The Jessica Letters: An Editor's RomanceHarris, Corra
General
The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance
Harris, Corra
Editors -- Fiction
You complain of my letter because I argue a philosophical proposition in
it while pleading for love. Do you not know that this is man's way? And I
would not try to deceive you: this philosophical proposition, which seems
to you almost a matter of indifference, is more to me than everything else
in the world. For it I could surrender all my heart's hope; for it I could
sacrifice my own person; even, if the choice were necessary, which cannot
be, I might sacrifice you. There is this duality in man's nature. The
ambition of his intellect, the passion, it may be, to force upon the world
some vision of his imagination or some theorem of his brain, works in him
side by side with his personal being, and the two are never quite fused.
Can you not recall a score of examples in history of men who have led this
dual existence? You reviewed for me Bismarck's Love Letters and were
yourself struck by this sharp contrast between the iron determination of
the man in public affairs and the softness and sweetness of his domestic
life. That is but one case in point of the eternal dualism in masculine
nature which a woman can never comprehend, and which always, if it
confronts her nakedly, she resents. For a woman is not so. There exists no
such gap in her between her heart and brain, between her outer and inner
life. And the consequence shows itself in many ways. She is less efficient
in the world and is never a creator or impresser of new ideas; but, on the
other hand, her character possesses a certain unity that is the wonder of
all men who observe. She calls the man selfish and is bitter against him
at times, but her accusation is wrong. It is not selfishness which leads a
man if needs be to cut off his own personal desires while sacrificing
another; it is the power in him which impels the world into new courses. A
man's virtues are aggressive and turned toward outer conquest and may have
little relation to his own heart. But a woman's virtues are bound up with
every impulse of her personal being; they work out in her a loveliness and
unity of character which make the man appear beside her coarse and
unmoral. Men of vicious private life have more than once been benefactors
of the human race; I think that never happened in the case of a woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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