In this connection I must mention Shelley, who, like all men of
genius, shared the feminine development, and, unlike many, knew it.
His life was one of the first pulse-beats in the present
reform-growth. He, too, abhorred blood and heat, and, by his system
and his song, tended to reinstate a plant-like gentleness in the
development of energy. In harmony with this, his ideas of marriage
were lofty, and, of course, no less so of Woman, her nature, and
destiny.
For Woman, if, by a sympathy as to outward condition, she is led to
aid the enfranchisement of the slave, must be no less so, by inward
tendency, to favor measures which promise to bring the world more
thoroughly and deeply into harmony with her nature. When the lamb
takes place of the lion as the emblem of nations, both women and men
will be as children of one spirit, perpetual learners of the word and
doers thereof, not hearers only.
A writer in the New York Pathfinder, in two articles headed
"Femality," has uttered a still more pregnant word than any we have
named. He views Woman truly from the soul, and not from society, and
the depth and leading of his thoughts are proportionably remarkable.
He views the feminine nature as a harmonizer of the vehement elements,
and this has often been hinted elsewhere; but what he expresses most
forcibly is the lyrical, the inspiring and inspired apprehensiveness
of her being.
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