The Young Woman's Guide. Alcott William Andrus

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СКАЧАТЬ certain processes which have received the name of education, till their arrival at a certain size or age. The fault, reader—if such should be the case—is not chargeable, solely, on your parents. They followed a custom which they found; they did not make it. But however this may be, it is clear that your great object should now be, to see what you can do for yourself.

      Now, then, here you are, twelve, fourteen, perhaps sixteen years of age. Your parents have brought you up according to the existing customs, for the future. They have not sought to make you feel your present responsibilities, your present power to do good, your present capacity for communicating and securing happiness, so much as to make you believe there are responsibilities, and powers, and capacities, and rewards, to be yours when you come to be large enough and old enough to appreciate or receive them.

      But whatever your parents may have left undone in regard to the formation of your character, it is yours to do. Need I urge the necessity of the case? The present is an exceedingly important period of your life; and what is to be done, must be done quickly. But what your parents have hitherto left undone, they will be likely to continue to leave undone. Unless you apply yourself, therefore—and that immediately—to the finishing of a work, that, owing to the circumstances in which they have been and still are placed, and the views they have entertained, they have left unfinished, your education is not likely to be, by any means, so perfect as it should be. You must take it up, therefore, where they have left it; and do, for yourself, what they have not done for you. In other words, you must engage, at once, in the great work of self-education.

      It may, indeed, be the case, that you are the child of parents who have done their best, and who have done it intelligently. Blessed is the young woman who has such parents, but thrice blessed are the parents themselves, if, in the performance of their work, they have the co-operation of the daughter. There must be self-education even where there are the best of parents. In fact, the work of parental training and that of self-education, should go on together; they cannot well be separated. Parental effort will produce but half its legitimate results, when not seconded by the efforts of infancy and childhood, and especially of youth. The reasons for this are so obvious that they hardly need to be repeated. No young woman can be constantly in the company of her mother; no mother can constantly watch over her daughter. In the best families there are hours of each day, when the child of every age, especially of youthful age and capacity, must be left to herself or to the influence of others. What, then, is to become of her? Is she to yield to that current of the world which every where sets downward?

      You will say, perhaps, that she has good habit on her side, together with the counsels of good and kind parents. If so, I say again, she is highly favored. But what if it happen to be otherwise? What if the parents happen not to be wise and discriminating, or seem unable to find time, in the bustle of a busy world, to do that which they know it were desirable to do? What then?

      I repeat the sentiment, then: if you have the best of parents, you are liable, at your age, to be thrown, day after day, into new and untried circumstances—such as it were next to impossible for parents to foresee. New feelings will arise unknown to yourself, and undiscoverable by them. New passions will make their appearance—new temptations will solicit—new trials will be allotted you, In spite of the best parental efforts at education, there will still remain to you a great work of self-effort.

      To assist you in it, is the leading object of this little volume. It is not a substitute for parental counsels. It is not a substitute for your own reflections. If it prove not an aid to parents, in their task, and if it encourage not the reflection and the self-efforts of the young, it will not accomplish its object.

      In the preceding chapter I have endeavored to give a general idea of education, as I understand and use the term. In this I have shown that no small part of the great work of education devolves, in the best circumstances—and much more in circumstances which are unfavorable—upon the daughter. I have shown that her whole life is a state of preparation, indeed—but also, in some measure, a state of reward.

      You perceive your own character and happiness, for time and for eternity, to be placed, in no small degree and measure, in your own hands—the efforts of parents, friends and teachers to the contrary notwithstanding. You perceive the formation of that character, by the combined efforts of your parents and others and yourself, to constitute the work of your education. You perceive yourself capable—at least I hope you do—of everlasting progress; of approaching the great source of Light, and Truth, and Knowledge, and Excellence, forever and ever, though without the possibility of attaining it. You perceive that, though allied on the one side to the dust you tread on, you are allied on the other side to heaven; that though connected by ties of consanguinity to the worm you are also connected, or may be, with angels and archangels, and cherubim and seraphim, in the glorious work of unceasing progress upward toward the throne of God. Will you not, then, hail with joy, every effort of every being who would assist your spirit in its upward flight?

      To educate yourself—to make progress—to ascend toward the Eternal Throne,—you must know yourself—the laws within and without you—your relations, by means of those laws, to other things and other beings—your powers, your capacities, your prerogatives. You must, moreover, know how to govern yourself in accordance with your knowledge.

      CHAPTER IV

      LOVE OF IMPROVEMENT

      Female capabilities. Doing every thing in the best possible manner. Unending progress. Every person and every occupation susceptible of improvement, indefinitely. Doing well what is before us. Anecdote illustrative of this principle. Personal duties. Two great classes of persons described. Hopes of reaching the ears of the selfish.

      I have already said that you are capable of never-ending progress in knowledge and excellence, and that it is alike your interest and your duty to aspire to that perfection for which God has given you capabilities. The object of the present chapter is to kindle within you a desire to make progress in every thing you do—to go on, as the Scripture expresses it, to perfection.

      "Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well," is an old but true maxim. More than even this might be affirmed. Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing in the best possible manner. No matter how well you have done the same thing heretofore; no matter how much more perfectly you already do it than your neighbors. You are not to make the past of your own experience, or the present of your neighbor's, the measure of your conduct. The question is—How well can I perform this particular act now?

      Perhaps no person who reads these paragraphs, will doubt the truth of the general principle I have laid down. Thus far, it may be said, all seems to be correct. We are, indeed, bound to do every thing we do, to the glory of God; and he can hardly be glorified in the doing of a thing in a manner which is short of the best in our power.

      Yet, when we come to apply the principle, and say in what particulars we should strive to make progress and do better, from day to day, and from hour to hour, (if the thing is to be performed so often,) many an individual will be found, I fear, to stand back; and among those who thus shrink from the just application of admitted principle, will be found not a few who, till now, supposed they had within them a strong desire for perpetual improvement.

      It is, my young friends, no trifling matter to have burning within a hearty desire for eternal progress. It is no small thing to do whatever our hands find to do, which it is fit that an intelligent being—one who belongs to the family of Christ—should do, in such a manner that it will contribute to the glory of God, and the good of mankind.

      And yet less than this, as Christians or even as rational and immortal beings, we cannot do. I know, indeed, that many who profess to be the disciples of Christ, actually do less than this. I know there are hundreds and thousands who are called by his worthy name, and who seem to be almost above the liability to do that which could be regarded as positively wrong, who, nevertheless, are very far from striving to do everything СКАЧАТЬ