Chapter LXXXVI: Act I: Scene 2. New York, towards the end of the summer of 1780 (17)

This is truly characteristic of the woman, and it manifests an order of mind admirably adapted to the circumscribed sphere in which nature seems to have destined her to move. But it does not suit the wide arena of the statesman. Go, for example, into the great deliberative body of this country, and listen to the polemical combats of the minds that are there brought together, and mark particularly the powerful effusions of that individual with the master mind of this country--I had like to have said of the age in which he lives--and you will be amazed at the vast power of generalization and consequent condensation which his capacious mind displays. Is it the complicate and difficult subject of the banking system which has fallen under his review, then observe how he passes by unheeded, the petty details and minute histories of the little institutions around him which engage the little minds of the body, and fixes his eagle gaze on the great and prominent points of the subject; shows you that the _general_ nature of man, and the _general_ nature of this institution, is the same at Amsterdam, at Venice, at London, as at Philadelphia, Washington, or Baltimore. He points out the great and general circumstances which lead on to the corruption and final destruction of the system, and shows you that the straining and breaking of our banks in by-gone times, was not the result of chance and accident, but of causes as fixed and unerring in their operation as the law of gravity or the force of elasticity. Or is he on the great subject of the dangers to be apprehended from irresponsible power in the hands of a dominant majority, then observe how his mind ranges over the history of the past, and culls from the page of Greece and Rome, and even from that more sacred one of Israel's people, the great lessons which they inculcate upon this point. He shows you that the contests of patricians and plebeians, the forcible establishment of the power of the tribunes in ancient Rome, and the division of a modern parliament into the lords and commons, or the fearful disputes between the _tiers état_ and the nobles and clergy in France, all prove the same great truth and teach the same great lesson, _that every great interest to be safe, must have the means of defending itself_. Such a mind as this when it fails, fails (if I may use the language of the logician) from not attending to specific and individual differences in the application of general principles: it fails because while leaping from the Appenines to the Alps, and from the Alps to the Pyrennees, it does not perceive the rivulets, the flowers, the little hills and dales which lie beneath. Such a mind is the very opposite of that of woman.

But it may be said there are women who have reigned with glory and lustre, and merited well of their country and mankind. Christina, for example, in Sweden, Isabella in Castile, and Elizabeth in England, have merited the esteem of their age and posterity. The two Catharines in Russia, and Maria Theresa, during the long wars about the pragmatic sanction, have each manifested the abilities of statesmen. To this however, I would remark in the first place, that we are concerned here with general rules and not with particular exceptions. Now the general rule is what I have stated; women make bad politicians, unsafe depositaries of power, and most partial and unequal administrators of {682} justice. In the second place, you will find that the weakness and errors of the good female sovereigns have almost always arisen from their feminine foibles or womanly judgments. Take, for example, Queen Elizabeth, whom Mr. Hume has pronounced to have been perhaps the greatest female sovereign who ever sat upon a throne. It was said of her that her inclinations and the coquetries of her sex, stole beneath the cares of her throne and the grandeur of her character. And it has been said, with perhaps too much truth, that if Mary Queen of Scotland had been less beautiful, Elizabeth had been less cruel; she always believed too readily, that the mere power of pleasing implied genius. The exaggerated but well-timed gallantries of Raleigh,[4] and the personal beauty and accomplishments of the earl of Leicester, made the fortunes of those individuals.

[Footnote 4: Raleigh threw a new plush cloak into the mud over which the queen was passing; she stepped cautiously on it, and shot forth a smile upon the young captain. This cunning gallantry introduced him to the queen for the first time; his advancement was rapid, and the title of captain was soon changed for that of Sir Walter.]

This celebrated queen has been described as passionately admiring handsome persons, and he was already far advanced in her favor who approached her with beauty and grace. It is said she had so unconquerable an aversion to ugly and ill-made men, that she could not endure their presence. Her aversion to boots was very marked, and highly characteristic of the woman. I think it is Sir Walter Scott who, in one of his romances, represents her as having had so much aversion to the boots of the Duke of Suffolk, who was brought forward by his party for the honor of knighthood, as to fly into a passion about it, and for some time to refuse to knight him in such a dress.[5] She is well known to have been a great coquette, giving all her suitors some hopes of finally obtaining her hand. She had likewise a most ardent desire to be thought beautiful. Raleigh was well aware of this excessive vanity, and made it a means of securing her favor and continuing in her good graces. Mr. Hume tells us that Sir Walter, in a love-letter written to the queen when she was sixty years old, after exhausting his poetic talent in exalting her charms and his devotion, concludes by _comparing_ her to _Venus and Diana_. D'Israeli says that Du Maurier, in his Memoirs, writes: "I heard from my father, that having been sent to her, at every audience he had with her Majesty, she pulled off her gloves more than a hundred times, to _display her hands_, which were indeed beautiful and very white." And he says, "She never forgave Buzenval for ridiculing her bad pronunciation of the French language; and when Henry IV sent him over on an embassy, she would not receive him. So nice was the irritable vanity of this great queen, that she made her private injuries matters of state." Well then has it been said, that "the toilet of Elizabeth was indeed an altar of devotion, of which she was the idol, and all her ministers were her votaries: it was the reign of coquetry, and the golden age of millinery."

[Footnote 5: In the Memoirs of the Duchess d'Abrantes, it is stated that Madame Permon, mother of the Duchess, had a very great aversion to the boots of the Republican generals, particularly when wet and passing through the process of drying.]

It is true, in spite of all these foibles and defects of character, she made a great sovereign; but it is easy to mark throughout the whole course of her administration, even in the graver matters of legislation, the constantly modifying influence of feminine weakness. It was Elizabeth who granted, more extensively than any other sovereign, privileges and monopolies to her favorites, which is one of the worst forms which the restrictive system can assume. In doing this, she seems to have been anxious to solve the problem of doing every thing for her friends and pretended admirers, without disturbing her conscience by the infliction of too much injury on the body politic. But experience has shown that she most wofully failed by her plan in the solution of the problem, and took by these monopolies and privileges even a great deal more out of the pockets of the people, than could ever come into those of her favorites and flatterers. Even the celebrated laws of this reign in regard to the paupers of England, in my opinion, mark the overweening humanity of the woman, combined with a deficiency of that power of generalization, which can alone enable us to arrive at just conclusions on so delicate and complicated a subject. When she ordered the overseers of the poor to see that every individual in the kingdom should be well fed, clothed and employed, the order, although a humane one, was certainly impracticable. Mr. Malthus asserts, that when king Canute seated himself on the sea shore, and ordered the rising tide not to approach his royal feet, he was not guilty of more vanity than this celebrated order of Elizabeth displayed; but there was certainly humanity in the intention.

In addition to the preceding remarks upon the incapacity of woman in general for the able discharge of political duties, we may observe that she is more disposed to despotism while in power than man. This may be ascribed to greater physical weakness, and consequent dependence in general. When, therefore, she wields the sceptre, she is constantly disposed to manifest her power--to let the world see she is really a ruler. She makes a show of her authority, precisely for the same reason that a newly created nobleman is more tenacious of his title than an old one, or a legitimate monarch less suspicious on the throne than a usurper. Thomas says that great men are more carried to that species of despotism which arises from lofty ideas; and women above the ordinary class, to the despotism which proceeds from passion. The last is rather a sally of the heart than the effect of system. The despotism of woman however, very rarely, except when stimulated by violent love and jealousy, leads on to cruelty; they have too much feeling, sympathy and kindness to be cruel. Their despotism arises rather from caprice, and a desire to promote the interest of friends and flatterers, than from any regular system of ambition and vice. Give them unlimited sway, and you rarely find them exercising that merciless tyranny which delights in blood. Their sensibility rarely forsakes them, even on the throne. Deny them power, and they make monarchs as jealous and suspicious as rival beauties in a ball room. There never was on the throne of England a more determined stickler for prerogative than Queen Elizabeth. She was exceedingly jealous of the powers of her parliament; and up to the very last hour of her long life, a shuddering came over her whenever she thought of a successor to the throne. {683} Yet Elizabeth was far from beings as cruel as many of the male sovereigns who have sat on the English throne.

The passion of love, however, is the most dangerous one in the breast of the female sovereign. As I have already observed, it is the strongest of our nature whilst it lasts, even in the breast of man; but with woman, it is not only the strongest, but like Aaron's rod, it swallows up all the rest. Elizabeth's lovers were her dependents, and she was withal a woman of strong masculine mind, cultivated by an education of the most classical and severe character, yet we have seen the mighty influence which even her lovers exerted over her, in spite of all her caution.

Mary, the sister of Elizabeth, the bigoted Catholic, is a melancholy instance of the influence of even unrequited love, upon the politics of a female sovereign. While married to Philip of Spain, England was very little more than a Spanish province. Perhaps it was the example of Mary which in a great measure deterred Elizabeth from ever marrying, although repeatedly pressed to it by the Parliament. The caricature gotten up during the reign of Queen Mary is an admirable burlesque of the errors and weaknesses of female rule. It represented her Majesty "naked, meager, withered and wrinkled, with every aggravated circumstance of deformity which could disgrace a female figure, seated in a regal chair; a crown on her head, surrounded with the letters M. R. A. accompanied with Maria Regina Angliæ in smaller letters! A number of Spaniards were sucking her to the skin and bone, and a specification was added of the money, rings, jewels, and other presents with which she had secretly gratified her husband Philip."

To see what woman may be capable of doing under the influence of the passion of love accompanied by jealousy, let us at once recur to a state of semi-barbarism, where but little restraint is imposed on the feelings and passions, and where nature consequently manifests itself in all its most horrid deformities without wearing the mask which civilized manners and an enlightened and moral public opinion, aided by the printing press have imposed even upon the most hardy and most wicked in the polished countries of Europe. Among the Memoirs of Celebrated Women by Madame Junot, we find that of Zingha, a great African princess who ruled in her dominions with absolute sway. In the contemplation of her character we are fully disposed to acquiesce in the truth of Shakspeare's assertion, that "proper deformity shows not in the fiend so horrid as in woman." This princess was a perfect tigress when for a moment her argus-eyed jealousy conceived the least interruption to her amours, from the beauty, or the affections, or the accomplishments of another. We are told that "a young girl who waited on her had the misfortune to be attached to a man upon whom the queen had herself cast an eye of affection. Having discovered that the feeling was mutual between the youthful lovers, Zingha had them brought before her; and giving her poniard to the young man, ordered him to plunge it into the bosom of his mistress, to open her bosom and eat her heart! The moment he had obeyed this cruel order she turned to the wretched man, who perhaps expected his pardon, and looked at him as if to confirm this expectation. But she ordered his head to be severed from his body, and it fell upon the mutilated corpse of his mistress." On another occasion she had spared a particular female from among those doomed to destruction, when perceiving a paramour looking with tenderness upon her, she immediately recalled her executioner, and coldly said, "take this woman also and throw her into the grave with her companion." Such is the influence of the passion of love and jealousy upon the female mind even in _Negro land_, and well may we join Madame Junot in the remark, that "this memoir (of Zingha) which is strictly true may lead to much reflection in those who so bitterly attack the whites for their treatment of negro slaves. The latter in our colonies have _never yet undergone such degradation_."[6]

[Footnote 6: "Add to this the horrible superstitions of the Giagas," says the same writer, "and our colonial slaves must have little to regret in their native country."]

A woman in love, whilst she is willing to sacrifice all for the object beloved, may occasionally demand all. She is very apt to be too capricious for wise and prosperous government. A little experiment in love matters might occasionally be of more moment to her, than the regulation of trade, the modification of the corn laws, or the raising or lowering of the taxes. We all know that woman is sometimes extremely capricious and even despotic in the wars of Cupid. She does sometimes make most fearful exactions merely to manifest her power, or to confirm her faith in the fidelity and devotedness of her lover. Now all this will do well enough in private life, because it chequers the path of love with the powerfully exciting alternations of hope and disappointment, and throws around the object of our affections all those attractions, and all that more ethereal and imaginative loveliness, which the extreme difficulty of attainment ever generates in the mind. Although the lover may sometimes groan under such a despotism, and even attempt to renounce it,[7] yet the public sustains no injury. But when this capricious lover is a queen upon the throne, or an ambitious aspirant for political power, then the consequences may be truly disastrous. Rousseau tells us upon the authority of Brantome, that during the reign of Francis I, a young girl had a lover who was a great _babbler_. So capricious was she, and so fond of the exercise of power, that she ordered him to keep an absolute and profound silence, as the condition of her love, until she might release his tongue. He actually remained silent two years, when every body believed him dumb. Then one day in the presence of a large assembly, she boasted that by _one word_ she could restore speech to the _dumb_. She looked him in the face and said, "_parlez!_" "_speak!_" when the man began to speak again! Now in this case no one suffered but the poor man, and he had no doubt hours of ecstatic felicity in her occasional kindness, and sympathy, and love, for so much devotion. He gloried in the chains which he wore: he might be a little restive at times, under the caprice and whim of his {684} mistress, but was no doubt in all his difficulties ever ready to apply to her the language of one of Martial's Epigrams on the whimsical waywardness of a friend,

"Difficilis, facilis, jucundus, acerbus es idem
Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te."

but when such love or caprice as this reaches the throne, the people pay for the folly. _Delirant reges plectuntur Achivi._

[Footnote 7: We are informed that during the age of chivalry, a lady and her lover knight, at the Court of Vienna, were looking over a palisade at a very ferocious lion, when the lady designedly let fall her glove within the enclosure, and asked the knight to pick it up for her. Without hesitation he leaped the enclosure, threw a cloak at the lion, which diverted his attention for a moment, and escaped unhurt with the glove, and then in presence of the whole court renounced the lady and her love forever, because she had imposed so cruel and dangerous a test of his affections.]

The poor Dutch saw but little sport or justice in those harassing campaigns of Lewis XIV in Holland, undertaken principally to please and amuse his mistresses, and exalt himself in their estimation as a military chieftain. The English too saw nothing but degradation and misfortune while Mademoiselle Queraille, the celebrated Duchess of Portsmouth, was the favorite mistress of Charles, and by her predilections for France, and influence on Charles, made him the subservient tool of Lewis XIV, and England but a province to France. And the ill-fated Protestants of the same country had before but too mournfully lamented at the stake that England's Queen was the wife of the most sullen, dark, and ferocious bigot of his age.

But I have said enough, I hope, to show that the field of politics does not furnish the proper theatre for woman's glory and fame. It is strewed with too many brambles and thorns for her delicate and timid nature. It presents too many temptations to wander from the path of justice and equity, to be resisted by the modest gentleness and the unresisting pliancy of her sympathetic and humane temperament. Let her not then be over-ambitious in politics, lest she be brought to realize at last the maxim which is but too true--"Corruptio optimi pessima est." Let her ever remember that she who has the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, as Gisborne has well observed, enjoys a decoration superior to all the glories of the peerage. Not only, however, has the custom of the world generally excluded woman from political stations, but she has been excluded likewise from the right of suffrage or of voting. Her condition in society, her physical organization, the bearing and nursing of children, her delicacy, modesty, weakness and dependency on man, all concur to make such exclusion proper.[8] The _utilitarians_ say, that no evil can result to the fair sex from this exclusion, because their interests are involved in the interests of the males, and consequently the former cannot be oppressed by the latter. Thus they say almost every woman has a husband, a brother, or a father, all of whom are interested in her welfare. She need not consequently fear an invasion of her rights, for those in power are interested in defending them. To a certain extent this assertion is true. But the condition of woman in past ages, and in the eastern nations, shows most conclusively that she may be oppressed by the stronger sex, and that her interests therefore have not been so completely involved in those of man as to make oppression impracticable. Well then, under these circumstances, does it behoove man, in the possession of _all_ the political power, to guard against its abuse--to remember that the frailer and weaker member of our race is placed necessarily under his protection, and lies at his mercy--that humanity, magnanimity, and even self-interest, alike require that her rights should be guarded, and her condition ameliorated--that she who is the delight and ornament of society, the Corinthian capital of our race, should not be permitted to pine under neglect and oppression, but should be conducted tenderly to that exalted eminence whence she may diffuse her benign influence over all the ramifications of social intercourse. And the more I have been enabled to read the page of history have I become convinced, that the continued amelioration of woman's condition is one of the most unerring symptoms of the continuing prosperity and civilization of the world.

[Footnote 8: I do not then agree entirely with Talleyrand in the assertion that, "to see one half of the human race excluded by the other from all participation of government, is a political phenomenon that, according to abstract principles, it is impossible to explain."]

But although I would say that woman is not fitted to take the lead in politics, or to vote at elections, yet would I recommend to all men in political life, or in any other situation, generally to consult female friends before they act in any very important matters. Their opinions and counsels are rarely to be despised, even in politics. The politician ought always to be possessed of their views, though he should not be implicitly governed by them. There is a chain of connection running through and binding together all the events of this world, moral, social, religious, and political. The mind of man, to act with perfect wisdom in any department, must survey all the causes and events, both great and small, which may have a bearing either direct or remote on the issue at which he aims. Now, although man may be able to generalize more extensively, and take a wider and more comprehensive view of the events which are passing around him, yet that very generalization and comprehension of mind, do often make him overlook those little causes, those secret motives, those nice and evanescent springs of action, which are frequently the real causes of the greatest events transpiring in the political drama. "It was not from a massive bar of iron, but from a small and tiny needle," as my lord Bacon observes, "that we discovered the great mysteries of nature." And thus it frequently happens, that by looking attentively at apparently unimportant passions or small events, we are enabled to arrive at the true causes of individual and even national distinctions. It is in this latter department of knowledge that the sagacity of woman is infinitely beyond that of man. She divines more certainly than he all those secret motives of the heart, and detects more readily those delicate, invisible springs of action which so frequently control the course of events. She is more thoroughly acquainted with the nature and character of that mighty influence which woman exerts over man in every condition of life in which he may be placed, and therefore her advice is never to be neglected. In reading the history of any epoch, I always consider my reading as incomplete until I can peruse the histories and the memoirs written by females. They are almost sure to fill the chasms left by the writers of our sex. They frequently enter some of the _penetralia_ of the mind and heart which are inaccessible to man; they perceive the vibration of certain chords invisible to our duller optics. Their views may often be partial, prejudiced, and incomplete, yet when taken in connexion with the more enlarged and philosophical accounts of other writers, they enable the future historian to form a more perfect, more consistent, and more philosophical picture of the whole.

{685} Historians have sometimes puzzled their brains to assign a philosophical cause for this or that course of conduct of a great statesman, when a woman would have told you at once that it originated from some little family feud, or perhaps from an ardent attachment to some sweet, coy, unobtrusive, timid creature, the bare mention of whose name on the page of history would crimson her cheeks with the deep blush of modesty. The historian may be puzzled to account for the sudden and injudicious march of Mareschal Villars, at the head of the grand army of France, towards Brussels. Reader, the true cause was that he was anxious to see his wife, who was staying in a small town on the road to Brussels.[9] It has been said that the course which Cicero pursued towards the conspirators in Rome, resulted principally from the instigation of Terentia, who had her private reasons for hating them. And the hatred of the great orator for Clodius the Demagogue was likewise inspired principally by his wife Terentia, on account of her jealousy of Clodia, the sister of Clodius, who had been anxious to marry Cicero. Now in regard to all those more impalpable and delicate causes which take their origin in the heart, the affections, the social relations, woman is much more sagacious than man; she sees them when they escape his vision; and consequently her penetration may enable her to make discoveries or applications which man would never have thought of. Hence, I repeat again, the counsel of woman ought ever to be taken before we enter upon important events. Dufresnay has shown that many conspiracies even have failed because not confided to woman. And many a man who has kept his transactions secret from his wife, has rued the consequences. Rousseau tells us that while travelling through Switzerland he frequently found the views and advice of _Therese_ of the utmost importance; sometimes rescuing him from the great difficulties that surrounded him, and which could not have been so well overcome without her. And yet he tells us that she was not a well educated woman. The fact is, woman excels man, as has been well observed, in attaining her _present_ purposes; her invention is prompt, her boldness happy, and her execution facile.

[Footnote 9: This celebrated general of Louis XIV, according to St. Simon, often turned his army aside from the great object which he had in view, from some such causes as these.]

Even the warnings and cautions of women, for which no good reason can be assigned, ought not always to be disregarded. They are frequently inferences drawn from that nice discernment and tact so characteristic of the sex amid the little incidents of life, or from their capability of reading the varying features of the human countenance, or marking more distinctly the altered shades of manner, even when individuals are attempting to wear the mask of deception and hypocrisy. Cæsar's wife, we are told, implored him not to go to the Senate Chamber of Rome on the fatal day of the Ides of March; and although she could give no better reasons for her solicitude than dreams, visions, and strange feelings, yet it is more than probable that these were produced by the acute, the penetrating, microscopic observation of a woman's mind upon the events and characters which surrounded her in Rome. Brutus, Cassius, Dolabella, &c. might conceal their purposes during their daily intercourse, from him who had led the armies of Rome to victory in Gaul, and Britain, and Illirium, and had, by the majesty and force of his own mind, overturned the liberties of his country, and grasped in his single hand the sceptre of the world, but, in all probability, they were unable to wear that countenance and assume those manners which would impose upon the more minute discernment of Cæsar's wife, amid the troubles, solicitudes, and suspicions, incident to a season of revolution. Pontius Pilate would have released the Saviour of the world, and quieted a troubled conscience, if he had given heed to the solemn warning of his wife, to have nothing to do with that just man, (Jesus.) Yet she could give no better reason for her warning, than that she had suffered many things that day in a dream, because of him.

_Conversation--Epistolary Writing._

I come now to the consideration of the relative merits of the sexes, in that most pleasing attitude in which we generally find them indulging familiar converse in the social circle. And here, I think, we shall be forced to assign the palm to the fair sex. The social talents of woman all over the world, where her education is not too much neglected, are superior to those of man. Her conversation we generally find more varied, more natural, more allied with the interesting incidents and events of life than that of man. She is a nicer, and more acute observer of what is passing around her. She treasures up more interesting details and occurrences; she is much better acquainted with that most interesting of all subjects, the play of the social and amorous affections; and she studies the most pleasing and fascinating manner of communicating her thoughts to others; hence she becomes the ornament and the boast of the social circle.

Some persons may imagine the conversational power to bear some proportion to the general strength of the intellect, and that, as man cultivates the higher powers of the mind more thoroughly than woman, he must therefore excel her in the social circle. This, however, is very far from being true. The beauty of conversation depends on two things: 1st. On the character of the facts, anecdotes, knowledge, &c. which form the staple of what is said. 2d. On the manner and style of communicating them. Now I conceive that the subjects most generally pleasing in promiscuous society, are not those of a deeply philosophical or abstract character, not those which require the greatest stretch of intellect to comprehend, but those subjects generally which have reference to the ordinary occurrences and transactions of life; those in which all are interested, and which all can comprehend: those, in fine, which concern ourselves _immediately_ and particularly. Grave disquisitions and lectures on abstract subjects, are out of place in the drawing room; those who indulge much in them may be called learned, but they are generally considered intolerable _prosers_. The divine who is always talking to us about _grace_ and its operation on the heart, the lawyer who is lavish of his profound learning on contingent remainders and executory devises, or the physician who tries to instruct us in the mysteries of animal life, by recounting theory after theory upon the subject, are ever looked upon as great bores in the social circle. Not only, however, is the character of the subject of importance in conversation, but there must be variety. No matter how important {686} and interesting the topic, the patience of a company will soon be worn out by even an intelligent and fluent man who will discourse of nothing else. The most insufferable of all bores, says the author of Vivian Grey, is the man whose mind is engrossed with one single subject, who thinks of no other, and of course talks of no other.

So far as the subject matter, or _materiel_ of conversation is concerned, let us enter a little into the _metaphysics_ of the subject, and see, upon philosophical principles, how woman becomes superior to man in this respect.

The principle of association, or of suggestion as it is termed by the more recent writers on the philosophy of the human mind, is the great and controlling law of the mental frame; it is that principle which enables us to supply all our wants, to adapt means to ends, to call up the knowledge of the past, to look into the undeveloped events of the future. It is this associating faculty which may be looked upon as truly the master workman of the mind. Its agency is requisite in the action of all our mental powers, and consequently in pointing out the intellectual differences between the sexes, it is proper never to lose sight of so important a modifier of mental character. Metaphysicians tell us that there are three principles or laws, according to which the association of ideas operates. 1st. Resemblance. 2d. Contiguity in time or place. And 3d. Contrast. Now if we examine into these three divisions, we shall find each one susceptible of a subdivision into two classes, marked and distinct. Thus 1st. There may be resemblance in the objects themselves. Or 2d. In the effects or emotions which they excite. For example, I see a man--he is like, in face and feature, to one I knew well in France--I think immediately of the Frenchman: here is resemblance in objects themselves. I see a violent hurricane--it reminds me of the desolating ravages of a Zenghis Khan, or Tamerlane: here is resemblance in the effects, and not in the objects themselves. I hear the cooing of the dove, and I think of the gentleness and innocence of the child. I hear a man reviling and blaspheming his God, and I think of midnight darkness: here is similarity in the emotions excited by the objects. A corresponding division may be made of contrast. Thus I see a dwarf, and he calls instantly to my mind the largest man I ever saw: this is contrast in the objects. I see a raging, destructive lion, and think immediately of the meek and humble Saviour of the world: here is contrast in the effects. I see the white and tender lily on the drooping stalk, and I think of the fiendish passions of a Macbeth or a Richard: here is contrast in the emotions excited by the objects. Lastly, contiguity in time and place may be divided into casual and fixed; thus I see a man today whom I saw yesterday in company with another: I instantly think of that other. I hear the last _eclipse_ mentioned, I think of the place I was in at that time, the company I was with, the anecdotes told, &c. In the first instance we have casual contiguity in place, and in the second in place and time both. I see the moon on the meridian, and think of the tides in our rivers. I see a magnet, and I think of its attraction for iron; here is necessary contiguity in time, and in the last instance in place too. Upon this last species of contiguity is dependent that most important of all relations, the relation of cause and effect, and of premises and conclusions.

In unison with the division here made of the associating principles, it is easy to explain the character of three distinct orders of mind, which will of course appear widely different in the conversational displays of the social circle. There is, first, the _common mind_, associating its ideas together by palpable resemblance or contrast among them, and by the mere casual and loose contiguity in time and place. Secondly, _the poetical or sentimental mind_, associating principally by resemblance or contrast in the effects produced by objects or the emotions which they excite. And thirdly, the _philosophical mind_, associating principally by necessary contiguity in time and place, by cause and effect, premises and conclusions.

Such a mind as the first, is most impressed with the details and occurrences around. It never ascends to the original contemplation of ideas and thoughts which belong to the region of philosophy and poetry. It may, it is true, recollect sometimes, distant and beautiful analogies, or even philosophical associations, but it is purely because it has heard these things spoken of by others, and not from original conception. Such a mind has no creative power of its own; as it receives so does it pour forth, without alteration. It has been well compared to the cistern into which water is poured; you have nothing to do but turn the cock and out it comes (as one of our newspaper editors recently observed, in relation to a different subject,) "water, dirt, sticks, bugs, pine tags and all!" Such a mind has no _productive power_ whatever. In this flood of details, you see no connecting principle like cause and effect, premises and conclusions, &c.--but this thing is remembered because it is like that. This fact is now related because it was spoken at the same time with that, or in the same place. Such an individual as this has, as Diderot expresses it, "une tête meublée d'un grand nombre de choses disparates," which he says resembles a library with mismatched books, or a German compilation garnished, without reason and without taste, with Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Latin.

Such individuals as these are more pleasing and amusing to us in conversation, when the mind is not otherwise engaged, than most of us are willing to allow. They spread before us a promiscuous feast of neighborhood news, and like Mathews the comedian, although there be but one speaker, they give you the _sayings_, the _conjectures_, the _shrugs_, and the _winks_ of all the parties concerned, and thus give to their communications quite a dramatic effect. Barbers, midwives, seamstresses, hostesses, &c. cultivate this kind of association to the greatest pitch of perfection. Their professions may be said to demand it.

Such individuals, when called into court to give testimony, are sometimes exceedingly amusing, from the pertinacity with which they detail all, even the most minute circumstances, and when interrupted because of the irrelevancy or illegality of their testimony, they are very apt to begin again at the very beginning of their narrative. In the minuteness of their remembrances they are like Mrs. Quickly in the play, when she wishes to make Falstaff remember the time when he promised to marry her.[10] The _Cicerone_ of Italy have generally memories of the same description.

[Footnote 10: This has generally been adduced by the metaphysicians since the time of Lord Kames, as an exemplification of this minute memory, and it illustrates so well the remarks which I have been making above, that I cannot forbear to add it in a foot note.

_Falstaff_. What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

_Hostess_. Marry, if thou wast an honest man, thyself and thy money too. Thou didst swear to me on a parcel gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin Chamber, at the round table, by a sea coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the prince broke thy head for likening him to a singing man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady, thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not good wife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound. And didst not thou when she was gone down stairs desire me to be no more familiarity with such poor people, saying that ere long they should call me Madame! and didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book oath, deny it if thou canst.--_Sec. Part, Hen. 4, Act 2d. Scene 2_.]

{687} Individuals of this character are the little chroniclers of the day. They are the little historians of the little events transpiring around them. They form a sort of cement for society--they furnish a species of connecting link between the past and the present. They embalm for a few years the memory of those who would otherwise have passed away and been forgotten. The smallest and greatest of the human race love fame. The temple at Ephesus was burnt down for fame, and it is the character which I have just been describing that gives a little fame to classes that would never have been heard of, and in old age such a being can tell the young around him of the deeds and achievements of their sires and grandsires and great grandsires. Such individuals as these are remarkable for very exact memories, and as they are never persons of much comprehension of mind, it has been generally imagined that good memories are rarely accompanied with good understandings. Hence the couplet of Pope,

"When in the mind the Memory prevails,
The more solid power of the understanding fails."

This however is but one form which the memory assumes, and consequently we must draw no enlarged inferences from it. Women have generally much more of this memory than men. The sphere in which they move, the occupations in which they are engaged, the lesser necessity on their part for original thought and action of mind, all tend to produce this character.

The second class of mind, according to the division made above, is the poetic or sentimental--that species of mind which associates by the more distant analogies and resemblances, or contrast in objects, in their effects, or in the emotions which they excite. Imagination is the essence of such a mind as this. It enables us to see resemblances and contrasts where others see none. "How many are there," says Doct. Brown, "who have seen an old oak, half leafless amid the younger trees of the forest, and who are capable of remembering it when they think of the forest itself, or of events that happened there! But it is to the mind of Lucan that it rises _by analogy_, to the conception of a veteran chief:

'Stat magni nominis umbra
Qualis frugifero quercus sublimis in agro.'"

What a scene for the enjoyment of love and friendship--what a group of delightful and beautiful images has Virgil brought together in two lines of his Eclogues!

"Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata Lycori,
Hic nemus: hic ipso tecum consumerer oevo."

Many have seen a starling in a cage, but it is a Sterne who in imagination sees a captive in his dungeon, half wasted away with long expectation and confinement. Pale and feverish, the western breeze for thirty years had not fanned his blood. He sees him sitting upon the ground in the farthest corner, on a little straw, alternately his chair and bed, with a little calendar of small sticks, and etching with a rusty nail another day of misery to add to the heap.

When this species of association is dwelt on too much the individual is characterized by a sort of sickly, morbid sentimentality, which is both highly unnatural, and very disagreeable. He is ever trying to display the effects of what Mary Woolstonecraft calls a "pumped up passion." Those writers whom Dr. Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments calls whining philosophers, possess minds of this order. They can never see happiness in one part of the world but to reflect on the misery which is experienced in another. Is our country at peace, happy and prosperous, than rejoice not at it, for there are millions of human beings suffering in China, Japan, Hindostan, and Bengal. Thompson's writings are deeply imbued with this whining philosophy, and so perhaps are Cowper's, as was to be expected from the state of his mind.

It is, however, the association by distant resemblances in objects, by analogies in effects and in emotions which furnishes the mind with perhaps the most interesting materials for social converse. Such a mind is what the world calls _brilliant_. We soon tire of it, however, if it does not occasionally relax, and give us a few of those details and minutiæ, which belong to the mind of the first order in our division. As was said of the poetry of Thomas Moore, we do not like always to feed upon the _whip syllabubs_ we soon become hungry for _bread and meat_.

Such a mind as the one I have just been describing, has rarely a very accurate or exact memory. The imagination is too active for the fidelity of the memory. Pope has well asserted, that

"Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away."

Men possessing such minds as these rarely make good historians or profound philosophers. They neither narrate with fidelity, nor can they philosophize with ability. Their imagination gilds and varnishes the knowledge they have accumulated. Events, as Boswell expresses it, _grow mellow_ in their memories.[11] But for this very reason do they become exceedingly brilliant in conversation, when they have the power of communicating their ideas well. Mr. Stewart tells as that Boswell himself was a striking exemplification of his own remark, "for his stories," says Mr. S. "which I have often listened to with delight, seldom failed to _improve_ wonderfully in such a keeping as _his_ memory afforded. They were much more amusing than even his printed anecdotes; the latter were deprived of every chance of this sort of _improvement_, by the scrupulous fidelity with which (probably from a secret distrust of the accuracy {688} of his recollection) he was accustomed to record every conversation which he thought interesting, a few hours after it took place."

[Footnote 11: "I have often experienced," says Boswell in his tour through the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson, "that scenes through which a man has past _improves by lying in the memory: they grow mellow_."]

With regard to the order of mind which we have just been considering, it may be said that although a few men may cultivate it to a much higher pitch of perfection than it is generally found to exist among women, yet taking the sexes together, it is rather a characteristic of the weaker sex, at least in as much as the associations are dependent on similarity or contrast in emotions. Women, taking the whole sex together, have undoubtedly more imagination than men, especially inrelation to what I would term the sentimental and romantic portions of our nature. They have nicer discernment and tact, more feeling, sympathy, emotion and curiosity of all descriptions, and so far as these furnish materials for association, they are superior to our sex. Now these are precisely the materials which are most interesting when properly clothed in the fascinating unaffected phraseology of a well educated lady. Moreover, although men may perhaps display more originality generally in the species of association falling under our second division, yet I apprehend for that very reason they have less variety, and, as we shall soon see, less quickness and ease in calling up their associations.

The third class of minds, according to our arrangements is the _philosophical_ mind--that which associates principally by the relation of _necessary_ contiguity in time and place, by cause and effect, premises and conclusions. This is undoubtedly the mind of the first quality, and much the rarest in the human family. Knowledge, however, which is acquired by associations of this character, is too abstruse and unintelligible to the great mass of mankind to be interesting in the social circle, and persons who have this order of mind rarely have the other two in any perfection, and consequently their conversation is not of that attractive character which pleases by its ease, grace, and variety. Individuals of this character very rarely display a good memory for mere words and details. Their knowledge is arranged under certain general principles, and when they wish to arrive at the detail, they are obliged to reason down from the principle to the fact which is arranged under it. Such a mind has rather a knowledge of general principles, than of particular facts and incidents. General abstract subjects rarely produce much impression on the mind of the mass. This is one reason why divines, who have the most grand and sublime theme to descant on, nevertheless often fail to produce much effect on their audiences. Their subject, although grand, is yet a general one. The vices against which they preach are the vices of the human race. The awful judgment of which they speak, is a judgment to come at some indefinite time hereafter. Mankind to be moved and interested must be addressed specially and personally. You must not come before them clothed in abstractions and generalizations. Look to that celebrated sermon of Massillon, pronounced by Voltaire in his article on Eloquence, in the _Encydopedie Francaise_, to be one of the most eloquent effusions of modern times, and examine particularly that portion which had so startling an effect on the audience as to make them spring simultaneously from their seats, and you will see that it was just at that moment that the eloquent divine dropped all his abstractions and generalities and applied his subject to those very persons who were listening to him. "Je m'arrête _à vous_, mes freres, qui êtes _ici_ assemblées. Je ne parle plus du reste des hommes," &c. And again, "Je suppose que c'est _ici_ votre derniere heure, et la fin de l'univers; que les cieux vont s'ouvrir sur vos têtes--Jesus Christe paraitre dans sa gloire au milieu de _ce temple_," &c.

It is useless to say that men much oftener have minds of the third class in our arrangement than women; not because there is any natural difference between the sexes in this particular, but because ours is placed in a situation requiring the cultivation of this species of mind more than the other. Our professions and occupations exert, if I may say so, a more effectual demand for the development of this order of intellect, than those of woman. Men in their passage through life, are obliged to examine into the _necessary_ connection between events; they must adapt means to ends; they must attain their purposes by well arranged plans, according to the relation of cause and effect. Woman, on the contrary, from the nature of the sphere in which she moves, and the character of the occupations in which she is engaged, is more conversant with objects than with their _necessary_ connections and relations. She is not obliged to arrange so many concatenated plans; her mind is more alive to the perception of the objects around her, and less to the _causæ rerum_. Her feelings and sympathies are most exquisite, but she attends less to their relations and dependences. She is in fine a creature of emotion rather than of philosophy.

It is for this reason that women rarely make good metaphysicians, although their feelings and sympathies are of the most exquisite character. Yet they are not in the habit of reflecting upon them--arranging them into classes, according to their necessary connections, and thence deducing the general principles and laws of the mind. Mr. Stewart says that the taste for the philosophy of the human mind is rarer among the sex, than even for pure mathematics. He seems to think that there are but two names in the whole catalogue of female authors, at all celebrated for deep metaphysical research--Miss Edgeworth and Madame de Stael; and he deems it not unfortunate for the world that the former was early diverted from such unattractive speculations, to that more brilliant career of literature which she has pursued with so unrivalled a reputation.[12]

[Footnote 12: In regard to Madame de Stael, it is proper to remark, that although certainly an able metaphysician--perhaps the very ablest that has ever appeared of her sex--yet you see throughout her writings the character of the woman. Her isolated aphorisms and maxims are most splendid; but when you come to examine any one of her productions as a whole, you see the want of system and complete connection between the parts. Her descriptions of our emotions and feelings are almost unrivalled for pathos and beauty; but when she would put together the different parts of the mind, and sketch out a heroine or a hero--a _Corinne_ or her _lover_--she presents incongruous beings such as nature never produces. Her mind, after all, was but the mind of a woman--a mind that could furnish the very best materials in the world for a philosopher to weave into his systems--a mind too susceptible of emotion to philosophize on abstract principles--a mind that relied on feeling, rather than reason, to guide it to truth. In her work on the French Revolution, though certainly very able, you see how her mind is warped by her affection for her father, (M. Necker.) You see how her conceptions of the Revolution as a whole, are biassed and prejudiced by too intense a consideration of the scenes and events transpiring immediately around her, and concerning her family. Goethe seems to think that Madame de Stael had no idea what duty meant, so completely was she a creature of feeling.]