Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/552

 the part she has to play in life. She feels more than she thinks. A man forces his way by power of body and intelligence. She acts on him by tact and by all those weaknesses in which with him lies her chief power. Her flexibility of character gives rise to caprice which consists of a brusque passage from one sentiment to another totally opposed. Her habitual feebleness and deficient vigor inspire her with less confidence; and, as a woman can not therefore act directly, she employs indirect measures to effect her ends. Hence the natural desire to please inherent in the sex, the artfulness, the dissimulations, the little managements and intrigues, the graces, the coquetry, and other seductive ways, which, to a certain extent, have always been ceded to by intellectual and physical force. For the same reasons, and from the same cause, her weaknesses and vices are greater, and no man can compete with a really bad woman in petty jealousies, spiteful actions, revenge, and even in the ingenuity and vindictiveness of crime. It is this affectability which, if it be a cause of her frailties, is equally efficacious in giving luster to her virtues. It is this which constitutes the chief charm of the mother, who instinctively detects the slightest desire or change in her offspring and impulsively acts for its benefit; of the wife, who sympathizes with and encourages her husband, fagged and anxious for the common weal; and of the nurse, who takes in at a glance all the details and wants of the patient and ministers to his requirements with pity and devotion. It is this which gives rise to that compassion, sympathy, piety, and affectionate disposition which are the chief characteristics of a woman. It is the feeling of powerlessness which makes her identify herself with the unfortunate and unhappy, which natural pity is the base of all social virtues.

—There can be little doubt that social manners, education, and an infinity of circumstances may affect the qualities woman derives from her material organization, and even efface the original character which nature has given her. In the simplest condition, the man labors with his hands and with his wits for mutual support and protection; the woman rears her children, tends the sick, and conducts domestic affairs. Such, if the most primitive, is probably the healthiest and happiest condition for the female. Her sympathetic and susceptible nature has here every scope for action without being shaken by rude and oft repeated shocks. In civilized life, especially among the upper classes, everything seems combined to foster and increase the natural affectability of woman's nature, and society renders her, already unfortunate by organization, the victim of the most painful and varied series of moral and corporeal affections. Medical philosophers have declaimed, and will long continue to do so, in vain, against the whole system of the education and bringing up of women, which is directed solely to the purpose of making them personally attractive, and subsequently securing for them brilliant settlements for life, at the expense of their