第29章 CHAPTER 3(4)

Is it reasonable to think that those who are fit for the greater functionsof politics, are incapable of qualifying themselves for the less? Is thereany reason in the nature of things, that the wives and sisters of princesshould, whenever called on, be found as competent as the princes themselvesto their business, but that the wives and sisters of statesmen, and administrators,and directors of companies, and managers of public institutions, should beunable to do what is done by their brothers and husbands? The real reasonis plain enough; it is that princesses, being more raised above the generalityof men by their rank than placed below them by their sex, have never beentaught that it was improper for them to concern themselves with politics;but have been allowed to feel the liberal interest natural to any cultivatedhuman being, in the great transactions which took place around them, andin which they might be called on to take a part. The ladies of reigning familiesare the only women who are allowed the same range of interests and freedomof development as men; and it is precisely in their case that there is notfound to be any inferiority. Exactly where and in proportion as women's capacitiesfor government have been tried, in that proportion have they been found adequate.

This fact is in accordance with the best general conclusions which theworld's imperfect experience seems as yet to suggest, concerning the peculiartendencies and aptitudes characteristic of women, as women have hithertobeen. I do not say, as they will continue to be; for, as I have already saidmore than once, I consider it presumption in anyone to pretend to decidewhat women are or are not, can or cannot be, by natural constitution. Theyhave always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development,in so unnatural a state, that their nature cannot but have been greatly distortedand disguised; and no one can safely pronounce that if women's nature wereleft to choose its direction as freely as men's, and if no artificial bentwere attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions ofhuman society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any materialdifference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacitieswhich would unfold themselves. I shall presently show, that even the leastcontestable of the differences which now exist, are such as may very wellhave been produced merely by circumstances, without any difference of naturalcapacity. But, looking at women as they are known in experience, it may besaid of them, with more truth than belongs to most other generalisationson the subject, that the general bent of their talents is towards the practical.

This statement is conformable to all the public history of women, in thepresent and the past. It is no less borne out by common and daily experience.

Let us consider the special nature of the mental capacities most characteristicof a woman of talent. They are all of a kind which fits them for practice,and makes them tend towards it. What is meant by a woman's capacity of intuitiveperception? It means, a rapid and correct insight into present fact. It hasnothing to do with general principles. Nobody ever perceived a scientificlaw of nature by intuition, nor arrived at a general rule of duty or prudenceby it. These are results of slow and careful collection and comparison ofexperience; and neither the men nor the women. Of intuition usually shinein this department, unless, indeed, the experience necessary is such as theycan acquire by themselves. For what is called their intuitive sagacity makesthem peculiarly apt in gathering such general truths as can be collectedfrom their individual means of observation. When, consequently, they chanceto be as well provided as men are with the results of other people's experience,by reading and education (I use the word chance advisedly, for, in respectto the knowledge that tends to fit them for the greater concerns of life,the only educated women are the self-educated) they are better furnishedthan men in general with the essential requisites of skilful and successfulpractice. Men who have been much taught, are apt to be deficient in the senseof present fact; they do not see, in the facts which they are called uponto deal with, what is really there, but what they have been taught to expect.

This is seldom the case with women of any ability. Their capacity of "intuition"preserves them from it. With equality of experience and of general faculties,a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.

Now this sensibility to the present, is the main quality on which the capacityfor practice, as distinguished from theory, depends. To discover generalprinciples, belongs to the speculative faculty: to discern and discriminatethe particular cases in which they are and are not applicable, constitutespractical talent: and for this, women as they now are have a peculiar aptitude.

I admit that there can be no good practice without principles, and that thepredominant place which quickness of observation holds among a woman's faculties,makes her particularly apt to build overhasty generalisations upon her ownobservation; though at the same time no less ready in rectifying those generalisations,as her observation takes a wider range. But the corrective to this defect,is access to the experience of the human race; general knowledge -- exactlythe thing which education can best supply. A woman's mistakes are specificallythose of a clever self-educated man, who often sees what men trained in routinedo not see, but falls into errors for want of knowing things which have longbeen known. Of course he has acquired much of the pre-existing knowledge,or he could not have got on at all; but what he knows of it he has pickedup in fragments and at random, as women do.