Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/138

130, and she will at once see that the claim of equality which is set up is altogether an erroneous one, and that the attempt to make woman equal in the way some contend that she should be, would be to do the greatest possible wrong, both to herself and society. That she has not the strong intellectual power that man possesses, no woman, but one blinded by her own pride and self-love, will for a moment attempt to maintain. There are men of weak intellect, and women of strong intellect; but take the whole mass of women and the whole mass of men, and every one can see that there is an immense preponderance of intellect in the one over the other. By intellect do not understand us to say mind: we are only speaking of a faculty of the mind by which man is peculiarly distinguished. Love, the sweeter, purer, stronger quality of mind, is woman’s.

In the beginning, God made man male and female. There is a deep significance in this peculiar language. It is said in the Bible, speaking of a man and his wife, that They twain shall be one flesh. And the common perception of mankind, brought down into common language, is, that “a man and his wife are one.” This is not a mere figure of speech, a beautiful