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BOOK III.

EDUCATION OF THE SOUL.

MORAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES OF MOTHERS OF

FAMILIES.

CHAPTER I.

OF A GREAT DUTY WHICH IS IMPOSED UPON MOTHERS.

"O Dieu, donnez moi des paroles, non de celles qui flattent les oreilles, et qui font louer les discours, mais de celles qui pénétrent les cœurs, et qui captivent l'entendement."

BOSSUET. Sermons.

LISTEN, good mothers: this is not a question of one of those idle studies, the only aim of which is to stock the memory; it concerns an important question, the most important which can be agitated on the earth; so important, that the manner in which you resolve it, will decide without appeal of your moral life and death, of the moral life and death of children. your It is not only a matter that regards yourselves, but also the flesh of your flesh, the blood of your blood; poor little creatures, whom you have brought into this world, with passions, vices, love, hatred, pain, and death; for these are in truth what they have received from you with the life of the body; and these will indeed be miserable presents, if you do not also give them the life of the soul; that is to say, arms wherewith to fight, and a light whereby to direct themselves.

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You are mothers according to the laws of our material nature, with all the love of a hen which watches over its little ones, and covers them with its wings. I come to ask you to be mothers according to the laws of our divine nature, with all the love of a soul called upon to form souls.

Assure yourselves well, whether or not you owe to your children only the milk of your breasts, and the instruction of the intelligence; and if you interrogate the Gospel and nature, take heed to their answer—" Man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of truth."

Truth is that which renders man free; it is the voice which calls us to the love of God and of our neighbour, and to virtue.

Error, on the contrary, is that which renders us slaves to the passions of others and to our own; it is that which causes us to sacrifice our conscience to fortune, to honours, to glory, to vice.

There are men who have lived for truth, and who may be cited as its type; Epaminondas, Socrates, Plato, Fénelon, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and out of the sphere of humanity, Jesus Christ.

There are others who have lived for error; Anytus, Marat, Cartouche, Cæsar, Napoleon; for all glory which is bought with the slavery or the blood of men is but a false glory.

Thus, virtue springs from truth; crime from error; whence we may infer that a good treatise on education can only be in the end the search after truth.

The destiny of your children depends then on the solicitude with which you engage in this search. You may open out to them the road to happiness, and precede them in it. A delightful task, which calls for all the powers of your soul, and which will place you in the presence of God, of nature, of your children, and of yourselves.

And mark well all that nature has done towards accomplishing this difficult work. In the first place, she has brought you near to the truth which is in her, by detaching your sex from almost all the ambitions which debase our own and secondly, she has given your love to the tenderness of little children, at the same time that she has filled their hearts with innocence, and their minds with curiosity. Can you doubt the object of your mission, when you perceive the sweet harmonies which unite them to you? Nature attaches them to your bosoms, awakens them by your caresses: she wills that they should owe everything to you, so that after having received from you life and thought, these earthly angels await your inspirations, in order to believe and to love.

But the care of nature is not limited to these sweet approximations: she has for you and for your children a particular foresight, which being badly understood, have caused her more than once to be accused of forgetfulness and injustice. All the beings which inhabit this earth, except man, receive instincts from her: she perfects the education of animals, and neglects ours; she gives to an insect a splendid covering, and casts us naked upon the earth. Such are the complaints of Lucretius; and yet it so happens that what appeared to him an abandonment, is the highest degree of foresight. On the one hand, our nakedness has given us the whole world; on the other, our ignorance tends to bring us nearer to truth. In fact, when education comes to take possession of the child, it finds him in a situation absolutely similar to that of the sage Descartes his intelligence is new, his soul slumbers: his memory is still unfurnished, the mind is a blank sheet: but there is this difference between the sage and the child, that the former was obliged to erase from his mind that which he had already learned with great trouble; whereas

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the child, having received nothing, either from nature or from education, presents himself pure to the thoughts of men, with a soul which aspires to develope itself. Thus his ignorance is a benefit, a foresight, which raises him to the level of the sage. This sheet is empty, good mothers, in order that you should fill it; but reflect well, that all which you engrave upon it will remain; that if you engrave error, the child will live in error; that is to say, that he will be unhappy even were fortune to load him with her choicest gifts that if you engrave upon it truth, the child will live in truth; that is to say, he will be happy even if fortune should try him with affliction; for, according to the beautiful remark of Plato, the knowledge of truth alone suffices for the happiness of man.

To establish principles which recall all men to the laws of nature by destroying the institutions and the prejudices which oppose themselves to these laws,-this is what must be sought for, this is what it is truly useful to know.

Be then in a state to inspire your children, if you are desirous that they should be happy. The entrance upon this path may perhaps seem to you barren, and the word truth has in it a something of austerity, which perhaps startles you. But, have you ever drawn back from the most painful sacrifices, when the material life of your children has been concerned? Do you not each day descend to the most trifling details respecting the support and the health of their bodies, and when their moral life, when their soul is concerned, when the question is to save them by your means, and to save yourselves by means of them, would you hesitate? No, no, you will not hesitate; you will not violate the law of your being, which calls you to the source of the good, the true, the infinite. What are

a few days of study, in order to arrive so near to God, and to bring your children thither?

CHAPTER II.

OF ERROR AND TRUTH.

"Que puis-je savoir! que dois-je faire, qu'ose-je espérer ?"

KANT.

"Et de quel autre sujet un homme sensé pourroit-il s'entretenir plus souvent et plus volontiers."

PLATON.

WHAT can I know, what ought I to do? What dare I hope? I raise my voice, I interrogate all the systems of philosophy, all the religions, and all reply to me, "Come to us." Then listening to each, I hear some proposing to me to believe nothing, others to believe without examining; they begin by requiring doubt, and end by requiring from me credulity. If I speak of virtue, I hear this name given to crime; if I speak of God, I hear this appellation bestowed upon matter; the farther I advance, the more my reason becomes confused, and I conclude by being sure of nothing; not even of the existence of my soul; not even of the substance of my body; metaphysics do not leave me my sensations; logic leaves me only in uncertainty between two opposite reasonings. Thus I may touch upon every system without arriving at any conviction; and immersed in this philosophical and religious darkness, after having studied all, and pondered over all, I stop, alarmed at being able to understand only my nothingness.

But what is it really true that the knowledge of truth is denied to us; that we experience the desire for it; we feel the want of it, and that nothing in us can reach up to