The Young Lady's Mentor by A Lady

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This noble picture of self-control can be realized only by those who
keep even the best instincts of a woman's nature under the government of
strict principle, remembering that the most beautiful of these instincts
may not be followed without guidance or restraint. Those who yield to
such instincts without reflection and self-denial will exhaust their
energies before the time comes for the fulfilment of duties.

The third branch of my subject is the most difficult. It may, indeed,
appear strange that we should not have the right to sacrifice our own
happiness: that surely belongs to us to dispose of, if nothing else
does. Besides, happiness is evidently not the state of being intended
for us here below; and that much higher state of mind from which all
"_hap_"[44] is excluded--viz. blessedness--is seldom granted unless the
other is altogether withdrawn.

You must, however, observe that this blessedness is only granted when
the lower state--that of happiness--could not be preserved except by a
positive breach of duty, or when it is withheld or destroyed by the
immediate interposition of God Himself, as in the case of death,
separation, incurable disease, &c. Under any of the above circumstances,
we have the sure promise of God, "As thy days are, so shall thy strength
be." The lost and mourned happiness will not be allowed to deprive us of
the powers of rejoicing in hope, and serving God in peace; also of
diffusing around us the cheerfulness and contentment which is one of the
most important of our Christian duties. These privileges, however, we
must not expect to enjoy, if, by a mistaken unselfishness, (often deeply
stained with pride,) we sacrifice to another the happiness that lay in
our own path, and which may, in reality, be prejudicial to them, as it
was not intended for them by Providence: while, on the contrary, it may
have been by the same Providence intended for us as the necessary drop
of sweetness in the otherwise overpowering bitterness of our earthly
cup.

We take, as it were, the disposal of our fate out of the hands of God as
much when we refuse the happiness He sends us as when we turn aside from
the path of duty on account of some rough passage we see there before
us. Good and evil both come from the hands of the Lord. We should be
watchful to receive every thing exactly in the way He sees it fit for
us.

Experience, as well as theory, confirms the truth of the above
assertions. Consider even your own case with relation to any sacrifice
of your own real happiness to the supposed happiness of another. I can
imagine this possible even in a selfish disposition, not yet hardened.
Your good-nature, warm feelings, and pride (in you a powerfully
actuating principle) may have at times induced you to make, in moments
of excitement, sacrifices of which you have not fully "counted the
cost." Let us, then, examine this point in relation to yourself, and to
the petty sacrifices of daily life. If you have allowed others to
encroach too much on your time, if you have given up to them your
innocent pleasures, your improving pursuits, and favourite companions,
has this indulgence of their selfishness really added to their
happiness? Has it not rather been unobserved, except so far to increase
the unreasonableness of their expectations from you, to make them angry
when it at last becomes necessary to resist their advanced
encroachments? On your own side, too, has it not rather tended to
irritate you against people whom you formerly liked, because you are
suffering from the daily and hourly pressure of the sacrifices you have
imprudently made for them? Believe me, there can be no peace or
happiness in domestic life without a _bien entendu_ self-love, which
will be found by intelligent experience to be a preservative from
selfishness, instead of a manifestation of it.

From all that I have already said, you will, I hope, infer that I am not
likely to recommend any extravagant social sacrifices, or to bring you
in guilty of selfishness for actions not really deserving of the name.
Indeed, I have said so much on the other side, that I may now have some
difficulty in proving that, while defending self-love, I have not been
defending you. We must therefore go back to my former definition of
selfishness--namely, a seeking for ourselves that which is not our real
good, to the neglect of all consideration for that which is the real
good of others. This is viewing the subject _an grand_,--a very general
definition, indeed, but not a vague one, for all the following
illustrations from the minor details of life may clearly be referred
under this head.

These are the sort of illustrations I always prefer--they come home so
much more readily to the heart and mind. Will not some of the following
come home to you? The indulgence of your indolence by sending a tired
person on a message when you are very well able to go yourself--sending
a servant away from her work which she has to finish within a certain
time--keeping your maid standing to bestow much more than needful
decoration on your dress, hair, &c., at a time when she is weak or
tired--driving one way for your own mere amusement, when it is a real
inconvenience to your companion not to go another--expressing or acting
on a disinclination to accompany your friend or sister when she cannot
go alone--refusing to give up a book that is always within your reach to
another who may have only this opportunity of reading it--walking too
far or too fast, to the serious annoyance of a tired or delicate
companion--refusing, or only consenting with ill-humour, to write a
letter, or to do a piece of work, or to entertain a visitor, or to pay a
visit, when the person whose more immediate business it is, has, from
want of time, and not from idleness or laziness, no power to do what she
requests of you--dwelling on all the details of a painful subject, for
the mere purpose of giving vent to and thus relieving your own feelings,
though it may be by the harrowing up of those of others who are less
able to bear it. All these are indeed trifles--but

Trifles make the sum of human things,[45]

and are sure to occur every day, and to form the character into such
habits as will fit or unfit it for great proofs of unselfishness, should
such be ever called for. Besides, it is on trifles such as these that
the smoothness of "the current of domestic joy" depends. It is a
smoothness that is easily disturbed: do not let your hand be the one to
do it.

In all the trifling instances of selfishness above enumerated, I have
generally supposed that a request has been made to you, and that you
have not the trouble of finding out the exact manner in which you can
conquer selfishness for the advantage of your neighbour. I must now,
however, remind you that one of the penalties incurred by past
indulgence in selfishness is this, that those who love you will not
continue to make those requests which you have been in the habit of
refusing, or, if you ever complied with them, of reminding the obliged
person, from time to time, how much serious inconvenience your
compliance has subjected you to. This, I fear, may have been your habit;
for selfish people exaggerate so much every "little" (by "the good man")
"nameless, unremembered act," that they never consider them gratefully
enough impressed on the heart of the receiver without frequent reminders
from themselves. If such has been the case, you must not expect the
frank, confiding request, the entire trust in your willingness to make
any not unreasonable sacrifice, with which the unselfish are gratified
and rewarded, and for which perhaps you often envy them, though you
would not take the trouble to deserve the same confidence yourself. Even
should you now begin the attempt, and begin it in all earnestness, it
will take some time to establish your new character. _En attendant_, you
must be on the watch for opportunities of obliging others, for they will
not be freely offered to you; you must now exercise your own
observation to find out what they would once have frankly told
you,--whether you are tiring people physically or distressing them
morally, or putting them to practical inconvenience. I do not make the
extravagant supposition that all those with whom you associate have
attained to Christian perfection; the proud and the resentful, as well
as the delicate-minded, will suffer much rather than repeat appeals to
your unselfishness which have often before been disregarded. They may
exercise the Christian duty of forgiveness in other ways, but this is
the most difficult of all. Few can attain to it, and you must not hope
it.

Finally; I wish to warn you against believing those who tell you that
such minute analysis of motives, such scrutiny into the smallest details
of daily conduct, has a tendency to produce an unhealthy
self-consciousness. This might, indeed, be true, if the original state
of your nature, before the examination began, were a healthy one. "If
Adam had always remained in Paradise, there would have been no anatomy
and no metaphysics:" as it is not so, we require both. Sin has entered
the world, and death by sin; and therefore it is that both soul and body
require a care and a minute watchfulness that cannot, in the present
state of things, originate either disease or sin. They have both existed
before.

No one ever became or can become selfish by a prayerful examination into
the fact of being so or not. In matters of mere feeling, it is indeed
dangerous to scrutinize too narrowly the degree and the nature of our
emotions. We have no standard by which to try them. If a medical man
cannot be trusted to ascertain correctly the state of his own pulse,
how much more difficult is it for the amateur to sit in judgment on the
strength and number of the pulsations of his own heart and mind.

The case is quite different when feelings manifest themselves in overt
acts: then they become of a nature requiring and susceptible of minute
analyzation. This is the self-scrutiny I recommend to you.

May you be led to seek earnestly for help from above to overcome the
hydra of selfishness, and may you be encouraged, by that freely offered
help, to exert your own energies to the utmost!

Let me urge on your especial attention the following verses from the
Bible on the subjects which we have been considering. If you selected
each one of these for a week's _practice_, making it at once a question,
a warning, and a direction, it would be a tangible, so to speak, use of
the Holy Scriptures, that has been found profitable to many:--

"We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and
not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbour for
his good to edification. Even Christ pleased not himself."[46]

"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister."[47]

"He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto
themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again."[48]

"Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things
of others."[49]

"Let all your things be done with charity."[50]

"By love serve one another."[51]

"But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you, for
ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another."[52]

"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in
deed and in truth."[53]

"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his
neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."[54]

"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them."[55]

FOOTNOTES:

[40] Archdeacon Manning.

[41] See Bishop Butler's Sermons.

[42] 1 Cor. vi. 20.

[43] Acts iv. 28.

[44] Coleridge's Aids to Reflection.

[45] Hannah More.

[46] Rom. xv. 1, 2, 3.

[47] Matt. xx. 28.

[48] 2 Cor. v. 15.

[49] Phil. ii. 4.

[50] 1 Cor. xvi. 14.

[51] Gal. v. 13.

[52] Thess. iv. 9.

[53] 1 John iii. 18.

[54] Rom. xiii. 9, 10.

[55] Matt. vii. 12.

LETTER VI.

SELF-CONTROL.

You will probably think it strange that I should consider it necessary
to address you, of all others, upon the subject of self-control,--you
who are by nature so placid and gentle, so dignified and refined, that
you have never been known to display any of the outbreaks of temper
which sometimes disgrace the conduct of your companions.

You compare yourself with others, and probably cannot help admiring your
superiority. You have, besides, so often listened to the assurances of
your friends that your temper is one that cannot be disturbed, that you
may think self-control the very last point to which your attention
needed to be directed. Self-control, however, has relation to many
things besides mere temper. In your case I readily believe that to be of
singular sweetness, though even in your case the temper itself may still
require self-control. You will esteem it perhaps a paradox when I tell
you that the very causes which preserve your temper in an external state
of equability, your refinement of mind, your self-respect, your delicate
reserve, your abhorrence of every thing unfeminine and ungraceful, may
produce exactly the contrary effect on your feelings, and provoke
internally a great deal of contempt and dislike for those whose conduct
transgresses from your exalted ideas of excellence.

On your own account you would not allow any unkind word to express such
feelings as I have described, but you cannot or do not conceal them in
the expression of your features, in the very tones of your voice. You
further allow them free indulgence in the depths of your heart; in its
secret recesses you make no allowances for the inferiority of people so
differently constituted, educated, and disciplined from
yourself,--people whom, instead of despising and avoiding, you ought
certainly to pity, and, if possible, to sympathize with.

In this respect, therefore, the control which I recommend to you has
reference even to your much vaunted temper, for though any outward
display of ill-breeding and petulance might be much more opposed to your
respect for yourself, any inward indulgence of the same feelings must be
equally displeasing in the sight of God, and nearly as prejudicial to
the passing on of your spirit towards being "perfect, even as your
Father which is in heaven is perfect."[56]

Besides, though there may be no outbreak of ill-temper at the time your
annoyance is excited, nor any external manifestation of contempt even in
your expressive countenance, you will certainly be unable to preserve
kindness and respect of manner towards those whose errors and failings
are not met by internal self-control. You will be contemptuously
heedless of the assertions of those whose prevarication you have even
once experienced; those who have once taunted you with obligation will
never be again allowed to confer a favour upon you; you will avoid all
future intercourse with those whose unkind and taunting words have
wounded your refinement and self-respect. All this would contribute to
the formation of a fine character in a romance, for every thing that I
have spoken of implies your own truth and honesty, your generous nature,
your delicate and sensitive habits of mind, your dread of inflicting
pain. For all these admirable qualities I give you full credit, and, as
I said before, they would make an heroic character in a romance. In real
life, however, they, every one of them, require strict self-control to
form either a Christian character, or one that will confer peace and
happiness. You may be all that I have described, and I believe you to be
so, while, at the same time your severe judgments and unreasonable
expectations may be productive of unceasing discomfort to yourself and
all around you. Your friends plainly see that you expect too much from
them, that you are annoyed when their duller perceptions can discover no
grounds for your annoyance, that you decline their offers of service
when they are not made in exactly the refined manner your imagination
requires. Your annoyance may seldom or never express itself in words,
but it is nevertheless perceptible in the restraint of your manner, in
your carelessness of sympathy on any point with those who generally
differ from you, in the very tone of your voice, in the whole character
of your conversation. Gradually the gulf becomes wider and wider that
separates you from those among whom it has pleased God that your lot
should be cast.

You cannot yet be at all sensible of the dangers I am now pointing out
to you. You cannot yet understand the consequences of your present want
of self-control in this particular point. The light of the future alone
can waken them out of present darkness into distinct and fatal
prominence.

Habit has not yet formed into an isolating chain that refinement of mind
and loftiness of character which your want of self-control may convert
into misfortunes instead of blessings. Whenever, even now, a sense of
total want of sympathy forces itself upon you, you console yourself with
such thoughts as these: "Sheep herd together, eagles fly alone,"[57]&c.

Small consolation this, even for the pain your loneliness inflicts on
yourself, still less for the breach of duties it involves.

There must, besides, be much danger in a habit of mind that leads you to
attribute to your own superiority those very unpleasantnesses which
would have no existence if that superiority were more complete. For, in
truth, if your spiritual nature asserted its due authority over the
animal, you would habitually exercise the power which is freely offered
you, of supreme control over the hidden movements of your heart as well
as over the outward expression of the lips.

I would strongly urge you to consider every evidence of your
isolation--of your want of sympathy with others--as marks of moral
inferiority; then, from your conscientiousness of mind, you would seek
anxiously to discover the causes of such isolation, and you would
endeavour to remove them.

Nothing is more difficult than the perpetual self-control necessary for
this purpose. Constant watchfulness is required to subdue every feeling
of superiority in the contemplation of your own character, and constant
watchfulness to look upon the words and actions of others through, as it
were, a rose-coloured medium. The mind of man has been aptly compared to
cut glass, which reflects the very same light in various colours as well
as different shapes, according to the forms of the glass. Display then
the mental superiority of which you are justly conscious, by moulding
your mind into such forms as will represent the words and actions of
others in the most favourable point of view. The same illustration will
serve to suggest the best manner of making allowances for those whose
minds are unmanageable, because uneducated and undisciplined. They
cannot _see_ things in the same point of view that you do; how
unreasonable then is it of you to expect that they should form the same
estimate of them.

Let us now enter into the more minute details of this subject, and
consider the many opportunities for self-control which may arise in the
course of even this one day. I will begin with moral evil.

You may hear falsehoods asserted, you may hear your friend traduced, you
may hear unfair and exaggerated statements of the conduct of others,
given to the very people with whom they are most anxious to stand well.
These are trials to which you may be often exposed, even in domestic
life; and their judicious management, the comparative advantages to
one's friends or one's self of silence or defence, will require your
calmest judgment and your soundest discretion; qualities which of course
cannot be brought into action without complete self-control. I can
hardly expect, or, indeed, wish that you should hear the falsehoods of
which I have spoken without some risings of indignation; these, however,
must be subdued for your friend's sake as well as your own. You would
think it right to conquer feelings of anger and revenge if you were
yourself unjustly accused, and though the other excitement may bear the
appearance of more generosity, you must on reflection admit that it is
equally your duty to subdue such feelings when they are aroused by the
injuries inflicted on a friend. The happy safeguard, the _instinctive_
test, by which the well-regulated and comparatively innocent mind may
safely try the right or the wrong of every indignant feeling is this: so
far as the feeling is painful, so far is it tainted with sin. To "be
angry and sin not,"[58] there must be no pain in the anger: pain and sin
cannot be separated: there may indeed be sorrow, but this is to be
carefully distinguished from pain. The above is a test which, after
close examination and experience, you will find to be a safe and true
one. Whenever they are thus safe and true, our instinctive feelings
ought to be gratefully made use of; thus even our animal nature may be
made to come to the assistance of our spiritual nature, against which it
is too often arrayed in successful opposition.

I have spoken of the exceeding difficulty of exercising self-control
under such trying circumstances as those above described, and this
difficulty will, I candidly confess, be likely to increase in proportion
to your own honesty and generosity. Be comforted, however, by this
consideration, that, conflict being the only means of forming the
character into excellence, and your natural amiability averting from you
many of the usual opportunities for exercising self-control, you would
be in want of the former essential ingredient in spiritual discipline
did not your very virtues procure it for you.

While, however, I allow you full credit for these virtues, I must insist
on a careful distinction between a mere virtue and a Christian grace.
Every virtue becomes a vice the moment it overpasses its prescribed
boundaries, the moment it is given free power to follow the bent of
animal nature, instead of being, even though a virtue, kept under the
strict control of religious principle.

I must now suggest to you some means by which I have known self-control
to be successfully exhibited and perpetuated, with especial reference to
that annoyance which we have last considered. Instead, then, of dwelling
on the deviations from truth of which I have spoken, even when they are
to the injury of a friend, try to banish the subject from your mind and
memory; or, if you are able to think of it in the very way you please,
try to consider how much the original formation of the speaker's mind,
careless habits, and want of any disciplining education, may each and
all contribute to lessen the guilt of the person who has annoyed you. No
one knows better than yourself that tho original nature of the mind, as
well as its implanted habits, modifies every fact presented to its
notice. Still further, the point of view from which the fact or the
character has been seen may have been entirely different from yours.
These other persons may absolutely have _seen_ the thing spoken of in a
position so completely unlike your mental vision of it, that they are as
incapable of understanding your view as you may be of understanding
theirs. If sincere in your wish for improvement, you had better prove
the truth of the above assertion by the following process. Take into
your consideration any given action, not of a decidedly honourable
nature--one which, perhaps, to most people would appear of an
indifferent nature,--but to your lofty and refined notions deserving of
some degree of reprehension. You have a sufficiently metaphysical head
to be able to abstract yourself entirely from your own view of the case,
and then you can contemplate it with a total freedom from prejudice.
Such a contemplation can only be attempted when no feeling is
concerned,--feeling giving life to every peculiarity of moral sentiment,
as the heat draws out those characters which would otherwise have passed
unknown and unnoticed. I would then have you examine carefully into all
the considerations which might qualify and alter, even your own view of
the case. Dwell long and carefully upon this part of the process. It is
astonishing (incredible indeed until it is tried) how much our opinions
of the very same action may alter if we determinately confine ourselves
to the favourable aspect in which it may be viewed, keeping the contrary
side entirely out of sight.

As soon as this has been carried to the utmost, you must further (that
my experiment may be fairly tried) endeavour to throw yourself, in
imagination, not only into the position, but also into the natural and
acquired mental and moral perceptions of the person whose action you are
taking into your consideration. For this purpose you must often
imagine--natural dimness of perception, absence of acute sensibility,
indifference to wounding the feelings of others from mere carelessness
and want of reflective powers, little natural conscientiousness, an
entire absence of the taste or the power of metaphysical examination
into the effect produced by our actions. All these natural deficiencies,
you must further consider, may in this case be increased by a totally
neglected education,--first, by the want of parental discipline, and
afterwards of that more important self-education which few people have
sufficient strength of character to subject themselves to. Lastly, I
would have you consider especially the moral atmosphere in which they
have habitually breathed: according to the nature of this the mental
health varies as certainly as the physical strength varies in a bracing
or relaxing air. A strong bodily constitution may resist longer, and
finally be less affected by a deleterious atmosphere than a weak or
diseased frame; and so it is with the mental constitution. Minds
insensibly imbibe the tone of the atmosphere in which they most
frequently dwell; and though natural loftiness of character and natural
conscientiousness may for a very long period resist such influences, it
cannot be expected that inferior natures will be able to do so.

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