Another line of thought will, perhaps, lead us more directly and nearer to the end we have in view. The external influence of women on the whole human community is, for the most part (for here, too, there are great and memorable exceptions) confined to a narrow sphere of the immediate duties of the affections, or to similar relations in the wider social circle. So, too, is it inwardly as regards the consciousness. All the faculties of women and their several manifestations lie, if I may so express myself, close together, and, as it were, in a friendly circle around the loving soul, as their common center. With regard, then, to the comparison of the two sexes and their mental differences, I would venture to observe, that on the one side it seems to me that a certain harmonious fullness of the consciousness is the preponderating character; and, on the other, its eccentric evolution. Not that I mean that in the sex which is pre-eminently called to outward activity, the mind loses its grand center in the inner life, or, comet-like, delights to wander in vast, irregular orbits, as is, indeed, commonly enough asserted. My meaning is, simply, that the masculine mind will ever dare, as, indeed, it ought, to move in wider circles than the feminine. The extremes of the consciousness, if the expression be allowable--the farthest poles both of reason and fancy--are, so to speak, the property of the more active sex; while the harmonious union and contact of both in the soul belong to the more sensitive. All such general and characteristic sketches, however, must always be most imperfect. Still I believe it may be safely and truly said, that, with highly-favored dispositions and noble natures (and these must be always supposed and taken for the foundation of such general remarks), the gain to be derived from this intellectual community and influence, in which one individual consciousness completes the other, must be sought in the one sex in a greater development of mind and elevation of soul, and in the other in a more harmonious adjustment and softening of the mental powers, and in a far more sensitive excitement of the soul’s susceptibilities. But in this most intimate of unions, when regarded as divinely blessed, and when in reality it appears to be so, then on either side both mind and soul are, as it were, twice combined and joined together in closest association, and, if we may say so, even married and wedded together. Consequently, while external life derives from marriage its moral foundation and origin, the internal life of man is, as it were, mentally renewed by it, or fructified afresh and redoubled. LECTURE III. OF THE SOUL’S SHARE IN KNOWLEDGE; AND OF REVELATION.