licated bodies. It is possible that if his mind had
not been exercised at the time about the adulteration of the royal
crown, it would not have been led to anything by the overflowing of his
bath; but the capacity to receive a suggestion of that kind is, I
believe, a capacity exclusively masculine. A woman would have noticed
the overflowing, but she would have noticed it only as a cause of
disorder or inconvenience.

This absence of the investigating and discovering tendencies in women is
confirmed by the extreme rarity of inventions due to women, even in the
things which most interest and concern them. The stocking-loom and the
sewing-machine are the two inventions which would most naturally have
been hit upon by women, for people are naturally inventive about things
which relieve _themselves_ of labor, or which increase their own
possibilities of production; and yet the stocking-loom and the
sewing-machine are both of them masculine ideas, carried out to
practical efficiency by masculine energy and perseverance. So I believe
that all the improvements in pianos are due to men, though women have
used pianos much more than men have used them.

This, then, is in my view the most important negative characteristic of
women, that they do not push forwards intellectually by their own force.
There have been a few instances in which they have written with power
and originality, have become learned, and greatly superior, no doubt, to
the majority of men. There are three or four women in England, and as
many on the Continent, who have lived intellectually in harness for many
years, and who unaffectedly delight in strenuous intellectual labor,
giving evidence both of fine natural powers and the most persevering
culture; but these women have usually been encouraged in their work by
some near masculine influence. And even if it were possible, which it is
not, to point to some female Archimedes or Leonardo da Vinci, it is not
the rare exceptions which concern us, but the prevalent rule of Nature.
Without desiring to compare our most learned ladies with anything so
disagreeable to the eye as a bearded woman, I may observe that Nature
generally has a few exceptions to all her rules, and that as women
having beards are a physical exception, so women who naturally study and
investigate are intellectual exceptions. Once more let me repudiate any
malicious intention in establishing so unfortunate and _maladroite_ an
association of ideas,