WOMAN AND HER ERA. BY ELIZA W. FARNHAM. Every book of knowledge known to Oosana or Vreehaspatee is by nature implanted in the understandings of I pray you, O gracious Captain, save and protect these good women, for had we been deprived of their excellent Women are both clearer in intellect and more generous in affection than men. They love Truth more because they In Two Volumes. VOL. 2. New York: A. J. DAVIS & CO., 274 CANAL STREET. 1864. Her shape arises! She, less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than The ever, gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled, She knows the thoughts as she passes-nothing is concealed from her, She is none the less considerate or friendly therefore; She is the best beloved-it is without exceptionshe has no reason to fear and she does not fear, Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, proposals, ribaid expressions, are idle to her as she passes, She is silent-she is possessed of herself-they do not offend her, She receives them as the laws of nature receives them-she is strong, She too is a law of nature-there is no law stronger than she is. WOMAN AND HER ERA. PART THIRD. The Actual Qualities of Woman's Nature, and her Consequent Experiences. INTRODUCTORY. I enter upon this branch of my subject with less assurance than upon either of the preceding ones. Not because I feel any poverty or weakness in it. On the contrary the argument is nowhere so affluent in resource, nowhere so firmly grounded, as in the imperishable Truths of Woman's Nature. If it were poor here, it must necessarily fail everywhere else. For here is where we must find the CAUSES, of which all that we have seen as phenomena, in Sentiment, Religion, Art, and History, are but effects-the realities these, of which those are the symbols and signs. If there be not in the feminine nature these realities, then the signs are but shams; perishable counterfeits of something that exists not, but is only imagined; and they must disappear as soon as their want of root in the Actual is shown. But whatever the wealth of the subject-and I feel rich and strong in considering it-I confess here my conscious inability to do it justice. For this inquiry alone should fill volumes; and it will at no distant day, when some Woman, able in spiritual analysis, shall take it up. If, then, the hints here set down may be found helpful to fuller, clearer, braver statement of my sex, I shall at least count my part not ill done. Truth is easy or difficult to present, in proportion as it has already obtained acknowledgment in some manner, either in the felt or uttered sentiment of mankind; in social, intellectual, esthetic, or spiritual systems, or in the perceptions we have of beings and their relations. Now many truths of Woman's nature, as we have already seen, have passed by general acknowledgment, and become incorporated into social institutes. Their force and relations may be dim or clear, balanced or incongruous, harmonious or paradoxical, but they are seen and felt in some manner. They may perhaps be acknowledged in one connection and denied in another; they are sometimes felt, but not clearly perceived; again they are perceived, but are not rationally joined to each other and to other truths; they become the expressed sentiment of mankind, but are perhaps scouted in its intellectual systems. Or they pass more or less into these, yet remain in the dimmest twilight, mere shadows upon the outskirts of the more artificial, complex, arbitrary, social and civil systems in which society clothes itself. And thus the variety of position in which we find them is sufficiently contradictory and confused to make the attempt to array and present them, with the force which is their due, a rather formidable one; in which I would bethe candid reader's sympathy rather than his most astute criticism. For criticism is as often the enemy of Truth as its defender; and Truth being the one essential object of this inquiry, let each rather endeavor, in the divine, artistic spirit of her lover, to supply lineaments that may be iacking to her perfect aspect here, than to criticise the proportions of those which are developed. The first and broadest Truth that fronts us at the very entrance to this field, is that expressed in the current words, "Woman is a Mystery." They are man's words, and they express the actual relation of the feminine to the masculine life. The former is necessarily a mystery to the latter; as in that which exceeds, there must be somewhat of mystery to that which is exceeded. Woman is a mystery to man by transcending both his consciousness and his capacity for experiences. Beyond the line of identical function and faculty, all that belongs to him, belongs equally to her, by correspondents in her life. But that which is added to her, beyond the common line of endowment, is impossible, and therefore mysterious, to him. Please observe that there is, first, a department of identical capacities; second, a department of common capacities; and third, a department of feminine capacities. All the masculine powers lie within the lines of the first and second departments, and Woman shares each one, while in the third she is exclusive. Woman produces and includes man. As his creator, under the laws of the Universal Creator, she knows his nature as he can never know it: as including him by her larger circuit of capacities, she knows what is in him. It is not by study of him, but by being all and more than he is. She will therefore |