Margaret McMillan

“ But good home-keepers must make progress—they must extend as well as perfect their empire. Their motherhood cannot always lie "among the pots," though it may begin there. Sooner or later it must be a winged thing, that returns to its starting always after every flight, still a thing winged as well as gentle—a dove that bears the branch of peace over the dark, troubled waters of the outer world. The nation that clips its wings, and makes the ark of home a prison, always sees, sooner or later, the Avenger arise on the hearthstone. It is impossible to destroy the natural power of either sex. ”

“ NO one will deny that we are living in a period of great social upheaval and unrest. A great thrill has passed through this country—a thrill of wonder, of mingled joy and alarm, and in some quarters perhaps of terror. The old political parties no longer face each other in the field, alone. Another is between them, who looks at each, but gives allegiance to neither. The masses have awakened, as it seems, suddenly. And it is pretty certain that they will look at every great question of human interest from a new standpoint and with a new aim. ”

“ They grow with the demand on their resources, and perfectly new chambers are built in when the demand for them exists. The eye, the ear, the nose, the skin, all have their own storerooms here, and what comes in through these senses is piled up in its own place as memories—reminiscences laid away, not on wooden shelves, however, but in rafts of living cells, and capable at any moment of being launched with great éclat into the vortex of the higher brain life. ”

“ Why did the militant Suffragette ever come to the door of the House of Commons? How did she ever come into existence at all? And how is it that while thousands of women, more "intellectual" than she, have asked for the vote for years in the most lady-like and constitutional way, and have got nothing for the pains but admiring politeness?—how is it, I say, that she, the militant Suffragette, can forego the admiration, but wants a Vote, and will, if necessary, fight for it, and—yes, let us admit the truth—die for it? ”

“ But whether it be heroism or criminality that youth brings in its train, this phase of life is always one of stress and storm, of eruption, and of revelation. The organism then as it were shows its hand. It is exposed through the turmoil of rapid growth, and, like the sea in tempest, yields up its secrets.
Imagination, which is the motor power in mind, is of course dominant during this period. It is more uncontrolled if not more creative than it will ever be again. Even those who will never again be artists are artists in youth. ”

“ Séguin had a great horror of routine, and of falling into mere use and wont. His book, The Child, Normal and Abnormal, is like a living raft, and the reason is, that even though he sat at the feet of many teachers, he returned always to study the child under his own roof, to learn from the little helpless, and perhaps motionless figure of the "abnormal" child, whose pitiful face and form held the key to so many enigmas, whose darkened life was a secret as well as a tragedy. ”

“ There are many victories—every man in an army is a victor—towards the end of a battle, but not at the beginning. Workhouses, prisons, refuges—great sums are spent in providing all these, and in making deep channels as it were for the dark, swift river of human misery that is flowing ever into the night of forgetfulness. Yet, need this river be so deep—so wide? "No," say the school doctors standing at its source. ”

“ No one can look at it without being reminded of the keyboard of a piano. It is microscopic. No eye had seen it. No one had imagined it. Yet it was flung forth like spray from the wave—in work.
Sometimes, perhaps, the secret is flung forth, but remains a secret. In the violin, for example, there is something that is never recognized, never explained. It is, above all, the old violins, the great old violins, which hold this secret, which is also a spell. Something in the heart of the violinist answers to it, and he loves it as he might love a beautiful mistress without understanding it. ”

“ The tendency of State education is to make the middle brain its goal.
But what is that goal beyond—that higher level for which all the rest of the human system seems to labour and travail. What are those vast, silent areas, whose work is carried on in a darkness which has not been penetrated, and which seem to hold fast locked in their open yet silent hearts the mystery of our moral and mental life. ”

“ Already however the sickly children gathered out of the school population of Charlottenburg and Mulhausen are at their beneficent work. They are showing, as the feeble have always shown, where the new light falls. They are drawing us back, as is their wont into the far, far past—and are pointing also with their pale fingers, into the far future. Only weakness can be so bold and so convincing. ”

“ Terrible as it may appear, these abandoned women were doing more for the world, and infinitely more for their sex, than were the poor respectable ladies hidden in their darkened homes. They showed the beauty of human life expanding unhindered. It blossomed, it is true, this life, in the path of the lava stream, but it blossomed. Not on the lava-swept slope, neither is it in the dark, unwholesome languor of the gynacée can the Human Garden be planted. The divorce between Virtue and Power ended, as we know, very badly. The poor undeveloped woman of the home was well avenged. ”

“ Only to-day is a voice here and there heard crying that, beyond all this, the teaching itself and the training itself given in school has a physiological side; that elementary education at least, is always more or less of a physiological experiment, and that for this reason, in elementary schools, the teachers and doctor should come a little closer together. Why should either confine himself to looking for disease? Has the school doctor no interest in seeing and hearing a lesson given? ”

“ In short, out of doors the healthy child finds (in good weather, at least) the ideal school! It is not easy to see how it can quickly be restored to all, or even to many. Who knows how many years may pass before we can even give a roof playground to all the pale-faced children of the cities? For a long time, as it appears, we must be content, in our climate, to build schools for rude weather, to think of fog, and frost, and rain, and trust a very great deal to the power of pictures, of good ventilation, and of symbols. ”