A General View of Positivism by Auguste Comte (learn to read books TXT) 📕

in most cases with the first formation of the passion; but it is not necessary in all cases to gratify the instinct. Abstinence, in cases where there is real ground for it on both sides, will but serve to strengthen mutual affection.

We have examined the position of Woman as a wife, without supposing her to be a mother. We shall find that maternity, while it extends her sphere of moral influence, does not alter its nature.

As a mother, no less than as a wife, her position will be improved by Positivism. She will have, almost exclusively, the direction of household education. Public education given subsequently, will be little but a systematic development of that which has been previously given at home.

For it is a fundamental principle that education, in the normal condition of society, must be entrusted to the spiritual power; and in the family the spiritual power is represented by Woman. There are strong prejudices against entrusting the education of children to mothers: prejudices springing from the revolutionary spirit of modern times. Since the close of the Middle Ages, the tendency has been to place the intellect above the heart. We have neglected the moral side of education, and I have given undue importance to its intellectual side. But Positivism having superseded this revolutionary phase by demonstrating the preponderance of the heart over the intellect, moral education will resume its proper place. Certainly the present mode of instruction is not adopted for Woman’s teaching. But their influence over the education of the future will be even greater than it was in the Middle Ages. For in the first place, in every part of it, moral considerations will be paramount; and moreover, until puberty, nothing will be studied continuously except Art and Poetry. The knights of old times were usually brought up in this way under feminine guidance, and on them most assuredly it had no enervating influence. The training can hardly be supposed less adapted to a pacific than to a warlike state of society. For instruction, theoretical and practical, as distinguished from education, masters are no doubt necessary. But moral education will be left entirely to women, until the time arrives for systematic teaching of moral science in the years immediately preceding majority. Here the philosopher is necessary. But the chief duties of the philosopher lie with adults; his aim being to recall them, individually or collectively, to principles impressed on them in childhood, and to enforce the right application of these principles to special cases as they may arise. That part of education which has the greatest influence on life, what may be called the spontaneous training of the feelings, belongs entirely to the mother. Hence it is, as I have already observed, of the greatest importance to allow the pupil to remain with his family, and to do away with the monastic seclusion of our public schools.

The peculiar fitness of women for inculcating these elementary principles of morality is a truth which every true philosopher will fully recognize. Women, having stronger sympathies than men, must be better able to call out sympathies in others. Men of good sense have always felt it more important to train the heart than the head; and this is the view adopted by Positive Philosophy. There is a danger of exaggerating the importance of system and of forgetting the conditions on which its utility depends; but the Positivist is preserved from this danger by the peculiar reality of his philosophy. In morals, even more than in other subjects, we can only systematize what has existed previously without system. The feelings must first be stimulated to free and direct action, before we attempt to bring them under philosophic discipline. And this process, which begins with birth, and lasts during the whole period of physical growth, should be left for women to superintend. So specially are they adapted for it, that failing the mother, a female friend, if well chosen, and if she can make herself sufficiently a member of the family, will in most cases do better than the father himself. The importance of the subject can only be appreciated by minds dominated, as women’s minds are, by feeling. Women can see, what men can seldom see, that most actions, and certainly the actions of youth and childhood, ought not to be judged in themselves so much as by the tendencies which they show or by the habits to which they lead. Viewed with reference to their influence on character, no actions are indifferent. The simplest events in a child’s life may serve as an occasion for enforcing the fundamental principle by which the early as well as later stages of Positivist education should be directed; the strengthening of Social Feeling, the weakening of Self-love. In fact, actions of an unimportant kind are precisely those in which it is easiest to appreciate the feelings which prompted them; since the mind of the observer, not being occupied with the consequences of such actions, is more free to examine their source. Moreover, it is only by teaching the child to do right in small things that he can be trained for the hard inward struggle that lies before him in life; the struggle to bring the selfish instincts more and more completely under the control of his higher sympathies. In these respects the best tutor, however sympathetic his nature, will be always far inferior to a good mother. A mother may often not be able to explain the reason of the principle on which she acts, but the wisdom of her plans will generally show itself in the end. Without formal teaching, she will take every opportunity of showing her children, as no other instructor could show them, the joy that springs from generous feelings, and the misery of yielding to selfishness.

From the relation of mother we return by a natural transition to Woman’s position as a wife. The mother, though her authority of course tends to decrease, continues to superintend the growth of