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
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.
Having described three distinct and separate orders of mind, remarkable for different kinds of associations, and all widely differing in the possession of that information suited to social converse, I come now to compare the sexes together, in relation to the second point essential to conversation, the power of communicating our knowledge pleasantly and attractively to others. He undoubtedly is the most pleasing companion in the social circle whose mind is of that capacious, well stored kind that is capable of ranging at will through the various classes of associations just pointed out, giving you at one time connections and relations of abstract principles, or philosophical deductions—at another, of analogies between objects, effects, and emotions—and at another, interesting and circumstantial details of the common events of every day life. "Conversation," says a modern writer, "may be compared to a lyre with seven chords—philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal, and the weather. There are some professors who, like Paganini, 'can discourse most eloquent music' upon one string only, and some who can grasp the whole instrument, and with a master's hand, sound it from the top to the bottom of its compass." Such individuals as these are very rare. Perhaps Dr. Johnson,13 McIntosh and Coleridge might be cited as specimens in England, and Schlegel in Germany. Individuals of this character are very rare, because in the first place, there are very few whose minds are capable of ranging through the whole extent of knowledge; and secondly, it does by no means follow, that those possessing the information, might be able to communicate it to others with that brilliancy of diction, and judgment in the selection of matter and its quantity, which will insure complete success in the social circle.
13 Johnson's style in conversation must have been too grandiloquent and studied, to have admitted of that variety and ease so necessary to the social circle.
I will make a few promiscuous remarks on these two points. Men of deeply philosophic minds, are almost sure, from the character of their speculations, to glide imperceptibly into habits of abstraction, and to withdraw their attention from the scenes and occurrences transpiring around them, to the contemplation of that world of thought in which they dwell. Their thoughts are not the thoughts of other men; the world in which they live is not the world of others. A Newton, while wrapt in these philosophic visions, can sit for hours in the cold, half dressed, eyes fixed, unconscious of all around him; he can forget to dine; he can, in fine, forget himself, his friends, and the world in which he lives. An Adam Smith, while studying the great laws which regulate the accumulation, distribution, and consumption of wealth, can so far forget himself and the world, as to mimic with his cane, a soldier, who presents arms to him through respect, and march after him when he moves off; he can be present when toasts are drunk, and know nothing of what is passing.14 Minds of this order are almost sure to neglect associations of a lighter character. They fail to acquire that species of information which is most pleasing in conversation. And, moreover, they are apt to have what are called slow memories; they cannot call up their knowledge quick, and utter it with volubility. The process by which they hive their wisdom is slow and tedious, depending on patient thought, and persevering reflection. Such a mind has been compared, in the social circle, to a ship of the line run a ground in a creek. It is too massive and ponderous for the element and space in which it floats. It is said that Newton was rather slow and dull in conversation even upon philosophical subjects. Many an individual in Europe, of far inferior genius, was more brilliant in conversation than himself, even upon his own discoveries. Descartes, whose mind was of the first order, was silent in mixed company. It was said that he received his intellectual wealth from nature in solid bars, not in current coin.15 Men like these are better pleased with the contemplation of the solid wealth in their possession, than with the means of making it glitter and attract the gaze of the world. They value ideas more than words—knowledge more than the media of communication. They think it better, as Spurzheim on Education says, to have two ideas with one mode of expressing them, than one idea with two modes of expression. Such men as these then are apt, unless stimulated by very peculiar circumstances, to be deficient, first, in that variety requisite for agreeable conversation, and secondly, in the style and power of communicating their ideas to others.
14 It is said that Dr. Smith was one day present, when the toast to "absent friends" was drank by the company. A friend who sat by the Doctor, told him that he had just been toasted, whereupon he thanked the company for the honor, and apologised for his absence of mind, very much of course to the amusement of his friends so well aware of his habits of abstraction.