352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but in working them up by processes of thought into comprehensive 

 truths of science and laws of conduct, than to carry on his speculations 

 in the companionship, and under the criticism, of a really superior wo- 

 man. There is nothing comparable to it for keeping his thoughts 

 within the limits of real things, and the actual facts of nature. Wo- 

 men's thoughts are thus as useful in giving reality,to those of think- 

 ing men as men's thoughts in giving width and largeness to those of 

 women." Here we have a clear recognition of the law that width and 

 largeness, mental growth, originate in the male, and are then preserved 

 by women, and the context leaves no room to doubt that the " really 

 superior woman " which filled the author's memory at the time this 

 passage was written, was a woman in whom .this feminine character- 

 istic was well developed ; that she was a woman filled with the fruits 

 of human experience ; and it is a little strange that he fails to see that 

 the relation with which, for a man of speculation, there is nothing 

 comparable, may have a wider value, and be of the greatest impor- 

 tance to humanity as a whole. 



The next passage which I shall quote is still more to the point. 

 He says : " Let us now consider another of the admitted superiorities 

 of clever women, greater quickness of aj)prehension. Is this not pre- 

 eminently a quality which fits a person for practice ? In action every- 

 thing depends upon deciding promptly. In speculation nothing does. 

 A mere thinker can wait, can take time to consider, can collect addi- 

 tional evidence ; he is not obliged to complete his philosophy at once 

 lest the opportunity should go by. The power of drawing the best 

 conclusion possible from insufficient data is not, indeed, useless in 

 philosophy ; the construction of a provisional hypothesis consistent 

 with all known facts is often the needful basis for further inquiry. 

 But this faculty is rather serviceable in philosophy than the main 

 qualification for it ; and for the auxiliary as well as for the main ques- 

 tion the philosopher can allow himself any time he pleases. He is in 

 no need of doing rapidly what he does ; what he rather needs is pa- 

 tience to work on slowly until imperfect lights have become perfect, 

 and a conjecture has ripened into a theorem. For those, on the con- 

 trary, whose business is with the fugitive and perishable with indi- 

 vidual facts, not kinds of facts rapidity of thought is a qualification 

 next only in importance to the power of thought itself. He who has 

 not his faculties under immediate command in the contingencies of 

 action might as well not have them at all. He may be fit to criticise, 

 but he is not fit to act. Now it is in this that women, and the men 

 who are most like women, confessedly excel. The other sort of man, 

 however preeminent may be his faculties, arrives slowly at complete 

 command of them ; rapidity of judgment and promptitude of judicious 

 action, even in the things he knows best, are the gradual and late re- 

 sult of strenuous effort grown into habit." 



I have quoted these passages from Mill at length, as they give a 



