SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES 247 



The species of life Florence Nightingale lived, involving as it 

 did struggle with a masculine world, and conquest of it, implies 

 the existence in her of certain masculine traits and marks, for 

 the normal feminine psyche is submissive rather than aggressive 

 toward its environment, human and otherwise. Belonging to 

 a family in the highest circles, it was upon the table d'hote of 

 her destiny that she should become a regulation debutante, 

 careeristina, and successful wife and mother. Instead, she chose 

 to question the whole routine of the life of her class, and in her 

 diary she records her doubts and cravings, and her revolt against 

 what is assumed by her family and friends to be the normal 

 course of existence for her. The attitudes and questionings in 

 these passages, the religious feeling displayed, are distinctly mas- 

 culine. Most easily could the following, for instance, pass as 

 having been written by a man: "I desire for a considerable time 

 only to lead a life of obscurity and toil, for the purpose of allow- 

 ing whatever I may have received of God to ripen, and turning 

 it some day to the glory of His Name. Nowadays people are too 

 much in a hurry both to produce and consume themselves. It is 

 only in retirement, in silence, in meditation that are formed the 

 men who are called to exercise an influence upon society." In 

 a note-book she puts May 7, 1852, as the date upon which she 

 was conscious of a call from God to be a saviour. Now the vast 

 majority of women who have remained spinsters at 32, in spite 

 of considerable personal attractions and high natural ability, are 

 visited by waves of emotional fervor for a de-personalization of 

 the self. But in the case of the subject, as Strachey has so well 

 shown, the call was pursued with a self-willed, pitiless, unscrupu- 

 lous determination, worthy of Satan himself upon the most fero- 

 cious evil bent. In its pursuit indeed she became what her latest 

 biographer has called a "woman possessed by a Demon." All 

 necessary, not alone because if she had been meek and mild she 

 would have existed in futility, but because of the high percentage 

 of the masculine endocrines in her composition. It is most re- 

 grettable that we have no statement of the findings of a 

 gynecologic examination of her. That she was almost con- 

 sciously masculine may be inferred not only from the way she 

 bullied Lord Pannure and worked to death her dearest friend 

 with the angelic temper, Sidney Herbert, who was so amiable that 

 he could be driven by one who wrote: "I have done with being 

 amiable. It is the mother of all mischief." She could also write, 

 "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse. 



