We must mention also, that one cause of a livelier sense of pity in woman, is her own weakness and her lower intellect. “Anger,” writes A. Bain, “the passion for war, are bound up with activity and strength; conditions of weakness and of repose are favorable to the softer sentiments.” Strong men who display great muscular or mental activity, and who often experience the satisfactions arising from power, only realise with extreme difficulty the feelings of the weak; for, as H. Spencer remarks,[40] “to feel pity for any suffering which we witness, we must have experienced it ourselves to the same extent or in an approximate degree.” Thus healthy persons become, after a serious sickness, more feeling than they formerly were for those who are suffering; women are continually in a state of ill-health. Besides which women have not been involved in the struggle for life, as have men during the whole process of evolution: this struggle for life implying, as it does, the necessity of pursuing one’s own object irrespective of the ills which it may entail on the unhappy competitors, and often rendering a man insensible to the sorrows of those around him. To this we add, that love for man has not been without influence in developing the sense of pity in woman. The main characteristic of the love of woman towards man, is self-abnegation and devotion; woman finds her happiness in devotion to the man she loves and in making for him the most painful sacrifices. Read the “Letters of Heloise,” the “Life of Carlyle,” or the “Life of Mme. de Lespinasse.” Each woman, carries hidden in her heart, an inexhaustible treasure of devotion which heredity has added to through all the centuries, during which woman has lived in contact with man and sought to win his good-will, displaying an affection and an ardent zeal in his behalf; nothing then is easier than to spend this treasure on the unhappy, when she has not found the man on whom to lavish it. The close relationship between pity, maternity, and love, is also shown by this fact, that the heroines of charity are almost always widows without sons, or unmarried women. When a woman has a husband or sons to love and cherish, she does not feel the same tenderness towards the suffering; this goes to prove that if these two sentiments are interchangeable, they are but two different forms of the same thing. PITY AND CRUELTY.