nd a lovingness ever
ready to pour itself forth upon any or all human beings who were
capable of giving the smallest feelings in return. The rest of her
moral characteristics were such as naturally accompany these
qualities of mind and heart: the most genuine modesty combined with
the loftiest pride; a simplicity and sincerity which were absolute
towards all who were fit to receive them; the utmost scorn for
whatever was mean and cowardly, and a burning indignation at
everything brutal or tyrannical, faithless or dishonorable in
conduct and character, while making the broadest distinction between
"mala in se" and mere "mala prohibita"--between acts giving evidence
of intrinsic badness in feeling and character, and those which are
only violations of conventions either good or bad, violations which
whether in themselves right or wrong are capable of being committed
by persons in every other respect lovable and admirable.

To be admitted into any degree of mental intercourse with a being of
these qualities could not but have a most beneficial influence on my
development; though the effect was only gradual, and several years
elapsed before her mental progress and mine went forward in the
complete companionship they at last attained. The benefit I received
was far greater than any which I could hope to give; though to her,
who had at first reached her opinions by the moral intuition of a
character of strong feeling, there was doubtless help as well as
encouragement to be derived from one who had arrived at many of the
same results by study and reasoning: and in the rapidity of her
intellectual growth, her mental activity, which converted everything
into knowledge, doubtless drew from me, as it did from other
sources, many of its materials. What I owe, even intellectually, to
her is, in its detail, almost infinite; of its general character a
few words will give some, though a very imperfect, idea.

With those who, like the best and wisest of mankind, are
dissatisfied with human life as it is, and whose feelings are wholly
identified with its radical amendment, there are two main regions of
thought. One is the region of ultimate aims--the constituent
elements of the highest realizable ideal of human life.

The other is that of the immediately useful and practically
attainable. In bot