CONTRADICTIONS IN FEMININE MINDS.--Owing to the fact that women are so much more personal than objective, there are tendencies included in the range of their ideas which are logically in contradiction to one another; they are accustomed in turn to become enthusiastically fond just of the representatives of these tendencies and accept their systems in the lump; but in such wise that a dead place originates wherever a new personality afterwards gets the ascendancy. It may happen that the whole philosophy in the mind of an old lady consists of nothing but such dead places. 420. WHO SUFFERS THE MORE?--After a personal dissension and quarrel between a woman and a man the latter party suffers chiefly from the idea of having wounded the other, whilst the former suffers chiefly from the idea of not having wounded the other sufficiently; so she subsequently endeavours by tears, sobs, and discomposed mien, to make his heart heavier. 421. AN OPPORTUNITY FOR FEMININE MAGNANIMITY.--If we could disregard the claims of custom in our thinking we might consider whether nature and reason do not suggest several marriages for men, one after another: perhaps that, at the age of twenty-two, he should first marry an older girl who is mentally and morally his superior, and can be his leader through all the dangers of the twenties (ambition, hatred, self-contempt, and passions of all kinds). This woman's affection would subsequently change entirely into maternal love, and she would not only submit to it but would encourage the man in the most salutary manner, if in his thirties he contracted an alliance with quite a young girl whose education he himself should take in hand. Marriage is a necessary institution for the twenties; a useful, but not necessary, institution for the thirties; for later life it is often harmful, and promotes the mental deterioration of the man. 422. THE TRAGEDY OF CHILDHOOD.--Perhaps it not infrequently happens that noble men with lofty aims have to fight their hardest battle in childhood; by having perchance to carry out their principles in opposition to a base-minded father addicted to feigning and falsehood, or living, like Lord Byron, in constant warfare with a childish and passionate mother. He who has had such an experience will never be able to forget all his life who has been his greatest and most dangerous enemy. 423.