“That was foolish. No true woman ever stops half way in her principles, or shrinks from carrying them out, by a cold and cowardly calculation of consequences. She leaves that to masculine virtue. When once women adopt a principle, they are prepared to follow it to its last results, without counting the sacrifice. You men cannot do this. You are always hesitating, deliberating, craving the end, but afraid to grasp it, compromising with your reason and your conscience. Recollect Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth, as painted by Shakspeare, who knew man’s heart and woman’s too. Here is the reason why you always stop half way in your reforms, or never do more than patch a piece of new cloth on to an old garment, which only makes the rent worse. Hence your need of woman’s straightforward logic, her disinterestedness, her singleness of heart, her constancy of purpose, and her invincible courage.” “But perhaps, my dear lady, women are not seldom rash, and what you commend in them is the effect of narrowness of view, and not of that clear and enlarged comprehensiveness, that “many sidedness,” to use a Germanism, which is desirable in a true and trustworthy reformer. Perhaps she lacks prudence, and may not use sufficient caution in adopting her principles, and thus may adopt false principles, and find ruin where she imagines she is to find only safety.” “It is safer to trust her instincts than man’s reason. Yet I deny not the danger to which you allude, and therefore it is that it is never safe to trust her to act alone. Hence the necessity, in all our movements for reform, of the strict union of man and woman. She needs him as a drag on her too great rapidity of motion, and to temper her zeal with his prudence, and he needs her to inspire him with courage, energy, and love. Either is only a half without the other, and both must be united, as I have already told you, to form a complete and productive whole.” “I think I now understand what is meant by philanthropy. I have the idea, but as a pure idea it amounts to nothing. We must realize it, or reduce it to practice. Our great work is to remodel the world according to this idea. But how is this to be done?”