Now, it would certainly appear that this _Hebraism_, as Mr. Arnold calls it, is rather characteristic of the higher sort of women. The moment a woman rises above the passion for personal admiration and the struggle for petty social ambition or sordid matrimonial scheming, to which so large a number of unhappy ones are trained and consigned from girlhood, on the principle of “keeping women in their proper sphere,”--the moment, I say, that a woman has been lifted by education or her natural force of character above all this frivolity and baseness, we almost invariably find in her a degree of earnestness about ethical and ethico-religious questions which is far more rarely traceable among men. It is true that her exclusion from a great many fields of masculine interest naturally centres her thoughts more on such subjects, and that, when those exclusions are more or less removed, we must expect to see more frequently women absorbed in the same worldly interests as men, and perhaps some who now think night and day of a ball will be equally eager about a bill in Parliament. Still, I believe that, independently of circumstances, women have a special tendency (as Renan avers of the Celtic race) to “long after the infinite,” and to yearn to bring an element of sacredness and nobleness into the transactions of daily life such as their moral aspect alone affords. I believe that nine women out of ten (of the better sort, of whom I have spoken) would, if they had the choice, oftener speak of duty and religion than of any other themes.[35] If this be so, it would follow that, as time goes on, instead of women falling behind in the progress of humanity, that progress will constantly tend to bring women more to the front as students and expounders of morality.