fronts her nakedly, she resents. For a woman is not so. There exists no
such gap in her between her heart and brain, between her outer and inner
life. And the consequence shows itself in many ways. She is less efficient
in the world and is never a creator or impresser of new ideas; but, on the
other hand, her character possesses a certain unity that is the wonder of
all men who observe. She calls the man selfish and is bitter against him
at times, but her accusation is wrong. It is not selfishness which leads a
man if needs be to cut off his own personal desires while sacrificing
another; it is the power in him which impels the world into new courses. A
man's virtues are aggressive and turned toward outer conquest and may have
little relation to his own heart. But a woman's virtues are bound up with
every impulse of her personal being; they work out in her a loveliness and
unity of character which make the man appear beside her coarse and
unmoral. Men of vicious private life have more than once been benefactors
of the human race; I think that never happened in the case of a woman.

And because of this harmony, this unconsciousness in woman's virtue, a
man's love of woman takes on a form of idealisation which a woman never
understands and indeed often resents. What in him is something removed
from himself, something which he analyses and governs and manipulates, is
in the woman beloved an integral part of her character. Virtue seems in
her to become personified and he calls her by strange names. For this
reason men who make language tend always to give to abstract qualities the
feminine gender, as you must have observed in Latin and might observe in a
score of other tongues. For this reason, too, a man's love of woman
assumes such form of worship as Dante paid to Beatrice or Petrarch to
Laura. It would be grotesque for a woman to love in this way, for virtue
is not a man's character, but a faculty of his character. And so is it
strange that I should approach you asking for love that my soul may have
peace? It cannot enter into my comprehension that such a cry should come
from you to me. All that I strive to accomplish in the world, all that I
gird myself to battle for, the ideals that I would lay down my life that
men may behold and cherish,--is it not now all gathered up in the beauty
and serenity of your own person? What I labour to express in words is
already yours in inner possession. If I ask you for peace, it is not