Woman's mission.

Date:: 1842

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman's mission. Source: Wellcome Collection.

82/180 (page 76)

Here, then, the conventual spirit has been in inju- rious operation;—no less so on other points. This conventual prejudice has banished • from our school-rooms the name of love, and presented to their youthful inmates fragments instead of books, cramped and puny publications instead of the works of master spirits, lest the mind should be contaminated by any allusion to that passion contained in them. The wisdom of such a pro- ceeding is much upon a par with that which devoted the feet to stocks and the shoulders to backboards in order to make them elegant, and denied them heaven’s air, and active exercise, through care for their health. The result, in the one case as in the other, is disease and distortion. Nature will assert her rights over the beings she has made: and she avenges, by the production of deformity, all attempts to force or shackle her operations. The golden globe could not check the expansive force of water; equally useless is it to attempt any check on the expansive force of mind,—it will ooze out! We ought long ago to have been convinced that the only power allowed to us is the power of direction. If one half the amount of effort expended in useless endeavours to cramp and check, had been turned towards this channel, how different would be the results! It is true that it is easier to check than to guide,—to