Page:Sexology.djvu/152

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few, and can no more be considered the rule than the necessity. Genius is not necessary to constitute an intel- ligent creature.

We have already asserted that women have more courage than men. In the fortitude to endure privation, suffering, disease, reverses of fortune, they are not merely superior to man, they have enough for both. They not only sup- port their own misfortunes, they bear those of others. They re-animate the broken merchant, the discouraged artist. A wife, sick at heart, can smile to make "him" smile. She represents at the same time resignation and hope. She is the personification of all that is compre- hended in what we call "heart," the domestic and social qualities, such as filial, fraternal, conjugal, and maternal affection, but above all, of Love. The Joys which spring from the association of father and son pertain more to hope than to reality, to the future rather than to the present. The daughter, only, can complete them, and the charm which she gives to the household, despite her present ungracious position, foreshadows to us what hap- piness she will yet bring to the family in the better order of things to come. If the son represents the hope of the family, the daughter represents its purity. When the mother weeps it is the daughter who consoles her; when the father suffers it is the daughter who cares for him. The father returns in the evening, bowed with fatigue, saddened with pre-occupations, who runs to meet him even upon the threshold? who relieves him of his hat and coat? his daughter! and suddenly fatigue and care have vanished. And so with education. The chances are ten to one that your son has scarcely emerged from his infancy ere the necessities of his education separate him from you. If you live in the country, you send him many miles away;