something of the childish temperament; the texture of her organs does not lose all of its original softness. The development which age effects in all portions of the body never gives to them the same degree of density that they acquire in man; however, in proportion as the womanly qualities become fixed, differences are noted in her figure and proportions, of which some did not previously exist, while others were not appreciable. Although she starts from the same point as man, she develops in a manner peculiar to herself, and reaches earlier the last stage of her development. Everywhere puberty is relatively earlier than in man; has Nature more to accomplish in the one than in the other? Does the perfection of man cost more than that of woman? However this may be, man is still evidently in his childhood, and subject to the laws which govern that age, while woman already experiences a new kind of life, and finds herself, perhaps with astonishment, provided with new attributes, and subject to a new order of functions, foreign to man, and hitherto foreign to herself. From this moment there is discovered in her a new chain of physical and moral relations, which constitutes for man the principal of that new interest which shall soon attract him toward the woman, and which has already become for her a source of new needs and functions.
Man has a far less exquisite tenderness for his off-spring than woman. There is little else than moral sympathy which attaches the father to the infant. Paternal love does not exist save as a thing of growth, of education. The sense of proprietorship, a sort of manly pride is about the extent of a father's feeling toward his infant during the first days or weeks of its life. Not so with the mother; she loves her child as the fruit of her womb, as the purest of her blood, as her own life — a thing easily understood.
