The conclusions may carry them further, to judge from the most modern paintings of the tone of mind of their own time, of its impatience and restlessness and want of hope. Let them compare the patient finish, the complete thought given to every detail in the works of the greatest painters, the accumulated light and depth, the abounding life, with the hasty, jagged, contemporary manner of painting, straining into harshness from want of patience, tense and angular from want of real vitality, exhausted from the absence of inward repose. They will comment for themselves upon the pessimism to which so many surrender themselves, taking with them their religious art, with its feeble Madonnas and haggard saints, without hope or courage or help, painted out of the abundance of their own heart's sadness. This contrast carries much teaching to the children of to-day if they can understand it, for each one who sets value upon faith and hope and resolution and courage in art is a unit adding strength to the line of defence against the invasions of sadness and dejection of spirit.
These considerations belong to the moral and spiritual value of the study of art, in the early years of an education intended to be general. They are of primary importance although in themselves only indirect results of the study. As to its direct results, it may be said in general that two things must be aimed at during the years of school life, appreciation of the beautiful in the whole realm of art, and some very elementary execution in one or other branch, some doing or making according to the gift of each one.
The work on both sides is and can be only preparation, only the establishment of principles and the laying of foundations; if anything further is attempted during school life it is apt to throw the rest of the education out of proportion, for in nothing whatever can a girl leaving the school-room be looked upon as having finished. It is a great deal if she is well-grounded and ready to begin. Even the very branches of study to which a disproportioned space has been allowed will suffer the penalty of it later on, for the narrow basis of incomplete foundations tends to make an ill-balanced superstructure which cannot bear the stress of effort required for perfection without falling into eccentricity or wearing itself out. Both misfortunes have been seen before now when infant prodigies have been allowed to grow on one side only. Restraint and control and general building up tend to strengthen even the talent which has apparently to be checked, by giving it space and equilibrium and the power of repose. Even if art should be their profession or their life-work in any form, the sacrifices made for general education will be compensated in the mental and moral balance of their work.
If general principles of art have been kept before the minds of children, and the history of art has given them some true ideas of its evolution, they are ready to learn the technique and practice of any branch to which they may be attracted. But as music and painting are more within their reach than other arts, it is reasonable that they should be provided for in the education of every child, so that each should have at least the offer and invitation of an entrance into those worlds, and latent talents be given the opportunity of declaring themselves. Poetry has its place apart, or rather it has two places, its own in the field of literature, and another, as an inspiration pervading all the domain of the fine arts, allied with music by a natural affinity, connected with painting on the side of imagination, related in one way or another to all that is expressive of the beautiful. Children will feel its influence before they can account for it, and it is well that they should do so—to feel it is in the direction of refusing the evil and choosing the good.
Music is coming into a more important place among educational influences now that the old superstition of making every child play the piano is passing away. It was an injustice both to the right reason of a child and to the honour of music when it was forced upon those who were unwilling and unfit to attain any degree of excellence in it. We are renouncing these superstitions and turning to something more widely possible—to cultivate the audience and teach them to listen with intelligence to that which without instruction is scarcely more than pleasant noise, or at best the expression of emotion. The intellectual aspect of music is beginning to be brought forward in teaching children, and with this awakening the whole effect of music in education is indefinitely raised. It has scarcely had time to tell yet, but as it extends more widely and makes its way through the whole of our educational system it may be hoped that the old complaints, too well founded, against the indifference and carelessness of English audiences, will be heard no more. We shall never attain to the kind of religious awe which falls upon a German audience, or to its moods of emotion, but we may reach some means of expression which the national character does not forbid, showing at least that we understand, even though we must not admit that we feel.
It is impossible to suggest what may be attained by girls of exceptional talent, but in practice if the average child-students, with fair musical ability, can at the end of their school course read and sing at sight fairly easy music, and have a good beginning of intelligent playing on one or two instruments, they will have brought their foundations in musical practice up to the level of their general education. If with some help they can understand the structure of a great musical work, and perhaps by themselves analyse an easy sonata, they will be in a position to appreciate the best of what they will hear afterwards, and if they have learnt something of the history of music and of the works of the great composers, their musical education will have gone as far as proportion allows before they are grown up. Some notions of harmony, enough to harmonize by the most elementary methods a simple melody, will be of the greatest service to those whose music has any future in it.
Catholic girls have a right and even a duty to learn something of the Church's own music; and in this also there are two things to be learnt—appreciation and execution. And amongst the practical applications of the art of music to life there is nothing more honourable than the acquired knowledge of ecclesiastical music to be used in the service of the Church. When the love and understanding of its spirit are acquired the diffusion of a right tone in Church music is a means of doing good, as true and as much within the reach of many girls as the spread of good literature; and in a small and indirect way it allows them the privilege of ministering to the beauty of Catholic worship and devotion.
The scope of drawing and painting in early education has been most ably treated of in many general and special works, and does not concern us here except in so far as it is connected with the training of taste in art which is of more importance to Catholics than to others, as has been considered above, in its relation to the springs of spiritual life, to faith and devotion, and also in so far as taste in art serves to strengthen or to undermine the principles on which conduct is based. We have to brace our children's wills to face restraint, to know that they cannot cast themselves at random and adrift in the pursuit of art, that their ideals must be more severe than those of others, and that they have less excuse than others if they allow these ideals to be debased. They ought to learn to be proud of this restraint, not to believe themselves thwarted or feel themselves galled by it, but to understand that it stands for a higher freedom by the side of which ease and unrestraint are more like servitude than liberty; it stands for the power to refuse the evil and choose the good; it stands for intellectual and moral freedom of choice, holding in check the impulse and inclination that are prompted from within and invited from without to escape from control.
The best teaching in this is to show what is best, and to give the principles by which it is to be judged. To talk of what is bad, or less good, even by way of warning, is less persuasive and calculated even to do harm to girls whose temper of mind is often "quite contrary." Warnings are wearisome to them, and when they refer to remote dangers, partly guessed at, mostly unknown, they even excite the spirit of adventure to go and find out for themselves, just as in childhood repeated warnings and threats of the nursery-maids and maiden aunts are the very things which set the spirit of enterprise off on the voyage of discovery, a fact which the head nurse and the mother have found out long ago, and so have learnt to refrain from these attractive advertisements of danger. So it is with teachers. We learn by experience that a trumpet blast of warning wakes the echoes at first and rouses all that is to be roused, but also that if it is often repeated it dulls the ear and calls forth no response at all. Quiet positive teaching convinces children; to show them the best things attracts them, and once their true allegiance is given to the best, they have more security within themselves than in many danger signals set up for their safety. What is most persuasive of all is a whole-hearted love for real truth and beauty in those who teach them. Their own glow of enthusiasm is caught, light from light, and taste from taste, and ideal from ideal; warning may be lost sight of, but this is living spirit and will last.
What children can accomplish by the excellent methods of teaching drawing and painting which are coming into use now, it is difficult to say. Talent as well as circumstances and conditions of education differ very widely in this. But as preparation for intelligent appreciation they should acquire some elementary principles of criticism, and some knowledge of the history and of the different schools of painting, indications of what to look for here and there in Europe and likewise of how to look at it; this is what they can take with them as a foundation, and in some degree all can acquire enough to continue their own education according to their opportunities. Matter-of-fact minds can learn enough not to be intolerable, the average enough to guide and safeguard their taste. They are important, for they will be in general the multitude, the public, whose judgment is of consequence by its weight of numbers; they will by their demand make art go upwards or downwards according to their pleasure. For the few, the precious few who are chosen and gifted to have a more definite influence, all the love they can acquire in their early years for the best in art will attach them for life to what is sane and true and lovely and of good fame.
The foundations of all this lie very deep in human nature, and taste will be consistent with itself throughout the whole of life. It manifests itself in early sensitiveness and responsiveness to artistic beauty. It determines the choice in what to love as well as what to like. It will assert itself in friendship, and estrangement in matters of taste is often the first indication of a divergence in ideals which continues and grows more marked until at some crossroads one takes the higher path and the other the lower and their ways never meet again. That higher path, the disinterested love of beauty, calls for much sacrifice; it must seek its pleasure on ly in the highest, and not look for a first taste of delight, but a second, when the power of criticism has been schooled by a kind of asceticism to detect the choice from the vulgar and the true from the insincere. This spirit of sacrifice must enter into every form of training for life, but above all into the training of the Catholic mind. It has a wide range and asks much of its disciples, a certain renunciation and self-restraint in all things which never completely lets itself go. Catholic art bears witness to this: "Where a man seeks himself there he falls from love," says a Kempis, and this is proved not only in the love of God, but in what makes the glory of Christian art, the love of beauty and truth in the service of faith.
CHAPTER XII.
MANNERS.
"Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each—once—a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage."—EMERSON.
The late Queen Victoria had a profound sense of the importance of manners and of certain conventionalities, and the singular gift of common sense, which stood for so much in her, stands also for the significance of those things on which she laid so much stress.
Conventionality has a bad name at present, and manners are on the decline, this is a fact quite undisputed. As to conventionalities it is assumed that they represent an artificial and hollow code, from the pressure of which all, and especially the young, should be emancipated. And it may well be that there is something to be said in favour of modifying them—in fact it must be so, for all human things need at times to be revised and readapted to special and local conditions. To attempt to enforce the same code of conventions on human society in different countries, or at different stages of development, is necessarily artificial, and if pressed too far it provokes reaction, and in reaction we almost inevitably go to extreme lengths. So in reaction against too rigid conventionalities and a social ritual which was perhaps over-exacting, we are swinging out beyond control in the direction of complete spontaneity. And yet there is need for a code of conventions—for some established defence against the instincts of selfishness which find their way back by a short cut to barbarism if they are not kept in check.
Civilized selfishness leads to a worse kind of barbarism than that of rude and primitive states of society, because it has more resources at its command, as cruelty with refinement has more resources for inflicting pain than cruelty which can only strike hard. Civilized selfishness is worse also in that it has let go of better things; it is not in progress towards a higher plane of life, but has turned its back upon ideals and is slipping on the down-grade without a check. We can see the complete expression of life without conventions in the unrestraint of "hooliganism" with us, and its equivalents in other countries. In this we observe the characteristic product of bringing up without either religion, or conventions, or teaching in good manners which are inseparable from religion. We see the demoralization of the very forces which make both the strength and the weakness of youth and a great part of its charm, the impetuosity, the fearlessness of consequence, the lightheartedness, the exuberance which would have been so strong for good if rightly turned, become through want of this right impetus and control not strong but violent, uncontrollable and reckless to a degree which terrifies the very authorities who are responsible for them, in that system which is bringing up children with nothing to hold by, and nothing to which they can appeal. Girls are inclined to go even further than boys in this unrestraint through their greater excitability and recklessness, and their having less instinct of self-preservation. It is a problem for the local authorities. Their lavish expenditure upon sanitation, adornment, and—to use the favourite word—"equipment" of their schools does not seem to touch it; in fact it cannot reach the real difficulty, for it makes appeal to the senses and neglects the soul, and the souls of children are hungry for faith and love and something higher to look for, beyond the well-being of to-day in the schools, and the struggle for life, in the streets, to-morrow.
It is not only in the elementary schools that such types of formidable selfishness are produced. In any class of life, in school or home, wherever a child is growing up without control and "handling," without the discipline of religion and manners, without the yoke of obligations enforcing respect and consideration for others, there a rough is being brought up, not so loud-voiced or so uncouth as the street-rough, but as much out of tune with goodness and honour, with as little to hold by and appeal to, as troublesome and dangerous either at home or in society, as uncertain and unreliable in a party or a ministry, and in any association that makes demand upon self-control in the name of duty.
This is very generally recognized and deplored, but except within the Church, which has kept the key to these questions, the remedy is hard to find. Inspectors of elementary schools have been heard to say that, even in districts where the Catholic school was composed of the poorest and roughest elements, the manners were better than those of the well-to-do children in the neighbouring Council schools. They could not account for it, but we can; the precious hour of religious teaching for which we have had to fight so hard, influences the whole day and helps to create the "Catholic atmosphere" which in its own way tells perhaps more widely than the teaching. Faith tells of the presence of God and this underlies the rest, while the sense of friendly protection, the love of Our Lady, the angels, and saints, the love of the priest who administers all that Catholic children most value, who blesses and absolves them in God's name, all these carry them out of what is wretched and depressing in their surroundings to a different world in which they give and receive love and respect as children of God. No wonder their manners are gentler and their intercourse more disposed to friendliness, there is something to appeal to and uphold, something to love.
The Protestant Reformation breaking up these relations and all the ceremonial observance in which they found expression, necessarily produced deterioration of manners. As soon as anyone, especially a child, becomes—not rightly but aggressively—independent, argumentatively preoccupied in asserting that "I am as good as you are, and I can do without you"—he falls from the right proportion of things, becomes less instead of greater, because he stands alone, and from this to warfare against all order and control the step is short. So it has proved. The principles of Protestantism worked out to the principles of the Revolution, and to their natural outcome, seen at its worst in the Reign of Terror and the Commune of 1871 in Paris.
Again the influence of the Church on manners was dominant in the age of chivalry. At that time religion and manners were known to be inseparable, and it was the Church that handled the rough vigour of her sons to make them gentle as knights. This is so well known that it needs no more than calling to mind, and, turning attention to the fact that all the handling was fundamental, it is handling that makes manners. Even the derivation of the word does not let us forget this—manners from manieres, from manier, from main, from manus, the touch of the human hand upon the art of living worthily in human society, without offence and without contention, with the gentleness of a race, the gens, that owns a common origin, the urbanity of those who have learned to dwell in a city "compact together," the respect of those who have some one to look to for approval and control, either above them in dignity, or beneath them in strength, and therefore to be considered with due reverence.
The handling began early in days of chivalry, no time was lost, because there would necessarily be checks on the way. Knighthood was far off, but it could not be caught sight of too early as an ideal, and it was characteristic of the consideration of the Church that, in the scheme of manners over which she held sway, the first training of her knights was intrusted to women. For women set the standard of manners in every age, if a child has not learnt by seven years old how to behave towards them it is scarcely possible for him to learn it at all, and it is by women only that it can be taught. The little damoiseaux would have perfect and accomplished manners for their age when they left the apartments of the ladies at seven years old; it was a matter of course that they would fall off a good deal in their next stage. They would become "pert," as pages were supposed to be, and diffident as esquires, but as knights they would come back of themselves to the perfect ways of their childhood with a grace that became well the strength and self-possession of their knighthood. We have no longer the same formal and ceremonial training; it is not possible in our own times under the altered conditions of life, yet it commands attention for those who have at heart the future well-being of the boys and girls of to-day. The fundamental facts upon which manners are grounded remain the same. These are, some of them, worth consideration:—
1. That manners represent a great deal more than mere social observances; they stand as the outward expression of some of the deepest springs of conduct, and none of the modern magic of philanthropy— altruism, culture, the freedom and good-fellowship of democracy, replaces them, because, in their spirit, manners belong to religion.
2. That manners are a matter of individual training, so that they could never be learnt from a book. They can scarcely be taught, except in their simplest elements, to a class or school as a whole, but the authority which stands nearest in responsibility to each child, either in the home circle or at school, has to make a special study of it in order to teach it manners. The reason of this is evident. In each nature selfishness crops out on one side rather than another, and it is this which has to be studied, that the forward may be repressed, the shy or indolent stimulated, the dreamy quickened into attention, and all the other defective sides recognized and taken, literally, in hand, to be modelled to a better form.
3. That training in manners is not a short course but a long course of study, a work of patience on both sides, of gentle and most insistent handling on one side and of long endurance on the other. There are a very few exquisite natures with whom the grace of manners seems to be inborn. They are not very vigorous, not physically robust; their own sensitiveness serves as a private tutor or monitor to tell them at the right moment what others feel, and what they should say or do. They have a great gift, but they lay down their price for it, and suffer for others as well as in themselves more than their share. But in general, the average boy and girl needs a "daily exercise" which in most cases amounts to "nagging," and in the best hands is only saved from nagging by its absence of peevishness, and the patience with which it reminds and urges and teases into perfect observance. The teasing thing, and yet the most necessary one, is the constant check upon the preoccupying interests of children, so that in presence of their elders they can never completely let themselves go, but have to be attentive to every service of consideration or mark of respect that occasion calls for. It is very wearisome, but when it has been acquired through laborious years—there it is, like a special sense superadded to the ordinary endowments of nature, giving presence of mind and self-possession, arming the whole being against surprise or awkwardness or indiscretion, and controlling what has so long appeared to exercise control over it—the conditions of social intercourse.
How shall we persuade the children of to-day that manners and conventions have not come to an end as part of the old regime which appears to them an elaborate unreality V It is exceedingly difficult to do so, at school especially, as in many cases their whole family consents to regard them as extinct, and only when startled at the over-growth of their girls' unmannerly roughness and self-assertion they send them to school "to have their manners attended to"; but then it is too late. The only way to form manners is to teach them from the beginning as a part of religion, as indeed they are. Devotion to Our Lady will give to the manners both of boys and girls something which stamps them as Christian and Catholic, something above the world's level. And, as has been so often pointed out, the Church's ritual is the court ceremonial of the most perfect manners, in which every least detail has its significance, and applies some principle of inward faith and devotion to outward service.
If we could get to the root of all that the older codes of manners required, and even the conventionalities of modern life—these remnants, in so far as they are based on the older codes—it would be found that, as in the Church's ceremonial, not one of them was without its meaning, but that all represented some principle of Christian conduct, even if they have developed into expressions which seem trivial. Human things tend to exaggeration and to "sport," as gardeners say, from their type into strange varieties, and so the manners which were the outcome of chivalry—exquisite, idealized, and restrained in their best period, grew artificial in later times and elaborated themselves into an etiquette which grew tyrannical and even ridiculous, and added violence to the inevitable reaction which followed. But if we look beyond the outward form to the spirit of such prescriptions as are left in force, there is something noble in their origin, either the laws of hospitality regulating all the relations of host and guest, or reverence for innocence and weakness which surrounded the dignity of both with lines of chivalrous defence, or the sensitiveness of personal honour, the instinct of what was due to oneself, an inward law that compelled a line of conduct that was unselfish and honourable. So the relics of these lofty conventions are deserving of all respect, and they cannot be disregarded without tampering with foundations which it is not safe to touch. They are falling into disrepute, but for the love of the children let us maintain them as far as we can. The experience of past ages has laid up lessons for us, and if we can take them in let us do so, if only as a training for children in self-control, for which they will find other uses a few years hence.
But in doing this we must take account of all that has changed. There are some antique forms, beautiful and full of dignity, which it is useless to attempt to revive; they cannot live again, they are too massive for our mobile manner of life to-day. And on the other hand there are some which are too high-pitched, or too delicate. We are living in a democratic age, and must be able to stand against its stress. So in the education of girls a greater measure of independence must necessarily be given to them, and they must learn to use it, to become self-reliant and self-protecting. They have to grow more conscious, less trustful, a little harder in outline; one kind of young dignity has to be exchanged for another, an attitude of self-defence is necessary. There is perhaps a certain loss in it, but it is inevitable. The real misfortune is that the first line of defence is often surrendered before the second is ready, and a sudden relaxation of control tends to yield too much; in fact girls are apt to lose their heads and abandon their self-control further than they are able to resume it. Once they have "let themselves go"—it is the favourite phrase, and for once a phrase that completely conveys its meaning—it is exceedingly difficult for them to stop themselves, impossible for others to stop them by force, for the daring ones are quite ready to break with their friends, and the others can elude control with very little difficulty. The only security is a complete armour of self-control based on faith, and a home tie which is a guarantee for happiness. Girls who are not happy in their own homes live in an atmosphere of temptation which they can scarcely resist, and the happiness of home is dependent in a great measure upon the manners of home, "there is no surer dissolvant of home affections than discourtesy." [1—D. Urquhart.] It is useless to insist on this, it is known and admitted by almost all, but the remedy or the preventive is hard to apply, demanding such constant self-sacrifice on the part of parents that all are not ready to practise it; it is so much easier and it looks at first sight so kind to let children have their way. So kind at first, so unselfish in appearance, the parents giving way, abdicating their authority, while the young democracy in the nursery or school-room takes the reins in hand so willingly, makes the laws, or rather rules without them, by its sovereign moods, and then outgrows the "establishment" altogether, requires more scope, snaps the link with home, scarcely regretting, and goes off on its own account to elbow its way in the world. It is obviously necessary and perhaps desirable that many girls should have to make their own way in the world who would formerly have lived at home, but often the way in which it is done is all wrong, and leaves behind on both sides recollections with a touch of soreness.
For those who are practically concerned with the education of girls the question is how to attain what we want for them, while the force of the current is set so strongly against us. We have to make up our minds as to what conventions can survive and fix in some way the high and low-water marks, for there must be both, the highest that we can attain, and the lowest that we can accept. All material is not alike; some cannot take polish at all. It is well if it can be made tolerable; if it does not fall below that level of manners which are at least the safeguard of conduct; if it can impose upon itself and accept at least so much restraint as to make it inoffensive, not aggressively selfish. Perhaps the low-water mark might be fixed at the remembrance that other people have rights and the observance of their claims. This would secure at least the common marks of respect and the necessary conventionalities of intercourse. For ordinary use the high-water mark might attain to the remembrance that other people have feelings, and to taking them into account, and as an ordinary guide of conduct this includes a great deal and requires training and watchfulness to establish it, even where there is no exceptional selfishness or bluntness of sense to be overcome. The nature of an ordinary healthy energetic child, high-spirited and boisterous, full of a hundred interests of its own, finds the mere attention to these things a heavy yoke, and the constant self-denial needed to carry them out is a laborious work indeed.
The slow process of polishing marble has more than one point of resemblance with the training of manners; it is satisfactory to think that the resemblance goes further than the process, that as only by polishing can the concealed beauties of the marble be brought out, so only in the perfecting of manners will the finer grain of character and feeling be revealed. Polishing is a process which may reach different degrees of brilliancy according to the material on which it is performed; and so in the teaching of manners a great deal depends upon the quality of the nature, and the amount of expression which it is capable of acquiring. It is useless to press for what cannot be given, at the same time it is unfair not to exact the best that every one is able to give. As in all that has to do with character, example is better than precept.
But in the matter of manners example alone is by no means enough; precept is formally necessary, and precept has to be enforced by exercise. It is necessary because the origin of established conventionalities is remote; they do not speak for themselves, they are the outcome of a general habit of thought, they have come into being through a long succession of precedents. We cannot explain them fully to children; they can only have the summary and results of them, and these are dry and grinding, opposed to the unpremeditated spontaneous ways of acting in which they delight. Manners are almost fatally opposed to the sudden happy thoughts of doing something original, which occur to children's minds. No wonder they dislike them; we must be prepared for this. They are almost grown up before they can understand the value of what they have gone through in acquiring these habits of unselfishness, but unlike many other subjects to which they are obliged to give time and labour, they will not leave this behind in the schoolroom. It is then that they will begin to exercise with ease and precision of long practice the art of the best and most expressive conduct in every situation which their circumstances may create.
In connexion with this question of circumstances in life and the situations which arise out of them, there is one thing which ought to be taught to children as a fundamental principle, and that is the relation of manners to class of life, and what is meant by vulgarity. For vulgarity is not—what it is too often assumed to be—a matter of class, but in itself a matter of insincerity, the effort to appear or to be something that one is not. The contrary of vulgarity, by the word, is preciousness or distinction, and in conduct or act it is the perfect preciousness and distinction of truthfulness. Truthfulness in manners gives distinction and dignity in all classes of society; truthfulness gives that simplicity of manners which is one of the special graces of royalty, and also of an unspoiled and especially a Catholic peasantry. Vulgarity has an element of restless unreality and pretentious striving, an affectation or assumption of ways which do not belong to it, and in particular an unwillingness to serve, and a dread of owning any obligation of service. Yet service perfects manners and dignity, from the highest to the lowest, and the manners of perfect servants either public or private are models of dignity and fitness. The manners of the best servants often put to shame those of their employers, for their self-possession and complete knowledge of what they are and ought to be raises them above the unquietness of those who have a suspicion that they are not quite what might be expected of them. It is on this uncertain ground that all the blunders of manners occur; when simplicity is lost disaster follows, with loss of dignity and self-respect, and pretentiousness forces its way through to claim the respect which it is conscious of not deserving.
Truth, then, is the foundation of distinction in manners for every class, and the manners of children are beautiful and perfect when simplicity bears witness to inward truthfulness and consideration for others, when it expresses modesty as to themselves and kindness of heart towards every one. It does not require much display or much ceremonial for their manners to be perfect according to the requirements of life at present; the ritual of society is a variable thing, sometimes very exacting, at others disposed to every concession, but these things do not vary—truth, modesty, reverence, kindness are of all times, and these are the bases of our teaching.
The personal contribution of those who teach, the influence of their companionship is that which establishes the standard, their patience is the measure which determines the limits of attainment, for it is only patience which makes a perfect work, whether the attainment be high or low. It takes more patience to bring poor material up to a presentable standard than to direct the quick intuitions of those who are more responsive; in one case efforts meet with resistance, in the other, generally with correspondence. But our own practice is for ourselves the important thing, for the inward standard is the point of departure, and our own sincerity is a light as well as a rule, or rather it is a rule because it is a light; it prevents the standard of manners from being double, one for use and one for ornament; it imposes respect to be observed with children as well as exacted from them, and it keeps up the consciousness that manners represent faith and, in a sense, duty to God rather than to one's neighbour.
This, too, belongs not to the fleeting things of social observance but to the deep springs of conduct, and its teaching may be summed up in one question. Is not well-instructed devotion to Our Lady and the understanding of the Church's ceremonies a school of manners in which we may learn how human intercourse may be carried on with the most perfect external expressiveness? Is not all inattention of mind to the courtesies of life, all roughness and slovenliness, all crude unconventionality which is proud of its self-assertion, a "falling from love" in seeking self? Will not the instinct of devotion and imitation teach within, all those things which must otherwise be learned by painful reiteration from without; the perpetual give up, give way, give thanks, make a fitting answer, pause, think of others, don't get excited, wait, serve, which require watchfulness and self-sacrifice?
Perhaps in the last year or two of education, when our best opportunities occur, some insight will be gained into the deeper meaning of all these things. It may then be understood that they are something more than arbitrary rules; there may come the understanding of what is beautiful in human intercourse, of the excellence of self-restraint, the loveliness of perfect service. If this can be seen it will tone down all that is too uncontrolled and make self-restraint acceptable, and will deal with the conventions of life as with symbols, poor and inarticulate indeed, but profoundly significant, of things as they ought to be.
CHAPTER XIII.
HIGHER EDUCATION OP WOMEN.
"In die Erd' isi's aufgenommen,
Glucklich ist die Form gefullt;
Wird's auch schon zu Tage kommen,
Dass es Fleiss und Kunst vergilt?
Wenn der Guss misslang?
Wenn die Form zersprang?
Ach, vielleicht, indem wir hoffen,
Hat uns Unheil schon getroffen."
SCHILLER, "Das Lied von der Gloeke."
So far in these pages the education of girls has only been considered up to the age of eighteen or so, that is to the end of the ordinary school-room course. At eighteen, some say that it is just time to go to school, and others consider that it is more than time to leave it. They look at life from different points of view. Some are eager to experience everything for themselves, and as early as possible to snatch at this good thing, life, which is theirs, and make what they can of it, believing that its only interest is in what lies beyond the bounds of childhood and a life of regulated studies; they want to begin to live. Others feel that life is such a good thing that every year of longer preparation fits them better to make the most of its opportunities, and others again are anxious—for a particular purpose, sometimes, and very rarely for the disinterested love of it—to undertake a course of more advanced studies and take active part in the movement "for the higher education of women." The first will advance as far as possible the date of their coming out; the second will delay it as long as they are allowed, to give themselves in quiet to the studies and thought which grow in value to them month by month; the third, energetic and decided, buckle on their armour and enter themselves at universities for degrees or certificates according to the facilities offered.
There can be no doubt that important changes were necessary in the education of women. About the middle of the last century it had reached a condition of stagnation from the passing away of the old system of instruction before anything was ready to take its place. With very few exceptions, and those depended entirely on the families from which they carae, girls were scarcely educated at all. The old system had given them few things but these were of value; manners, languages, a little music and domestic training would include it all, with perhaps a few notions of "the use of the globes" and arithmetic. But when it dwindled into a book called "Hangnail's Questions," and manners declined into primness, and domestic training lost its vigour, then artificiality laid hold of it and lethargy followed, and there was no more education for "young ladies."
In a characteristically English way it was individual effort which came to change the face of things, and honour is due to the pioneers who went first, facing opposition and believing in the possibilities of better things. In some other countries the State would have taken the initiative and has done so, but we have our own ways of working out things, "l'aveugle et tatonnante infaillibilite de l'Angleterre," as some one has called it, in which the individual goes first, and makes trial of the land, and often experiences failure in the first attempts. From the closing years of the eighteenth century, when the "Vindication of the Rights of Women" was published by Mary Wollstonecraft, the question has been more or less in agitation. But in 1848, with the opening of Queen's College in London, it took its first decided step forward in the direction of provision for the higher education of women, and in literature it was much in the air. Tennyson's "Princess" came in 1847, and "Aurora Leigh" from Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1851, and things moved onward with increasing rapidity until at one moment it seemed like a rush to new goldfields. One university after another has granted degrees to women or degree certificates in place of the degrees which were refused; women are resident students at some universities and at others present themselves on equal terms with men for examination. The way has been opened to them in some professions and in many spheres of activity from which they had been formerly excluded.
One advantage of the English mode of proceeding in these great questions is that the situation can be reconsidered from time to time without the discordant contentions which surround any proclamation of non-success in State concerns. We feel our way and try this and that, and readjust ourselves, and a great deal of experimental knowledge has been gained before any great interests or the prestige of the State have been involved. These questions which affect a whole people directly or indirectly require, for us at least, a great deal of experimenting before we know what suits us. We are not very amenable to systems, or theories, or ready-made schemes. And the phenomenon of tides is very marked in all that we undertake. There is a period of advance and then a pause and a period of decline, and after another pause the tide rises again. It may perhaps be accounted for in part by the very fact that we do so much for ourselves in England, and look askance at anything which curtails the freedom of our movements, when we are in earnest about a question; but this independence is rapidly diminishing under the more elaborate administration of recent years, and the increase of State control in education. Whatever may be the effect of this in the future, it seems as if there were at present a moment of reconsideration as to whether we have been quite on the right track in the pursuit of higher education for women, and a certain discontent with what has been achieved so far. There are at all events not many who are cordially pleased with the results. Some dissatisfaction is felt as to the position of the girl students in residence at the universities. They cannot share in any true sense in the life of the universities, but only exist on their outskirts, outside the tradition of the past, a modern growth tolerated rather than fostered or valued by the authorities. This creates a position scarcely enviable in itself, or likely to communicate that particular tone which is the gift of the oldest English universities to their sons. Some girl students have undoubtedly distinguished themselves, especially at Cambridge; in the line of studies they attained what they sought, but that particular gift of the university they could not attain. It is lamented that the number of really disinterested students attending Girton and Newnham is small; the same complaint is heard from the Halls for women at Oxford; there is a certain want of confidence as to the future and what it is all leading to. To women with a professional career before them the degree certificates are of value, but the course of studies itself and its mental effect is conceded by many to be disappointing. One reason may be that the characteristics of girls' work affect in a way the whole movement. They are very eager and impetuous students, but in general the staying power is short; an excessive energy is put out in one direction, then it flags, and a new beginning is made towards another quarter. So in this general movement there have been successive stages of activity.
The higher education movement has gone on its own course. The first pioneers had clear and noble ideals; Bedford College, the growth of Cheltenham, the beginnings of Newnham and Girton Colleges, the North of England Ladies' "Council of Education" represented them. Now that the movement has left the port and gone beyond what they foresaw, it has met the difficulties of the open sea.
Nursing was another sphere opened about the same time, to meet the urgent needs felt during the Crimean War; it was admirably planned out by Florence Nightingale, again a pioneer with loftiest ideals. There followed a rush for that opening; it has continued, and now the same complaint is made that it is an outlet for those whose lives are not to their liking at home, rather than those who are conscious of a special fitness for it or recognized as having the particular qualities which it calls for. And then came the development of a new variety among the unemployed of the wealthier classes, the "athletic girl." Not every one could aspire to be an athletic girl, it requires some means, and much time; but it is there, and it is part of the emancipation movement. The latest in the field are the movements towards organization of effort, association on the lines of the German Frauenbund, and the French Mouvement Feministe, and beside them, around them, with or without them, the Women's Suffrage Movement, militant or non-militant. These are of the rising tide, and each tide makes a difference to our coast-line, in some places the sea gains, in others the land, and so the thinkers, for and against, register their victories and defeats, and the face of things continues to change more and more rapidly.
It seems an ungracious task, unfair—perhaps it seems above all retrograde and ignorant—to express doubt and not to think hopefully of a cause in which so many lives have been spent with singular disinterestedness and self-devotion. Yet these adverse thoughts are in the air, not only amongst those who are unable to win in the race, but amongst those who have won, and also amongst those who look out upon it all with undistracted and unbiassed interest; older men, who look to the end and outcome of things, to the ultimate direction when the forces have adjusted themselves. Those who think of the next generation are not quite satisfied with what is being done for our girls or by them.
Catholics have been spurred hotly into the movement by those who are keenly anxious that we should not be left behind, but should show ourselves able to be with the best in all these things. Perhaps at the stage which has been reached we have more reason than others to be dissatisfied with the results of success, since we are more beset than others by the haunting question—what then? For those who have to devote themselves to the cause of Catholic education it is often and increasingly necessary to win degrees or their equivalents, not altogether for their own value, but as the key that fits the lock, for the gates to the domain of education are kept locked by the State. And so in other spheres of Catholic usefulness the key may become more and more necessary. But—may it be suggested—in their own education, a degree for a man and a degree for a girl mean very different things, even if the degree is the same. For a girl it is the certificate of a course of studies. For a man an Oxford or Cambridge degree means atmosphere unique in character, immemorial tradition, association, all kinds of interests and subtle influences out of the past, the impressiveness of numbers, among which the individual shows in very modest proportions indeed whatever may be his gifts. The difference is that of two worlds. Bat even at other universities the degree means more to a man if it is anything beyond a mere gate-key. It is his initial effort, after which comes the full stress of his life's work. For a girl, except in the rarest cases, it is either a gate-key or a final effort, either her life's work takes a different turn, or she thinks she has had enough. The line of common studies is adapted for man's work and programme of life. It has been made to fit woman's professional work, but the fit is not perfect. It has a marked unfitness in its adaptation for women to the real end of higher education, or university education, which is the perfecting of the individual mind, according to its kind, in surroundings favourable to its complete development.
Atmosphere is a most important element at all periods of education, and in the education of girls all-important, and an atmosphere for the higher education of girls has not yet been created in the universities. The girl students are few, their position is not unassailable, their aims not very well defined, and the thing which is above all required for the intellectual development of girls—quiet of mind—is not assured. It is obvious that there can never be great tradition and a past to look back to, unless there is a present, and a beginning, and a long period of growth. But everything for the future consists in having a noble beginning, however lowly, true foundations and clear aims, and this we have not yet secured. It seems almost as if we had begun at the wrong end, that the foundations of character were not made strong enough, before the intellectual superstructure began to be raised—and that this gives the sense of insecurity. An unusual strength of character would be required to lead the way in living worthily under such difficult circumstances as have been created, a great self-restraint to walk without swerving or losing the track, without the controlling machinery of university rules and traditions, without experience, at the most adventurous age of life, and except in preparation for professional work without the steadying power of definite duties and obligations. A few could do it, but not many, and those chosen few would have found their way in any case. The past bears witness to this.
But the past as a whole bears other testimony which is worth considering here. Through every vicissitude of women's education there have always been the few who were exceptional in mental and moral strength, and they have held on their way, and achieved a great deal, and left behind them names deserving of honour. Such were Maria Gaetana Agnesi, who was invited by the Pope and the university to lecture in mathematics at Bologna (and declined the invitation to give herself to the service of the poor), and Lucretia Helena Gomaro Piscopia, who taught philosophy and theology! and Laura Bassi who lectured in physics, and Clara von Schur-man who became proficient in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldaic in order to study Scripture "with greater independence and judgment," and the Pirk-heimer family of Nuremberg, Caritas and Clara and others, whose attainments were conspicuous in their day. But there is something unfamiliar about all these names; they do not belong so much to the history of the world as to the curiosities of literature and learning. The world has not felt their touch upon it; we should scarcely miss them in the galleries of history if their portraits were taken down.
The women who have been really great, whom we could not spare out of their place in history, have not been the student women or the remarkably learned. The greatest women have taken their place in the life of the world, not in its libraries; their strength has been in their character, their mission civilization in its widest and loftiest sense. They have ruled not with the "Divine right of kings," but with the Divine right of queens, which is quite a different title, undisputed and secure to them, if they do not abdicate it of themselves or drag it into the field of controversy to be matched and measured against the Divine or human rights of kings. "The heaven of heavens is the Lord's, but the earth He has given to the children of men," and to woman He seems to have assigned the borderland between the two, to fit the one for the other and weld the links. Hers are the first steps in training the souls of children, the nurseries of the kingdom of heaven (the mothers of saints would fill a portrait gallery of their own); hers the special missions of peace and reconciliation and encouragement, the hidden germs of such great enterprises as the Propagation of the Faith, and the trust of such great devotions as that of the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Heart to be brought within the reach of the faithful. The names of Matilda of Tuscany, of St. Catherine of Siena, of Blessed Joan of Arc, of Isabella the Catholic, of St. Theresa are representative, amongst others, of women who have fulfilled public missions for the service of the Church, and of Christian people, and for the realization of religious ideals: true queens of the borderland between both worlds. Others have reigned in their own spheres, in families or solitudes, or cloistered enclosures—as the two Saints Elizabeth, Paula and Eustochium and all their group of friends, the great Abbesses Hildegarde, Hilda, Gertrude and others, and the chosen line of foundresses of religious orders—these too have ruled the borderland, and their influence, direct or indirect, has all been in the same direction, for pacification and not for strife, for high aspiration and heavenly-mindedness, for faith and hope and love and self-devotion, and all those things for want of which the world is sick to death.
But the kingdom of woman is on that borderland, and if she comes down to earth to claim its lowland provinces she exposes herself to lose both worlds, not securing real freedom or permanent equality in one, and losing hold of some of the highest prerogatives of the other. These may seem to be cloudy and visionary views, and this does not in any sense pretend to be a controversial defence of them, but only a suggestion that both history and present experience have something to say on this side of the question, a suggestion also that there are two spheres of influence, requiring different qualities for their perfect use, as there are two forces in a planetary system. If these forces attempted to work on one line the result would be the wreck of the whole, but in their balance one against the other, apparently contrary, in reality at one, the equilibrium of the whole is secured. One is for motor force and the other for central control; both working in concert establish the harmony of planetary motion and give permanent conditions of unity. Here, as elsewhere, uniformity tends to ultimate loosening of unity; diversity establishes that balance which combines freedom with stability.
Once more it must be said that only the Catholic Church can give perfect adjustment to the two forces, as she holds up on both sides ideals which make for unity. And when the higher education of women has flowered under Catholic influence, it has had a strong basis of moral worth, of discipline and control to sustain the expansion of intellectual life; and without the Church the higher education of women has tended to one-sidedness, to nonconformity of manners, of character, and of mind, to extremes, to want of balance, and to loss of equilibrium in the social order, by straining after uniformity of rights and aims and occupations.
So with regard to the general question of women's higher education may it be suggested that the moral training, the strengthening of character, is the side which must have precedence and must accompany every step of their education, making them fit to bear heavier responsibilities, to control their own larger independence, to stand against the current of disintegrating influences that will play upon them. To be fit for higher education calls for much acquired self-restraint, and unfortunately it is on the contrary sometimes sought as an opening for speedier emancipation from control. Those who seek it in this spirit are of all others least fitted to receive it, for the aim is false, and it gives a false movement to the whole being. Again, when it is entirely dissociated from the realities of life, it tends to unfit girls for any but a professional career in which they will have—at great cost to their own well-being—to renounce their contact with those primeval teachers of experience.
In some countries they have found means of combining both in a modified form of university life for girls, and in this they are wiser than we. Buds of the same tree have been introduced into England, but they are nipped by want of appreciation. We have still to look to our foundations, and even to make up our minds as to what we want. Perhaps the next few years will make things clearer. But in the meantime there is a great deal to be done; there is one lesson that every one concerned with girls must teach them, and induce them to learn, that is the lesson of self-command and decision. Our girls are in danger of drifting and floating along the current of the hour, passive in critical moments, wanting in perseverance to carry out anything that requires steady effort. They are often forced to walk upon slippery ground; temptations sometimes creep on insensibly, and at others make such sudden attacks that the thing all others to be dreaded for girls is want of courage and decision of character. Those render them the best service who train them early to decide for themselves, to say yes or no definitely, to make up their mind promptly, not because they "feel like it" but for a reason which they know, and to keep in the same mind which they have reasonably made up. Thus they may be fitted by higher moral education to receive higher mental training according to their gifts; but in any case they will be prepared by it to take up whatever responsibilities life may throw upon them.
The future of girls necessarily remains indeterminate, at least until the last years of their education, but the long indeterminate time is not lost if it has been spent in preparatory training of mind, and especially in giving some resistance to their pliant or wayward characters. Thus, whether they devote themselves to the well-being of their own families, or give themselves to volunteer work in any department, social or particular, or advance in the direction of higher studies, or receive any special call from God to dedicate their gifts to His particular service, they will at least have something to give; their education will have been "higher" in that it has raised them above the dead level of mediocre character and will-power, which is only responsive to the inclination or stimulus of the moment, but has no definite plan of life. It may be that as far as exterior work goes, or anything that has a name to it, no specified life-work will be offered to many, but it is a pity if they regard their lives as a failure on that account.
There are lives whose occupations could not be expressed in a formula, yet they are precious to their surroundings and precious in themselves, requiring more steady self-sacrifice than those which give the stimulus of something definite to do. These need not feel themselves cut off from what is highest in woman's education, if they realize that the mind has a life in itself and makes its own existence there, not selfishly, but indeed in a peculiarly selfless way, because it has nothing to show for itself but some small round of unimpressive occupations; some perpetual call upon its sympathies and devotion, not enough to fill a life, but just enough to prevent it from turning to anything else. Then the higher life has to be almost entirely within itself, and no one is there to see the value of it all, least of all the one who lives it. There is no stimulus, no success, no brilliancy; it is perhaps of all lives the hardest to accept, yet what perfect workmanship it sometimes shows. Its disappearance often reveals a whole tissue of indirect influences which had gone forth from it; and who can tell how far this unregistered, uncertificated higher education of a woman, without a degree and with an exceedingly unassuming opinion of itself, may have extended. It is a life hard to accept, difficult to put into words with any due proportion to its worth, but good and beautiful to know, surely "rich in the sight of God,"
CHAPTER XIV.
CONCLUSION.
"Far out the strange ships go:
Their broad sails flashing red
As flame, or white as snow:
The ships, as David said.
'Winds rush and waters roll:
Their strength, their beauty, brings
Into mine heart the whole
Magnificence of things.'"
LIONEL JOHNSON.
The conclusion is only an opportunity for repeating how much there is still to be said, and even more to be thought of and to be done, in the great problem and work of educating girls. Every generation has to face the same problem, and deals with it in a characteristic way. For us it presents particular features of interest, of hope and likewise of anxious concern. The interest of education never flags; year after year the material is new, the children come up from the nursery to the school-room, with their life before them, their unbounded possibilities for good, their confidence and expectant hopefulness as to what the future will bring them. We have our splendid opportunity and are greatly responsible for its use. Each precious result of education when the girl has grown up and leaves our hands is thrown into the furnace to be tried—fired—like glass or fine porcelain. Those who educate have, at a given moment, to let go of their control, and however solicitously they may have foreseen and prepared for it by gradually obliging children to act without coercion and be responsible for themselves, yet the critical moment must come at last and "every man's work shall be manifest," "the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is" (1 Cor. III). Life tries the work of education, "of what sort it is." If it stands the test it is more beautiful than before, its colours are fixed. If it breaks, and some will inevitably break in the trial, a Catholic education has left in the soul a way to recovery. Nothing, with us, is hopelessly shattered, we always know how to make things right again. But if we can we must secure the character against breaking, our effort in education must be to make something that will last, and for this we must often sacrifice present success in consideration of the future, we must not want to see results. A small finished building is a more sightly object than one which is only beginning to rise above its foundations, yet we should choose that our educational work should be like the second rather than the first, even though it has reached "the ugly stage," though it has its disappointments and troubles before it, with its daily risks and the uncertainty of ultimate success. But it is a truer work, and a better introduction to the realities of life.
A "finished education" is an illusion or else a lasting disappointment; the very word implies a condition of mind which is opposed to any further development, a condition of self-satisfaction. What then shall we call a well-educated girl, whom we consider ready for the opportunities and responsibilities of her new life? An equal degree of fitness cannot be expected from all, the difference between those who have ten talents and those who have only two will always be felt. Those who have less will be well educated if they have acquired spirit enough not to be discontented or disheartened at feeling that their resources are small; if we have been able to inspire them with hope and plodding patience it will be a great thing, for this unconquerable spirit of perseverance does not fail in the end, it attains to something worthy of all honour, it gives us people of trust whose character is equal to their responsibilities, and that is no little thing in any position of life; and, if to this steadiness of will is added a contented mind, it will always be superior to its circumstances and will not cease to develop in the line of its best qualities.
It is not these who disappoint—in fact they often give more than was expected of them. It is those of great promise who are more often disappointing in failing to realize what they might do with their richer endowments; they fail in strength of will.
Now if we want a girl to grow to the best that a woman ought to be it is in two things that we must establish her fundamentally—quiet of mind and firmness of will. Quiet of mind equally removed from stagnation and from excitement. In stagnation her mind is open to the seven evil spirits who came into the house that was empty and swept; under excitement it is carried to extremes in any direction which occupies its attention at the time. The best minds of women are quiet, intuitive, and full of intellectual sympathies. They are not in general made for initiation and creation, but initiation and creation lean upon them for understanding and support. And their support must be moral as well as mental, for this they need firmness of will. Support cannot be given to others without an inward support which does not fail towards itself in critical moments. The great victories of women have been won by this inward support, this firmness and perseverance of will based upon faith. The will of a woman is strong, not in the measure of what it manifests without, as of what it reserves within, that is to say in the moderation of its own impulsiveness and emotional tendency, in the self-discipline of perseverance, the subordination of personal interest to the good of whatever depends upon it for support. It is great in self-devotion, and in this is found its only lasting independence.
To give much and ask little in personal return is independence of the highest kind. But faith alone can make it possible. The Catholic Faith gives that particular orientation of mind which is independent of this world, knowing the account which it must give to God. To some it is duty and the reign of conscience, to others it is detachment and the reign of the love of God, the joyful flight of the soul towards heavenly things. The particular name matters little, it has a centre of gravity. "As everlasting foundations upon a solid rock, so the commandments of God in the heart of a holy woman." [1—Ecclus. XXVI. 24.]
APPENDIX I.
EXTRACT FROM "THE BLESSED SACRAMENT" BY FATHER FABER.
BOOK III. SEC. VII.
Let us put aside the curtain of vindicative fire, and see what this pain of loss is like; I say, what it is like, for it fortunately surpasses human imagination to conceive its dire reality. Suppose that we could see the huge planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic momentum, such as the mighty avalanche most feebly figures, and thus describing with chafing eccentricities and frightful deflections, their mighty centre-seeking and centre-flying circles, we should behold in the nakedness of its tremendous operations the Divine law of gravitation. Thus in like manner should we see the true relations between God and ourselves, the true meaning and worth of His beneficent presence, if we could behold a lost soul at the moment of its final and judicial reprobation, a few moments after its separation from the body and in all the strength of its disembodied vigour and the fierceness of its penal immortality.
No beast of the jungle, no chimera of heathen imagination, could be so appalling. No sooner is the impassable bar placed between God and itself than what theologians call the creature's radical love of the Creator breaks out in a perfect tempest of undying efforts. It seeks its centre and it cannot reach it. It bounds up towards God, and is dashed down again. It thrusts and beats against the granite walls of its prison with such incredible force, that the planet must be strong indeed whose equilibrium is not disturbed by the weight of that spiritual violence. Yet the great law of gravitation is stronger still, and the planet swings smoothly through its beautiful ether. Nothing can madden the reason of the disembodied soul, else the view of the desirableness of God and the inefficacious attractions of the glorious Divinity would do so.
Up and down its burning cage the many-facultied and mightily intelligenced spirit wastes its excruciating immortality in varying and ever varying still, always beginning and monotonously completing, like a caged beast upon its iron tether, a threefold movement, which is not three movements successively, but one triple movement all at once. In rage it would fain get at God to seize Him, dethrone Him, murder Him, and destroy Him; in agony it would fain suffocate its own interior thirst for God, which parches and burns it with all the frantic horrors of a perfectly self-possessed frenzy; and in fury it would fain break its tight fetters of gnawing fire which pin down its radical love of the beautiful Sovereign Good, and drag it ever back with cruel wrench from its desperate propension to its uncreated Centre. In the mingling of these three efforts it lives its life of endless horrors. Portentous as is the vehemence with which it shoots forth its imprecations against God, they fall faint and harmless, far short of His tranquil, song-surrounded throne.
Pour views of its own hideous state revolve around the lost soul, like the pictures of some ghastly show. One while it sees the million times ten million genera and species of pains of sense which meet and form a loathsome union with this vast central pain of loss. Another while all the multitude of graces, the countless kind providences, which it has wasted pass before it, and generate that undying worm of remorse of which Our Saviour speaks. Then comes a keen but joyless view, a calculation, but only a bankrupt's calculation, of the possibility of gains for ever forfeited, of all the grandeur and ocean-like vastness of the bliss which it has lost. Last of all comes before it the immensity of God, to it so unconsoling and so unprofitable; it is not a picture, it is only a formless shadow, yet it knows instinctively that it is God. With a cry that should be heard creation through, it rushes upon Him, and it knocks itself, spirit as it is, against material terrors. It clasps the shadow of God, and, lo! it embraces keen flames. It runs up to Him but it has encountered only fearful demons. It leaps the length of its chain after Him, but it has only dashed into an affrighting crowd of lost and cursed souls. Thus is it ever writhing under the sense of being its own executioner. Thus there is not an hour of our summer sunshine, not a moment of our sweet starlight, not a vibration of our moonlit groves, not an undulation of odorous air from our flowerbeds, not a pulse of delicious sound from music or song to us, but that hapless unpitiable soul is ever falling sick afresh of the overwhelming sense that all around it is eternal.
EXTRACT FROM "THE CREATOR AND THE CREATURE." BY FATHER FABER.
BOOK II. CH. V.
Yet the heavenly joys of the illuminated understanding far transcend the thrills of the glorified senses. The contemplation of heavenly beauty and of heavenly truth must indeed be beyond all our earthly standards of comparison. The clearness and instantaneousness of all the mental processes, the complete exclusion of error, the unbroken serenity of the vision, the facility of embracing whole worlds and systems in one calm, searching, exhausting glance, the Divine character and utter holiness of all the truths presented to the view—these are broken words which serve at least to show what we may even 'now indistinctly covet in that bright abode of everlasting bliss. Intelligent intercourse with the angelic choirs, and the incessant transmission of the Divine splendours through them to our minds, cannot be thought of without our perceiving that the keen pleasures and deep sensibilities of the intellectual world on earth are but poor, thin, unsubstantial shadows of the exulting immortal life of our glorified minds above.
The very expansion of the faculties of the soul, and the probable disclosure in it of many new faculties which have no object of exercise in this land of exile, are in themselves pleasures which we can hardly picture to ourselves. To be rescued from all narrowness, and for ever; to possess at all times a perfect consciousness of our whole undying selves, and to possess and retain that self-consciousness in the bright light of God; to feel the supernatural corroborations of the light of glory, securing to us powers of contemplation such as the highest mystical theology can only faintly and feebly imitate; to expatiate in God, delivered from the monotony of human things; to be securely poised in the highest flights of our immense capacities, without any sense of weariness, or any chance of a reaction; who can think out for himself the realities of a life like this?
Yet what is all this compared with one hour, one of earth's short hours, of the magnificences of celestial love? Oh to turn our whole souls upon God, and souls thus expanded and thus glorified; to have our affections multiplied and magnified a thousandfold, and then girded up and strengthened by immortality to bear the beauty of God to be unveiled before us; and even so strengthened, to be rapt by it into a sublime amazement which has no similitude on earth; to be carried away by the inebriating torrents of love, and yet be firm in the most steadfast adoration; to have passionate desire, yet without tumult or disturbance; to have the most bewildering intensity along with an unearthly calmness; to lose ourselves in God, and then find ourselves there more our own than ever; to love rapturously and to be loved again still more rapturously, and then for our love to grow more rapturous still, and again the return of our love to be still outstripping what we gave, and then for us to love even yet more and more and more rapturously, and again, and again, and again to have it so returned, and still the great waters of God's love to flow over us and overwhelm us until the vehemence of our impassioned peace and the daring vigour of our yearning adoration reach beyond the sight of our most venturous imagining; what is all this but for our souls to live a life of the most intelligent entrancing ecstasy, and yet not be shivered by the fiery heat? There have been times on earth when we have caught our own hearts loving God, and there was a flash of light, and then a tear, and after that we lay down to rest. O happy that we were! Worlds could not purchase from us even the memory of those moments. And yet when we think of heaven, we may own that we know not yet what manner of thing it is to love the Lord Our God.