The Influence of Women.

New Zealand Mail, 22 April 1887, Page 5

The Influence of W omen.

National Review. As things have hitherto been in the world, men have been the fighters in the open and women the healers in the tent's. To men has been apportioned the rough, rnde, hardening work, to women the softening and

refining care of details ; to men command, to women influence. To men has been given, by nature and sex, heroic qualities and the larger crimes and vices ; to women gentle virtues and smaller faults, and the restraining influence which comes by the very fact of their innocence, their goodness, their purity, their unselfishness. Just as a society is demoralised where women claim the permitted license of men, just as it is hardened and coarsened where women exercise the functions of men, or have even their special virtues in excess of their own, so is it purified and refined by their sweetness, their devotion, their charm—in a word, by their feminineness, working in its assigned sphere. But that sphere is not one of direct command over men, nor of acknowledged leadership in* public affairs. It is one of wholesome restraint and accepted influence in society and the home, where the recognised virtues of women are most wanted and ac; with best effect. As masters in the great matters of national polity and conduct these same virtues would be, and are, as disastrous as cowardice, tender-heartedness or delicacy on a field of battle and in the hospital tent ; and he loves best the truth of life and the right ordering of affairs who opposes most strenuously their intrusion where they would be harmful and not beneficial. Take, for instauce, the two essentially feminine qualities of pity and delicacy. Excellent as restraining influences, n 3 governing powers they would be, and are, simply destructive of all true manhood. The one mitigates the severity of pure justice, i?he other removes ugliness when it can, softens it when it cannot, and beautifies essential poverty with adventitious ornamentation. But where should we be if this pity, this delicacy, had the upper hand, and the nervous fears and refinements of women depressed the energies of men to a level with their own and abolished all the rude and unsightly activities ? Rough and cruel and ghastly things must be done in the world, and pity for the individual must not be suffered to interfere with the general good—for the most part brought about by the sacrifice of the individual. Else must we go back to root-eating and substantial barbarism. But the individualising faculty of women comes in to soften what cannot be prevented, and their pity restrains unnecessary excess of necessary suffering. Thus each faculty acts as that well-worn drag without which things would go too fast, bu'. with which, in exaggeration, things do not go at all. For example, rabie3 may be prevalent, but the largest proportion of the women with favorite lap-dogs are more indignant because of the discomlort of their own muzzled pets than able to appreciate the usefulness of the general law. If polled today, that largest proportion would vote for the abolition of the muzzle, no matter what the results to the community at large, glad to secure the freedom of their own at the expense of a principle. And what is true of lap-dogs is true of all the rest. When these two qualities—this pity, this delicacy, born of the power of individualisation possessed by women—are lost by their own hardness and coarseness, or are suffered to be unduly predominant, the work of the world fares badly. Should we ever see either this loss or this predominance—and we shall have one or the other if the future supremacy of women he established society will have cause to regret the time when men were the authoritative leaders of life, the sole fighters and the sole law-givers, the heroes and the scavengers ; and women lived in the shadow, as Marys or as Marthas, supplementing the shortcomings of the stronger sex by their own completing qualities. In the civilisation which was the well-spring of our own, not all the women of immortal name were women of highest repute. Those who were specially beautiful like Andromache, Penelope, Nausicaa, were women who fulfilled in the home life the ideal qualities of their sex in devotion, constancy, simplicity. Those who broke the bounds, like Helen, or came to the front with abnormal gifts, like Cassandra, or were even, like Aspasia, supreme in loveliness and intellectual graces, were disastrous to others or to themselves; or their supremacy was, at the best, more beautiful .than worthy of imitation. And the publicity that did not foster the best virtues of womanhood then does not foster them now. There is a sex both in morality and good taste, as there ia in intellect and physique ; and circumstance is to character what soil is to a plant. That strong black peat-moss in which certain hardy growths flourish, would kill others which thrive abundantly iu light aud sandy ground ; just as robins, and linnets, and skylarks, and nightingales want different treatmenfc from that which suits kites and eagles. Women have the key of the position they ought to fill in the greater reticence, the the more sensitive modesty, which, it must be confessed, was once more universally regarded as part of their moral equipment than it is now. No man of ordinary good feeling—there are alwaya brutes to prove the rule ly exception —would hurt the purity of a modest wife by ribald talk or obscene suggestions. A son would not retail the story of his youthful immoralities to the mother he truly honored, though he would confide in his father, seeking advice and assistance from the experience and sympathy of sex. Each would feel and respect the barrier raised by the woman’s native delicacy, though each would know that these things, which were not to be taught nor told, made part of the inherent conditions of human lif o