And yet Man’s delightful and utter want of the commonest logic is never more flagrantly exhibited than in this vital matter of his estimate of Woman, taking it all round in a broad sense. Daily, hourly, in the household and in the market-place, he may be heard cheapening her abilities, sneering at such triumphs as she attains, cracking stale jests at her “love of gossip,” “love of dress” (for he is seldom original even in a joke), and her “incessant tongue,” blissfully ignoring the fact that his own is wagging all the time; and yet no one can twist him so limply and helplessly round the littlest of her little fingers as she can. Moreover, throughout all the ages, so far as the keenest explorer or historical student can discover, his highest ideals of life have been depicted in the Feminine form. Fortune, Fame, Justice, the Arts and Sciences, are all represented by female figures lovingly designed by male hands. Evidently conscious in himself that a woman’s purity, honesty, fidelity, and courage are nobler types of these virtues than his own, Man apparently is never weary of idealizing them as Woman womanly. Thoroughly aware of the supreme sovereignty Woman can exercise whenever he gives her the chance, he, while endeavouring to bind and hold her intellectual forces by his various edicts and customs, takes ever an incongruous satisfaction in doing her full justice by the magnitude of his feminine ideals. The divine spirit of Nature itself, called “Egeria,” is always depicted by man as a woman. Faith, Hope and Charity, are represented as female spirits, as are the Three Graces. The Muses are women; so are the Fates. Hence, as all the virtues, morals, arts, and sciences are shown by the highest masculine skill as wearing woman’s form and possessing woman’s attributes, it is easy to see that man has always been perfectly aware in his inward intelligence of Woman’s true worth and right place in creation, though, by such laws as he has made for his own better convenience, he has put up whatever barriers he can in the way of the too swift advancement of so superior and victorious a creature. Now that she is beginning to take an important share in the world’s work and progress, he is becoming vaguely alarmed. In each art, in each profession he sees her gaining step by step to higher intellectual dominance. He watches her move from plane to plane of study, learning, as she goes, that the mere animalism of unthinking subservience to his passions is not her only heritage. And straightway the long-spoilt child begins to whimper. “A woman has no creative power!” he cries. “No imagination!--no originality!--no force of character! What she does in the Arts is so very little----!”