er powers and outer conditions, and the most
extraordinary gifts are surest to destroy or prevent that adjustment.
The divine remedy is self-sacrifice, self-detachment, and the
attuning of the soul by the laws of the ideal world, the perfect
state of society.

Poor and feeble souls exact most from the world. Rich and soaring
souls have a self-sufficing modesty, which, in its own exuberance,
asks but little from others. The lark, when, at sunrise, she rises,
singing, above our sight, shows that it was not from lack of power to
climb, that she made the humble choice to build her nest in the
grass. Here lies the most elect office of woman--to attract and train
men to the sober and blissful ends of wisdom and love, and withdraw
their passions from the wretched ends of folly, on which so many
waste their lives, in ploughing the air, sowing the sea, and trying
to catch the wind with a net. The redemption of the worst men will be
effected when they make voluntary acquisition of what the best women
possess by instinct, and spontaneously exhibit; namely, that
disinterested love of goodness, which is willing to give all and ask
nothing. Happy is he, and he alone safely happy, who gives affection
to his fellows, as the sun gives light to the creation. It receives
not directly back from single objects what it gives them; but, from
the whole, all that it radiates is returned. It is so with the good
man and his race. Persons may not return the reverence and love he
lavishes, but humanity will. For what is his total feeling towards
the collective individuals that constitute his race, except the
glorified reverberation from humanity, back into his experience, of
what his own soul has sent forth?

The call of woman, in this age, then, is not to be a brawling
politician, clamoring for her share in the authorities and honors of
the world, launching jokes, sarcasms, and sneers to the right and the
left. Clearly, her genuine work, beyond the family circle, is to set
an example of modest devotion to personal improvement and the social
weal. Sir Philip Sidney describes a horseman who "stirred the bridle
so gently, that it did rather distil virtue than use violence." That
is, in some sense, a type of the proper power of woman. It is her
heavenly mission to influence by yielding, rule by obeying, conquer
by surrender, and put the crowning grace of joy and glory on her sex
by ministering to the hurts and wants of humanity. Kindled by her
exam