Yet even this acknowledgment, rather conquered by Woman than proffered

by Man, has been sullied by the usual selfishness. Too much is said of

women being better educated, that they may become better companions

and mothers _for_ men. They should be fit for such companionship,

and we have mentioned, with satisfaction, instances where it has been

established. Earth knows no fairer, holier relation than that of a

mother. It is one which, rightly understood, must both promote and

require the highest attainments. But a being of infinite scope must

not be treated with an exclusive view to any one relation. Give the

soul free course, let the organization, both of body and mind, be

freely developed, and the being will be fit for any and every relation

to which it may be called. The intellect, no more than the sense of

hearing, is to be cultivated merely that Woman may be a more valuable

companion to Man, but because the Power who gave a power, by its mere

existence signifies that it must be brought out toward perfection.

In this regard of self-dependence, and a greater simplicity and

fulness of being, we must hail as a preliminary the increase of the

class contemptuously designated as "old maids."

We cannot wonder at the aversion with which old bachelors and old

maids have been regarded. Marriage is the natural means of forming a

sphere, of taking root in the earth; it requires more strength to do

this without such an opening; very many have failed, and their

imperfections have been in every one's way. They have been more

partial, more harsh, more officious and impertinent, than those

compelled by severer friction to render themselves endurable. Those

who have a more full experience of the instincts have a distrust as to

whether the unmarried can be thoroughly human and humane, such as is

hinted in the saying, "Old-maids' and bachelors' children are well

cared for," which derides at once their ignorance and their

presumption.

Yet the business of society has become so complex, that it could now

scarcely be carried on without the presence of these despised

auxiliaries; and detachments from the army of aunts and uncles are

wanted to stop gaps in every hedge. They rove about, mental and moral

Ishmaelites, pitching their tents amid the fixed and ornamented homes

of men.

In a striking variety of forms, genius of late, both at home and

abroad, has paid its tribute to the character of the Aunt and the

Uncle, recognizing in these personages the spiritual parents, who have

supplied defects in the treatment of the busy or careless actual

parents.

They also gain a wider, if not so deep experience. Those who are not

intimately and permanently linked with others, are thrown upon

themselves; and, if they do not there find peace and incessant life,

there is none to flatter them that they are not very poor, and very

mean.

A position which so constantly admonishes, may be of inestimable

benefit. The person may gain, undistracted by other relationships, a

closer communion with the one. Such a use is made of it by saints and

sibyls. Or she may be one of the lay sisters of charity, a canoness,

bound by an inward vow,--or the useful drudge of all men, the Martha,

much sought, little prized,--or the intellectual interpreter of the

varied life she sees; the Urania of a half-formed world's twilight.

Or she may combine all these. Not needing to care that she may please

a husband, a frail and limited being, her thoughts may turn to the

centre, and she may, by steadfast contemplation entering into the

secret of truth and love, use it for the good of all men, instead of a

chosen few, and interpret through it all the forms of life. It is

possible, perhaps, to be at once a priestly servant and a loving muse.

Saints and geniuses have often chosen a lonely position, in the faith

that if, undisturbed by the pressure of near ties, they would give

themselves up to the inspiring spirit, it would enable them to

understand and reproduce life better than actual experience could.

How many "old maids" take this high stand we cannot say: it is an

unhappy fact that too many who have come before the eye are gossips

rather, and not always good-natured gossips. But if these abuse, and

none make the best of their vocation, yet it has not failed to produce

some good results. It has been seen by others, if not by themselves,

that beings, likely to be left alone, need to be fortified and

furnished within themselves; and education and thought have tended

more and more to regard these beings as related to absolute Being, as

well as to others. It has been seen that, as the breaking of no bond

ought to destroy a man, so ought the missing of none to hinder him

from growing. And thus a circumstance of the time, which springs

rather from its luxury than its purity, has helped to place women on

the true platform.

Perhaps the next generation, looking deeper into this matter, will

find that contempt is put upon old maids, or old women, at all, merely

because they do not use the elixir which would keep them always young.

Under its influence, a gem brightens yearly which is only seen to more

advantage through the fissures Time makes in the casket. [Footnote:

Appendix F.] No one thinks of Michael Angelo's Persican Sibyl, or St.

Theresa, or Tasso's Leonora, or the Greek Electra, as an old maid,

more than of Michael Angelo or Canova as old bachelors, though all had

reached the period in life's course appointed to take that degree.

See a common woman at forty; scarcely has she the remains of beauty,

of any soft poetic grace which gave her attraction as Woman, which

kindled the hearts of those who looked on her to sparkling thoughts,

or diffused round her a roseate air of gentle love. See her, who was,

indeed, a lovely girl, in the coarse, full-blown dahlia flower of what

is commonly matron-beauty, "fat, fair, and forty," showily dressed,

and with manners as broad and full as her frill or satin cloak. People

observe, "How well she is preserved!" "She is a fine woman still,"

they say. This woman, whether as a duchess in diamonds, or one of our

city dames in mosaics, charms the poet's heart no more, and would look

much out of place kneeling before the Madonna. She "does well the

honors of her house,"--"leads society,"--is, in short, always spoken

and thought of upholstery-wise.

Or see that care-worn face, from which every soft line is

blotted,--those faded eyes, from which lonely tears have driven the

flashes of fancy, the mild white beam of a tender enthusiasm. This

woman is not so ornamental to a tea-party; yet she would please

better, in picture. Yet surely she, no more than the other, looks as a

human being should at the end of forty years. Forty years! have they

bound those brows with no garland? shed in the lamp no drop of

ambrosial oil?

Not so looked the Iphigenia in Aulis. Her forty years had seen her in

anguish, in sacrifice, in utter loneliness. But those pains were borne

for her father and her country; the sacrifice she had made pure for

herself and those around her. Wandering alone at night in the vestal

solitude of her imprisoning grove, she has looked up through its

"living summits" to the stars, which shed down into her aspect their

own lofty melody. At forty she would not misbecome the marble.

Not so looks the Persica. She is withered; she is faded; the drapery

that enfolds her has in its dignity an angularity, too, that tells of

age, of sorrow, of a stern resignation to the _must_. But her

eye, that torch of the soul, is untamed, and, in the intensity of her

reading, we see a soul invincibly young in faith and hope. Her age is

her charm, for it is the night of the past that gives this beacon-fire

leave to shine. Wither more and more, black Chrysalid! thou dost but

give the winged beauty time to mature its splendors!

Not so looked Victoria Colonna, after her life of a great hope, and of

true conjugal fidelity. She had been, not merely a bride, but a wife,

and each hour had helped to plume the noble bird. A coronet of pearls

will not shame her brow; it is white and ample, a worthy altar for

love and thought.

Even among the North American Indians, a race of men as completely

engaged in mere instinctive life as almost any in the world, and where

each chief, keeping many wives as useful servants, of course looks

with no kind eye on celibacy in Woman, it was excused in the following

instance mentioned by Mrs. Jameson. A woman dreamt in youth that she

was betrothed to the Sun. She built her a wigwam apart, filled it with

emblems of her alliance, and means of on independent life. There she

passed her days, sustained by her own exertions, and true to her

supposed engagement.

In any tribe, we believe, a woman, who lived as if she was betrothed

to the Sun, would be tolerated, and the rays which made her youth

blossom sweetly, would crown her with a halo in age.

There is, on this subject, a nobler view than heretofore, if not the

noblest, and improvement here must coincide with that in the view

taken of marriage. "We must have units before we can have union," says

one of the ripe thinkers of the times.

If larger intellectual resources begin to be deemed needful to Woman,

still more is a spiritual dignity in her, or even the mere assumption

of it, looked upon with respect. Joanna Southcote and Mother Anne Lee

are sure of a band of disciples; Ecstatica, Dolorosa, of enraptured

believers who will visit them in their lowly huts, and wait for days

to revere them in their trances. The foreign noble traverses land and

sea to hear a few words from the lips of the lowly peasant girl, whom

he believes especially visited by the Most High. Very beautiful, in

this way, was the influence of the invalid of St. Petersburg, as

described by De Maistre.

Mysticism, which may be defined as the brooding soul of the world,

cannot fail of its oracular promise as to Woman. "The mothers," "The

mother of all things," are expressions of thought which lead the mind

towards this side of universal growth. Whenever a mystical whisper was

heard, from Behmen down to St. Simon, sprang up the thought, that, if

it be true, as the legend says, that Humanity withers through a fault

committed by and a curse laid upon Woman, through her pure child, or

influence, shall the new Adam, the redemption, arise. Innocence is to

be replaced by virtue, dependence by a willing submission, in the

heart of the Virgin-Mother of the new race.

The spiritual tendency is toward the elevation of Woman, but the

intellectual by itself is not so. Plato sometimes seems penetrated by

that high idea of love, which considers Man and Woman as the two-fold

expression of one thought. This the angel of Swedenborg, the angel of

the coming age, cannot surpass, but only explain more fully. But then

again Plato, the man of intellect, treats Woman in the Republic as

property, and, in the Timaeus, says that Man, if he misuse the

privileges of one life, shall be degraded into the form of Woman; and

then, if ho do not redeem himself, into that of a bird. This, as I

said above, expresses most happily how antipoetical is this state of

mind. For the poet, contemplating the world of things, selects various

birds as the symbols of his most gracious and ethereal thoughts, just

as he calls upon his genius as muse rather than as God. But the

intellect, cold, is ever more masculine than feminine; warmed by

emotion, it rushes toward mother-earth, and puts on the forms of

beauty.

The electrical, the magnetic element in Woman has not been fairly

brought out at any period. Everything might be expected from it; she

has far more of it than Man. This is commonly expressed by saying that

her intuitions are more rapid and more correct. You will often see men

of high intellect absolutely stupid in regard to the atmospheric

changes, the fine invisible links which connect the forms of life

around them, while common women, if pure and modest, so that a vulgar

self do not overshadow the mental eye, will seize and delineate these

with unerring discrimination.

Women who combine this organization with creative genius are very

commonly unhappy at present. They see too much to act in conformity

with those around them, and their quick impulses seem folly to those

who do not discern the motives. This is an usual effect of the

apparition of genius, whether in Man or Woman, but is more frequent

with regard to the latter, because a harmony, an obvious order and

self-restraining decorum, is most expected from her.

Then women of genius, even more than men, are likely to be enslaved by

an impassioned sensibility. The world repels them more rudely, and

they are of weaker bodily frame.

Those who seem overladen with electricity frighten those around them.

"When she merely enters the room, I am what the French call

_herisse_," said a man of petty feelings and worldly character of

such a woman, whose depth of eye and powerful motion announced the

conductor of the mysterious fluid.

Woe to such a woman who finds herself linked to such a man in bonds

too close! It is the crudest of errors. He will detest her with all

the bitterness of wounded self-love. He will take the whole prejudice

of manhood upon himself, and, to the utmost of his power, imprison and

torture her by its imperious rigors.

Yet, allow room enough, and the electric fluid will be found to

invigorate and embellish, not destroy life. Such women are the great

actresses, the songsters. Such traits we read in a late searching,

though too French, analysis of the character of Mademoiselle Rachel,

by a modern, La Rochefeucault. The Greeks thus represent the muses;

they have not the golden serenity of Apollo; they are overflowed with

thought; there is something tragic in their air. Such are the Sibyls

of Gueroino; the eye is overfull of expression, dilated and lustrous;

it seems to have drawn the whole being into it.

Sickness is the frequent result of this overcharged existence. To this

region, however misunderstood, or interpreted with presumptuous

carelessness, belong the phenomena of magnetism, or mesmerism, as it

is now often called, where the trance of the Ecstatica purports to be

produced by the agency of one human being on another, instead of, as

in her case, direct from the spirit.

The worldling has his sneer at this as at the services of religion.

"The churches can always be filled with women"--"Show me a man in one

of your magnetic states, and I will believe."

Women are, indeed, the easy victims both of priestcraft and

self-delusion; but this would not be, if the intellect was developed

in proportion to the other powers. They would then have a regulator,

and be more in equipoise, yet must retain the same nervous

susceptibility while their physical structure is such as it is.

It is with just that hope that we welcome everything that tends to

strengthen the fibre and develop the nature on more sides. When the

intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual

consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded

with fancy.

Then, "she who advances

With rapturous, lyrical glances,

Singing the song of the earth, singing

Its hymn to the Gods,"

will not be pitied as a mad-woman, nor shrunk from as unnatural.

The Greeks, who saw everything in forms, which we are trying to

ascertain as law, and classify as cause, embodied all this in the form

of Cassandra. Cassandra was only unfortunate in receiving her gift too

soon. The remarks, however, that the world still makes in such cases,

are well expressed by the Greek dramatist.

In the Trojan dames there are fine touches of nature with regard to

Cassandra. Hecuba shows that mixture of shame and reverence that

prosaic kindred always do toward the inspired child, the poet, the

elected sufferer for the race.

When the herald announces that Cassandra is chosen to be the mistress

of Agamemnon, Hecuba answers, with indignation, betraying the pride

and faith she involuntarily felt in this daughter.

"_Hec_. The maiden of Phoebus, to whom the golden-haired

Gave as a privilege a virgin life!

_Tal_. Love of the inspired maiden hath pierced him.

_Hec_. Then cast away, my child, the sacred keys, and from thy person

The consecrated garlands which thou wearest."

Yet, when, a moment after, Cassandra appears, singing, wildly, her

inspired song, Hecuba calls her, "My _frantic_ child."

Yet how graceful she is in her tragic _raptus_, the chorus shows.

"_Chorus_. How sweetly at thy house's ills thou smil'st,

Chanting what, haply, thou wilt not show true."

If Hecuba dares not trust her highest instinct about her daughter,

still less can the vulgar mind of the herald Talthybius, a man not

without feeling, but with no princely, no poetic blood, abide the

wild, prophetic mood which insults all his prejudices.

"_Tal_. The venerable, and that accounted wise,

Is nothing better than that of no repute;

For the greatest king of all the Greeks,

The dear son of Atreus, a possessed with the love

Of this mad-Woman. I, indeed, am poor;

Yet I would not receive her to my bed."

The royal Agamemnon could see the beauty of Cassandra; _he_ was

not afraid of her prophetic gifts.

The best topic for a chapter on this subject, in the present day,

would be the history of the Seeress of Prevorst, the best observed

subject of magnetism in our present times, and who, like her

ancestresses of Delphos, was roused to ecstasy or phrensy by the touch

of the laurel.

I observe in her case, and in one known to me here, that what might

have been a gradual and gentle disclosure of remarkable powers was

broken and jarred into disease by an unsuitable marriage. Both these

persons were unfortunate in not understanding what was involved in

this relation, but acted ignorantly, as their friends desired. They

thought that this was the inevitable destiny of Woman. But when

engaged in the false position, it was impossible for them to endure

its dissonances, as those of less delicate perceptions can; and the

fine flow of life was checked and sullied. They grew sick; but, even

so, learned and disclosed more than those in health are wont to do.

In such cases, worldlings sneer; but reverent men learn wondrous news,

either from the person observed, or by thoughts caused in themselves

by the observation. Fenelon learns from Guyon, Kerner from his

Seeress, what we fain would know. But to appreciate such disclosures

one must be a child; and here the phrase, "women and children," may,

perhaps, be interpreted aright, that only little children shall enter

into the kingdom of heaven.

All these motions of the time, tides that betoken a waxing moon,

overflow upon our land. The world at large is readier to let Woman

learn and manifest the capacities of her nature than it ever was

before, and here is a less encumbered field and freer air than

anywhere else. And it ought to be so; we ought to pay for Isabella's

jewels.

The names of nations are feminine--Religion, Virtue and Victory are

feminine. To those who have a superstition, as to outward reigns, it

is not without significance that the name of the queen of our

motherland should at this crisis be Victoria,--Victoria the First.

Perhaps to us it may be given to disclose the era thus outwardly

presaged.

Another Isabella too at this time ascends the throne. Might she open a

new world to her sex! But, probably, these poor little women are,

least of any, educated to serve as examples or inspirers for the rest.

The Spanish queen is younger; we know of her that she sprained her

foot the other day, dancing in her private apartments; of Victoria,

that she reads aloud, in a distinct voice and agreeable manner, her

addresses to Parliament on certain solemn days, and, yearly, that she

presents to the nation some new prop of royalty. These ladies have,

very likely, been trained more completely to the puppet life than any

other. The queens, who have been queens indeed, were trained by

adverse circumstances to know the world around them and their own

powers.

It is moving, while amusing, to read of the Scottish peasant measuring

the print left by the queen's foot as she walks, and priding himself

on its beauty. It is so natural to wish to find what is fair and

precious in high places,--so astonishing to find the Bourbon a

glutton, or the Guelph a dullard or gossip.

In our own country, women are, in many respects, better situated than

men. Good books are allowed, with more time to read them. They are not

so early forced into the bustle of life, nor so weighed down by

demands for outward success. The perpetual changes, incident to our

society, make the blood circulate freely through the body politic,

and, if not favorable at present to the grace and bloom of life, they

are so to activity, resource, and would be to reflection, but for a

low materialist tendency, from which the women are generally exempt in

themselves, though its existence, among the men, has a tendency to

repress their impulses and make them doubt their instincts, thus often

paralyzing their action during the best years.

But they have time to think, and no traditions chain them, and few

conventionalities, compared with what must be met in other nations.

There is no reason why they should not discover that the secrets of

nature are open, the revelations of the spirit waiting, for whoever

will seek them. When the mind is once awakened to this consciousness,

it will not be restrained by the habits of the past, but fly to seek

the seeds of a heavenly future.

Their employments are more favorable to meditation than those of men.

Woman is not addressed religiously here more than elsewhere. She is

told that she should be worthy to be the mother of a Washington, or

the companion of some good man.' But in many, many instances, she has

already learned that all bribes have the same flaw; that truth and

good are to be sought solely for their own sakes. And, already, an

ideal sweetness floats over many forms, shines in many eyes.

Already deep questions are put by young girls on the great theme: What

shall I do to enter upon the eternal life?

Men are very courteous to them. They praise them often, check them

seldom. There is chivalry in the feeling toward "the ladies," which

gives them the best seats in the stage-coach, frequent admission, not

only to lectures of all sorts, but to courts of justice, halls of

legislature, reform conventions. The newspaper editor "would be better

pleased that the Lady's Book should be filled up exclusively by

ladies. It would then, indeed, be a true gem, worthy, to be presented

by young men to the, mistress of their affections." Can gallantry go

further?

In this country is venerated, wherever seen, the character which

Goethe spoke of as an Ideal, which he saw actualized in his friend and

patroness, the Grand Duchess Amelia: "The excellent woman is she, who,

if the husband dies, can be a father to the children." And this, if

read aright, tells a great deal.

Women who speak in public, if they have a moral power, such as has

been felt from Angelina Grimke and Abby Kelly,--that is, if they speak

for conscience' sake, to serve a cause which they hold sacred,--invariably

subdue the prejudices of their hearers, and excite an interest

proportionate to the aversion with which it had been the purpose to

regard them.

A passage in a private letter so happily illustrates this, that it

must be inserted here.

Abby Kelly in the Town-House of ----.

"The scene was not unheroic--to see that woman, true to humanity and

her own nature, a centre of rude eyes and tongues, even gentlemen

feeling licensed to make part of a species of mob around a female out

of her sphere. As she took her seat in the desk amid the great noise,

and in the throng, full, like a wave, of something to ensue, I saw her

humanity in a gentleness and unpretension, tenderly open to the sphere

around her, and, had she not been supported by the power of the will

of genuineness and principle, she would have failed. It led her to

prayer, which, in Woman especially, is childlike; sensibility and will

going to the side of God and looking up to him; and humanity was

poured out in aspiration.

"She acted like a gentle hero, with her mild decision and womanly

calmness. All heroism is mild, and quiet, and gentle, for it is life

and possession; and combativeness and firmness show a want of

actualness. She is as earnest, fresh and simple, as when she first

entered the crusade. I think she did much good, more than the men in

her place could do, for Woman feels more as being and reproducing--this

brings the subject more into home relations. Men speak through, and

mostly from intellect, and this addresses itself to that in others

which is combative."

Not easily shall we find elsewhere, or before this time, any written

observations on the same subject, so delicate and profound.

The late Dr. Channing, whose enlarged and tender and religious nature

shared every onward impulse of his tune, though his thoughts followed

his wishes with a deliberative caution which belonged to his habits

and temperament, was greatly interested in these expectations for

women. His own treatment of them was absolutely and thoroughly

religious. He regarded them as souls, each of which had a destiny of

its own, incalculable to other minds, and whose leading it must

follow, guided by the light of a private conscience. He had sentiment,

delicacy, kindness, taste; but they were all pervaded and ruled by

this one thought, that all beings had souls, and must vindicate their

own inheritance. Thus all beings were treated by him with an equal,

and sweet, though solemn, courtesy. The young and unknown, the woman

and the child, all felt themselves regarded with an infinite

expectation, from which there was no reaction to vulgar prejudice. He

demanded of all he met, to use his favorite phrase, "great truths."

His memory, every way dear and reverend, is, by many, especially

cherished for this intercourse of unbroken respect.

At one time, when the progress of Harriet Martineau through this

country, Angelina Grimke's appearance in public, and the visit of Mrs.

Jameson, had turned his thoughts to this subject, he expressed high

hopes as to what the coming era would bring to Woman. He had been much

pleased with the dignified courage of Mrs. Jameson in taking up the

defence of her sex in from which women usually shrink, because, if

they express themselves on such subjects with sufficient force and

clearness to do any good, they are exposed to assaults whose vulgarity

makes them painful. In intercourse with such a woman, he had shared

her indignation at the base injustice, in many respects, and in many

regions, done to the sex; and been led to think of it far more than

ever before. He seemed to think that he might some time write upon the

subject. That his aid is withdrawn from the cause is a subject of

great regret; for, on this question as on others, he would have known

how to sum up the evidence, and take, in the noblest spirit, middle

ground. He always furnished a platform on which opposing parties could

stand and look at one another under the influence of his mildness and

enlightened candor.

Two younger thinkers, men both, have uttered noble prophecies,

auspicious for Woman. Kinmont, all whose thoughts tended towards the

establishment of the reign of love and peace, thought that the

inevitable means of this would be an increased predominance given to

the idea of Woman. Had he lived longer, to see the growth of the Peace

Party, the reforms in life and medical practice which seek to

substitute water for wine and drugs, pulse for animal food, he would

have been confirmed in his view of the way in which the desired

changes are to be effected.

In this connection I must mention Shelley, who, like all men of

genius, shared the feminine development, and, unlike many, knew it.

His life was one of the first pulse-beats in the present

reform-growth. He, too, abhorred blood and heat, and, by his system

and his song, tended to reinstate a plant-like gentleness in the

development of energy. In harmony with this, his ideas of marriage

were lofty, and, of course, no less so of Woman, her nature, and

destiny.

For Woman, if, by a sympathy as to outward condition, she is led to

aid the enfranchisement of the slave, must be no less so, by inward

tendency, to favor measures which promise to bring the world more

thoroughly and deeply into harmony with her nature. When the lamb

takes place of the lion as the emblem of nations, both women and men

will be as children of one spirit, perpetual learners of the word and

doers thereof, not hearers only.

A writer in the New York Pathfinder, in two articles headed

"Femality," has uttered a still more pregnant word than any we have

named. He views Woman truly from the soul, and not from society, and

the depth and leading of his thoughts are proportionably remarkable.

He views the feminine nature as a harmonizer of the vehement elements,

and this has often been hinted elsewhere; but what he expresses most

forcibly is the lyrical, the inspiring and inspired apprehensiveness

of her being.

This view being identical with what I have before attempted to

indicate, as to her superior susceptibility to magnetic or electric

influence, I will now try to express myself more fully.

There are two aspects of Woman's nature, represented by the ancients

as Muse and Minerva. It is the former to which the writer in the

Pathfinder looks. It is the latter which Wordsworth has in mind, when

he says,

"With a placid brow,

Which woman ne'er should forfeit, keep thy vow."

The especial genius of Woman I believe to be electrical in movement,

intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency. She excels not so easily

in classification, or recreation, as in an instinctive seizure of

causes, and a simple breathing out of what she receives, that has the

singleness of life, rather than the selecting and energizing of art.

More native is it to her to be the living model of the artist than to

set apart from herself any one form in objective reality; more native

to inspire and receive the poem, than to create it. In so far as soul

is in her completely developed, all soul is the same, but in so far as

it is modified in her as Woman, it flows, it breathes, it sings,

rather than deposits soil, or finishes work; and that which is

especially feminine flushes, in blossom, the face of earth, and

pervades, like air and water, all this seeming solid globe, daily

renewing and purifying its life. Such may be the especially feminine

element spoken of as Femality. But it is no more the order of nature

that it should be incarnated pure in any form, than that the masculine

energy should exist unmingled with it in any form.

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism.

But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid

hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine

man, no purely feminine woman.

History jeers at the attempts of physiologists to bind great original

laws by the forms which flow from them. They make a rule; they say

from observation what can and cannot be. In vain! Nature provides

exceptions to every rule. She sends women to battle, and sets Hercules

spinning; she enables women to bear immense burdens, cold, and frost;

she enables the man, who feels maternal love, to nourish his infant

like a mother. Of late she plays still gayer pranks. Not only she

deprives organizations, but organs, of a necessary end. She enables

people to read with the top of the head, and see with the pit of the

stomach. Presently she will make a female Newton, and a male Syren.

Man partakes of the feminine in the Apollo, Woman of the masculine as

Minerva.

What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive

powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of

the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It

may appear as prophecy or as poesy. It enabled Cassandra to foresee

the results of actions passing round her; the Seeress to behold the

true character of the person through the mask of his customary life.

(Sometimes she saw a feminine form behind the man, sometimes the

reverse.) It enabled the daughter of Linnaeus to see the soul of the

flower exhaling from the flower. [Footnote: The daughter of Linnaeus

states, that, while looking steadfastly at the red lily, she saw its

spirit hovering above it, as a red flame. It is true, this, like many

fair spirit-stories, may be explained away as an optical illusion, but

its poetic beauty and meaning would, even then, make it valuable, as

an illustration of the spiritual fact.] It gave a man, but a poet-man,

the power of which he thus speaks: "Often in my contemplation of

nature, radiant intimations, and as it were sheaves of light, appear

before me as to the facts of cosmogony, in which my mind has, perhaps,

taken especial part." He wisely adds, "but it is necessary with

earnestness to verify the knowledge we gain by these flashes of

light." And none should forget this. Sight must be verified by light

before it can deserve the honors of piety and genius. Yet sight comes

first, and of this sight of the world of causes, this approximation to

the region of primitive motions, women I hold to be especially

capable. Even without equal freedom with the other sex, they have

already shown themselves so; and should these faculties have free

play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous

inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.

Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let

us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take

what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman,

black or white. Jove sprang from Rhea, Pallas from Jove. So let it be.

If it has been the tendency of these remarks to call Woman rather to

the Minerva side,--if I, unlike the more generous writer, have spoken

from society no less than the soul,--let it be pardoned! It is love

that has caused this,--love for many incarcerated souls, that might be

freed, could the idea of religious self-dependence be established in

them, could the weakening habit of dependence on others be broken up.

Proclus teaches that every life has, in its sphere, a totality or

wholeness of the animating powers of the other spheres; having only,

as its own characteristic, a predominance of some one power. Thus

Jupiter comprises, within himself, the other twelve powers, which

stand thus: The first triad is _demiurgic or fabricative_, that

is, Jupiter, Neptune, Vulcan; the second, _defensive_, Vesta,

Minerva, Mars; the third, _vivific_, Ceres, Juno, Diana; and the

fourth, Mercury, Venus, Apollo, _elevating and harmonic_. In the

sphere of Jupiter, energy is predominant--with Venus, beauty; but each

comprehends and apprehends all the others.

When the same community of life and consciousness of mind begin among

men, humanity will have, positively and finally, subjugated its brute

elements and Titanic childhood; criticism will have perished;

arbitrary limits and ignorant censure be impossible; all will have

entered upon the liberty of law, and the harmony of common growth.

Then Apollo will sing to his lyre what Vulcan forges on the anvil, and

the Muse weave anew the tapestries of Minerva.

It is, therefore, only in the present crisis that the preference is

given to Minerva. The power of continence must establish the

legitimacy of freedom, the power of self-poise the perfection of

motion.

Every relation, every gradation of nature is incalculably precious,

but only to the soul which is poised upon itself, and to whom no loss,

no change, can bring dull discord, for it is in harmony with the

central soul.

If any individual live too much in relations, so that he becomes a

stranger to the resources of his own nature, he falls, after a while,

into a distraction, or imbecility, from which he can only be cured by

a time of isolation, which gives the renovating fountains time to rise

up. With a society it is the same. Many minds, deprived of the

traditionary or instinctive means of passing a cheerful existence,

must find help in self-impulse, or perish. It is therefore that, while

any elevation, in the view of union, is to be hailed with joy, we

shall not decline celibacy as the great fact of the time. It is one

from which no vow, no arrangement, can at present save a thinking

mind. For now the rowers are pausing on their oars; they wait a change

before they can pull together. All tends to illustrate the thought of

a wise cotemporary. Union is only possible to those who are units. To

be fit for relations in time, souls, whether of Man or Woman, must be

able to do without them in the spirit.

It is therefore that I would have Woman lay aside all thought, such as

she habitually cherishes, of being taught and led by men. I would have

her, like the Indian girl, dedicate herself to the Sun, the Sun of

Truth, and go nowhere if his beams did not make clear the path. I

would have her free from compromise, from complaisance, from

helplessness, because I would have her good enough and strong enough

to love one and all beings, from the fulness, not the poverty of

being.

Men, as at present instructed, will not help this work, because they

also are under the slavery of habit. I have seen with delight their

poetic impulses. A sister is the fairest ideal, and how nobly

Wordsworth, and even Byron, have written of a sister!

There is no sweeter sight than to see a father with his little

daughter. Very vulgar men become refined to the eye when leading a

little girl by the hand. At that moment, the right relation between

the sexes seems established, and you feel as if the man would aid in

the noblest purpose, if you ask him in behalf of his little daughter.

Once, two fine figures stood before me, thus. The father of very

intellectual aspect, his falcon eye softened by affection as he looked

down on his fair child; she the image of himself, only more graceful

and brilliant in expression. I was reminded of Southey's Kehama; when,

lo, the dream was rudely broken! They were talking of education, and

he said,

"I shall not have Maria brought too forward. If she knows too much,

she will never find a husband; superior women hardly ever can."

"Surely," said his wife, with a blush, "you wish Maria to be as good

and wise as she can, whether it will help her to marriage or not."

"No," he persisted, "I want her to have a sphere and a home, and some

one to protect her when I am gone."

It was a trifling incident, but made a deep impression. I felt that

the holiest relations fail to instruct the unprepared and perverted

mind. If this man, indeed, could have looked at it on the other side,

he was the last that would have been willing to have been taken

himself for the home and protection he could give, but would have been

much more likely to repeat the tale of Alcibiades with his phials.

But men do _not_ look at both sides, and women must leave off

asking them and being influenced by them, but retire within

themselves, and explore the ground-work of life till they find their

peculiar secret. Then, when they come forth again, renovated and

baptized, they will know how to turn all dross to gold, and will be

rich and free though they live in a hut, tranquil if in a crowd. Then

their sweet singing shall not be from passionate impulse, but the

lyrical overflow of a divine rapture, and a new music shall be evolved

from this many-chorded world.

Grant her, then, for a while, the armor and the javelin. Let her put

from her the press of other minds, and meditate in virgin loneliness.

The same idea shall reappear in due time as Muse, or Ceres, the

all-kindly, patient Earth-Spirit.

Among the throng of symptoms which denote the present tendency to a

crisis in the life of Woman,--which resembles the change from

girlhood, with its beautiful instincts, but unharmonized thoughts, its

blind pupilage and restless seeking, to self-possessed, wise and

graceful womanhood,--I have attempted to select a few.

One of prominent interest is the unison upon the subject of three male

minds, which, for width of culture, power of self-concentration and

dignity of aim, take rank as the prophets of the coming age, while

their histories and labors are rooted in the past.

Swedenborg came, he tells us, to interpret the past revelation and

unfold a new. He announces the New Church that is to prepare the way

for the New Jerusalem, a city built of precious stones, hardened and

purified by secret processes in the veins of earth through the ages.

Swedenborg approximated to that harmony between the scientific and

poetic lives of mind, which we hope from the perfected man. The links

that bind together the realms of nature, the mysteries that accompany

her births and growths, were unusually plain to him. He seems a man to

whom insight was given at a period when the mental frame was

sufficiently matured to retain and express its gifts.

His views of Woman are, in the main, satisfactory. In some details we

my object to them, as, in all his system, there are still remains of

what is arbitrary and seemingly groundless--fancies that show the

marks of old habits, and a nature as yet not thoroughly leavened with

the spiritual leaven. At least, so it seems to me now. I speak

reverently, for I find such reason to venerate Swedenborg, from an

imperfect knowledge of his mind, that I feel one more perfect might

explain to me much that does not now secure my sympathy.

His idea of Woman is sufficiently large and noble to interpose no

obstacle to her progress. His idea of marriage is consequently

sufficient. Man and Woman share an angelic ministry; the union is of

one with one, permanent and pure.

As the New Church extends its ranks, the needs of Woman must be more

considered.

Quakerism also establishes Woman on a sufficient equality with Man.

But, though the original thought of Quakerism is pure, its scope is

too narrow, and its influence, having established a certain amount of

good and made clear some truth, must, by degrees, be merged in one of

wider range. [Footnote: In worship at stated periods, in daily

expression, whether by word or deed, the Quakers have placed Woman on

the same platform with Man. Can any one assert that they have reason

to repent this?] The mind of Swedenborg appeals to the various nature

of Man, and allows room for aesthetic culture and the free expression

of energy.

As apostle of the new order, of the social fabric that is to rise from

love, and supersede the old that was based on strife, Charles Fourier

comes next, expressing, in an outward order, many facts of which

Swedenborg saw the secret springs. The mind of Fourier, though grand

and clear, was, in some respects, superficial. He was a stranger to

the highest experiences. His eye was fixed on the outward more than

the inward needs of Man. Yet he, too, was a seer of the divine order,

in its musical expression, if not in its poetic soul. He has filled

one department of instruction for the new era, and the harmony in

action, and freedom for individual growth, he hopes, shall exist; and,

if the methods he proposes should not prove the true ones, yet his

fair propositions shall give many hints, and make room for the

inspiration needed for such.

He, too, places Woman on an entire equality with Man, and wishes to

give to one as to the other that independence which must result from

intellectual and practical development.

Those who will consult him for no other reason, might do so to see how

the energies of Woman may be made available in the pecuniary way. The

object of Fourier was to give her the needed means of self-help, that

she might dignify and unfold her life for her own happiness, and that

of society. The many, now, who see their daughters liable to

destitution, or vice to escape from it, may be interested to examine

the means, if they have not yet soul enough to appreciate the ends he

proposes.

On the opposite side of the advancing army leads the great apostle of

individual culture, Goethe. Swedenborg makes organization and union

the necessary results of solitary thought. Fourier, whose nature was,

above all, constructive, looked to them too exclusively. Better

institutions, he thought, will make better men. Goethe expressed, in

every way, the other side. If one man could present better forms, the

rest could not use them till ripe for them.

Fourier says, As the institutions, so the men! All follies are

excusable and natural under bad institutions.

Goethe thinks, As the man, so the institutions! There is no excuse for

ignorance and folly. A man can grow in any place, if he will.

Ay! but, Goethe, bad institutions are prison-walls and impure air,

that make him stupid, so that he does not will.

And thou, Fourier, do not expect to change mankind at once, or even

"in three generations," by arrangement of groups and series, or

flourish of trumpets for attractive industry. If these attempts are

made by unready men, they will fail.

Yet we prize the theory of Fourier no less than the profound

suggestion of Goethe. Both are educating the age to a clearer

consciousness of what Man needs, what Man can be; and better life must

ensue.

Goethe, proceeding on his own track, elevating the human being, in the

most imperfect states of society, by continual efforts at

self-culture, takes as good care of women as of men. His mother, the

bold, gay Frau Aja, with such playful freedom of nature; the wise and

gentle maiden, known in his youth, over whose sickly solitude "the

Holy Ghost brooded as a dove;" his sister, the intellectual woman

_par excellence_; the Duchess Amelia; Lili, who combined the

character of the woman of the world with the lyrical sweetness of the

shepherdess, on whose chaste and noble breast flowers and gems were

equally at home; all these had supplied abundant suggestions to his

mind, as to the wants and the possible excellences of Woman. And from

his poetic soul grew up forms new and more admirable than life has yet

produced, for whom his clear eye marked out paths in the future.

In Faust Margaret represents the redeeming power, which, at present,

upholds Woman, while waiting for a better day. The lovely little girl,

pure in instinct, ignorant in mind, is misled and profaned by man

abusing her confidence.[Footnote: As Faust says, her only fault was a

"kindly delusion,"--"ein guter wahn."] To the Mater _Dolorosa_

she appeals for aid. It is given to the soul, if not against outward

sorrow; and the maiden, enlightened by her sufferings, refusing to

receive temporal salvation by the aid of an evil power, obtains the

eternal in its stead.

In the second part, the intellectual man, after all his manifold

strivings, owes to the interposition of her whom he had betrayed

_his_ salvation. She intercedes, this time, herself a glorified

spirit, with the Mater _Gloriosa_.

Leonora, too, is Woman, as we see her now, pure, thoughtful, refined

by much acquaintance with grief.

Iphigenia he speaks of in his journals as his "daughter," and she is

the daughter [Footnote: Goethe was as false to his ideas, in practice,

as Lord Herbert. And his punishment was the just and usual one of

connections formed beneath the standard of right, from the impulses of

the baser self. Iphigenia was the worthy daughter of his mind; but the

son, child of his degrading connection in actual life, corresponded

with that connection. This son, on whom Goethe vainly lavished so much

thought and care, was like his mother, and like Goethe's attachment

for his mother. "This young man," says a late well-informed writer (M.

Henri Blaze), "Wieland, with good reason, called the son of the

servant, _der Sohn der Magd_. He inherited from his father only

his name and his _physique_."] whom a man will wish, even if he

has chosen his wife from very mean motives. She is the virgin,

steadfast, soul, to whom falsehood is more dreadful than any other

death.

But it is to Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Wandering Years that

I would especially refer, as these volumes contain the sum of the

Sage's observations during a long life, as to what Man should do,

under present circumstances, to obtain mastery over outward, through

an initiation into inward life, and severe discipline of faculty.

As Wilhelm advances into the upward path, he becomes acquainted with

better forms of Woman, by knowing how to seek, and how to prize them

when found. For the weak and immature man will, often, admire a

superior woman, but he will not be able to abide by a feeling which is

too severe a tax on his habitual existence. But, with Wilhelm, the

gradation is natural, and expresses ascent in the scale of being. At

first, he finds charm in Mariana and Philina, very common forms of

feminine character, not without redeeming traits, no less than charms,

but without wisdom or purity. Soon he is attended by Mignon, the

finest expression ever yet given to what I have called the lyrical

element in Woman. She is a child, but too full-grown for this man; he

loves, but cannot follow her; yet is the association not without an

enduring influence. Poesy has been domesticated in his life; and,

though he strives to bind down her heavenward impulse, as art or

apothegm, these are only the tents, beneath which he may sojourn for a

while, but which may be easily struck, and carried on limitless

wanderings.

Advancing into the region of thought, he encounters a wise

philanthropy in Natalia (instructed, let us observe, by an

_uncle_); practical judgment and the outward economy of life in

Theresa; pure devotion in the Fair Saint.

Further, and last, he comes to the house of Macaria, the soul of a

star; that is, a pure and perfected intelligence embodied in feminine

form, and the centre of a world whose members revolve harmoniously

around her. She instructs him in the archives of a rich human history,

and introduces him to the contemplation of the heavens.

From the hours passed by the side of Mariana to these with Macaria, is

a wide distance for human feet to traverse. Nor has Wilhelm travelled

so far, seen and suffered so much, in vain, He now begins to study how

he may aid the next generation; he sees objects in harmonious

arrangement, and from his observations deduces precepts by which to

guide his course as a teacher and a master, "help-full, comfort-full."

In all these expressions of Woman, the aim of Goethe is satisfactory

to me. He aims at a pure self-subsistence, and a free development of

any powers with which they may be gifted by nature as much for them as

for men. They are units, addressed as souls. Accordingly, the meeting

between Man and Woman, as represented by him, is equal and noble; and,

if he does not depict marriage, he makes it possible.

In the Macaria, bound with the heavenly bodies in fixed revolutions,

the centre of all relations, herself unrelated, he expresses the

Minerva side of feminine nature. It was not by chance that Goethe gave

her this name. Macaria, the daughter of Hercules, who offered herself

as a victim for the good of her country, was canonized by the Greeks,

and worshipped as the Goddess of true Felicity. Goethe has embodied

this Felicity as the Serenity that arises from Wisdom, a Wisdom such

as the Jewish wise man venerated, alike instructed in the designs of

heaven, and the methods necessary to carry them into effect upon

earth.

Mignon is the electrical, inspired, lyrical nature. And wherever it

appears we echo in our aspirations that of the child,

"So let me seem until I be:--

Take not the _white robe_ away."

* * * * *

"Though I lived without care and toil,

Yet felt I sharp pain enough to

Make me again forever young."

All these women, though we see them in relations, we can think of as

unrelated. They all are very individual, yet seem nowhere restrained.

They satisfy for the present, yet arouse an infinite expectation.

The economist Theresa, the benevolent Natalia, the fair Saint, have

chosen a path, but their thoughts are not narrowed to it. The

functions of life to them are not ends, but suggestions.

Thus, to them, all things are important, because none is necessary.

Their different characters have fair play, and each is beautiful in

its minute indications, for nothing is enforced or conventional; but

everything, however slight, grows from the essential life of the

being.

Mignon and Theresa wear male attire when they like, and it is graceful

for them to do so, while Macaria is confined to her arm-chair behind

the green curtain, and the Fair Saint could not bear a speck of dust

on her robe.

All things are in their places in this little world, because all is

natural and free, just as "there is room for everything out of doors."

Yet all is rounded in by natural harmony, which will always arise

where Truth and Love are sought in the light of Freedom.

Goethe's book bodes an era of freedom like its own of "extraordinary,

generous seeking," and new revelations. New individualities shall be

developed in the actual world, which shall advance upon it as gently

as the figures come out upon his canvas.

I have indicated on this point the coincidence between his hopes and

those of Fourier, though his are directed by an infinitely higher and

deeper knowledge of human nature. But, for our present purpose, it is

sufficient to show how surely these different paths have conducted to

the same end two earnest thinkers. In some other place I wish to point

out similar coincidences between Goethe's model school and the plans

of Fourier, which may cast light upon the page of prophecy.

* * * * *

Many women have observed that the time drew nigh for a better care of

the sex, and have thrown out hints that may be useful. Among these may

be mentioned--

Miss Edgeworth, who, although restrained by the habits of her age and

country, and belonging more to the eighteenth than the nineteenth

century, has done excellently as far as she goes. She had a horror of

sentimentalism, and of the love of notoriety, and saw how likely

women, in the early stages of culture, were to aim at these. Therefore

she bent her efforts to recommending domestic life. But the methods

she recommends are such as will fit a character for any position to

which it may be called. She taught a contempt of falsehood, no less in

its most graceful, than in its meanest apparitions; the cultivation of

a clear, independent judgment, and adherence to its dictates; habits

of various and liberal study and employment, and a capacity for

friendship. Her standard of character is the same for both sexes,--Truth,

honor, enlightened benevolence, and aspiration after knowledge.

Of poetry, she knows nothing, and her religion consists in honor and

loyalty to obligations once assumed--in short, in "the great idea of

duty which holds us upright." Her whole tendency is practical.

Mrs. Jameson is a sentimentalist, and, therefore, suits us ill in some

respects, but she is full of talent, has a just and refined perception

of the beautiful, and a genuine courage when she finds it necessary.

She does not appear to have thought out, thoroughly, the subject on

which we are engaged, and her opinions, expressed as opinions, are

sometimes inconsistent with one another. But from the refined

perception of character, admirable suggestions are given in her "Women

of Shakspeare," and "Loves of the Poets."

But that for which I most respect her is the decision with which she

speaks on a subject which refined women are usually afraid to

approach, for fear of the insult and scurrile jest they may

encounter; but on which she neither can nor will restrain the

indignation of a full heart. I refer to the degradation of a large

portion of women into the sold and polluted slaves of men, and the

daring with which the legislator and man of the world lifts his head

beneath the heavens, and says, "This must be; it cannot be helped; it

is a necessary accompaniment of _civilization_."

So speaks the _citizen_. Man born of Woman, the father of

daughters, declares that he will and must buy the comforts and

commercial advantages of his London, Vienna, Paris, New York, by

conniving at the moral death, the damnation, so far as the action of

society can insure it, of thousands of women for each splendid

metropolis.

O men! I speak not to you. It is true that your wickedness (for you

must not deny that at least nine thousand out of the ten fall through

the vanity you have systematically flattered, or the promises you have

treacherously broken); yes, it is true that your wickedness is its own

punishment. Your forms degraded and your eyes clouded by secret sin;

natural harmony broken and fineness of perception destroyed in your

mental and bodily organization; God and love shut out from your hearts

by the foul visitants you have permitted there; incapable of pure

marriage; incapable of pure parentage; incapable of worship; O

wretched men, your sin is its own punishment! You have lost the world

in losing yourselves. Who ruins another has admitted the worm to the

root of his own tree, and the fuller ye fill the cup of evil, the

deeper must be your own bitter draught. But I speak not to you--you

need to teach and warn one another. And more than one voice rises in

earnestness. And all that _women_ say to the heart that has once

chosen the evil path is considered prudery, or ignorance, or perhaps a

feebleness of nature which exempts from similar temptations.

But to you, women, American women, a few words may not be addressed in

vain. One here and there may listen.

You know how it was in the Oriental clime, One man, if wealth

permitted, had several wives and many handmaidens. The chastity and

equality of genuine marriage, with "the thousand decencies that flow"

from its communion, the precious virtues that gradually may be matured

within its enclosure, were unknown.

But this man did not wrong according to his light. What he did, he

might publish to God and Man; it was not a wicked secret that hid in

vile lurking-places and dens, like the banquets of beasts of prey.

Those women were not lost, not polluted in their own eyes, nor those

of others. If they were not in a state of knowledge and virtue, they

were at least in one of comparative innocence.

You know how it was with the natives of this continent. A chief had

many wives, whom he maintained and who did his household work; those

women were but servants, still they enjoyed the respect of others and

their own. They lived together, in peace. They knew that a sin against

what was in their nation esteemed virtue, would be as strictly

punished in Man as in Woman.

Now pass to the countries where marriage is between one and one. I

will not speak of the Pagan nations, but come to those which own the

Christian rule. We all know what that enjoins; there is a standard to

appeal to.

See, now, not the mass of the people, for we all know that it is a

proverb and a bitter jest to speak of the "down-trodden million." We

know that, down to our own time, a principle never had so fair a

chance to pervade the mass of the people, but that we must solicit its

illustration from select examples.

Take the Paladin, take the Poet. Did _they_ believe purity more

impossible to Man than to Woman? Did they wish Woman to believe that

Man was less amenable to higher motives,--that pure aspirations would

not guard him against bad passions,--that honorable employments and

temperate habits would not keep him free from slavery to the body? O

no! Love was to them a part of heaven, and they could not even wish to

receive its happiness, unless assured of being worthy of it. Its

highest happiness to them was that it made them wish to be worthy.

They courted probation. They wished not the title of knight till the

banner had been upheld in the heats of battle, amid the rout of

cowards.

I ask of you, young girls--I do not mean _you_ whose heart is

that of an old coxcomb, though your looks have not yet lost their

sunny tinge. Not of you whose whole character is tainted with vanity,

inherited or taught, who have early learned the love of coquettish

excitement, and whose eyes rove restlessly in search of a "conquest"

or a "beau;" you who are ashamed _not_ to be seen by others the

mark of the most contemptuous flattery or injurious desire. To such I

do not speak. But to thee, maiden, who, if not so fair, art yet of

that unpolluted nature which Milton saw when he dreamed of Comus and

the Paradise. Thou, child of an unprofaned wedlock, brought up amid

the teachings of the woods and fields, kept fancy-free by useful

employment and a free flight into the heaven of thought, loving to

please only those whom thou wouldst not be ashamed to love; I ask of

thee, whose cheek has not forgotten its blush nor thy heart its

lark-like hopes, if he whom thou mayest hope the Father will send

thee, as the companion of life's toils and joys, is not to thy thought

pure? Is not manliness to thy thought purity, not lawlessness? Can his

lips speak falsely? Can he do, in secret, what he could not avow to

the mother that bore him? O say, dost thou not look for a heart free,

open as thine own, all whose thoughts may be avowed, incapable of

wronging the innocent, or still further degrading the fallen--a man,

in short, in whom brute nature is entirely subject to the impulses of

his better self?

Yes! it was thus that thou didst hope; for I have many, many times

seen the image of a future life, of a destined spouse, painted on the

tablets of a virgin heart.

It might be that she was not true to these hopes. She was taken into

what is called "the world," froth and scum as it mostly is on the

social caldron. There, she saw fair Woman carried in the waltz close

to the heart of a being who appeared to her a Satyr. Being warned by a

male friend that he was in fact of that class, and not fit for such

familiar nearness to a chaste being, the advised replied that "women

should know nothing about such things." She saw one fairer given in

wedlock to a man of the same class. "Papa and mamma said that 'all men

were faulty at some time in their lives; they had a great many

temptations.' Frederick would be so happy at home; he would not want

to do wrong." She turned to the married women; they, O tenfold horror!

laughed at her supposing "men were like women." Sometimes, I say, she

was not true, and either sadly accommodated herself to "Woman's lot,"

or acquired a taste for satyr-society, like some of the Nymphs, and

all the Bacchanals of old. But to those who could not and would not

accept a mess of pottage, or a Circe cup, in lieu of their birthright,

and to these others who have yet their choice to make, I say, Courage!

I have some words of cheer for you. A man, himself of unbroken purity,

reported to me the words of a foreign artist, that "the world would

never be better till men subjected themselves to the same laws they

had imposed on women;" that artist, he added, was true to the thought.

The same was true of Canova, the same of Beethoven. "Like each other

demi-god, they kept themselves free from stain;" and Michael Angelo,

looking over here from the loneliness of his century, might meet some

eyes that need not shun his glance.

In private life, I am assured by men who are not so sustained and

occupied by the worship of pure beauty, that a similar consecration is

possible, is practised; that many men feel that no temptation can be

too strong for the will of man, if he invokes the aid of the Spirit

instead of seeking extenuation from the brute alliances of his nature.

In short, what the child fancies is really true, though almost the

whole world declares it a lie. Man is a child of God; and if he seeks

His guidance to keep the heart with diligence, it will be so given

that all the issues of life may be pure. Life will then be a temple.

The temple round

Spread green the pleasant ground;

The fair colonnade

Be of pure marble pillars made;

Strong to sustain the roof,

Time and tempest proof;

Yet, amidst which, the lightest breeze

Can play as it please;

The audience hall

Be free to all

Who revere

The power worshipped here,

Sole guide of youth,

Unswerving Truth.

In the inmost shrine

Stands the image divine,

Only seen

By those whose deeds have worthy been--

Priestlike clean.

Those, who initiated are,

Declare,

As the hours

Usher in varying hopes and powers;

It changes its face,

It changes its age,

Now a young, beaming grace,

Now Nestorian sage;

But, to the pure in heart,

This shape of primal art

In age is fair,

In youth seems wise,

Beyond compare,

Above surprise;

What it teaches native seems,

Its new lore our ancient dreams;

Incense rises from the ground;

Music flows around;

Firm rest the feet below, clear gaze the eyes above,

When Truth, to point the way through life, assumes the wand of Love;

But, if she cast aside the robe of green,

Winter's silver sheen,

White, pure as light,

Makes gentle shroud as worthy weed as bridal robe had been.

[Footnote: As described by the historians:--

"The temple of Juno is like what the character of Woman should be.

Columns! graceful decorums, attractive yet sheltering.

Porch! noble, inviting aspect of the life.

Kaos! receives the worshippers. See here the statue of the Divinity.

Ophistodpmos! Sanctuary where the most precious possessions were kept

safe from the hand of the spoiler and the eye of the world."]

We are now in a transition state, and but few steps have yet been

taken. From polygamy, Europe passed to the marriage _de convenance_.

This was scarcely an improvement An attempt was then made to substitute

genuine marriage (the mutual choice of souls inducing a permanent union),

as yet baffled on every side by the haste, the ignorance, or the impurity

of Man.

Where Man assumes a high principle to which he is not yet ripened, it

will happen, for a long time, that the few will be nobler than before;

the many, worse. Thus now. In the country of Sidney and Milton, the

metropolis is a den of wickedness, and a sty of sensuality; in the

country of Lady Russell, the custom of English peeresses, of selling

their daughters to the highest bidder, is made the theme and jest of

fashionable novels by unthinking children who would stare at the idea

of sending them to a Turkish slave-dealer, though the circumstances of

the bargain are there less degrading, as the will and thoughts of the

person sold are not so degraded by it, and it is not done in defiance

of an acknowledged law of right in the land and the age.

I must here add that I do not believe there ever was put upon record

more depravation of Man, and more despicable frivolity of thought and

aim in Woman; than in the novels which purport to give the picture of

English fashionable life, which are read with such favor in our

drawing-rooms, and give the tone to the manners of some circles.

Compared with the cold, hard-hearted folly there described, crime is

hopeful; for it, at least, shows some power remaining in the mental

constitution.

To return:--Attention has been awakened among men to the stains of

celibacy, and the profanations of marriage. They begin to write about

it and lecture about it. It is the tendency now to endeavor to help

the erring by showing them the physical law. This is wise and

excellent; but forget not the better half. Cold bathing and exercise

will not suffice to keep a life pure, without an inward baptism, and

noble, exhilarating employment for the thoughts and the passions.

Early marriages are desirable, but if (and the world is now so out of

joint that there are a hundred thousand chances to one against it) a

man does not early, or at all, find the person to whom he can be

united in the marriage of souls, will you give him in the marriage

_de convenance_? or, if not married, can you find no way for him

to lead a virtuous and happy life? Think of it well, ye who think

yourselves better than pagans, for many of _them_ knew this sure

way. [Footnote: The Persian sacred books, the Desatir, describe the

great and holy prince Ky Khosrou, as being "an angel, and the son of

an angel," one to whom the Supreme says, "Thou art not absent from

before me for one twinkling of an eye. I am never out of thy heart.

And I am contained in nothing but in thy heart, and in a heart like

thy heart. And I am nearer unto thee than thou art to thyself." This

prince had in his Golden Seraglio three ladies of surpassing beauty,

and all four, in this royal monastery, passed their lives, and left

the world as virgins.

The Persian people had no scepticism when the history of such a mind

was narrated.]

To you, women of America, it is more especially my business to address

myself on this subject, and my advice may be classed under three

heads:

Clear your souls from the taint of vanity.

Do not rejoice in conquests, either that your power to allure may be

seen by other women, or for the pleasure of rousing passionate

feelings that gratify your love of excitement.

It must happen, no doubt, that frank and generous women will excite

love they do not reciprocate, but, in nine cases out of ten, the woman

has, half consciously, done much to excite. In this case, she shall

not be held guiltless, either as to the unhappiness or injury of the

lover. Pure love, inspired by a worthy object, must ennoble and bless,

whether mutual or not; but that which is excited by coquettish

attraction of any grade of refinement, must cause bitterness and

doubt, as to the reality of human goodness, so soon as the flush of

passion is over. And, that you may avoid all taste for these false

pleasures,

"Steep the soul

In one pure love, and it will lost thee long."

The love of truth, the love of excellence, whether you clothe them in

the person of a special object or not, will have power to save you

from following Duessa, and lead you in the green glades where Una's

feet have trod.

It was on this one subject that a venerable champion of good, the last

representative of the spirit which sanctified the Revolution, and gave

our country such a sunlight of hope in the eyes of the nations, the

same who lately, in Boston, offered anew to the young men the pledge

taken by the young men of his day, offered, also, his counsel, on

being addressed by the principal of a girl's school, thus:--

REPLY OF MR. ADAMS.

Mr. Adams was so deeply affected by the address of Miss Foster, as to

be for some time inaudible. When heard, he spoke as follows:

"This is the first instance in which a lady has thus addressed me

personally; and I trust that all the ladies present will be able

sufficiently to enter into my feelings to know that I am more affected

by this honor than by any other I could hare received,

"You have been pleased, madam, to allude to the character of my

father, and the history of my family, and their services to the

country. It is indeed true that, from the existence of the republic as

an independent nation, my father and myself have been in the public

service of the country, almost without interruption. I came into the

world, as a person having personal responsibilities, with the

Declaration of Independence, which constituted us a nation. I was a

child at that time, and had then perhaps the greatest of blessings

that can be bestowed on man--a mother who was anxious and capable to

form her children to be what they ought to be. From that mother I

derived whatever instruction--religious especially and moral--has

pervaded a long life; I will not say perfectly, and as it ought to be;

but I will say, because it is justice only to the memory of her whom I

revere, that if, in the course of my life, there has been any

imperfection, or deviation from what she taught me, the fault is mine,

and not hers.

"With such a mother, and such other relations with the sex, of sister,

wife, and daughter, it has been the perpetual instruction of my life

to love and revere the female sex. And in order to carry that

sentiment of love and reverence to its highest degree of perfection, I

know of nothing that exists in human society better adapted to produce

that result, than institutions of the character that I have now the

honor to address.

"I have been taught, as I have said, through the course of my life, to

love and to revere the female sex; but I have been taught, also--and

that lesson has perhaps impressed itself on my mind even more

strongly, it may be, than the other--I have been taught not to flatter

them. It is not unusual, in the intercourse of Man with the other

sex--and especially for young men--to think that the way to win the

hearts of ladies is by flattery. To love and to revere the sex, is

what I think the duty of Man; _but not to flatter them;_ and this

I would say to the young ladies here--and if they, and others present,

will allow me, with all the authority which nearly four score years

may have with those who have not yet attained one score--I would say

to them what I have no doubt they say to themselves, and are taught

here, not to take the flattery of men as proof of perfection.

"I am now, however, I fear, assuming too much of a character that does

not exactly belong to me. I therefore conclude, by assuring you,

madam, that your reception of me has affected me, as you perceive,

more than I can express in words; and that I shall offer my best

prayers, till my latest hour, to the Creator of us all, that this

institution especially, and all others of a similar kind, designed to

form the female mind to wisdom and virtue, may prosper to the end of

time."

It will be interesting to add here the character of Mr. Adams' mother,

as drawn by her husband, the first John Adams, in a family letter

[Footnote: Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, vol. i., p. 246.]

written just before his death.

"I have reserved for the last the life of Lady Russell. This I have

not yet read, because I read it more than forty years ago. On this

hangs a tale which you ought to know and communicate it to your

children. I bought the Life and Letters of Lady Russell in the year

1775, and sent it to your grandmother, with an express intent and

desire that she should consider it a mirror in which to contemplate

herself; for, at that time, I thought it extremely probable, from the

daring and dangerous career I was determined to run, that she would

one day find herself in the situation of Lady Russell, her husband

without a head. This lady was more beautiful than Lady Russell, had a

brighter genius, more information, a more refined taste, and, at

least, her equal in the virtues of the heart; equal fortitude and

firmness of character, equal resignation to the will of Heaven, equal

in all the virtues and graces of the Christian life. Like Lady

Russell, she never, by word or look, discouraged me from running all

hazards for the salvation of my country's liberties; she was willing

to share with me, and that her children should share with us both, in

all the dangerous consequences we had to hazard."

Will a woman who loves flattery or an aimless excitement, who wastes

the flower of her mind on transitory sentiments, ever be loved with a

love like that, when fifty years' trial have entitled to the

privileges of "the golden marriage?"

Such was the love of the iron-handed warrior for her, not his

hand-maid, but his help-meet:

"Whom God loves, to him gives he such a wife."

I find the whole of what I want in this relation, in the two epithets

by which Milton makes Adam address _his_ wife.

In the intercourse of every day he begins:

"Daughter of God and man, _accomplished_ Eve."

[Footnote: See Appendix H.]

In a moment of stronger feeling,

"Daughter of God and man, IMMORTAL Eve."

What majesty in the cadence of the line; what dignity, what reverence

in the attitude both of giver and receiver!

The woman who permits, in her life, the alloy of vanity; the woman who

lives upon flattery, coarse or fine, shall never be thus addressed,

She is _not_ immortal so far as her will is concerned, and every

woman who does so creates miasma, whose spread is indefinite. The hand

which casts into the waters of life a stone of offence knows not how

far the circles thus caused may spread their agitations.

A little while since I was at one of the most fashionable places of

public resort. I saw there many women, dressed without regard to the

season or the demands of the place, in apery, or, as it looked, in

mockery, of European fashions. I saw their eyes restlessly courting

attention. I saw the way in which it was paid; the style of devotion,

almost an open sneer, which it pleased those ladies to receive from

men whose expression marked their own low position in the moral and

intellectual world. Those women went to their pillows with their heads

full of folly, their hearts of jealousy, or gratified vanity; those

men, with the low opinion they already entertained of Woman confirmed.

These were American _ladies;_ that is, they were of that class

who have wealth and leisure to make full use of the day, and confer

benefits on others. They were of that class whom the possession of

external advantages makes of pernicious example to many, if these

advantages be misused.

Soon after, I met a circle of women, stamped by society as among the

most degraded of their sex. "How," it was asked of them, "did you come

here?" for by the society that I saw in the former place they were

shut up in a prison. The causes were not difficult to trace: love of

dress, love of flattery, love of excitement. They had not dresses like

the other ladies, so they stole them; they could not pay for flattery

by distinctions, and the dower of a worldly marriage, so they paid by

the profanation of their persons. In excitement, more and more madly

sought from day to day, they drowned the voice of conscience.

Now I ask you, my sisters, if the women at the fashionable house be

not answerable for those women being in the prison?

As to position in the world of souls, we may suppose the women of the

prison stood fairest, both because they had misused less light, and

because loneliness and sorrow had brought some of them to feel the

need of better life, nearer truth and good. This was no merit in them,

being an effect of circumstance, but it was hopeful. But you, my

friends (and some of you I have already met), consecrate yourselves

without waiting for reproof, in free love and unbroken energy, to win

and to diffuse a better life. Offer beauty, talents, riches, on the

altar; thus shall you keep spotless your own hearts, and be visibly or

invisibly the angels to others.

I would urge upon those women who have not yet considered this

subject, to do so. Do not forget the unfortunates who dare not cross

your guarded way. If it do not suit you to act with those who have

organized measures of reform, then hold not yourself excused from

acting in private. Seek out these degraded women, give them tender

sympathy, counsel, employment. Take the place of mothers, such as

might have saved them originally.

If you can do little for those already under the ban of the

world,--and the best-considered efforts have often failed, from a want

of strength in those unhappy ones to bear up against the sting of

shame and the prejudices of the world, which makes them seek oblivion

again in their old excitements,--you will at least leave a sense of

love and justice in their hearts, that will prevent their becoming

utterly embittered and corrupt. And you may learn the means of

prevention for those yet uninjured. These will be found in a diffusion

of mental culture, simple tastes, best taught by your example, a

genuine self-respect, and, above all, what the influence of Man tends

to hide from Woman, the love and fear of a divine, in preference to a

human tribunal.

But suppose you save many who would have lost their bodily innocence

(for as to mental, the loss of that is incalculably more general),

through mere vanity and folly; there still remain many, the prey and

spoil of the brute passions of Man; for the stories frequent in our

newspapers outshame antiquity, and vie with the horrors of war.

As to this, it must be considered that, as the vanity and proneness to

seduction of the imprisoned women represented a general degradation in

their sex; so do these acts a still more general and worse in the

male. Where so many are weak, it is natural there should be many lost;

where legislators admit that ten thousand prostitutes are a fair

proportion to one city, and husbands tell their wives that it is folly

to expect chastity from men, it is inevitable that there should be

many monsters of vice.

I must in this place mention, with respect and gratitude, the conduct

of Mrs. Child in the case of Amelia Norman. The action and speech of

this lady was of straightforward nobleness, undeterred by custom or

cavil from duty toward an injured sister. She showed the case and the

arguments the counsel against the prisoner had the assurance to use in

their true light to the public. She put the case on the only ground of

religion and equity. She was successful in arresting the attention of

many who had before shrugged their shoulders, and let sin pass as

necessarily a part of the company of men. They begin to ask whether

virtue is not possible, perhaps necessary, to Man as well as to Woman.

They begin to fear that the perdition of a woman must involve that of

a man. This is a crisis. The results of this case will be important.

In this connection I must mention Eugene Sue, the French novelist,

several of whose works have been lately translated among us, as having

the true spirit of reform as to women. Like every other French writer,

he is still tainted with the transmissions of the old _regime_.

Still, falsehood may be permitted for the sake of advancing truth,

evil as the way to good. Even George Sand, who would trample on every

graceful decorum, and every human law, for the sake of a sincere life,

does not see that she violates it by making her heroines able to tell

falsehoods in a good cause. These French writers need ever to be

confronted by the clear perception of the English and German mind,

that the only good man, consequently the only good reformer, is he

"Who bases good on good alone, and owes

To virtue every triumph that he knows."

Still, Sue has the heart of a reformer, and especially towards women;

he sees what they need, and what causes are injuring them. From the

histories of Fleur de Marie and La Louve, from the lovely and

independent character of Rigolette, from the distortion given to

Matilda's mind, by the present views of marriage, and from the truly

noble and immortal character of the "hump-backed Sempstress" in the

"Wandering Jew," may be gathered much that shall elucidate doubt and

direct inquiry on this subject. In reform, as in philosophy, the

French are the interpreters to the civilized world. Their own

attainments are not great, but they make clear the post, and break

down barriers to the future.

Observe that the good man of Sue is as pure as Sir Charles Grandison.

Apropos to Sir Charles. Women are accustomed to be told by men that

the reform is to come _from them_. "You," say the men, "must

frown upon vice; you must decline the attentions of the corrupt; you

must not submit to the will of your husband when it seems to you

unworthy, but give the laws in marriage, and redeem it from its

present sensual and mental pollutions."

This seems to us hard. Men have, indeed, been, for more than a hundred

years, rating women for countenancing vice. But, at the same time,

they have carefully hid from them its nature, so that the preference

often shown by women for bad men arises rather from a confused idea

that they are bold and adventurous, acquainted with regions which

women are forbidden to explore, and the curiosity that ensues, than a

corrupt heart in the woman. As to marriage, it has been inculcated on

women, for centuries, that men have not only stronger passions than

they, but of a sort that it would be shameful for them to share or

even understand; that, therefore, they must "confide in their

husbands," that is, submit implicitly to their will; that the least

appearance of coldness or withdrawal, from whatever cause, in the wife

is wicked, because liable to turn her husband's thoughts to illicit

indulgence; for a man is so constituted that he must indulge his

passions or die!

Accordingly, a great part of women look upon men as a kind of wild

beasts, but "suppose they are all alike;" the unmarried are assured by

the married that, "if they knew men as they do," that is, by being

married to them, "they would not expect continence or self-government

from them."

I might accumulate illustrations on this theme, drawn from

acquaintance with the histories of women, which would startle and

grieve all thinking men, but I forbear. Let Sir Charles Grandison

preach to his own sex; or if none there be who feels himself able to

speak with authority from a life unspotted in will or deed, let those

who are convinced of the practicability and need of a pure life, as

the foreign artist was, advise the others, and warn them by their own

example, if need be.

The following passage, from a female writer, on female affairs,

expresses a prevalent way of thinking on this subject:

"It may be that a young woman, exempt from all motives of vanity,

determines to take for a husband a man who does not inspire her with a

very decided inclination. Imperious circumstances, the evident

interest of her family, or the danger of suffering celibacy, may

explain such a resolution. If, however, she were to endeavor to

surmount a personal repugnance, we should look upon this as

_injudicious_. Such a rebellion of nature marks the limit that

the influence of parents, or the self-sacrifice of the young girl,

should never pass. _We shall be told that this repugnance is an

affair of the imagination_. It may be so; but imagination is a

power which it is temerity to brave; and its antipathy is more

difficult to conquer than its preference." [Footnote: Madame Necker de

Saussure.]

Among ourselves, the exhibition of such a repugnance from a woman who

had been given in marriage "by advice of friends," was treated by an

eminent physician as sufficient proof of insanity. If he had said

sufficient cause for it, he would have been nearer right.

It has been suggested by men who were pained by seeing bad men

admitted, freely, to the society of modest women,--thereby encouraged

to vice by impunity, and corrupting the atmosphere of homes,--that

there should be a senate of the matrons in each city and town, who

should decide what candidates were fit for admission to their houses

and the society of their daughters. [Footnote: See Goethe's Tasso. "A

synod of good women should decide,"--if the golden age is to be

restored.]

Such a plan might have excellent results; but it argues a moral

dignity and decision which does not yet exist, and needs to be induced

by knowledge and reflection. It has been the tone to keep women

ignorant on these subjects, or, when they were not, to command that

they should seem so. "It is indelicate," says the father or husband,

"to inquire into the private character of such an one. It is

sufficient that I do not think him unfit to visit you." And so, this

man, who would not tolerate these pages in his house, "unfit for

family reading," because they speak plainly, introduces there a man

whose shame is written on his brow, as well as the open secret of the

whole town, and, presently, if _respectable_ still, and rich

enough, gives him his daughter to wife. The mother affects ignorance,

"supposing he is no worse than most men." The daughter _is_

ignorant; something in the mind of the new spouse seems strange to

her, but she supposes it is "woman's lot" not to be perfectly happy in

her affections; she has always heard, "men could not understand

women," so she weeps alone, or takes to dress and the duties of the

house. The husband, of course, makes no avowal, and dreams of no

redemption.

"In the heart of every young woman," says the female writer above

quoted, addressing herself to the husband, "depend upon it, there is a

fund of exalted ideas; she conceals, represses, without succeeding in

smothering them. _So long as these ideas in your wife are directed

to YOU, they are, no doubt, innocent_, but take care that they be

not accompanied with _too much_ pain. In other respects, also,

spare her delicacy. Let all the antecedent parts of your life, if

there are such, which would give her pain, be concealed from her;

_her happiness and her respect for you would suffer from this

misplaced confidence._ Allow her to retain that flower of purity,

_which should distinguish her, in your eyes, from every other

woman_." We should think so, truly, under this canon. Such a man

must esteem purity an exotic that could only be preserved by the

greatest care. Of the degree of mental intimacy possible, in such a

marriage, let every one judge for himself!

On this subject, let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine

herself; see whether she does not suppose virtue possible and

necessary to Man, and whether she would not desire for her son a

virtue which aimed at a fitness for a divine life, and involved, if

not asceticism, that degree of power over the lower self, which shall

"not exterminate the passions, but keep them chained at the feet of

reason." The passions, like fire, are a bad muster; but confine them

to the hearth and the altar, and they give life to the social economy,

and make each sacrifice meet for heaven.

When many women have thought upon this subject, some will be fit for

the senate, and one such senate in operation would affect the morals

of the civilized world.

At present I look to the young. As preparatory to the senate, I should

like to see a society of novices, such as the world has never yet

seen, bound by no oath, wearing no badge, In place of an oath, they

should have a religious faith in the capacity of Man for virtue;

instead of a badge, should wear in the heart a firm resolve not to

stop short of the destiny promised him as a son of God. Their service

should be action and conservatism, not of old habits, but of a better

nature, enlightened by hopes that daily grow brighter.

If sin was to remain in the world, it should not be by their

connivance at its stay, or one moment's concession to its claims.

They should succor the oppressed, and pay to the upright the reverence

due in hero-worship by seeking to emulate them. They would not

denounce the willingly bad, but they could not be with them, for the

two classes could not breathe the same atmosphere.

They would heed no detention from the time-serving, the worldly and

the timid.

They could love no pleasures that were not innocent and capable of

good fruit,

I saw, in a foreign paper, the title now given to a party abroad, "Los

Exaltados." Such would be the title now given these children by the

world: Los Exaltados, Las Exaltadas; but the world would not sneer

always, for from them would issue a virtue by which it would, at last,

be exalted too.

I have in my eye a youth and a maiden whom I look to as the nucleus of

such a class. They are both in early youth; both as yet

uncontaminated; both aspiring, without rashness; both thoughtful; both

capable of deep affection; both of strong nature and sweet feelings;

both capable of large mental development. They reside in different

regions of earth, but their place in the soul is the same. To them I

look, as, perhaps, the harbingers and leaders of a new era, for never

yet have I known minds so truly virgin, without narrowness or

ignorance.

When men call upon women to redeem them, they mean such maidens. But

such are not easily formed under the present influences of society. As

there are more such young men to help give a different tone, there

will be more such maidens.

The English, novelist, D'Israeli, has, in his novel of "The Young

Duke," made a man of the most depraved stock be redeemed by a woman

who despises him when he has only the brilliant mask of fortune and

beauty to cover the poverty of his heart and brain, but knows how to

encourage him when he enters on a better course. But this woman was

educated by a father who valued character in women.

Still, there will come now and then one who will, as I hope of my

young Exaltada, be example and instruction for the rest. It was not

the opinion of Woman current among Jewish men that formed the

character of the mother of Jesus.

Since the sliding and backsliding men of the world, no less than the

mystics, declare that, as through Woman Man was lost, so through Woman

must Man be redeemed, the time must be at hand. When she knows herself

indeed as "accomplished," still more as "immortal Eve," this may be.

As an immortal, she may also know and inspire immortal love, a

happiness not to be dreamed of under the circumstances advised in the

last quotation. Where love is based on concealment, it must, of

course, disappear when the soul enters the scene of clear vision!

And, without this hope, how worthless every plan, every bond, every

power!

"The giants," said the Scandinavian Saga, "had induced Loke (the

spirit that hovers between good and ill) to steal for them Iduna

(Goddess of Immortality) and her apples of pure gold. He lured her

out, by promising to show, on a marvellous tree he had discovered,

apples beautiful as her own, if she would only take them with her for

a comparison. Thus having lured her beyond the heavenly domain, she

was seized and carried away captive by the powers of misrule.

"As now the gods could not find their friend Iduna, they were confused

with grief; indeed, they began visibly to grow old and gray. Discords

arose, and love grew cold. Indeed, Odur, spouse of the goddess of love

and beauty, wandered away, and returned no more. At last, however, the

gods, discovering the treachery of Loke, obliged him to win back Iduna

from the prison in which she sat mourning. He changed himself into a

falcon, and brought her back as a swallow, fiercely pursued by the

Giant King, in the form of an eagle. So she strives to return among

us, light and small as a swallow. We must welcome her form as the

speck on the sky that assures the glad blue of Summer. Yet one swallow

does not make a summer. Let us solicit them in flights and flocks!"

* * * * *

Returning from the future to the present, let us see what forms Iduna

takes, as she moves along the declivity of centuries to the valley

where the lily flower may concentrate all its fragrance.

It would seem as if this time were not very near to one fresh from

books, such as I have of late been--no: _not_ reading, but

sighing over. A crowd of books having been sent me since my friends

knew me to be engaged in this way, on Woman's "Sphere,", Woman's

"Mission," and Woman's "Destiny," I believe that almost all that is

extant of formal precept has come under my eye. Among these I read

with refreshment a little one called "The Whole Duty of Woman,"

"indited by a noble lady at the request of a noble lord," and which

has this much of nobleness, that the view it takes is a religious one.

It aims to fit Woman for heaven; the main bent of most of the others

is to fit her to please, or, at least, not to disturb, a husband.

Among these I select, as a favorable specimen, the book I have already

quoted, "The Study [Footnote: This title seems to be incorrectly

translated from the French. I have not seen the original] of the Life

of Woman, by Madame Necker de Saussure, of Geneva, translated from the

French." This book was published at Philadelphia, and has been read

with much favor here. Madame Necker is the cousin of Madame de Stael,

and has taken from her works the motto prefixed to this.

"Cette vie n'a quelque prix que si elle sert a' l'education morale do

notre coeur."

Mde. Necker is, by nature, capable of entire consistency in the

application of this motto, and, therefore, the qualifications she

makes, in the instructions given to her own sex, show forcibly the

weight which still paralyzes and distorts the energies of that sex.

The book is rich in passages marked by feeling and good suggestions;

but, taken in the whole, the impression it leaves is this:

Woman is, and _shall remain_, inferior to Man and subject to his

will, and, in endeavoring to aid her, we must anxiously avoid anything

that can be misconstrued into expression of the contrary opinion, else

the men will be alarmed, and combine to defeat our efforts.

The present is a good time for these efforts, for men are less

occupied about women than formerly. Let us, then, seize upon the

occasion, and do what we can to make our lot tolerable. But we must

sedulously avoid encroaching on the territory of Man. If we study

natural history, our observations may be made useful, by some male

naturalist; if we draw well, we may make our services acceptable to

the artists. But our names must not be known; and, to bring these

labors to any result, we must take some man for our head, and be his

hands.

The lot of Woman is sad. She is constituted to expect and need a

happiness that cannot exist on earth. She must stifle such aspirations

within her secret heart, and fit herself, as well as she can, for a

life of resignations and consolations.

She will be very lonely while living with her husband. She must not

expect to open her heart to him fully, or that, after marriage, he

will be capable of the refined service of love. The man is not born

for the woman, only the woman for the man. "Men cannot understand the

hearts of women." The life of Woman must be outwardly a

well-intentioned, cheerful dissimulation of her real life.

Naturally, the feelings of the mother, at the birth of a female child,

resemble those of the Paraguay woman, described by Southey as

lamenting in such heart-breaking tones that her mother did not kill

her the hour she was born,--"her mother, who knew what this life of a

woman must be;"--or of those women seen at the north by Sir A.

Mackenzie, who performed this pious duty towards female infants

whenever they had an opportunity.

"After the first delight, the young mother experiences feelings a

little different, according as the birth of a son or a daughter has

been announced.

"Is it a son? A sort of glory swells at this thought the heart of the

mother; she seems to feel that she is entitled to gratitude. She has

given a citizen, a defender, to her country; to her husband an heir of

his name; to herself a protector. And yet the contrast of all these

fine titles with this being, so humble, soon strikes her. At the

aspect of this frail treasure, opposite feelings agitate her heart;

she seems to recognise in him _a nature superior to her own_, but

subjected to a low condition, and she honors a future greatness in the

object of extreme compassion. Somewhat of that respect and adoration

for a feeble child, of which some fine pictures offer the expression

in the features of the happy Mary, seem reproduced with the young

mother who has given birth to a son.

"Is it a daughter? There is usually a slight degree of regret; so

deeply rooted is the idea of the superiority of Man in happiness and

dignity; and yet, as she looks upon this child, she is more and more

_softened_ towards it. A deep sympathy--a sentiment of identity

with this delicate being--takes possession of her; an extreme pity for

so much weakness, a more pressing need of prayer, stirs her heart.

Whatever sorrows she may have felt, she dreads for her daughter; but

she will guide her to become much wiser, much better than herself. And

then the gayety, the frivolity of the young woman have their turn.

This little creature is a flower to cultivate, a doll to decorate."

Similar sadness at the birth of a daughter I have heard mothers

express not unfrequently.

As to this living so entirely for men, I should think when it was

proposed to women they would feel, at least, some spark of the old

spirit of races allied to our own. "If he is to be my bridegroom

_and lord_" cries Brunhilda, [Footnote: See the Nibelungen Lays.]

"he must first be able to pass through fire and water." "I will serve

at the banquet," says the Walkyrie, "but only him who, in the trial

of deadly combat, has shown himself a hero."

If women are to be bond-maids, let it be to men superior to women in

fortitude, in aspiration, in moral power, in refined sense of beauty.

You who give yourselves "to be supported," or because "one must love

something," are they who make the lot of the sex such that mothers are

sad when daughters are born.

It marks the state of feeling on this subject that it was mentioned,

as a bitter censure on a woman who had influence over those younger

than herself,--"She makes those girls want to see heroes?"

"And will that hurt them?"

"Certainly; how _can_ you ask? They will find none, and so they

will never be married."

"_Get_ married" is the usual phrase, and the one that correctly

indicates the thought; but the speakers, on this occasion, were

persons too outwardly refined to use it. They were ashamed of the

word, but not of the thing. Madame Necker, however, sees good possible

in celibacy.

Indeed, I know not how the subject could be better illustrated, than

by separating the wheat from the chaff in Madame Necker's book; place

them in two heaps, and then summon the reader to choose; giving him

first a near-sighted glass to examine the two;--it might be a

Christian, an astronomical, or an artistic glass,--any kind of good

glass to obviate acquired defects in the eye. I would lay any wager on

the result.

But time permits not here a prolonged analysis. I have given the clues

for fault-finding.

As a specimen of the good take the following passage, on the phenomena

of what I have spoken of, as the lyrical or electric element in Woman.

"Women have been seen to show themselves poets in the most pathetic

pantomimic scenes, where all the passions were depicted full of

beauty; and these poets used a language unknown to themselves, and,

the performance once over, their inspiration was a forgotten dream.

Without doubt there is an interior development to beings so gifted;

but their sole mode of communication with us is their talent. They

are, ill all besides, the inhabitants of another planet."

Similar observations have been made by those who have seen the women

at Irish wakes, or the funeral ceremonies of modern Greece or Brittany,

at times when excitement gave the impulse to genius; but, apparently,

without a thought that these rare powers belonged to no other planet,

but were a high development of the growth of this, and might, by wise

and reverent treatment, be made to inform and embellish the scenes of

every day. But, when Woman has her fair chance, she will do so, and

the poem of the hour will vie with that of the ages.

I come now with satisfaction to my own country, and to a writer, a

female writer, whom I have selected as the clearest, wisest, and

kindliest, who has, as yet, used pen here on these subjects. This is

Miss Sedgwick.

Miss Sedgwick, though she inclines to the private path, and wishes

that, by the cultivation of character, might should vindicate right,

sets limits nowhere, and her objects and inducements are pure. They

are the free and careful cultivation of the powers that have been

given, with an aim at moral and intellectual perfection. Her speech is

moderate and sane, but never palsied by fear or sceptical caution.

Herself a fine example of the independent and beneficent existence

that intellect and character can give to Woman, no less than Man, if

she know how to seek and prize it,--also, that the intellect need not

absorb or weaken, but rather will refine and invigorate, the

affections,--the teachings of her practical good sense come with great

force, and cannot fail to avail much. Every way her writings please me

both as to the means and the ends. I am pleased at the stress she lays

on observance of the physical laws, because the true reason is given.

Only in a strong and clean body can the soul do its message fitly.

She shows the meaning of the respect paid to personal neatness, both

in the indispensable form of cleanliness, and of that love of order

and arrangement, that must issue from a true harmony of feeling.

The praises of cold water seem to me an excellent sign in the age.

They denote a tendency to the true life. We are now to have, as a

remedy for ills, not orvietan, or opium, or any quack medicine, but

plenty of air and water, with due attention to warmth and freedom in

dress, and simplicity of diet.

Every day we observe signs that the natural feelings on these subjects

are about to be reinstated, and the body to claim care as the abode

and organ of the soul; not as the tool of servile labor, or the object

of voluptuous indulgence.

A poor woman, who had passed through the lowest grades of ignominy,

seemed to think she had never been wholly lost, "for," said she, "I

would always have good under-clothes;" and, indeed, who could doubt

that this denoted the remains of private self-respect in the mind?

A woman of excellent sense said, "It might seem childish, but to her

one of the most favorable signs of the times was that the ladies had

been persuaded to give up corsets."

Yes! let us give up all artificial means of distortion. Let life be

healthy, pure, all of a piece. Miss Sedgwick, in teaching that

domestics must have the means of bathing us much as their mistresses,

and time, too, to bathe, has symbolized one of the most important of

human rights.

Another interesting sign of the time is the influence exercised by two

women, Miss Martineau and Miss Barrett, from their sick-rooms. The

lamp of life which, if it had been fed only by the affections,

depended on precarious human relations, would scarce have been able to

maintain a feeble glare in the lonely prison, now shines far and wide

over the nations, cheering fellow-sufferers and hallowing the joy of

the healthful.

These persons need not health or youth, or the charms of personal

presence, to make their thoughts available. A few more such, and "old

woman" [Footnote: An apposite passage is quoted in Appendix F.] shall

not be the synonyme for imbecility, nor "old maid" a term of

contempt, nor Woman be spoken of as a reed shaken by the wind.

It is time, indeed, that men and women both should cease to grow old

in any other way than as the tree does, full of grace and honor. The

hair of the artist turns white, but his eye shines clearer than ever,

and we feel that age brings him maturity, not decay. So would it be

with all, were the springs of immortal refreshment but unsealed within

the soul; then, like these women, they would see, from the lonely

chamber window, the glories of the universe; or, shut in darkness, be

visited by angels.

I now touch on my own place and day, and, as I write, events are

occurring that threaten the fair fabric approached by so long an

avenue. Week before last, the Gentile was requested to aid the Jew to

return to Palestine; for the Millennium, the reign of the Son of Mary

was near. Just now, at high and solemn mass, thanks were returned to

the Virgin for having delivered O'Connell from unjust imprisonment, in

requital of his having consecrated to her the league formed in behalf

of Liberty on Tara's Hill. But last week brought news which threatens

that a cause identical with the enfranchisement of Jews, Irish, women,

ay, and of Americans in general, too, is in danger, for the choice of

the people threatens to rivet the chains of slavery and the leprosy of

sin permanently on this nation, through the Annexation of Texas!

Ah! if this should take place, who will dare again to feel the throb

of heavenly hope, as to the destiny of this country? The noble thought

that gave unity to all our knowledge, harmony to all our designs,--the

thought that the progress of history had brought on the era, the

tissue of prophecies pointed out the spot, where humanity was, at

last, to have a fair chance to know itself, and all men be born free

and equal for the eagle's flight,--flutters as if about to leave the

breast, which, deprived of it, will have no more a nation, no more a

home on earth.

Women of my country!--Exaltadas! if such there be,--women of English,

old English nobleness, who understand the courage of Boadicea, the

sacrifice of Godiva, the power of Queen Emma to tread the red-hot iron

unharmed,--women who share the nature of Mrs. Hutchinson, Lady

Russell, and the mothers of our own revolution,--have you nothing to

do with this? You see the men, how they are willing to sell

shamelessly the happiness of countless generations of fellow-creatures,

the honor of their country, and their immortal souls, for a money

market and political power. Do you not feel within you that which can

reprove them, which can check, which can convince them? You would not

speak in vain; whether each in her own home, or banded in unison.

Tell these men that you will not accept the glittering baubles,

spacious dwellings, and plentiful service, they mean to offer you

through those means. Tell them that the heart of Woman demands

nobleness and honor in Man, and that, if they have not purity, have

not mercy, they are no longer fathers, lovers, husbands, sons of

yours.

This cause is your own, for, as I have before said, there is a reason

why the foes of African Slavery seek more freedom for women; but put

it not upon that ground, but on the ground of right.

If you have a power, it is a moral power. The films of interest are

not so close around you as around the men. If you will but think, you

cannot fail to wish to save the country from this disgrace. Let not

slip the occasion, but do something to lift off the curse incurred by

Eve.

You have heard the women engaged in the Abolition movement accused of

boldness, because they lifted the voice in public, and lifted the

latch of the stranger. But were these acts, whether performed

judiciously or no, _so_ bold as to dare before God and Man to

partake the fruits of such offence as this?

You hear much of the modesty of your sex. Preserve it by filling the

mind with noble desires that shall ward off the corruptions of vanity

and idleness. A profligate woman, who left her accustomed haunts and

took service in a New York boarding-house, said "she had never heard

talk so vile at the Five Points, as from the ladies at the

boarding-house." And why? Because they were idle; because, having

nothing worthy to engage them, they dwelt, with unnatural curiosity,

on the ill they dared not go to see.

It will not so much injure your modesty to have your name, by the

unthinking, coupled with idle blame, as to have upon your soul the

weight of not trying to save a whole race of women from the scorn that

is put upon _their_ modesty.

Think of this well! I entreat, I conjure you, before it is too late.

It is my belief that something effectual might be done by women, if

they would only consider the subject, and enter upon it in the true

spirit,--a spirit gentle, but firm, and which feared the offence of

none, save One who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.

And now I have designated in outline, if not in fulness, the stream

which is ever flowing from the heights of my thought.

In the earlier tract I was told I did not make my meaning sufficiently

clear. In this I have consequently tried to illustrate it in various

ways, and may have been guilty of much repetition. Yet, as I am

anxious to leave no room for doubt, I shall venture to retrace, once

more, the scope of my design in points, as wad done in old-fashioned

sermons.

Man is a being of two-fold relations, to nature beneath, and

intelligences above him. The earth is his school, if not his

birth-place; God his object; life and thought his means of

interpreting nature, and aspiring to God.

Only a fraction of this purpose is accomplished in the life of any one

man. Its entire accomplishment is to be hoped only from the sum of the

lives of men, or Man considered as a whole.

As this whole has one soul and one body, any injury or obstruction to

a part, or to the meanest member, affects the whole. Man can never be

perfectly happy or virtuous, till all men are so.

To address Man wisely, you must not forget that his life is partly

animal, subject to the same laws with Nature.

But you cannot address him wisely unless you consider him still more

as soul, and appreciate the conditions and destiny of soul.

The growth of Man is two-fold, masculine and feminine.

So far as these two methods can be distinguished, they are so as

Energy and Harmony;

Power and Beauty;

Intellect and Love;

or by some such rude classification; for we have not language

primitive and pure enough to express such ideas with precision.

These two sides are supposed to be expressed in Man and Woman, that

is, as the more and the less, for the faculties have not been given

pure to either, but only in preponderance. There are also exceptions

in great number, such as men of far more beauty than power, and the

reverse. But, as a general rule, it seems to have been the intention

to give a preponderance on the one side, that is called masculine, and

on the other, one that is called feminine.

There cannot be a doubt that, if these two developments were in

perfect harmony, they would correspond to and fulfil one another, like

hemispheres, or the tenor and bass in music.

But there is no perfect harmony in human nature; and the two parts

answer one another only now and then; or, if there be a persistent

consonance, it can only be traced at long intervals, instead of

discoursing an obvious melody.

What is the cause of this?

Man, in the order of time, was developed first; as energy comes before

harmony; power before beauty.

Woman was therefore under his care as an elder. He might have been her

guardian and teacher.

But, as human nature goes not straight forward, but by excessive

action and then reaction in an undulated course, he misunderstood and

abused his advantages, and became her temporal master instead of her

spiritual sire.

On himself came the punishment. He educated Woman more as a servant

than a daughter, and found himself a king without a queen.

The children of this unequal union showed unequal natures, and, more

and more, men seemed sons of the handmaid, rather than princess.

At last, there were so many Ishmaelites that the rest grew frightened

and indignant. They laid the blame on Hagar, and drove her forth into

the wilderness.

But there were none the fewer Ishmaelites for that.

At last men became a little wiser, and saw that the infant Moses was,

in every case, saved by the pure instincts of Woman's breast. For, as

too much adversity is better for the moral nature than too much

prosperity, Woman, in this respect, dwindled less than Man, though in

other respects still a child in leading-strings.

So Man did her more and more justice, and grew more and more kind.

But yet--his habits and his will corrupted by the past--he did not

clearly see that Woman was half himself; that her interests were

identical with his; and that, by the law of their common being, he

could never reach his true proportions while she remained in any wise

shorn of hers.

And so it has gone on to our day; both ideas developing, but more

slowly than they would under a clearer recognition of truth and

justice, which would have permitted the sexes their due influence on

one another, and mutual improvement from more dignified relations.

Wherever there was pure love, the natural influences were, for the

time, restored.

Wherever the poet or artist gave free course to his genius, he saw the

truth, and expressed it in worthy forms, for these men especially

share and need the feminine principle. The divine birds need to be

brooded into life and song by mothers.

Wherever religion (I mean the thirst for truth and good, not the love

of sect and dogma) had its course, the original design was apprehended

in its simplicity, and the dove presaged sweetly from Dodona's oak.

I have aimed to show that no age was left entirely without a witness

of the equality of the sexes in function, duty and hope.

Also that, when there was unwillingness or ignorance, which prevented

this being acted upon, women had not the less power for their want of

light and noble freedom. But it was power which hurt alike them and

those against whom they made use of the arms of the servile,--cunning,

blandishment, and unreasonable emotion.

That now the time has come when a clearer vision and better action are

possible--when Man and Woman may regard one another, as brother and

sister, the pillars of one porch, the priests of one worship.

I have believed and intimated that this hope would receive an ampler

fruition, than ever before, in our own land.

And it will do so if this land carry out the principles from which

sprang our national life.

I believe that, at present, women are the best helpers of one another.

Let them think; let them act; till they know what they need.

We only ask of men to remove arbitrary barriers. Some would like to do

more. But I believe it needs that Woman show herself in her native

dignity, to teach them how to aid her; their minds are so encumbered

by tradition.

When Lord Edward Fitzgerald travelled with the Indians, his manly

heart obliged him at once to take the packs from the squaws and carry

them. But we do not read that the red men followed his example, though

they are ready enough to carry the pack of the white woman, because

she seems to them a superior being.

Let Woman appear in the mild majesty of Ceres, and rudest churls will

be willing to learn from her.

You ask, what use will she make of liberty, when she has so long been

sustained and restrained?

I answer; in the first place, this will not be suddenly given. I read

yesterday a debate of this year on the subject of enlarging women's

rights over property. It was a leaf from the class-book that is

preparing for the needed instruction. The men learned visibly as they

spoke. The champions of Woman saw the fallacy of arguments on the

opposite side, and were startled by their own convictions. With their

wives at home, and the readers of the paper, it was the same. And so

the stream flows on; thought urging action, and action leading to the

evolution of still better thought.

But, were this freedom to come suddenly, I have no fear of the

consequences. Individuals might commit excesses, but there is not only

in the sex a reverence for decorums and limits inherited and enhanced

from generation to generation, which many years of other life could

not efface, but a native love, in Woman as Woman, of proportion, of

"the simple art of not too much,"--a Greek moderation, which would

create immediately a restraining party, the natural legislators and

instructors of the rest, and would gradually establish such rules as

are needed to guard, without impeding, life.

The Graces would lead the choral dance, and teach the rest to regulate

their steps to the measure of beauty.

But if you ask me what offices they may fill, I reply--any. I do not

care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will. I do

not doubt there are women well fitted for such an office, and, if so,

I should be as glad to see them in it, as to welcome the maid of

Saragossa, or the maid of Missolonghi, or the Suliote heroine, or

Emily Plater.

I think women need, especially at this juncture, a much greater range

of occupation than they have, to rouse their latent powers. A party of

travellers lately visited a lonely hut on a mountain. There they found

an old woman, who told them she and her husband had lived there forty

years. "Why," they said, "did you choose so barren a spot?" She "did

not know; _it was the man's notion."_

And, during forty years, she had been content to act, without knowing

why, upon "the man's notion." I would not have it so.

In families that I know, some little girls like to saw wood, others to

use carpenters' tools. Where these tastes are indulged, cheerfulness

and good-humor are promoted. Where they are forbidden, because "such

things are not proper for girls," they grow sullen and mischievous.

Fourier had observed these wants of women, as no one can fail to do

who watches the desires of little girls, or knows the ennui that

haunts grown women, except where they make to themselves a serene

little world by art of some kind. He, therefore, in proposing a great

variety of employments, in manufactures or the care of plants and

animals, allows for one third of women as likely to have a taste for

masculine pursuits, one third of men for feminine.

Who does not observe the immediate glow and serenity that is diffused

over the life of women, before restless or fretful, by engaging in

gardening, building, or the lowest department of art? Here is

something that is not routine, something that draws forth life towards

the infinite.

I have no doubt, however, that a large proportion of women would give

themselves to the same employments as now, because there are

circumstances that must lead them. Mothers will delight to make the

nest soft and warm. Nature would take care of that; no need to clip

the wings of any bird that wants to soar and sing, or finds in itself

the strength of pinion for a migratory flight unusual to its kind. The

difference would be that _all_ need not be constrained to

employments for which _some_ are unfit.

I have urged upon the sex self-subsistence in its two forms of

self-reliance and self-impulse, because I believe them to be the

needed means of the present juncture.

I have urged on Woman independence of Man, not that I do not think the

sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in Woman this fact

has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded

marriage, and prevented either sex from being what it should be to

itself or the other.

I wish Woman to live, _first_ for God's sake. Then she will not

make an imperfect man her god, and thus sink to idolatry. Then she

will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and

poverty. Then, if she finds what she needs in Man embodied, she will

know how to love, and be worthy of being loved.

By being more a soul, she will not be less Woman, for nature is

perfected through spirit.

Now there is no woman, only an overgrown child.

That her hand may be given with dignity, she must be able to stand

alone. I wish to see men and women capable of such relations as are

depicted by Landor in his Pericles and Aspasia, where grace is the

natural garb of strength, and the affections are calm, because deep.

The softness is that of a firm tissue, as when

"The gods approve

The depth, but not the tumult of the soul,

A fervent, not ungovernable love."

A profound thinker has said, "No married woman can represent the

female world, for she belongs to her husband. The idea of Woman must

be represented by a virgin."

But that is the very fault of marriage, and of the present relation

between the sexes, that the woman does belong to the man, instead of

forming a whole with him. Were it otherwise, there would be no such

limitation to the thought.

Woman, self-centred, would never be absorbed by any relation; it would

be only an experience to her as to man. It is a vulgar error that

love, _a_ love, to Woman is her whole existence; she also is born

for Truth and Love in their universal energy. Would she but assume her

inheritance, Mary would not be the only virgin mother. Not Manzoni

alone would celebrate in his wife the virgin mind with the maternal

wisdom and conjugal affections. The soul is ever young, ever virgin.

And will not she soon appear?--the woman who shall vindicate their

birthright for all women; who shall teach them what to claim, and how

to use what they obtain? Shall not her name be for her era Victoria,

for her country and life Virginia? Yet predictions are rash; she

herself must teach us to give her the fitting name.