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his companions had burnt their fingers there before him and his own are sure to follow.
It is the same with women; and in a greater degree. They know all about Don Juan well enough. They are perfectly well aware how he treated A. and B. and C. and D. But when it comes to their own turn, they think that this time surely, and to them, things will be different and he will be in earnest. So they slide down into the alluring flame, and burn their fingers for life by playing with forbidden fire. But have we not all the secret belief that we shall escape the snares and pitfalls into which others have dropped and among which we choose to walk? that fire will not burn our fingers, at least so very badly, when we thrust them into it? and that, by some legerdemain of Providence, we shall be delivered from the consequences of our own folly, and that two and two may be made to count five in our behalf? Who is taught by the experience of an unhappy marriage, say? No sooner has a man got himself free from the pressure of one chain and bullet, than he hastens to fasten on another, quite sure that this chain will be no heavier than the daintiest little thread of gold, and this bullet as light and sweet as a cowslip-ball. Everything that had gone wrong before will come right this time; and the hot bars of close association with an uncomfortable temper and unaccommodating habits will be only like a juggling trick, and will burn no one's heart or hands.
People too, who burn their fingers in giving good advice unasked, seldom learn to hold them back. With an honest intention, and a strong desire to see right done, it is difficult to avoid putting our hands into fires with which we have no business. While we are young and ardent, it seems to us as if we have distinct business with all fraud, injustice, folly, wilfulness, which we believe a few honest words of ours will control and annul; but nine times out of ten we only burn our own hands, while we do not in the least strengthen those of the right nor weaken those of the wrong. We may say the same of good-natured people. There was never a row of chestnuts roasting at the fire for which your good-natured oaf will not stretch out his hand at the bidding and for the advantage of a friend. Experience teaches the poor oaf nothing; not even that fire burns. To put his name at the back of a bill, just as a mere form; to lend his money, just for a few days; or to do any other sort of self-immolating folly, on the faithful promise that the fire will not burn nor the knife cut--it all comes as easy to men of the good-natured sort as their alphabet. Indeed it is their alphabet, out of which they spell their own ruin; but so long as the impressionable temperament lasts--so long as the liking to do a good-natured action is greater than caution, suspicion, or the power of analogical reasoning--so long will the oaf make himself the catspaw of the knave, till at last he has left himself no fingers wherewith to pluck out the chestnuts for himself or another.
The first doubt of young people is always a source of intense suffering. Hitherto they have believed what they saw and all they heard; and they have not troubled themselves with motives nor facts beyond those given to them and lying on the surface. But when they find out for themselves that seeming is not necessarily being, and that all people are not as good throughout as they thought them, then they suffer a moral shock which often leads them into a state of practical atheism and despair. Many young people give up altogether when they first open the book of humanity and begin to read beyond the title-page; and, because they have found specks in the cleanest parts, they believe that nothing is left pure. They are as much bewildered as horror-struck, and cannot understand how any one they have loved and respected should have done this or that misdeed. Having done it, there is nothing left to love nor respect further. It is only by degrees that they learn to adjust and apportion, and to understand that the whole creature is not necessarily corrupt because there are a few unhealthy places here and there. But in the beginning this first scorching by the fire of experience is very painful and bad to bear. Then they begin to think the knowledge of the world, as got from books, so wonderful, so profound; and they look on it as a science to be learned by much studying of aphorisms. They little know that not the most affluent amount of phrase knowledge can ever regulate that class of action which springs from a man's inherent disposition; and that it is not facts which teach but self-control which prevents.
After very early youth we all have enough theoretical knowledge to keep us straight; but theoretical knowledge does nothing without self-knowledge, or its corollary, self-control. The world has never yet got beyond the wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; and Solomon's advice to the Israelitish youth lounging round the gates of the Temple is quite as applicable to young Hopeful coming up to London chambers as it was to them. Teaching of any kind, by books or events, is the mere brute weapon; but self-control is the intelligent hand to wield it. To burn one's fingers once in a lifetime tells nothing against a man's common-sense nor dignity; but to go on burning them is the act of a fool, and we cannot pity the wounds, however sore they may be. The Arcadian virtues of unlimited trust and hope and love are very sweet and lovely; but they are the graces of childhood, not the qualities of manhood. They are charming little finalities, which do not admit of modification nor of expansion; and in a naughty world, to go about with one's heart on one's sleeve, believing every one and accepting everything to be just as it presents itself, is offering bowls of milk to tigers, and meeting armed men with a tin sword. Such universal trust can only result in a perpetual burning of one's fingers; and a life spent in pulling out hot chestnuts from the fire for another's eating is by no means the most useful nor the most dignified to which a man can devote himself.
No state is more unfortunate than this listless want of purpose which has nothing to do, which is interested in nothing, and which has no serious object in life; and the drifting, aimless temperament, which merely waits and does not even watch, is the most disastrous that a man or woman can possess. Feverish energy, wearing itself out on comparative nothings, is better than the indolence which folds its hands and makes neither work nor pleasure; and the most microscopic and restless perception is more healthful than the dull blindness which goes from Dan to Beersheba, and finds all barren.
Necessarily there must be much verbal agitation if any measure is to be carried the fulcrum of which is public opinion. If you have to stir the dry bones you must prophesy to them in a loud voice, and not leave off till they have begun to shake. Things which can only be known by teaching must be spoken of, but things which have to be done are always better done the less the fuss made about them; and the more steadfast the action, the less noisy the agent. Purpose is apt to exhale itself in protestations, and strength is sure to exhaust itself by a flux of words. But at the present day what Mr. Carlyle called the Silences are the least honoured of all the minor gods, and the babble of small beginnings threatens to become intolerable. We all 'think outside our brains,' and the result is not conducive to mental vigour. It is as if we were to set a plant to grow with its heels in the air, and then look for roots, flowers and fruit, by the process of excitation and disclosure.
One of our quarrels with the Advanced Women of our generation is the hysterical parade they make about their wants and their intentions. It never seems to occur to them that the best means of getting what they want is to take it, when not forbidden by the law--to act, not to talk; that all this running hither and thither over the face of the earth, this feverish unrest and loud acclaim are but the dilution of purpose through much speaking, and not the right way at all; and that to hold their tongues and do would advance them by as many leagues as babble puts them back. A small knot of women, 'terribly in earnest,' could move multitudes by the silent force of example. One woman alone, quietly taking her life in her own hands and working out the great problem of self-help and independence practically, not merely stating it theoretically, is worth a score of shrieking sisters frantically calling on men and gods to see them make an effort to stand upright without support, with interludes of reproach to men for the want of help in their attempt. The silent woman who quietly calculates her chances and measures her powers with her difficulties so as to avoid the probability of a fiasco, and who therefore achieves a success according to her endeavour, does more for the real emancipation of her sex than any amount of pamphleteering, lecturing, or petitioning by the shrieking sisterhood can do. Hers is deed not declamation; proof not theory; and it carries with it the respect always accorded to success.
And really if we think of it dispassionately, and carefully dissect the great mosaic of hindrances which women say makes up the pavement of their lives, there is very little which they may not do if they like--and can. They have already succeeded in reopening for themselves the practice of medicine, for one thing; and this is an immense opportunity if they know how to use it. A few pioneers, unhelped for the most part, steadily and without shrieking, stormed the barricades of the hospitals and dissecting-rooms; heroically bearing the shower of hard-mouthed missiles with which they were pelted, and successfully forcing their way notwithstanding. But the most successful of them are those who held on with least excitement and who strove more than they declaimed; while others, by constitution belonging to the shrieking sisterhood, have comparatively failed, and have mainly succeeded in making themselves ridiculous. After some pressure but very little cackle--for here too the work was wanted, the desire real, and the workers in earnest--female colleges on a liberal and extended system of education have been established, and young women have now an opportunity of showing what they can do in brain work.
It is no longer by the niggardliness of men and the fault of an imperfect system if they prove intellectually inferior to the stronger sex; they have their dynamometer set up for them, and all they have to do is to register their relative strength--and abide the issue. All commerce, outside the Stock Exchange, is open to them equally with men; and there is nothing to prevent their becoming merchants, as they are now petty traders, or setting up as bill-brokers, commission agents, or even bankers--which last profession, according to a contemporary, they have actually adopted in New York, some ladies there having established a bank, which, so far as they have yet gone, they are said to conduct with deftness and ready arithmetic.
In literature they have competitors in men, but no monopolists. Indeed, they themselves have become almost the monopolists of the whole section of light literature and fiction; while nothing but absolute physical and mental incapacity prevents their taking the charge of a journal, and working it with female editor, sub-editor, manager, reporters, compositors, and even news-girls to sell the second edition at omnibus doors and railway stations. If a set of women chose to establish a newspaper and work it amongst themselves, no law could be brought to bear against them; and if they made it as philosophical as some, or as gushing as others, they might enter into a formidable rivalry with the old-established. They would have a fair hearing, or rather reading; they would not be 'nursed' nor hustled, and they would get just as much success as they deserved. To be sure, they do not yet sit on the Bench nor plead at the Bar. They are not in Parliament, and they are not even voters; while, as married women with unfriendly husbands and no protection-order, they have something to complain of, and wrongs which are in a fair way of being righted if the shrieking sisterhood does not frighten the world prematurely. But, despite these restrictions, they have a very wide circle wherein they can display their power, and witch the world with noble deeds, if they choose--and as some have chosen.
Of one thing women may be very sure, though they invariably deny it; the world is glad to take good work from any one who will supply it. The most certain patent of success is to deserve it; and if women will prove that they can do the world's work as well as men, they will share with them in the labour and the reward; and if they do it better they will distance them. The appropriation of fields of labour is not so much a question of selfishness as of proved fitness; but if, in times to come, women can show better harvesting than men, can turn out more finished, more perfected, results of any kind, the world's custom will flow to them by the force of natural law, and they will have the most to do of that which they can do the best. If they wish to educate public opinion to accept them as equals with men, they can only do so by demonstration, not by shrieks. Even men, who are supposed to inherit the earth and to possess all the good things of life, have to do the same thing.
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