ne
purpose to reach and _take_ her place, to touch and accomplish her work.

What are the qualities of this new soldier in the field of human
struggle? Whence comes and whither goes she?

These inquiries point us to the ideas of the Woman Revolution--its
Movements will be deductions from them.

Man knows neither woman nor her whence or whither. He acknowledges her a
Mystery from his earliest acquaintance with her to the present day.
Whatever his conquests over the hidden and the mysterious elsewhere in
nature, here is a mystery that confronts him whenever he turns
hither--nay, that grows by his attempts at mastering it. The permanently
mysterious is only that which exceeds us, and we study this but to learn
how widely its embracing horizon can spread as we advance. Thus the
woman of the nineteenth century is an incomparably greater mystery to
man than was her sister of the ninth. Scientific conquests do but touch
the periphery of her being; they explore her nature so far as it is of
common quality and powers with the nature of man and of the feminine
animals, and would perhaps do more wisely if they stopped dumb before
what lies beyond and above these levels. For beyond, man reads but to
misread--studies but to vex and confuse himself, and--shall I say
it?--learns to sneer at rather than to reverence what baffles his
inquiries. Does this statement seem harsh? Is it doubted? See its truth.
The only science (so called) which undertakes a study of woman does not
inspire its student with an increased respect for her. As a class,
medical men, above that of other men, are perhaps less chivalrous than
blacksmiths. Lucky is she and lucky are they if it be not diminished
instead. For, assuming man as the standard, the corporeal functions,
which absolutely elevate her in the scale of development, being added to
all that he possesses, and constituting her corporeal womanhood, are
seen by this student only as disabilities from which he is happily
exempt (as if a disability could come into any life but through the door
of an ability); and her larger measure of the divine attributes, faith,
hope, and love--love, as compassion and as maternity--are seen as simple
weaknesses to which he is happily superior.

The greatness of man's individuality lies in his power over the
external; that of woman's is interior, central, as the sun to our
planets, which roll through common fields of space, breathe a common
ether, share a common light