The most dangerous man to a woman is a man of high intellectual endowments morally perverted; for in a woman’s nature there is such a necessity to approve where she admires, and to believe where she loves,—a devotion compounded of love and faith is so much a part of her being,—that while the instincts remain true and the feelings uncorrupted, the conscience and the will may both be led far astray. Thus fell “our general mother,”—type of her sex,—overpowered, rather than deceived, by the colossal intellect,—half serpent, half angelic. [Illustration] Coleridge speaks, and with a just indignant scorn, of those who consider chastity as if it were a _thing_—a thing which might be lost or kept by external accident—a thing of which one might be robbed, instead of a state of being. According to law and custom, the chastity of Woman is as the property of Man, to whom she is accountable for it, rather than to God and her own conscience. Whatever people may say, such is the common, the social, the legal view of the case. It is a remnant of Oriental barbarism. It tends to much vice, or, at the best, to a low standard of morality, in both sexes. This idea of property in the woman survives still in our present social state, particularly among the lower orders, and is one cause of the ill treatment of wives. All those who are particularly acquainted with the manners and condition of the people will testify to this; namely, that when a child or any weaker individual is ill treated, those standing by will interfere and protect the victim; but if the sufferer be _the wife_ of the oppressor, it is a point of etiquette to look on, to take no part in the fray, and to leave the brute man to do what he likes “with his own.” Even the victim herself, if she be not pummelled to death, frequently deprecates such an interference with the dignity and the rights of her owner. Like the poor woman in the “Médecin malgré lui:”—“Voyez un peu cet impertinent qui vent empêcher les maris de battre leurs femmes!—et si je veux qu’il me batte, moi?”—and so ends by giving her defender a box on the ear. [Illustration] “Au milieu de tous les obstacles que la nature et la société out semés sur les pas de la femme, la seule condition de repos pour elle est de s’entourer de barrières que les passions ne puissent franchir; incapable de s’approprier l’existence, elle est toujours semblable a la Chinoise dont les pieds ont été mutilés et pour laquelle toute liberté est un leurre, toute espace ouverte une cause de chute. En attendant que l’éducation ait donné aux femmes leur véritable place, malheur à celles qui brisent les lisses accoutumées! pour elles l’indépendance ne sera, comme la gloire, qu’un deuil éclatant du bonheur!”—_B. Constant._ This also is one of those common-places of well-sounding eloquence, in which a fallacy is so wrapt up in words we have to dig it out. If this be true, it is true only so long as you compress the feet and compress the intellect,—no longer.