Man knows neither woman nor her whence or whither. He acknowledges her a Mystery from his earliest acquaintance with her to the present day. Whatever his conquests over the hidden and the mysterious elsewhere in nature, here is a mystery that confronts him whenever he turns hither--nay, that grows by his attempts at mastering it. The permanently mysterious is only that which exceeds us, and we study this but to learn how widely its embracing horizon can spread as we advance. Thus the woman of the nineteenth century is an incomparably greater mystery to man than was her sister of the ninth. Scientific conquests do but touch the periphery of her being; they explore her nature so far as it is of common quality and powers with the nature of man and of the feminine animals, and would perhaps do more wisely if they stopped dumb before what lies beyond and above these levels. For beyond, man reads but to misread--studies but to vex and confuse himself, and--shall I say it?--learns to sneer at rather than to reverence what baffles his inquiries. Does this statement seem harsh? Is it doubted? See its truth. The only science (so called) which undertakes a study of woman does not inspire its student with an increased respect for her. As a class, medical men, above that of other men, are perhaps less chivalrous than blacksmiths. Lucky is she and lucky are they if it be not diminished instead. For, assuming man as the standard, the corporeal functions, which absolutely elevate her in the scale of development, being added to all that he possesses, and constituting her corporeal womanhood, are seen by this student only as disabilities from which he is happily exempt (as if a disability could come into any life but through the door of an ability); and her larger measure of the divine attributes, faith, hope, and love--love, as compassion and as maternity--are seen as simple weaknesses to which he is happily superior. The greatness of man's individuality lies in his power over the external; that of woman's is interior, central, as the sun to our planets, which roll through common fields of space, breathe a common ether, share a common light and warmth, but know not that ether, that light, that warmth, whence theirs flows out to them. Central, potent, commanding, superior to laws which alternately move and still their currents--nay, being in themselves those very laws--this hidden power is never touched by them, is shared by them only in fixed measure, beyond which drafts upon it are protested as inexorably as turn the wheels of fate in producing a midge or a mastodon.