ive
us a new existence; or if they unfold the conditions and duties
of human life, they kindle our desire for worthy ends, and teach
us how to promote them. We learn to consider ourselves not as
single and detached beings, with separate interests from others,
but as parts of that great class who are the support of society--
that is, the upright, the intelligent, and the industrious. Hence
we cease to be absorbed by one set of narrow ideas; and the least
duties are dignified by being viewed as parts of a general
system. The bulk of mankind must and ought to confine their
attention principally to their own immediate business. But if
they who belong to the higher orders, do not avail themselves of
their command of time, to enlarge their minds and acquire
knowledge, one of the great uses of an upper class will be lost."

The trite and ridiculous axiom, the common refuge of imbecility, that
women should take no interest in politics, is then sifted and exposed; it
would be as wise to say, that women should take no interest in the blood
that circulates through their bodies because they are not physicians, or
in the air they breathe because they are not chemists. The people who are
most fond of repeating this absurdity, are, it may be observed, the very
people who are most furious with women for not acquiescing at once in any
absurdity which they may think proper to promulgate as an incontrovertible
truth. Ill temper, and rash opinions, and crude notions, are always
mischievous; but it is not in politics alone that they are exhibited, and
the women most applauded for not _meddling_ with politics, (an expression
which, as our author properly observes, assumes the whole matter in
dispute,) are generally those who adhere to the most obsolete doctrines
with the greatest tenacity, and pursue those who differ with them in
opinion with the most unmitigated rancour. In short, it is not till
enquiry supersedes implicit belief, till violence gives place to
reflection, till the study of sound and useful writers takes the place of
sweeping and indiscriminate condemnation, that this aphorism is brought
forward by those who would have listened with delight to the wildest
effusions of bigotry and ignorance. But in the work before us, the author
(convincing as her reasons are) has furnished the most complete practical
refutation of this ridiculous error.

Infinitely worse, however, than any