Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/87

 Rh "whatever emancipates our minds without giving us the mastery of ourselves is destructive," and if the intellectual freedom of woman is to be a noble freedom it must not degenerate into the privilege of thinking whatever she likes, and saying whatever she pleases. That instinctive refinement which she has acquired in centuries of self-repression is not a quality to be undervalued, or lightly thrust aside. If she loses "the strength that lies in delicacy," she is weaker in her social emancipation than in her social bondage.

The word "Virago," in the Renaissance, meant a woman of culture, character, and charm; a "man-like maiden" who combined the finer qualities of both sexes. The gradual debasement of a word into a term of reproach is sometimes a species of scandal. It is wilfully perverted in the course of years, and made to tell a different tale,—a false tale, probably,—which generations receive as true. On the other hand, it sometimes marks the swift degeneracy of a lofty ideal. In either case, the shame and pity are the same. Happily, as we are past the day when men looked askance upon women's sincere efforts at