ut we may be permitted to repeat that the scream
proves, not that he knows nothing of woman, but that woman knows nothing
of herself.

We are afraid, however, that all this feminine resentment points to a
radical defect in the mind of woman, which she is alternately proud to
acknowledge and resolute to deny. Frenchmen of the Thiers sort have a
trick to which they give the amusing name of logic; they present their
reader with a couple of alternatives which they assert divide the
universe, and bid you choose "of these two one." But any ordinary woman
presents to the observer a hundred distinct alternatives, and defies him
to choose any one in particular. There is no special reason, then, for
astonishment at the coolness with which she sets herself up one moment
as a "deductive creature," as one who attains the highest flights of
knowledge by intuition rather than by reason, and the next poses herself
as the one specially rational being in her household, and waits
patiently till her husband is reasonable too.

We are sometimes afraid that neither one nor the other of these theories
will hold water, and feel inclined to agree with one of the most
brilliant of her sex that, if woman loves with her head, she thinks with
her heart. As a rule, certainly, she judges through her affections. She
does not praise nor blame; she loves or hates. The one thing she cannot
understand is a purely intellectual criticism, the sort of morbid
anatomy of the mind which treats its subject as a mere dead thing simply
useful for demonstration. Very naturally, she attributes the same spirit
of affectional intelligence to her critics as to herself; and when they
unravel a few of her inconsistencies, amuse themselves with a few
follies, or even venture to point out a few faults, she brands them as
"hating" or "despising" woman. Point, too, is given to the charge by the
fact that these affections through which she lives are from their very
nature incapable of dealing with qualities, and naturally transform them
into persons. A woman does not love her lover's courage or truth or
honor; she loves her lover. If she prizes his qualities at all it is
simply because they are inherent in him, and so she gives herself very
little trouble to distinguish between his bad qualities and his good
ones. She considers herself bound to defend his characteristics in the
mass, and if she seem to give up his extravagance or his rakishness, it
is only with a secret dete