There are philogynists as fanatical as any "misogynists" who, reversing
our antiquated notions, bid the man look upon the woman as the higher
type of humanity; who ask us to regard the female intellect as the
clearer and the quicker, if not the stronger; who desire us to look up
to the feminine moral sense as the purer and the nobler; and bid man
abdicate his usurped sovereignty over Nature in favour of the female
line. On the other hand, there are persons not to be outdone in all
loyalty and just respect for woman-kind, but by nature hard of head and
haters of delusion, however charming, who not only repudiate the new
woman-worship which so many sentimentalists and some philosophers are
desirous of setting up, but, carrying their audacity further, deny even
the natural equality of the sexes. They assert, on the contrary, that in
every excellent character, whether mental or physical, the average woman
is inferior to the average man, in the sense of having that character
less in quantity, and lower in quality. Tell these persons of the rapid
perceptions and the instinctive intellectual insight of women, and they
reply that the feminine mental peculiarities, which pass under these
names, are merely the outcome of a greater impressibility to the
superficial aspects of things, and of the absence of that restraint upon
expression, which, in men, is imposed by reflection and a sense of
responsibility. Talk of the passive endurance of the weaker sex, and
opponents of this kind remind you that Job was a man, and that, until
quite recent times, patience and long-suffering were not counted among
the specially feminine virtues. Claim passionate tenderness as
especially feminine, and the inquiry is made whether all the best
love-poetry in existence (except, perhaps, the "Sonnets from the
Portuguese") has not been written by men; whether the song which
embodies the ideal of pure and tender passion--Adelaida--was written by
_Frau_ Beethoven; whether it was the Fornarina, or Raphael, who painted
the Sistine Madonna. Nay, we have known one such heretic go so far as to
lay his hands upon the ark itself, so to speak, and to defend the
startling paradox that, even in physical beauty, man is the superior. He
admitted, indeed, that there was a brief period of early youth when it
might be hard to say whether the prize should be awarded to the graceful
undulations of the female figure, or the perfect balance and supple
vigour of the male frame