Woman's mission.

Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    infancy; [“but women ought to know, and how shall they knew if no one dare to tell them ? that they are only ^/j^thers in the true sense and com- prehensive dignity of the term, if they labour in developing the souls of their children. Their mission on earth is not tcf bring forth an intelligent biped—it is a man which the world demands from them, a man whose soul is penetrated with virtue —who knows how to choose his companion, inspire virtue into his children, and if needful, to lay down his life at the shrine of duty. Woman, then, has a two-fold duty, as man has a two-fold birth.—To be born into the world is only to be born to pain or pleasure: to be born to the love of God and man, is the true existence; and this second birth our mother owes us, if she wishes for a higher hap- piness than that of watching us while we breathe and digest. This is the happiness which Shakspeare expresses so well when he makes the mother of Coriolanus say, that she felt more pleasure in hear- ing that he had performed an honourable action, than in the first joys of maternity*.”] Let us see how the different kinds of love are exemplified. The natural instinct, and the moral principle. The natural instinct will prompt the weakest and most criminal of women to confront pain, danger, death itself, for her offspring, but it * Aime