The superior being is sometimes a person who is above all the passions and weaknesses of ordinary men; a philosopher, or an etherealized woman dwelling on serene Olympian heights which no clouds obscure and where no earth-fogs rise. The passions which shake the human soul, as tempests shake the forest trees, and warp men's lives according to the run of their own lines, are unknown to these Olympian personages who cannot understand their power. They look on these tempestuous souls with a curious analytical gaze, speculating on the geography of their Gethsemane, and wondering why they cannot keep as calm and quiet as they themselves are. They sit in scornful judgment on the mysterious impulses regulating human nature--regulating and disturbing--and think how perfect all things would be if only passions and instincts were cut out of the great plan, and men and women were left to the dominion of pure reason. But they do not take into account the law of constitutional necessity, and they are utterly unable to strike a balance between the good and evil wrought both by the tempests of souls and by those of nature. They only know that storms are inconvenient, and that for themselves they have no need of such convulsions to clear off stagnant humours; nor are they made of elements which kindle and explode at the contact of such or such materials. And if they know nothing of all this, why then should others? If they can sit on Olympian heights serene above all passion, why should not the whole world sit with them, and fogs and fires, earthquakes and deluges, be conditions unknown? When this kind of superior being is a woman, there is something pretty in the sublime assumption of her supremacy and the sweeping range of her condemnation. Sheltered from temptation and secure from danger, she looks out on life from the serene heights of her safe place, and wonders how men can fail and women fall before the power of trials of which she knows only the name. Her circulation is languid and her temperament phlegmatic; and the burning desire of life which sends the strong into danger, perhaps into sin, is as much unknown to her as is the fever of the tropics to a Laplander crouching in his snow-hut. But she judges none the less positively because of her ignorance; and, as she looks into your quivering face with her untroubled eyes, lets you see plainly enough how she despises all the human frailties under which you may have tripped and stumbled. Sometimes she rebukes you loftily. Your soul is sore with the consciousness of your sin, your heart is weak with the pain of life; but the superior being tells you that repentance cannot undo the evil that has been done, and that to feel pain is weak.