring respect to those powers of arrangement, and that steady
and uncapriciously-exerted authority, which so facilitate and lighten
the task of obedience and dependence. This mode of managing a household,
even if they found it possible, would of course be disliked by those
who, having no higher resources, would find the day hang heavy on their
hands unless they watched all the details of household work, and made
every action of every servant result from their own immediate
interference, instead of from an enlarged and uniformly operating
system.

This subject has brought me back to the point from which I began,--the
_practical_ utility of a cultivated intellect, and the additional power
and usefulness it confers,--raising its possessor above all the mean and
petty cares of daily life, and enabling her to impart ennobling
influences to its most trifling details.

The power of thought, which I have so earnestly recommended you to
cultivate, is even still more practical, and still more useful, when
considered relatively to the most important business of life--that of
religion. Prayer and meditation, and that communion with the unseen
world which imparts a foretaste of its happiness and glory, are enjoyed
and profited by in proportion to the power of controlling the thoughts
and of exercising the mind. Having a firm trust, that to you every other
object is considered subordinate to that of advancement in the spiritual
life, it must be a very important consideration whether, and how far,
the self-education you may bestow on yourself will help you towards its
attainment. In this point of view there can be no doubt that the mental
cultivation recommended in this letter has a much more advantageous
influence upon your religious life than any other manner of spending
your time. Besides the many collateral tendencies of such pursuits to
favour that growth in grace which I trust will ever remain the principal
object of your desires, experience will soon show you that every
improvement in the reflective powers, every additional degree of control
over the movements of the mind, may find an immediate exercise in the
duties of religion.

The wandering thoughts which are habitually excluded from your hours of
study will not be likely to intrude frequently or successfully during
your hours of devotion; the habit of concentrating all the powers of
your mind on one particular subject, and then developing all its
features and details, will require no additional effort for the pious
heart to direct it into the lofty employments of meditation on eternal
things and communion with our God and Saviour: at the same time, the
employments of prayer and meditation will in their turn react upon your
merely secular studies, and facilitate your progress in them by giving
you habits of singleness of mind and steadiness of mental purpose.

FOOTNOTES:

[71] Carlyle.

[72] Matt. xxv. 23.

[73] Dan. xii. 3.

[74] "The vessel whose rupture occasioned the paralysis was so minute
and so slightly affected by the circulation, that it could have been
ruptured only by the over-action of the mind"--_Bishop Jebb's Life_.

[75] "This is nature's law; she will never see her children wronged. If
the mind which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample
upon its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury
but will rise and smile its oppressor. Thus has many a monarch been
dethroned."--_Longfellow_.

[76] It is the theory of Locke, that the angels have all their knowledge
spread out before them, as in a map,--all to be seen together at one
glance.

LETTER IX.

THE CULTIVATION OF THE MIND

(_Continued_)

In continuation of my last letter, I shall proceed at once to the minor
details of study, and suggest for your adoption such practices as others
by experience have found conducive to improvement. Not that one person
can lay down any rules for another that might in every particular be
safely followed: we must, each for ourselves, experimentalize long and
variously upon our own mind, before we can understand the mode of
treatment best suited to it; and we may, perhaps, in the progress of
such experiments, derive as much benefit from our mistakes themselves as
if the object of our experiments had been at once attained. It is not,
however, from wilful mistakes, or from deliberate ignorance, that we
ever derive profit. Instead, therefore, of striking out entirely new
plans for yourself, in which time and patience and even hope may be
exhausted, I should advise you to listen for direction to the
suggestions of those who by more than mere profession have frequented
the road upon which you are anxious to make a rapid progress. In books
you may find much that is useful; from the conversation of those who
have been self-educated you may receive still greater assistance,--as
the advice thus personally addressed must of course be more
discriminating and special. For this latter reason, in all that I am now
about to write, I keep in view the peculiar character and formation of
your mind. I do not address the world in general, who would profit
little by the course of education here recommended: I only write to my
Unknown Friend.

In the first place, I should advise, as of primary importance, the
laying down of a regular system of employment. Impose upon yourself the
duty of getting through so much work every day; even, if possible, lay
down a plan as to the particular period of the day in which each
occupation is to be attended to; many otherwise wasted moments would be
saved by having arranged beforehand that which is successively to engage
the attention. The great advantage of such regularity is experienced in
the acknowledged truth of Lord Chesterfield's maxim: "He who has most
business has most leisure." When the multiplicity of affairs to be got
through absolutely necessitates the arrangement of an appointed time for
each, the same habits of regularity and of undilatoriness (if I may be
allowed the expression) are insensibly carried into the lighter pursuits
of life. There is another important reason for the self-imposition of
those systematic habits which to men of business are a necessity; it is,
however, one which you cannot at all appreciate until you have
experienced its importance: I refer to the advantage of being, by a
self-imposed rule, provided with an immediate object, in which the
intellectual pursuits of a woman must otherwise be deficient. I would
not depreciate the mightiness of "the future;"[77] but it is evident that
the human mind is so constituted as to feel that motives increase in
strength as they approach in nearness; otherwise, why should it require
such strong faith, and that faith a supernatural gift, to enable us to
sacrifice the present gratification of a moment to the happiness of an
eternity. While, therefore, you seek by earnest prayer and reverential
desire to bring the future into perpetually operating force upon your
principles and practice, do not, at the same time, be deterred by any
superstitious fears from profiting by yourself and urging on others
every immediate and temporal motive, not inconsistent with the great
one, "to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever."[78]

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