“The very first
  Of human life must spring from woman’s breast,
  Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
  Your first tears quench’d by her, and your last sighs
  Too often breathed out in a woman’s hearing,
  When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
  Of watching the last hour of him who led them.”

Both passages show the right point of view for the appreciation of women.

One need only look at a woman’s shape to discover that she is not intended for either too much mental or too much physical work.  She pays the debt of life not by what she does but by what she suffers—­by the pains of child-bearing, care for the child, and by subjection to man, to whom she should be a patient and cheerful companion.  The greatest sorrows and joys or great exhibition of strength are not assigned to her; her life should flow more quietly, more gently, and less obtrusively than man’s, without her being essentially happier or unhappier.

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Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted—­in a word, are big children all their lives, something intermediate between the child and the man, who is a man in the strict sense of the word.  Consider how a young girl will toy day after day with a child, dance with it and sing to it; and then consider what a man, with the very best intentions in the world, could do in her place.

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With girls, Nature has had in view what is called in a dramatic sense a “striking effect,” for she endows them for a few years with a richness of beauty and a, fulness of charm at the expense of the rest of their lives; so that they may during these years ensnare the fantasy of a man to such a degree as to make him rush into taking the honourable care of them, in some kind of form, for a lifetime—­a step which would not seem sufficiently justified if he only considered the matter.  Accordingly, Nature has furnished woman, as she has the rest of her creatures, with the weapons and implements necessary for the protection of her existence and for just the length of time that they will be of service to her; so that Nature has proceeded here with her usual economy.  Just as the female ant after coition loses her wings, which then become superfluous, nay, dangerous for breeding purposes, so for the most part does a woman lose her beauty after giving birth to one or two children; and probably for the same reasons.

Then again we find that young girls in their hearts regard their domestic or other affairs as secondary things, if not as a mere jest.  Love, conquests, and all that these include, such as dressing, dancing, and so on, they give their serious attention.

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