Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/410

396 seem likely to prove the most beneficial channels. What are these channels?

Of all the pricks against which it is hard to kick, the hardest are those which are presented by Nature in the form of facts. Therefore we may begin by wholly disregarding those short-sighted enthusiasts who seek to overcome the natural and fundamental distinction of sex. No amount of female education can ever do this, nor is it desirable that it should. On this point I need not repeat what is now so often and so truly said, as to woman being the complement, not the rival, of man. But I should like to make one remark of another kind. The idea underlying the utterances of all these enthusiasts seems to be that the qualities wherein the male mind excels that of the female are, sui generis, the most exalted of human faculties: these good ladies fret and fume in a kind of jealousy that the minds, like the bodies, of men are stronger than those of women. Now, is not this a radically mistaken view? Mere strength, as I have already endeavored to insinuate, is not the highest criterion of nobility. Human nature is a very complex thing, and among the many ingredients which go to make the greatness of it even intellectual power is but one, and not by any means the chief. The truest grandeur of that nature is revealed by that nature as a whole, and here I think there can be no doubt that the feminine type is fully equal to the masculine, if indeed it be not superior. For I believe that if we all go back in our memories to seek for the highest experience we have severally had in this respect, the character which will stand out as all in all the greatest we have ever known, will be the character of a woman. Or, if any of us have not been fortunate in this matter, where in fiction or in real life can Ave find a more glorious exhibition of all that is best—the mingled strength and beauty, tact, gayety, devotion, wit, and consummate ability—where but in a woman can we find anything at once so tender, so noble, so lovable, and so altogether splendid as in the completely natural character of a Portia? A mere blue-stocking, who looks with envy on the intellectual gifts of a Voltaire, while shutting her eyes to the gifts of a sister such as this, is simply unworthy of having such a sister: she is incapable of distinguishing the pearl of great price among the sundry other jewels of our common humanity.

Now, the suspicion, not to say the active hostility, with which the so-called woman's movement has been met in many quarters, springs from a not unhealthy ground of public opinion. For there can be no real doubt that these things are but an expression of the value which that feeling attaches to all which is held distinctive of feminine character as it stands. Woman, as she has been bequeathed to us by the many and complex influences of the past, is recognized as too precious an inheritance lightly to be tampered with; and the dread lest any change in the conditions which have given us this inheritance should lead, as it were, to desecration, is in itself both wise and worthy. In