“Those writers who never go further into a subject than is compatible with making what they say indisputably clear to man, woman, and child, may be the lights of this age, but they will not be the lights of another.”
“It is not always necessary that truth should take a bodily form,—a material palpable form. It is sometimes better that it should dwell around us spiritually, creating harmony,—sounding through the air like the solemn sweet tone of a bell.”
57.
Women are inclined to fall in love with priests and physicians, because of the help and comfort they derive from both in perilous moral and physical maladies. They believe in the presence of real pity, real sympathy, where the tone and look of each have become merely habitual and conventional,—I may say professional. On the other hand, women are inclined to fall in love with criminal and miserable men out of the pity which in our sex is akin to love, and out of the power of bestowing comfort or love. “Car les femmes out un instinct céleste pour le malheur.” So, in the first instance, they love from gratitude or faith; in the last, from compassion or hope.
58.
“Men of all countries,” says Sir James Mackintosh, “appear to be more alike in their best qualities than the pride of civilisation would be willing to allow.”
And in their worst. The distinction between savage and civilised humanity lies not in the qualities, but the habits.