hed and specially identified. Over and above
the general influence which her mind had over mine, the most
valuable ideas and features in these joint productions (those which
have been most fruitful of important results, and which have
contributed most to the success and reputation of the works
themselves) originated with her, were emanations from her mind, my
part of them being no greater than in any of the thoughts which I
found in previous writings, and made my own only by incorporating
them with my own system of Thought. During the greater part of my
literary life I have performed the office in relation to her, which
from a rather early period I had considered as the most useful part
that I was qualified to take in the domain of thought: that of an
interpreter of original thinkers, and mediator between them and the
public.

* * * * *

Thus prepared, it will easily be believed that when I came into
close intellectual communion with a person of the most eminent
faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in thought,
continually struck out truths far in advance of me, but in which I
could not, as I had done in those others, detect any mixture of
error, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted in the
assimilation of those truths, and the most valuable part of my
intellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the paths
which connected them with my general system of thought.

The steps in my mental growth for which I was indebted to her were
far from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the subject
would probably suspect. It might be supposed, for instance, that my
strong convictions on the complete equality in all legal, political
social and domestic relations, which ought to exist between men and
women, may have been adopted or learned from her. This was so far
from being the fact that those convictions were among the earliest
results of the application of my mind to political subjects, and the
strength with which I held them was, as I believe, more than
anything else, the originating cause of the interest she felt in me.
What is true is, that, until I knew her, the opinion was in my mind,
little more than an abstract principle. I saw no more reason why
women should be held in legal subjection to other pe