ii.] EMANCIPATION-BLACK AND WHITE. 19 



haters of delusion, however charming, who not only repudiate 

 the new woman-worship which so many sentimentalists and 

 some philosophers are desirous of setting up, but, carrying their 

 audacity further, deny even the natural equality of the sexes. 

 They assert, on the contrary, that in every excellent character, 

 whether mental or physical, the average woman is inferior to the 

 average man, in the sense of having that character less in 

 quantity, and lower in quality. Tell these persons of the rapid 

 perceptions and the instinctive intellectual insight of women, 

 and they reply that the feminine mental peculiarities, which 

 pass under these names, are merely the outcome of a greater 

 impressibility to the superficial aspects of things, and of the 

 absence of that restraint upon expression, which, in men, is 

 imposed by reflection and a sense of responsibility. Talk of the 

 passive endurance of the weaker sex, and opponents of this kind 

 remind you that Job was a man, and that, until quite recent 

 times, patience and long-suffering were not counted among the 

 specially feminine virtues. Claim passionate tenderness as 

 especially feminine, and the inquiry is made whether all the 

 best love-poetry in existence (except, perhaps, the &quot; Sonnets from 

 the Portuguese &quot; ) has not been written by men ; whether the 

 song which embodies the ideal of pure and tender passion 

 Adelaida was written by Frau Beethoven ; whether it was the 

 Fornarina, or Raphael, who painted the Sistine Madonna. Nay, 

 we have known one such heretic go so far as to lay his hands 

 upon the ark itself, so to speak, and to defend the startling para 

 dox that, even in physical beauty, man is the superior. He 

 admitted, indeed, that there was a brief period of early youth 

 when it might be hard to say whether the prize should be 

 awarded to the graceful undulations of the female figure, or the 

 perfect balance and supple vigour of the male frame. But 

 while our new Paris might hesitate between the youthful 

 Bacchus and the Venus emerging from the foam, he averred 

 that, when Venus and Bacchus had reached thirty, the point no 

 longer admitted of a doubt ; the male form having then attained 

 its greatest nobility, while the female is far gone in decadence ; 



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