Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/71

Rh this order of books, or even to spend a large part of the time allotted to reading to their perusal, will hinder her advancement in mental improvement. She will be very apt, also, to sink into the mere waste of sympathy toward ideal personages, without seeing in them types of real classes that are in the world, and all around her.

All right improvement of the mind will depend upon the leading motive which a young lady has in view, when she reads, thinks, or observes, with a careful eye, what passes around her. If her end be to acquire the power of conversing intelligently on various topics, and of exhibiting an acquaintance with books, in order to appear well in society, or to gain the reputation of being an intellectual and well-read woman, her advancement will not be as real as she supposes. All knowledge has its appropriate sphere of action, and that is in the doing of something useful; and until it comes into this its true sphere, it never rises into intelligence. If therefore, a woman reads and thinks merely with an end to be thought wise, she never becomes more than a mere pedant, who betrays, on all occasions, the shallowness of her pretensions; but if she use the truth she acquires in seeking to advance the cause of truth for the