missed an opportunity for culture, she has been
confirmed in feminine illusions. If this happened only from time to
time, the effect would not tell so much on the mental constitution; but
it is incessant, it is continual. Men disguise their thoughts for women
as if to venture into the feminine world were as dangerous as travelling
in Arabia, or as if the thoughts themselves were criminal.

There appeared two or three years ago in _Punch_ a clever drawing which
might have served as an illustration to this subject. A fashionable
doctor was visiting a lady in Belgravia who complained that she suffered
from debility. Cod-liver oil being repugnant to her taste, the agreeable
doctor, wise in his generation, blandly suggested as an effective
substitute a mixture of cream and curacoa. What that intelligent man did
for his patient's physical constitution, all men of politeness do for
the intellectual constitution of ladies. Instead of administering the
truth which would strengthen, though unpalatable, they administer
intellectual cream and curacoa.

The primary cause of this tendency to say what is most pleasing to
women is likely to be as permanent as the distinction of sex itself. It
springs directly from sexual feelings, it is hereditary and instinctive.
Men will never talk to women with that rough frankness which they use
between themselves. Conversation between the sexes will always be
partially insincere. Still I think that the more women are respected,
the more men will desire to be approved by them for what they are in
reality, and the less they will care for approval which is obtained by
dissimulation. It may be observed already that, in the most intellectual
society of great capitals, men are considerably more outspoken before
women than they are in the provincial middle-classes. Where women have
most culture, men are most open and sincere. Indeed, the highest culture
has a direct tendency to command sincerity in others, both because it is
tolerant of variety in opinion, and because it is so penetrating that
dissimulation is felt to be of no use. By the side of an uncultivated
woman, a man feels that if he says anything different from what she has
been accustomed to she will take offence, whilst if he says anything
beyond the narrow range of her information he will make her cold and
uncomfortable. The most honest of men, in such a position, finds it
necessary to be very cautious, and can scarcely avoid a little
insin