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.
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.
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 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.