39 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



seem likely to prove the most beneficial channels. What are these 

 channels ? 



Of all the pricks against which it is hard to kick, the hardest are 

 those which are presented by Nature in the form of facts. Therefore 

 we may begin by wholly disregarding those short-sighted enthusiasts 

 who seek to overcome the natural and fundamental distinction of sex. 

 No amount of female education can ever do this, nor is it desirable 

 that it should. On this point I need not repeat what is now so often 

 and so truly said, as to woman being the complement, not the rival, of 

 man. But I should like to make one remark of another kind. The 

 idea underlying the utterances of all these enthusiasts seems to be 

 that the qualities wherein the male mind excels that of the female are, 

 sui generis, the most exalted of human faculties : these good ladies 

 fret and fume in a kind of jealousy that the minds, like the bodies, of 

 men are stronger than those of women. Now, is not this a radically 

 mistaken view ? Mere strength, as I have already endeavored to in- 

 sinuate, is not the highest criterion of nobility. Human nature is a 

 very complex thing, and among the many ingredients which go to 

 make the greatness of it even intellectual power is but one, and not by 

 any means the chief. The truest grandeur of that nature is revealed 

 by that nature as a whole, and here I think there can be no doubt that 

 the feminine type is fully equal to the masculine, if indeed it be not 

 superior. For I believe that if we all go back in our memories to seek 

 for the highest experience we have severally had in this respect, the 

 character which will stand out as all in all the greatest we have ever 

 known, will be the character of a woman. Or, if any of us have not 

 been fortunate in this matter, where in fiction or in real life can Ave find 

 a more glorious exhibition of all that is best the mingled strength and 

 beauty, tact, gayety, devotion, wit, and consummate ability where but 

 in a woman can we find anything at once so tender, so noble, so lova- 

 ble, and so altogether splendid as in the completely natural character 

 of a Portia ? A mere blue-stocking, who looks with envy on the in- 

 tellectual gifts of a Voltaire, while shutting her eyes to the gifts of a 

 sister such as this, is simply unworthy of having such a sister : she is 

 incapable of distinguishing the pearl of great price among the sundry 

 other jewels of our common humanity. 



Now, the suspicion, not to 6ay the active hostility, with which the 

 so-called woman's movement has been met in many quarters, springs 

 from a not unhealthy ground of public opinion. For there can be no 

 real doubt that these things are but an expression of the value which 

 that feeling attaches to all which is held distinctive of feminine char- 

 acter as it stands. Woman, as she has been bequeathed to us by the 

 many and complex influences of the past, is recognized as too precious 

 an inheritance lightly to be tampered with ; and the dread lest any 

 change in the conditions which have given us this inheritance should 

 lead, as it were, to desecration, iB in itself both wise and worthy. In 



