344 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scious instinct, a woman does thus stand by her colors. Why 

 this eager activity in the matter of temperance rather than the 

 tariff ? Because intemperance menaces the home. Why this 

 quick sympathy with organized or unorganized charities, as op- 

 posed to the average apathy over finance ? Because charity 

 touches people whom she can love and homes which she can 

 transfigure. And if one may be pardoned a notion somewhat 

 transcendental is not her oft-observed lack of creative ability^ 

 together with her equally notable power of appreciation, due to 

 the fact that with her an idea is not worked out so readily in 

 purely intellectual formulations as in the material of character ? 

 The laws of mechanics as such she does not readily apprehend, 

 but the truths of rectitude which are their moral counterpart she 

 grasps with special illumination. The masterpieces of formal art 

 she does not create, but she, more naturally than man, can live a 

 life which may properly be called a poem or a picture. 



And why this respect for womankind deeply rooted in the best 

 of men ? The individual character of woman is not, unfortunate- 

 ly, so much loftier than that of man as to compel it, and that she 

 is the " weaker sex " hardly accounts for so large a fact. Nor does 

 it look like a merely left-over remnant of mediseval chivalry. Is 

 it not, at bottom, that sound and sensible men recognize and 

 reverence the altruistic ideal, which, however faltering her loy- 

 alty, it is a woman's special privilege to perpetuate ? The beau- 

 tiful phrase so bedraggled by controversy 



Das Ewig-Weibliche 

 Zieht uns hinan 



does it not mean that the principle of love which rules a woman's 

 life is also the loadstar of human progress ? 



Homes must be made, and the masculine half of us, as they 

 make haste to proclaim with amusing emphasis, have neither the 

 inclination nor the ability to assume the task. Says one of them, 

 naively, " If marriage meant to a man what it does to a woman 

 in the way of suffering, labor, and social status, I am convinced 

 that not one man in fifty would marry." It is impossible not to 

 be reminded of the similar disclaimer 



Oh, then I can't marry you, my pretty maid ! 



and the milkmaid's retort 



Nobody asked you to, sir, she said 



seems singularly appropriate, did we wish to be so impolite as 

 to use it. But, strange as it may look to the masculine mind, 

 women in general do choose to marry. They are not driven to 

 it by the conditions of society, nor impelled by a blind sexual in- 

 stinct, nor misled by the enthusiasm of the martyr. They know 



