MARGARET opened our talk by saying that the subject of Wisdom presented more conversable points than that of Genius. We could all think and talk about Wisdom, and any man who had ever scratched his finger was to a degree wise. Minerva was the child of Counsel and Intelligent Will. She had no infancy, but sprang full-armed into being. Ready, agile, she was in herself the history of thought. She did not need that her life should be one of incident. Her attendant emblems are expressive: the Sphinx, the owl, the serpent, the cock, and the javelin suggest her whole story. WILLIAM WHITE asked why Genius was masculine and Wisdom feminine. MARGARET thought no one could find any difficulty in the fact that Genius was masculine. It presented itself to the mind in the full glow of power. The very outlines of the feminine form were yielding, and we could not associate them with a prominent, self-conscious state of the faculties. Wisdom was like woman, always ready for the fight if necessary, yet never going to it; taking reality as a basis, and classifying and arranging upon it all that Genius creates,—seeing the relations and proper values of things. GEORGE RIPLEY objected to this definition. He might have imbibed a Hebrew idea, but the office of Wisdom was surely something more than this,—a purely mechanical and orderly tact. MARGARET said she had not meant to give _our_ view of it, only the Greek idea as manifest in the story of Minerva. To William White she said, smiling, that she supposed he had not wondered so much that Genius should be masculine as that Wisdom should be feminine! But the Greeks were wise, and she revered their keen perception. ELISABETH HOAR said it seemed to her that Wisdom provided _means_. A hero might be inspired by Genius, but Wisdom provided his armor, taught him to distinguish the goal, and to perceive clearly the relation to it of any onward step. MARGARET agreed to this, and WILLIAM STORY said that Genius was indebted to Wisdom for _means of communication_. Genius thinks words impertinent, but Wisdom apprehends its intuitions, and gives them shape. MARGARET said further, that Wisdom must adopt instinctively the finest medium. It seemed to me that Wisdom not only gave power of communication, but power of attainment. Walter Scott was a good instance of the union of intuitive perception and human sagacity, but all these words about it cleared up nothing. MARGARET then proposed that we should take up the attributes of Minerva, and so get at the facts. MR. RIPLEY did not think it noble enough when she based Wisdom upon realities. WILLIAM STORY said Wisdom must have something to work upon. He thought Wisdom compared the intuitions of Genius with realities. CHARLES WHEELER thought the word _actual_ would help them out of their difficulty. I wanted to quote Emerson to the effect that the Ideal is more Real than the Actual.