according to sex,
age, race, temperament, training, and so on; and we get but a narrow view
of life when we limit our theories to one set of distinctions.

As a matter of social philosophy, this train of thought logically leads to
coeducation, impartial suffrage, and free cooperation in all the affairs of
life. As a matter of individual duty, it teaches the old moral to "act well
your part." No wise person will ever trouble himself or herself much about
the limitations of sex in intellectual labor. Rosa Bonheur was not trying
to work like a woman, or like a man, or unlike either, but to do her work
thoroughly and well. He or she who works in this spirit works nobly,
and gives an example which will pass beyond the bounds of sex, and help
all. The Abbe Liszt, the most gifted of modern pianists, told a friend of
mine, his pupil, that he had learned more of music from hearing Madame
Malibran sing, than from anything else whatever.

ANGELIC SUPERIORITY

It is better not to base any plea for woman on the ground of her angelic
superiority. The argument proves too much. If she is already so perfect,
there is every inducement to let well alone. It suggests the expediency of
conforming man's condition to hers, instead of conforming hers to man's. If
she is a winged creature, and man can only crawl, it is his condition that
needs mending.

Besides, one may well be a little incredulous of these vast claims.
Granting some average advantage to woman, it is not of such completeness as
to base much argument upon it. The minister, looking on his congregation,
rarely sees an unmixed angel, either at the head or at the foot of any pew.
The domestic servant rarely has the felicity of waiting on an absolute
saint at either end of the dinner-table. The lady's-maid has to compare her
little observations of human infirmity with those of the valet de chambre.
The lover worships the beloved, whether man or woman; but marriage bears
rather hard on the ideal in either case; and those who pray out of the same
book, "Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners," are not supposed to be
offering up petitions for each other only.

We all know many women whose lives are made wretched by the sins and
follies of their husbands. There are also many men whose lives are turned
to long wretchedness by the selfishness, the worldliness, or the bad temper
of their wives. Domestic tyranny belongs to neither sex by monopoly. If man
tortures or depresses woma