Genius is made visible only where God's Word has cleared from the mental horizon
the gross clouds of heathen error, while His Providence has withdrawn from the
individual woman that support and protection from man which is her sunshine over
the rough ways of the world. Hitherto she has usually won fame through suffering: let those who envy the bright ones remember this.
But, as the stars of heaven guide the mariner safely over the night-enveloped waters, so these stars of humanity are required to show the true progress of moral virtue through the waves of temptation and sin that roll over the earth. The greater the number, and the more light they diffuse, the greater will be the safety of society.
When men fully comprehend this, they will bless female genius, and fashion their own literature to a higher standard of moral taste and a nobler view of human destiny. Says the gifted author of Pendennis, " Women are pure, but not men. Women are unselfish, but not men."
In truth, the moral sense of men, though as yet imperfect, has rarely erred so widely as to show, in works of imagination even, any ideal of masculine nature so perfect in moral virtues as the feminine. In the conflicts of contending duties, in the trials of love and temptations of passion, the masters of dramatic art, great poets and novelists, never fall into the sin against nature of making their men better than their women.
The ideal of the angelic in humanity is, in Christian literature, always feminine. When this instinctive perception of woman's mission becomes an acknowledged and sustained mode of moral progress, it will be easy for the sex to make advances in every branch of literature and science connected with human improvement; and the horizon will be studded with stars.
Now, some readers may think I have found too many celebrities; others will search for omissions. There was never a perfect work, so mine must bear the general lot of criticism. All I ask is, that the contents be well understood before judgment is rendered.
Philadelphia, July 4th, 1851.[1]
- ↑ [The revised edition was completed, August 15th, 1854.]
