The True Woman | Page 5

loved. Neglect what
else you choose, you must not neglect that. It is the spiritual part of
man,--the God-given characteristic which longs for sympathy. Men feel
that this want has been met when they say, "Such a one understands me,
knows me, sees me, is in sympathy with me." Such moments are to all
of priceless value. Whoever meets this want is a boon from God. No
matter what the complexion, nor how the features seem: soul meets
soul. The heart feels a new life. The union is formed. _Call it affinity,
or what you will_, they love in one another the future good which they
aid one another to unfold. This includes home sympathies and
household wisdom. Such fellowship makes of home a joy, and of toil a
delight. When first the joy is reached, a foretaste of heaven is enjoyed.
"For it is the one rift of heaven which makes all heaven appear possible;
the ecstasy of hope and faith, out of which grows the love which is our
strongest mortal instinct and intimation of immortality."
Women are as conscious of this feeling as are men. There are times
when women meet their counterpart. The nature they long for and seek
after with unutterable longing, is before them. Finding it, they
recognize their lord, under whose protection they take shelter, and to
whose rule they submit, because of love which masters and controls
them. The heart cries out for a person--not for things. Spirit desires
spirit; soul yearns for soul. It is the genius of woman to be electrical in
movement, intuitive in penetration, and spiritual in tendency. She
excels not so easily in classification or recreation as in an instinctive
seizure of causes, and a simple breathing out of what she receives, that
has the singleness of life, rather than the selecting and energizing of art.
More native is it to her to be the living model of the artist, than to set
apart from herself any one form in objective reality. More native to
inspire and receive the poem than to create it. In so far as soul is in her
completely developed, all soul is the same; but in so far as it is
modified in her as woman, it flows, it breathes, it sings, rather than

deposits soil, or furnishes work; and that which is especially feminine,
flushes in blossom the face of the earth, and pervades, like air and
water, all this seeming solid globe, daily renewing and purifying its life.
Such is the especial feminine element which man desires as a helper,
and which is suited to him, and which compels him to exclaim, "O, my
God, give it to me for mine!"
It is said, "A woman will sometimes idealize a very inferior man, until
her love for him exalts him into something better than he originally was,
and her into little short of an angel; but a man almost invariably drops
to the level of the woman he is in love with. He cannot raise her; but
she can almost unlimitedly deteriorate him." This was true of Adam.
Eve, sinning, brought him to her level. Why this should be, Heaven
knows; but so it constantly is. We have but to look around us, with
ordinary observation, in order to see that a man's destiny, more than
even a woman's, depends far less upon the good or ill fortune of his
wooing than upon the sort of woman with whom he falls in love.
Before a man loves, he is under obligations to himself, to his future,
and to the world, to ask himself, Is this woman suited to me? Will she
help me to fulfil my mission? Does she supply my want? Can I
recognize her as God's gift to me? If Yes, then he is right in loving; for
"He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares
not put it to the touch, And win or lose it all."
A woman, writing of woman, has truly said, "There are but two ways
open to any woman. If she loves a man, and he does not love her, to
give him up may be a horrible pang and loss; but it cannot be termed a
sacrifice: she resigns what she never had. But if he does love her, and
she knows it, and if she loves him, she has a right, in spite of the whole
world, to hold to him till death do them part. She is bound to marry him,
though twenty other women loved him, and broke their hearts in loving
him. He is not theirs, but hers; and to have her for his wife is his right
and her duty." "And in this world are so many contradictory views of
duty