A system of this kind spoils women completely, and makes the least contradiction intolerable to them. It is better that they should at least have the opportunity of hearing truth, though no attempt need be made to force it upon them. The position of ladies of the generation which preceded ours is in many respects a very trying one, and we do not always adequately realize it. A lady like your mother, who never really went through any intellectual discipline, who has no notion of intellectual accuracy in anything, is compelled by the irresistible feminine instinct to engage her strongest feelings in every discussion that arises. A woman can rarely detach her mind from questions of persons to apply it to questions of fact. She does not think simply, "Is that true of such a thing?" but she thinks, "Does he love me or respect me?" The facts about the Argentine Republic and the American War were probably quite indifferent to your mother; but your opposition to what she had asserted seemed to her a failure in affection, and your attempt to teach her a failure in respect. This feeling in women is far from being wholly egoistic. They refer everything to persons, but not necessarily to their own persons. Whatever you affirm as a fact, they find means of interpreting as loyalty or disloyalty to some person whom they either venerate or love, to the head of religion, or of the State, or of the family. Hence it is always dangerous to enter upon intellectual discussion of any kind with women, for you are almost certain to offend them by setting aside the sentiments of veneration, affection, love, which they have in great strength, in order to reach accuracy in matters of fact, which they neither have nor care for. PART VIII. _ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY._ LETTER I. TO A YOUNG ENGLISH NOBLEMAN. A contrast--A poor student--His sad fate--Class-sentiment--Tycho Brahe--Robert Burns--Shelley's opinion of Byron--Charles Dickens--Shopkeepers in English literature--Pride of aristocratic ignorance--Pursuits tabooed by the spirit of caste--Affected preferences in intellectual pursuits--Studies that add to gentility--Sincerity of interest needed for genuine culture--The exclusiveness of scholarly caste--Its bad influence on outsiders--Feeling of Burns toward scholars--Sureness of class-instinct--Unforeseen effect of railways--Return to nomadic life and the chase--Advantages and possibilities to life in the higher classes. It is one of the privileges of authorship to have correspondents in the most widely different positions, and by means of their frank and friendly letters (usually much more frank than any oral communication) to gain a singularly accurate insight into the working of circumstances on the human intellect and character. The same post that brought me your last letter brought news about another of my friends whose lot has been a striking contrast to your own.[8]