Ill EMANCIPATION BLACK AND WHITE 69 



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 per- 

 ceptions 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 

 " Sonnets from the Portuguese " ) 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 

 Sis tine Madonna. Nay, we have known one such 



