and warmth, but know not that ether, that
light, that warmth, whence theirs flows out to them. Central, potent,
commanding, superior to laws which alternately move and still their
currents--nay, being in themselves those very laws--this hidden power is
never touched by them, is shared by them only in fixed measure, beyond
which drafts upon it are protested as inexorably as turn the wheels of
fate in producing a midge or a mastodon.

The greater includes the less, said the first Mathematician. It is no
more true of the geometer's space and the philosopher's matter than of
the physiologist's functional power. Apply the axiom to the functional
quantity of the feminine and masculine, and it will be seen which
includes which, and why man, in all the pride of his highest
achievements, is obliged to confess himself defeated, when, as an
investigator, he addresses himself to the solution of the problem of
womanhood. Her individualizing attributes make in her life a kingdom of
her own. Possessing every function and power which man possesses, either
in identity or equivalent--the faculties, capacities, and functions
common to both differing only comparatively in each from their degree in
the other, the masculine being confessedly the lighter side of the
balance, when the higher and finer attributes are in the scale--woman
has above them all her own unique life, which man can learn only as a
student and spectator, the depths of which all his penetration does not
enable him to explore, the secrets of which his consciousness can never
report. From and through the powers and attributes which centre herein,
come those experiences, perceptions--those faiths, hopes, trusts,
yearnings, aspirations, loves, which ray out to man that purer and
divine light without which he soon stumbles and falls--that warmth
without which his life becomes a wintry waste--that harmony without
which he is an instrument played at will by the cunning fiend of discord
and selfishness--that purity without whose sweet, cleansing current
flowing over and around him he is soon mired in the sloughs of appetite,
or swamped in the unclean sinks of sensualism--that steadfast holding to
things above, without which he soon drops down to grovel along the
earth--that unwavering faith and that utter trust in good which keeps
alive and warm in the heart of humanity its noblest ideals.

Thus the Cross of the feminine life embodies the idea of the revolution
in its favor: rev