Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
where can she find a fitting field for the exercise of her powers?
To many people, who have all the means of existence they care for
without a struggle, it seems that the only thing that can give a
thorough interest and zest to life is to devote themselves to the
elevation of the degraded classes of society. They find such monotony in
their own comfortable ways of living, and the misery of the very poor
seems so appalling to them, that they cannot escape from the passionate
desire to spend themselves in their service. The problems connected with
the relief and the prevention of the wretchedness by which they are
surrounded have all the interest of a scientific experiment, and are
capable of calling out all the fervor of a religion. But for the few
people here and there who have now the passion of the reformer it is not
impossible that another generation may see many thousands. A second
christianization of the world may convert all the happy into the
consolers of the unhappy, instead of leading people to absorb themselves
in the question of their own salvation. No one can say how great a
change might be made in the fair face of the earth if the effort to
remove the causes of poverty and of disease should become the serious
occupation of half mankind. In the lower stages of existence the
extermination of evil has been the work of a slow and gradual process.
Millions of individuals have been sacrificed in order to produce the few
who were fitted to their surroundings. But at last a creature has been
produced of so much intelligence that he is able to undertake his own
further development. He can speculate upon the causes of his failures in
the search for happiness, and he can apply remedies. It is true that
those remedies have often been productive of more harm than good, it is
true that it would be hard to calculate the evil effects of the English
poor-laws, for instance, but all the experiments that have hitherto
worked badly are but so much material from which to draw a knowledge of
better methods. When the Wlllimantic Thread Company has found a way to
make its girls come singing from their work as they go to it, and to
make better thread at the same time, no one can say that great changes
may not be brought about when once scientific methods shall have been
discovered for the extermination of disease and crime. What more
interesting field for investigation, for theory, for active work, can
women find than that large kind of charity which is to supersede in the
future the indiscriminate alms-giving of the past? The unselfishness
that is demanded by the life of a reformer they have already in large
abundance. There is no limit to the devotion which many women show their
families, but such devotion has in these days become so unnecessary as
to be little more than a higher form of selfishness. Perhaps it only
needs a leader to turn this store of energy into wider channels and to
make it subservient to larger ends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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