renewing and purifying its life. Such may be the especially feminine
element spoken of as Femality. But it is no more the order of nature
that it should be incarnated pure in any form, than that the masculine
energy should exist unmingled with it in any form.

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism.
But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid
hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine
man, no purely feminine woman.

History jeers at the attempts of physiologists to bind great original
laws by the forms which flow from them. They make a rule; they say
from observation what can and cannot be. In vain! Nature provides
exceptions to every rule. She sends women to battle, and sets Hercules
spinning; she enables women to bear immense burdens, cold, and frost;
she enables the man, who feels maternal love, to nourish his infant
like a mother. Of late she plays still gayer pranks. Not only she
deprives organizations, but organs, of a necessary end. She enables
people to read with the top of the head, and see with the pit of the
stomach. Presently she will make a female Newton, and a male Syren.

Man partakes of the feminine in the Apollo, Woman of the masculine as
Minerva.

What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive
powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of
the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It
may appear as prophecy or as poesy. It enabled Cassandra to foresee
the results of actions passing round her; the Seeress to behold the
true character of the person through the mask of his customary life.