old aloof from all
that interests and moves the wife, as is the case in countries where the
one sex may be seen professing to believe in nothing, while the other as
implicitly believes in everything. It is, however, easy to conceive of
cases in which this feminine influence that seems so innocent, is in
reality injurious. It may perhaps be the business of the husband to take
a public part in the affairs of his time. Conscience tells him that he
should be sincere, uncompromising, logical, even to the point of
disputing conclusions which good and pious people consider essential
and important. Or he may be a religious preacher, or a religious
reformer of his day, bound, in virtue of character, to maintain truth at
the risk of being unpopular; or, it may be, to prosecute inquiries and
reforms at the risk of shocking weaker brethren.

There are many who could tell us from their experience how terribly at
such a time they have been perplexed and hampered in their duty by the
affectionate ignorance, the tears, and the piety of women. Protestant
clergymen in particular are sometimes taunted with their conservative
tendencies, their indifference to the new lights of science, or of
history, and their disinclination to embark on perilous voyages in quest
of truth. Part of their conservatism arises from the fact that their
practical business is generally to teach what they do know, rather than
to inquire into what they do not know. Part of it comes, as we suspect,
from the fact that they are married. A wife is a sort of theological
drag. It serves no doubt to keep some of us from rolling too rapidly
down hill. It impedes equally the progress of others over ordinarily
level ground.

The importance of a social position to women is a thing which affects
their influence upon men no less materially than does their religious
sensibility. As a rule, they have no other means of measuring the
consideration in which they are held by the world, or the success in
life of those to whose fortunes they are linked, than by using a trivial
and worthless social standard. Men, whose training is wider, estimate
both their male and their female friends pretty fairly according to
their merits. But the majority of women, from their youth up, seldom
think of anybody without contrasting his or her social status with their
own. Success signifies to them introduction to this or that feminine
circle, admission to friendships from which they have been as yet