526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the part she has to play in life. She feels more than she thinks. A 

 man forces his way by power of body and intelligence. She acts on 

 him by tact and by all those weaknesses in which with him lies her 

 chief power. Her flexibility of character gives rise to caprice which 

 consists of a brusque passage from one sentiment to another totally 

 opposed. Her habitual feebleness and deficient vigor inspire her with 

 less confidence ; and, as a woman can not therefore act directly, she 

 employs indirect measures to effect her ends. Hence the natural de- 

 sire to please inherent in the sex, the artfulness, the dissimulations, the 

 little managements and intrigues, the graces, the coquetry, and other 

 seductive ways, which, to a certain extent, have always been ceded to 

 by intellectual and physical force. For the same reasons, and from 

 the same cause, her weaknesses and vices are greater, and no man can 

 compete with a really bad woman in petty jealousies, spiteful actions, 

 revenge, and even in the ingenuity and vindictiveness of crime. It is 

 this affectability which, if it be a cause of her frailties, is equally efii- 

 cacious in giving luster to her virtues. It is this which constitutes the 

 chief charm of the mother, who instinctively detects the slightest de- 

 sire or change in her offspring and impulsively acts for its benefit ; of 

 the wife, who sympathizes with and encourages her husband, fagged 

 and anxious for the common weal ; and of the nurse, who takes in at a 

 glance all the details and wants of the patient and ministers to his re- 

 quirements with pity and devotion. It is this which gives rise to that 

 compassion, sympathy, piety, and affectionate disposition which are 

 the chief characteristics of a woman. It is the feeling of powerless- 

 ness which makes her identify herself with the unfortunate and un- 

 happy, which natural pity is the base of all social virtues. 



The Effects of Social Life and Education ox Woman. — 

 There can be little doubt that social manners, education, and an infin- 

 ity of circumstances may affect the qualities woman derives from her 

 matei-ial organization, and even efface the original character which 

 nature has given her. In the simplest condition, the man labors with 

 his hands and with his wits for mutual support and protection ; the 

 woman rears her children, tends the sick, and conducts domestic affairs. 

 Such, if the most primitive, is probably the healthiest and happiest con- 

 dition for the female. Her sympathetic and susceptible nature has 

 here every scope for action without being shaken by rude and oft- 

 repeated shocks. In civilized life, especially among the upper classes, 

 everything seems combined to foster and increase the natural affecta- 

 bility of woman's nature, and society renders her, already unfortunate 

 by organization, the victim of the most painful and varied series of 

 moral and corporeal affections. Medical philosophers have declaimed, 

 and will long continue to do so, in vain, against the whole system of 

 the education and bringing up of women, which is directed solely to 

 the purpose of making them personally attractive, and subsequently 

 securing for them brilliant settlements for life, at the expense of their 



