20
IDEALS.
women are not so uniformly prosperous as to be independent of comfort and consolation—men have no monopoly of working, nor women of weeping. The sort of distinction it is attempted to establish, though not without an element of truth when rightly understood, is for the most part artificial, plausible in appearance, but breaking down under the test of experience. When overstrained, and made the foundation of a divided moral code, it is misleading in proportion to its attractiveness.
Happily this theory, though deeply and widely and most subtilely influential, is not completely dominant. People who go to church, and who read their Bibles, are perpetually reminded of one type and
