Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Laura has much to narrow and limit her circle; her heart, cruelly hedged in, is forced at each remove to recur to self; at every step she feels the chain which reminds her of its shortness. She has fewer means of exercising her sympathies than we have -- we who in every waking moment have forced upon our eyes constant marks of human feeling in the countenances of others, and upon our ears constant sounds that should appeal to our hearts, for sympathy.

Any departure from the moral and healthy condition of the body; any ail, or pain, or deformity or maim, is very apt to contract the circle of the sympathies by forcing the thoughts to dwell upon the centre of self. There are very few who can find the jewel in the head of the beast, which to the many is ever ugly and venomous.

It is said that to have perfect digestion, one should not know that one has a stomach; and it may be added, that to have perfect health, there should not be an obstacle or hindrance to the free action of any bodily organ. Now Laura has not only much less than we have to call out and exercise her sympathies and feeling for others, but she has much more to concentrate her thoughts upon herself; and if she should always be a generous and self-forgetful woman, it will be in spite of many obstacles; obstacles which will be more and more formidable as with advancing years the sense of individuality will become more distinct.

It is a law of nature, that this tendency to individualism should not be strong in children; each one has enough to impart consistency to the mass of actions which go to constitute the character. Children are given to us like clay in the hands of the potter, and poor pottering work we often make of it! One of the most difficult things in education, either public or private, is to decide how far this tendency and desire shall be indulged or gratified. Perhaps I am not understood; let me explain by a comparison.

If it be true (and we know it is,) that the physical organization of each one of us is subject to certain influences from the physical organization of others, producing sympathies, antipathies, and the like, it is equally true that nature requires a certain independence and individuality in every organism; and no person in the sound state of health can have his bodily organism so completely overpowered by the influence of any other person, as to have the direction of its movements wrested from his own control. This ought so to be, and is; and any apparent exception to it carries prima facie evidence that the organism so influenced must have been in a morbid and abnormal condition. It may be that nature affixes this liability to be controlled by other bodies as one of the ill consequences of a departure from the natural condition of health -- it may be something else; but it cannot be that she allowed the existence of any power by which the operation of one of her laws could be prevented. Now the moral nature has its laws of sympathy and influence as strong as the laws of gravitation and magnetism; and these laws require, that while each nature should be subject to certain general influences exercised by others, it should also retain a certain independence. Some strong minds strive to soar above these social influences, and attaining a cold sublimity of intellect, seem to move on undisturbed by human proximity; while others, swaying to and fro in the crowd of men, are moved by every wind of doctrine; they feel only as others feel, and think only as others think. But the great man, who in his icy isolation courts not human love, and heeds not human counsel, and the little man who never communes with his lonely self, and never relies on his own intellect, have both departed from the natural and healthy condition of the soul, and it is hard to say which suffers most in consequence of it. Some teachers entirely disregard the tendency of each pupil to develop his particular individualism; they break off the sharp corners, smooth away salient points, and strive to reproduce as many and as perfect types of themselves as possible. Their pupils are like artificial trees in a "trim parterre," all cut and docked, and made to grow after one pattern. Other teachers, overlooking that tendency, neglect to repress an undue propensity, or to draw out a too feeble sentiment, and their pupils have no type at all; they are like plants in a neglected woodland, where the stunted shrub, and the gnarled oak, proclaim the absence either of nature or art in their training.

Now in Laura's case all the difficulties are very much increased; she has departed from the natural and healthy standard, and although it is not by any fault of her own, her innocence does not suspend the action of the natural law. She is withdrawn from certain natural and healthy influences, she is subjected in an undue degree to other influences; the beautiful harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm -- between the world without her and the world within her, is broken, and it might perplex a wiser man than I am to obviate all the unfavorable consequences of it upon her future character.