The Best of What I Read for You

With great pleasure we record, from our literary correspondent in Damascus, Miss Inayat Ramzi, a brief survey of the best of what she read during the past month — matters which it concerns the aware woman to understand and to know...

In an article by the social writer Marcelle Auclair, in the French magazine The New Woman, published under the title "The One Who Will Bring You Happiness," we read the following: It is natural for a girl to ask herself by what sign she can distinguish the young man capable of bringing her happiness; and the writer answers this question — it is the very same sign by which we distinguish all other things in this world: the effect it leaves upon our souls, our thoughts, and our powers. Before deciding finally on her choice of one among the young men who come forward to ask for her hand, a girl must ask herself with which of them, in his company and in his presence, she feels herself better than in the company or presence of any other man — clearer and keener of mind, more refreshed in soul and more radiant in spirit; with which of them, by his very presence, her artistic depths and distant recesses are revealed to her, and he shows her fertile regions of her own self of which only yesterday she was ignorant, flooding her today with their dewy abundance, so that with him she feels the opening of blossoms and the shining of spring, and feels the strength of her own inner radiance — feels, indeed, that she has become a burning flame in the gardens of life, a flame overflowing with vitality and surging with energy — while she perceives that in the presence of another she is poorer in soul and smaller in worth. She must ask herself which of them meets her with sound logic and right ideas, granting her confidence, so that before him she feels safety and respect — a safety that restores to her soul its strength and clarity, or increases them — and feels that he enriches her with gifts, supplies her with powers, and calls forth in her capacities and virtues which she formerly denied she possessed; so that she feels she has become creative and inventive, wide in scope, far in horizons, surging with strength and vitality, soaring in splendid, verdant, beautiful airs; and feels that she has become more sensitive and more responsive to all that is beautiful, deeper in her understanding of life and of human nature — that she has even come to love life more than before, because she has come to know herself anew, through a new glass, and feels that she is a human being with a great worth in existence, a far-reaching influence, and a right to happiness.

The girl must also ask herself which of them makes her more radiant in beauty — for true love beautifies a person and gives him the power of enchantment, the brilliance of light, the release of radiance; which of them makes her feel the force of his influence, which awakens the feelings and directs the thoughts toward an ideal life and a more complete humanity, so that with him she finds life bright and enchanting, running toward her and bestowing upon her the highest meanings of nobility, beauty, and joy.

As an example of how a happy choice often creates a girl anew, the writer mentioned one of the girls of her acquaintance: after her engagement to a young man whom she preferred over the other young men, she changed from a flighty girl — impatient, narrow of temper, selfish — into a sensitive, tactful, intelligent girl, delicate of feeling, overflowing with enthusiasm and ardor. This means that the two spouses were created to understand one another, and that the virtues of each are multiplied by the virtues of the other.

2 — In an article by the writer Marie-Thérèse under the title "With What Mentality Should the Sex Education of Boys Be Approached," we read the following:

Until the age of ten a boy lives heedless and playful; but at that age he becomes conscious of himself and of his bodily constitution, and parents must not fly into anger at the remarks their little ones make, nor commit psychological errors harmful to the child, which it may prove impossible to repair. The duty — indeed the honor — of explaining the secrets of life and the functions of the organs belongs to the parents alone; and for this explanation to be useful, parents must proceed with it by degrees as the years advance, in a very natural and simple manner. Fathers take upon themselves the matter of the boys, just as mothers take upon themselves the matter of the girls — this in order to preserve the instinctive modesty common to all children. If sex education is conducted wisely up to the age of puberty, the young are then safe from many errors and deviations, and children find no need to hide from their parents the matter of the development of the glands; and to this result all parents must come. For life is a beautiful thing, and to give life is to share in the divine creation. Hence the old methods of hidden surveillance, of suspicion, and of disclosing the facts in a mistaken or harsh manner, are offenses against the child and against the reverence which every person must hold toward life. It is a crime to touch upon sexual questions before them under the aspect of sin and evil; on the contrary, one must give a sacred and exalted picture of the vital power, of its purpose and its lofty character, of the greatness of the family, and of the necessity of respecting the women and girls who are considered their complements. And the psychological development of the adolescent, and the angle from which the facts of sex and the questions of love and marriage appear to him, often depend on the good or bad manner in which these facts are presented to the adolescent.

3 — And in an article by the writer and educator France Adine under the title:

"The Art of Granting Freedom," from which we excerpt the following:

Education is an art — perhaps the most difficult and important of the arts. Some parents boast that they grant freedom of action to their children who are twelve or fifteen or eighteen years of age. This means indifference toward them; and neglect has never been a form of education, even a modest one — quite the contrary. And what sort of freedom would it be but a deformed freedom, misused, harming its possessor and all around him as well — unless those who enjoy it at this very early age are singular creatures endowed with uprightness, prudence, and understanding!!

We must distinguish, then, between the beautiful freedom and license of action given to the young, and that unconcern which carries surprises never pleasant. Freedom — I mean true freedom, necessary for the steady, harmonious, balanced growth of the human being and his advance toward bodily, psychological, and intellectual completeness — requires a preparing and a readying that extend over years. Therefore, to bring up a child means to give him all your attention and all your care, day after day and hour after hour — provided that this attention remain hidden when he can do without your help, but stand ready with explanation, or accompanied by help and support, when he turns to you asking for it. I say your help, and I do not say your smoothing away of the difficulties; for the child must understand, from the first years of his life, that every individual has his share of effort, and that it is base to shirk bearing it.

And the child who grows up in a stern, rigid environment fond of inflicting punishments cannot thereafter fully show his aptitudes and his gifts. Cruelty and excessive severity — like the love that wards off all responsibility from the child, and like the neglect and unconcern that dry up the heart — are all the worst methods of education.

True education must rest upon mutual trust, which is a blend of love and respect. The child has the right to be respected; and as for those who stifle his inclinations and silence his gifts without weighty cause, they are failed parents and criminal educators!

It is indeed a crime to treat our grown children as though they were people beneath us in humanity, and with something of the spirit of mastery! Yes, nothing is finer than that children should surround their parents with service and help; but only love wins love, and this love can never be selfish! And how can we forget that the creature we have brought into life is a creature possessing what we possess? And when parents have completed the education of their adolescent children, they should thereafter leave them free to choose their kind of life, if they are among those endowed with special gifts or aptitudes — yet without neglecting to furnish them with some friendly counsels drawn from experience. As for our grown children who have reached the age of marriage, whether young men or young women, it is wise to allow them to see and to mix with their companions of both sexes, and to open the way for them to honorable kinds of amusement; for if we have brought them up well, and trained them well, we have nothing to fear thereafter from any misuse of their freedom.

4 — And in an article by the writer Berthe Bernage, under the title "Enthusiasm," we read the following:

Enthusiasm is among the most effective of incentives and the strongest of the driving forces of humanity. Without enthusiasm we should have attained no progress and no reform, nor should we have had any form of the arts — sculpture or painting, music or architecture; the scientist and the inventor are people who live in continual enthusiasm. Let us consider, then, when we think of our children, that we possess no right to extinguish the ember of their ardor, but must be builders with them and not destroyers. We must refrain from resorting to criticism of any matter whatever, whatever the circumstances may be, and must not always and beforehand see the existing bad side of the things they mention to us. Children who grow up in an environment that subjects every topic to criticism, offers every negative remark, belittles the importance of every idea and its merits while exaggerating the display of its dangers, and casts shadows over every clear idea or noble deed or sincere devotion — such children grow up in selfishness and unconcern for anything, and become in the future insipid personalities, without taste and without aspiration toward anything clear or constructive. And can such children ever be happy in life! Enthusiasm is the salt of life, and its flame; without it, life would become cold and hollow, without meaning and without savor.