CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.

PORTIA.

We hear it asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that
intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are
common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it
appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of
woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical
organization;--it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That
certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or
intellectual energy, does not contradict the general principle founded
in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this:
in men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and
self-directed--more independent of the rest of the character, than we
ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a
much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.

In thinking over all the distinguished women can at this moment call to
mind, I recollect but one, who, in the exercise of a rare talent, belied
her sex, but the moral qualities had been first perverted.[5] It is from
not knowing, or not allowing this general principle, that men of genius
have committed some signal mistakes. They have given us exquisite and
just delineations of the more peculiar characteristics of women, as
modesty, grace, tenderness; and when they have attempted to portray them
with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy, intellect, they
have blundered in some respect; they could form no conception of
intellect which was not masculine, and therefore have either suppressed
the feminine attributes altogether and drawn coarse caricatures, or they
have made them completely artificial.[6] Women distinguished for wit may
sometimes appear masculine and flippant, but the cause must be sought
elsewhere than in nature, who disclaims all such. Hence the witty and
intellectual ladies of our comedies and novels are all in the fashion of
some particular time; they are like some old portraits which can still
amuse and please by the beauty of the workmanship, in spite of the
graceless costume or grotesque accompaniments, but from which we turn to
worship with ever new delight the Floras and goddesses of Titian--the
saints and the virgins of Raffaelle and Domenichino. So the Millamants
and Belindas, the Lady Townleys and Lady Teazles are out of date, while
Portia and Rosalind, in whom nature and th