The Merry Past 



for child-bearing and pleasure, which certainly did 

 not arise from any lack of fire in the imagination or 

 of refinement in their mind. 



" What did it arise from, if not the firm and absolute 

 conviction that these beings without character eluded 

 all order — all calculation ? 



" At this moment such a sane philosophy may very 

 well be too strong meat for you, my friend, or more 

 likely you will laugh at the idea of one of the most 

 feeble men where woman is concerned — one who has 

 idolised them so much, and whose mental, even more 

 than his physical disposition, cannot do without a 

 female companion — daring to write to you in this 

 austere way." 



Mirabeau knew women well. His knowledge of 

 them, unlike that of many modern philosophers and 

 reformers, was drawn from a more reliable source 

 than blue books and statistics solemnly perused in 

 sanctuaries of stolid respectability. Herbert Spencer 

 and John Stuart Mill could probably have learnt more 

 about the sex from him in a day than all their 

 recondite researches taught them during the whole 

 of their lives. Men of this sort who have lent their 

 aid to fanning the flame of feminine discontent have 

 no notion of the extravagances into which woman's 

 excited imagination is capable of being led. Of this 

 the suffragette agitation is a striking proof. What, 

 for instance, can be more absurd — setting aside its 

 futile vulgarity — than the assaults by these women 

 on policemen who merely do their duty } Gifted 

 women of the past have exerted great influence on 



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