{"id":12996,"date":"2026-05-17T22:28:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T02:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/an-extraordinary-letter-from-pioneering-education-reformer-elizabeth-peabody-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T22:28:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T02:28:58","slug":"an-extraordinary-letter-from-pioneering-education-reformer-elizabeth-peabody-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/an-extraordinary-letter-from-pioneering-education-reformer-elizabeth-peabody-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"An Extraordinary Letter from Pioneering Education Reformer Elizabeth Peabody \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\u201cA self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living,\u201d Virginia Woolf wrote in one of her characteristic asides of immense insight as she considered the dying art of letter writing<\/a>. This may be the most elemental paradox of existence: We yearn for permanence and stability despite a universe of constant change<\/a> as a way of hedging against the inescapable fact of our mortality, our own individual impermanence. And yet this faulty coping mechanism results not in immortality but in complacency, stagnation, a living death. Emerson captured this paradox with sundering precision as he weighed the key to personal growth<\/a>: \u201cPeople wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is what Emerson\u2019s contemporary and collaborator, the great education reformer Elizabeth Peabody<\/strong> (May 16, 1804\u2013January 3, 1894), explores in an 1838 letter to her friend Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s sister, included in Figuring<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. (Peabody\u2019s own sister, Sophia, would eventually marry Hawthorne, living through his conflicted romantic attachment to Herman Melville<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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Elizabeth Palmer Peabody<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a child, Peabody had taught herself Latin and Greek in order to access the world\u2019s wisdom and cut off her curls in revolt against her culture\u2019s preoccupation with young women\u2019s appearance rather than their minds. She learned astronomy and geography in an era when higher education was not available to women and become the first woman allowed into Boston\u2019s only lending library. (The exception only lasted a month, during which she borrowed twenty-one books.) In her ninety years, Peabody founded the first English-language kindergarten in America, translated the first American edition of Buddhist scripture, launched the country\u2019s first foreign-language bookstore and circulating library, coined the term Transcendentalism<\/em> to define the philosophical current sweeping New England, and introduced the king and queen of Transcendentalism<\/a>. The epitome of intellectual restlessness and creative self-reinvention, she never married \u2014 she lived a life her younger sister described as one of \u201chigh thinking and plain living.\u201d <\/p>\n

Quoting advice a friend had once given her, Peabody writes:<\/p>\n

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The perilous time for the most highly gifted is not youth. The holy sensibilities of genius \u2014 for all the sensibilities of genius are holy \u2014 keep their possessor essentially unhurt as long as animal spirits and the idea of being young last; but the perilous season is middle age, when a false wisdom tempts them to doubt the divine origin of the dreams of their youth; when the world comes to them, not with the song of the siren, against which all books warn us, but as a wise old man counselling acquiescence in what is below them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Art by the Brothers Hilts from A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader<\/em><\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peabody ends with the admonition that the path to complacency is paved with complacent companions:<\/p>\n

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No being of a social nature can be entirely beyond the tendency to fall to the level of his associates.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The antidote to stagnation, therefore, lies in surrounding oneself with people of creative vitality. The pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell \u2014 a contemporary of Peabody\u2019s and a key figure in Figuring<\/em> \u2014 would articulate this beautifully two decades later in contemplating how we co-create one another and recreate ourselves through friendship<\/a>: \u201cWhatever our degree of friends may be, we come more under their influence than we are aware.\u201d<\/p>\n

Complement with the pioneering social scientist John Gardner on the art of self-renewal<\/a> and legendary cellist Pablo Casals, at age 93, on creative vitality and how working with love prolongs your life<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
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\u201cA self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living,\u201d Virginia Woolf wrote in one of her characteristic asides of immense insight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}