This is perhaps what makes them seem bloodthirsty in their
vengeance; they feel that so it ought to be, and that the affirmation of
principle is of more account than the individual. They detest
half-measures and compromise. For the elder girls it is not so simple,
and the nearer they come to our own times the more necessary is it to
put before them that good is not always unaccompanied by evil nor evil
by good.
In the last two or three years of a girl's education all the time that
can be spared may be most profitably spent on the study of modern
history, since it is there that the more complex problems are found, and
there also that they will understand how contemporary questions have
their springs in the past, and see the rise of the forces which are at
work now, disintegrating the nations of Europe and shaking the
foundations of every government. There are grave lessons to be learnt,
not in gloomy or threatening forecasts but in showing the direction of
cause and effect and the renewal of the same struggle which has been
from the beginning, in ever fresh phases. The outcome of historical
teaching to Catholics can never be discouragement or depression,
whatever the forecast. The past gives confidence, and, when the glories
of bygone ages are weighed against their troubles, and the Church's
troubles now against her inward strength and her new horizons of hope,
there is great reason for gratitude that we live in our own much-abused
time.
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