April 1, 1870.--I am inclined to believe that for a woman love is the
supreme authority--that which judges the rest and decides what is good
or evil. For a man, love is subordinate to right. It is a great passion,
but it is not the source of order, the synonym of reason, the criterion
of excellence. It would seem, then, that a woman places her ideal in the
perfection of love, and a man in the perfection of justice. It was in
this sense that St. Paul was able to say, "The woman is the glory of the
man, and the man is the glory of God." Thus the woman who absorbs
herself in the object of her love is, so to speak, in the line of
nature; she is truly woman, she realizes her fundamental type. On the
contrary, the man who should make life consist in conjugal adoration,
and who should imagine that he has lived sufficiently when he has made
himself the priest of a beloved woman, such a one is but half a man; he
is despised by the world, and perhaps secretly disdained by women
themselves. The woman who loves truly seeks to merge her own
individuality in that of the man she loves. She desires that her love
should make him greater, stronger, more masculine, and more active. Thus
each sex plays its appointed part: the woman is first destined for man,
and man is destined for society.
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