CMP Review 2026-02-18

February 18, 2026

Charlotte Mason begins Ourselves, Book II, with a look at Emily Brontë as evidence to her First Principle, that Children are Born Persons and that there are no “little” men. That the:

properties of the soul are present in everyone, developed or undeveloped, in greater or lesser degree. So Christ seems to have taught; and many a [seemingly] insignificant soul has been found to hold capacity for Him.

In Emily Bronte we have an example of the immeasurable range of the soul, … that a delicate girl, brought up almost in isolation in a remote parsonage, should be able to sound the depths of human passion, conceive of human tragedy, and gather the fruits of human wisdom, is a very fair illustration of the majesty of the soul; all the more so because she was not among the great as regards either virtue or achievement.

It is here that Miss Mason adds another profound statement:

When we look at the immensity of man’s soul in our greats “we leave off too soon in our appreciation” as we “are too shamefaced to acknowledge to ourselves that it is in our own immensity we find some sort of measure for theirs” (xlvi).

@rbaburina

Form V students (approx. 10th & 11th grades) were reading from Ourselves, Book II, taking about 30 pages a term, under the subject of Everyday Morals and Economics.