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22

THE ACCORDS OF SEX

ever allegorically pleasing, would be but a monster if made real. The inconveniences of combining the two sexes would surmount the advantages. To increase their physical forces, nature has divided them, but she has united them by the sympathies of temperament, instinct, and passion. Man and woman. isolated are but two halves of the man of nature; the same name designates both in all languages. There are some of the Oriental, where woman has no generic name. The Siamese distinguish her from man only by the epithet of young; they call her the young man.

The character of woman is, however, as distinct from that of man as her sex, and she preserves both through all the periods of her life in perfect harmony with man. The mutual accord and native instinct which often inflames two lovers from their first interview, suggested to Plato that souls were originally two halves descended from heaven, exiled into different bodies, and incessantly seeking to unite on earth. Our modern statistics prove that men and women are born and die in equal number. The two sexes are in relation with nature and with their own wants only when they are united. Man climbs the tree and gathers its fruits-woman remains below to pick them up. One finds food, the other prepares it-one hunts wild beasts, the other rears domestic animals-one builds the house, the other makes the clothes.* One takes care of business a broad,

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. The correctness of this general statement does not preclude great latitude of exception. Those who confine their view to the past and present experience of our race, may observe that woman in China, in Germany, and some other parts of Europe, finds her sphere, as well as man, in the more robust labors of the field; while among the Indians of America, she has generally done the whole of what tillage they have carried on. Without considering this position the more desirable, it is not less true that woman suffers much in health and spirits from her habits of domestic confinement and indoor drudgeries, and that whether labor is falsely organized and thus made a drudgery, or rendered attractive by a true distri bution of its functions, nearly all its departments admit of both male and female labor combined in certain proportions, and we find, even in observing children, that nature has accordingly given to perhaps one third of females masculine tastes, as to one third of males, feminine tastes and aptitudes. Thus we have every where the charm of contrasts, and monotony is avoided in the plans of the Creator, which we learn in the natural distribution of characters, passions, tastes, temperaments, and instincts. They have all reference to specific objects of industry, luxury, and affection, and to certain spherical conditions whose adaptations when given or conquered make our life a harmony in itself, and a centre of harmonic vibration to all who

come near us.

PLACE MAN IN HARMONY WITH NATA2.

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22

THE ACCORDS OF SEX

ever allegorically pleasing, would be but a monster if made real. The inconveniences of combining the two sexes would surmount the advantages. To increase their physical forces, nature has divided them, but she has united them by the sympathies of temperament, instinct, and passion. Man and woman isolated are but two halves of the man of nature; the same name designates both in all languages. There are some of the Oriental, where woman has no generic name. The Siamese distinguish her from man only by the epithet of young; they call her the young man.

The character of woman is, however, as distinct from that of man as her sex, and she preserves both through all the periods of her life in perfect harmony with man. The mutual accord and native instinct which often inflames two lovers from their first interview, suggested to Plato that souls were originally two halves descended from heaven, exiled into different bodies, and incessantly seeking to unite on earth. Our modern statistics prove that men and women are born and die in equal number. The two sexes are in relation with nature and with their own wants only when they are united. Man climbs the tree and gathers its fruits-woman remains below to pick them up. One finds food, the other prepares it-one hunts wild beasts, the other rears domestic animals-one builds the house, the other makes the clothes.* One takes care of business a broad,

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. The correctness of this general statement does not preclude great latitude of exception. Those who confine their view to the past and present experience of our race, may observe that woman in China, in Germany, and some other parts of Europe, finds her sphere, as well as man, in the more robust labors of the field; while among the Indians of America, she has generally done the whole of what tillage they have carried on. Without considering this position the more desirable, it is not less true that woman suffers much in health and spirits from her habits of domestic confinement and indoor drudgeries, and that whether labor is falsely organized and thus iñade a drudgery, or rendered attractive by a true distri bution of its functions, nearly all its departments admit of both male and female labor combined in certain proportions, and we find, even in observing children, that nature has accordingly given to perhaps one third of females masculine tastes, as to one third of males, feminine tastes and aptitudes. Thus we have every where the charm of contrasts, and monotony is avoided in the plans of the Creator, which we learn in the natural distribution of characters, passions, tastes, temperaments, and instincts. They have all reference to specific objects of industry, luxury, and affection, and to certain spherical conditions whose adaptations when given or conquered make our life a harmony in itself, and a centre of harmonic vibration to all who

come near us.

PLACE MAN IN HARMONY WITH NATURE.

23

the other of home affairs, they double their pleasures and diminish their troubles by sharing them. Each sustains his own character; one tastes joy with all the enthusiasm of sensibility, the other with a deliberate or reflective consciousness. When troubles come, man resists them by firmness and reason, woman more happily evades them by her mobility, or bends while the storm passes over. One, proud of his strength, incessantly rises toward ambition; the other, proud of her delicacy, incessantly withdraws him to love. Does age weaken their first ardor? Youth had converged their affections around themselves; old age diverges toward their remotest grandchildren in paternal providence, and in maternal care and tenderness. Both, by the sentiment of their joys and of their afflictions, tend together toward Deity, and mingle fear and hope with the pangs and pleasures of human life. Like the spark, which gleams and vanishes unless it find some aliment to fix it, man and woman would be, without each other, only fugitive meteors. Nature has shared out to each of them separately, only ignorance, weakness, wants, poverty, and death, but by the conjugal harmony she communicates to the human race, science, power, enjoyments, and immortality.

Chasteness is so necessary a condition of beauty, both for the body and the soul of both sexes, that we might almost call it the source of beauty. It is the pure adolescent that makes the wise and strong man. Innocence of manners is a spiritual mountain air, which makes beautiful people every where, in the marshes of Holland, as in the mountains of Switzerland. Here, and in neighboring Flanders, Rubens has colored his goddesses, and Flamand modeled his loves.

Corporeal exercises effect diversions from the sentimental affections of the soul, absorb that excessive sensibility which otherwise render them sources of anguish, and furnish them with a healthy expression in attractive and useful pursuits. Girls and young women have great need of these. Nature has not made them to be eternally sitting. Mingle their studies with moderate labors. A garden will present such as are proportioned to their force and their taste. It must be

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