Prudence is another important business quality in women, as in men.
Prudence is practical wisdom, and comes of the cultivated judgment. It
has reference in all things to fitness, to propriety; judging wisely of
the right thing to be done, and the right way of doing it. It calculates
the means, order, time, and method of doing. Prudence learns from
experience, quickened by knowledge.
For these, amongst other reasons, habits of business are necessary to
be cultivated by all women, in order to their being efficient helpers in
the world's daily life and work. Furthermore, to direct the power of the
home aright, women, as the nurses, trainers, and educators of children,
need all the help and strength that mental culture can give them.
Mere instinctive love is not sufficient. Instinct, which preserves the
lower creatures, needs no training; but human intelligence, which is in
constant request in a family, needs to be educated. The physical health
of the rising generation is entrusted to woman by Providence; and it is
in the physical nature that the moral and mental nature lies enshrined.
It is only by acting in accordance with the natural laws, which before
she can follow woman must needs understand, that the blessings of health
of body, and health of mind and morals, can be secured at home.
Without a knowledge of such laws, the mother's love too often finds its
recompence only in a child's coffin. [1119]
It is a mere truism to say that the intellect with which woman as well
as man is endowed, has been given for use and exercise, and not "to fust
in her unused." Such endowments are never conferred without a purpose.
The Creator may be lavish in His gifts, but he is never wasteful.
Woman was not meant to be either an unthinking drudge, or the merely
pretty ornament of man's leisure. She exists for herself, as well as
for others; and the serious and responsible duties she is called upon to
perform in life, require the cultivated head as well as the sympathising
heart. Her highest mission is not to be fulfilled by the mastery of
fleeting accomplishments, on which so much useful time is now wasted;
for, though accomplishments may enhance the charms of youth and beauty,
of themselves sufficiently charming, they will be found of very little
use in the affairs of real life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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