lic benefaction of his race? The chivalric transference of
authority from man to woman is a striking instance of the propensity
of human nature to oscillate from one extreme to the other.

Some of the champions of the "rights of women," in our day,
apparently commit the error of inverting the real desideratum, which
is, to make men renounce and love like the finest women--not to make
women exact and fight like the coarsest men. They act as if they
thought men were both better and better off than women, and were to
be taken as models by them. But our hope lies in the saint, not in
the amazon. Woman, as seen in the Mary who sat at the feet of Christ,
brings a heavenly ministration to rescue man from every thing
discordant: woman, as seen in the Penthesilea who fought Achilles,
offers man but a perverted reflection of himself.

The common belief, that human life began in a paradisal state, is a
sentimental and mischievous error. The cradles of civilization are
full of murder. First, for a period of unknown duration, raged the
strife for precedence in physical power and its grossest symbols. In
civilized nations, this strife is now, for the most part, reduced to
boys and pugilists, who are always eager to try each other's
strength, and to crow above a thrown antagonist. Next came the strife
for precedence in social power, and its finer symbols of rank,
wealth, position, and fame. This strife may be traced in every record
of the past and present; is far more extensive, seductive, and
tenacious than the former; and has been left behind, as yet, only by
the saintliest exemplars of our race. The third period, the ideal
period which we now await, is one in which there shall be no strife
among mankind for comparative superiority over each other; but, in
place of it, a universal co-operating struggle for intrinsic personal
worth, a constant advancement in gaining the real prizes of being.
Then the wretched experiences of hate and jealousy, with their
thousandfold sins and pains, will rapidly lessen. There will be no
motives for envy and opposition, since the aims of men will be alike;
and the gain of each, so far from being a loss to the rest, will be a
gain to all. Let there be no strife for precedence, and all society
must be the wiser, purer, and happier for every spiritual gain made
by any member of it. Ambitious rivalry is wretchedness, and sure to
end in sickening disappointment. Disinterested aspiration, equally to
women