I must not mention Plato, I suppose,--he
was a mystic; nor Zeno,--he and his were visionaries:--but Aristotle,
the cold and dry Aristotle, has in a very remarkable passage in his
lesser tract of Ethics asserted the same thing; and called it "a divine
principle, lying deeper than those things which can be explained or
enunciated discursively."
Ib. p. 45, 46.
Sure I am that no father of a family that can at all estimate the
importance of keeping from the infant mind whatever might raise impure
ideas or excite improper inquiries will ever commend the Pilgrim's
Progress to their perusal.
And in the same spirit and for the same cogent reasons that the holy
monk Lewis prohibited the Bible in all decent families;--or if they must
have something of that kind, would propose in preference Tirante the
White! O how I abhor this abominable heart-haunting impurity in the
envelope of modesty! Merciful Heaven! is it not a direct consequence
from this system, that we all purchase our existence at the price of our
mother's purity of mind? See what Milton has written on this subject in
the passage quoted in the Friend in the essays on the communication of
truth. [6]
Ib. p. 47.
Let us ask whether the female mind is likely to be trained to purity
by studying this manual of piety, and by expressing its devotional
desires after the following example. "Mercy being a _young_ and
_breeding_ woman _longed_ for something," &c.
Out upon the fellow! I could find it in my heart to suspect him of any
vice that the worst of men could commit!
Ib.
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