Three Things Part 5

I would implore every mother, of any cla.s.s, ruthlessly to reject all the rules which she has been taught for the guidance of her family, _unless she has proved with common sense that they can be profitably applied to each particular case_. I would ask her to keep to no transmitted axiom, _unless it comes up to the requirements of the ever-changing and ever-advancing day_. There is only one unchangeable and immutable command which we should follow, and this is that we should not soil our souls, or render them up to G.o.d degraded and smirched when we go hence upon that journey from whence no man returneth.

In summing up both my articles upon the responsibility of motherhood, I find that in this second one I have made two statements which might read as contradictions. Firstly, I spoke of young people requiring personal gain to be held out to them as a reason for committing, or refraining from committing, certain actions; and then, a paragraph or two afterwards, I gave the ill.u.s.tration of the little girls' good behaviour to their mother as being only caused by the fact that it was more to their advantage so to behave. What I meant to show was that while boys are young and full of the rising impulses of nature they very rarely can have acquired sufficient spiritual belief to make them refrain from indulging in certain pleasures--or what seem pleasures to them--merely because they have been told these pleasures are wrong.

For instance, on the subject of smoking. What boy will stop smoking by being told it is wrong and that he is sinning by his disobedience? But there are many intelligent ones who will not indulge in it if it is explained to them that smoking will stop their growth and make them less likely to succeed in the cricket eleven, or, later, in the college eight. At that period the mind cannot look into unseen worlds, and is mainly occupied with realities from day to day, and therefore is more likely to be influenced by a simple explanation of what physical harm or what good in the immediate future will be the result of actions.

The little girls' behaviour to their mother is really an example of this same rule, only the principle for their action was not good, being merely temporary and strictly limited gain, and not that they should, as in the case of the boys, grow into fine, strong and healthy people, more able to enjoy life in the future.

There is another statement which I have constantly made which possibly might be twisted or misunderstood, and that is the one of the importance of the end. There are people who would turn it into the Jesuitical motto of "The end justifies the means." That is not what I wished to convey at all, but that if an end is good--and the main object, admittedly, is to obtain it--then there is no use in using methods which once might have accomplished this, but which no longer are practical because of the changed conditions, and if continued in will only lose all possibility of success.

How many fathers and mothers in past days have driven their offspring to disgrace and even death by adhering to harsh, Puritanical systems, out of date even at that time! And how many more to-day let them slip into the same abysses by their too indulgent rule!

As I have said, over and over again, the proof of any pudding is in the eating of it; so let every mother _examine her methods with her children by this standard: Are the children developing in moral and physical welfare by those which she is using, or are they retrogressing?_ Is she employing tact to guide their young fierce spirits, or is she trying to crush them by old-fashioned rules?

Questions such as these ought to be honestly asked by each mother of herself, and if the answer proves that retrogression is in progress, then she should not be so incredibly stupid as to continue in her old lines, but should examine herself and see how she can find the right new ones for her particular cases. La Rochefoucauld was wise when he said that vanity was at the root of most human mistakes. If a woman is not willing to undertake the true responsibility of motherhood, then she had far better be that sad thing which is a growing quant.i.ty in modern civilisation, namely, a childless wife devoted to dogs.

Hundreds of selfish, neurotic females show the utmost unselfish devotion to wretched little pet animals, when the slightest self-denial asked of them for little human atoms is more than they can accord. What does this mean? Is it a writing upon the wall?