forcibly is the lyrical, the inspiring and inspired apprehensiveness
of her being.

This view being identical with what I have before attempted to
indicate, as to her superior susceptibility to magnetic or electric
influence, I will now try to express myself more fully.

There are two aspects of Woman's nature, represented by the ancients
as Muse and Minerva. It is the former to which the writer in the
Pathfinder looks. It is the latter which Wordsworth has in mind, when
he says,

"With a placid brow,
Which woman ne'er should forfeit, keep thy vow."


The especial genius of Woman I believe to be electrical in movement,
intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency. She excels not so easily
in classification, or recreation, as in an instinctive seizure of
causes, and a simple breathing out of what she receives, that has the
singleness of life, rather than the selecting and energizing of art.

More native is it to her to be the living model of the artist than to
set apart from herself any one form in objective reality; more native
to inspire and receive the poem, than to create it. In so far as soul
is in her completely developed, all soul is the same, but in so far as
it is modified in her as Woman, it flows, it breathes, it sings,
rather than deposits soil, or finishes work; and that which is
especially feminine flushes, in blossom, the face of earth, and
pervades, like air and water, all this seeming solid globe, daily