CHAPTER VI


OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN

Darwin expended many years of his life in the study of disagreeable
animals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism to
environment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if he
had begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history has
been one unbroken succession of inspired and noble adaptations!

Woman's adaptability to man is one of the most mysterious, as it is
perhaps the most pathetic, of all the modes of her mysterious being.
Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of the
rock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of course,
she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her chameleon to a
like degree or indeed in a like manner. Such adaptability is not one of
the forms of his greatness, and even when he achieves it, it is not
becoming to him.

For woman's adaptability is not the domination of a weaker nature by a
stronger, it is in itself a noble and world-necessary form of strength.

Strength is needed as well for the taking as the making of an
impression,--something more than mere ductility. Weakness may never bear
the stamp of power,--it breaks in the moulding; and it is rather because
woman is so strong that she is able to take the Caesarean stamp of any
form of power. Nor cares she by whose hands she is moulded, whose image
she wears, be it warrior, poet, or priest, so long as she feels the