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No. 418, March 27, 1858J THE LEADER. 301
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INFLUENCE OF WOMEN ON CIVTLIZATION AND B...
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THE OATHS BILL DEBATE. The admission of ...
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—,NO^mAKKSJJL 0^P.pM^NJ^T HRJE:r^ The in...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Bank And The Bill-Brok.Ek,S. The Two...
r and abroad . If he goes whining to foreign Courts he will get no redress , but if he stays in Great Britain , spends his money here , or , as a last resource , takes passage in the Leviathan for a season ' s tour in North America , the rotten and bankrup t old Continent will be recalled to its senses , and will be anxious to lure back its best customers by an apology .
No. 418, March 27, 1858j The Leader. 301
No . 418 , March 27 , 1858 J THE LEADER . 301
Influence Of Women On Civtlization And B...
INFLUENCE OF WOMEN ON CIVTLIZATION AND BUCKLE . JIb , Buckle ' s Lecture on the Influence of Woman on the Progress of Knowledge has been welcomed as supplying a decided want in the social and political market . Our statesmanship has been for some years gradually but rapidly degenerating , from a failure of the chivalrous element . It has become empirical handicraft , devoid of large ulterior objects , unanimated by generous motives ; and thus the conclusion of Mr . Buckle ' s discourse is gladly accepted , for all the incompleteness of his reasoning . It was imperfect where he had to deal with the knowledge during the classic ages , when , as he said , in proportion as knowledge and civilization advanced , the position and the influence of Woman became more degraded . Now , how does the Preux Chevalier of Modern Science know that ? was he there ? The proposition is almost like a contradiction in terms , and ought to make any ingenuous and intelligent man pause to re-examine it . What evidence have we of this alleged decline of the influence of woman ? "We shall find it probably in some formal records , as to the extension of slavery , the subordinate position of the wife in the household , her very imperfect recognition at law , and in some cases the brilliant position of an Aspasia . The fact is , we know very little about the real life of the classics . The records that come to us deal principally with the events that are historical because they are exceptional . Were we to accept as proofs of the social condition the anecdotes current respecting any living despot , very false ideas would be transmitted to posterity of our social state ; the very influence acquired by an Aspasia is , if it is fairly considered , a striking proof of the influence that woman exercised over the commanding minds and the progress of knowledge . The ingenuous Buckle , we tear , has been stumbling into the inductive method ; for if he had turned from these scraps of political brawling and scandal , which we call history , to the more consistent writings of the poets , he would have learned something very
different— something consistent with the living as well as written history of the world . It is , however , entirely to misconceive the drift of his own argument when he contends for the superiority of the deductive over tHe inductive method , of the ideal over the actual . Here , again , there is a contradiction in terms , and the facts do not support him . Buckle deals with facts as if they stood alone . Goethe , he says , discovered the greatest fact in botany—the metamorphosis of the leaf into the flower , or vice versa ; Goethe being a poet who was ridiculed when he first enunciated
the ' idea / Newton was led to the doctrine of gravitation by reflection on seeing an apple fall , and bom that idea' ho was led to perceive the moon ' s motion hi her orbit , and the planets' round the sun . It was the power of imagination which enabled Haiiy to conceive the system of crystallography . It is the imaginative Shakspeare who , tracing the dust of Alexander , conceives the great idea of the indestructibility of matter ; a proposition from which the actualist Horatio flies oil' at a tangent . We observed more than one clerical pair of shoulders shudder at this utterance of a truth as to the
indestructibilit y of matter ; but no clerical protest , even if it had been uttered aloud , could have withstood the earnestness , power , and sympathetic force with which Mr . Buckle sustained his great argument : for he did sustain it , though ho stumbled here and there logically . What is all this about the discovery of great truths in science but n ' painful ^ Wiaconoeption-PJl . ^ W . hoii , Gocthc , cojicpLYcdiJljiP _ 'id . Cftl of botanical metamorphosis , was his mind unstorcd with inductive faotsP , Was not the idea itself suggested by inductive observation ? Would the brightest imagination in the world , untaught , while it gazoa on a flower springing from the root in its most porfect and brilliant form , for an instant conceive the idea which Goethe dotcotcd by the help of his imagination and hia inductive knowledge r What is ' imagination , ' except the habit of
conceiving facts which have not been experimentally tried , but which would be consistent with ascertained facts ? So Newton was prepared to see the apple fall by an immense mass of knowledge that slight accident was only like the tinkle of the mule-bell which brings down , in a great avalanche , the mass of snow standing ready to fall by its own accumulated weight . It is possible , nay , probable , that Shakspeare did conceive the idea of the
indestructibility of matter ; but by what process ? By his vast perceptive faculty ; by a power in which he excelled all other men known , of grasping innumerable facts so tenaciously and so clearly that he could perceive their connexion and sequence ; and any man reflecting for an instant on the purport of physical facts would be most likely to stumble upon the idea that he never yet has ascertained a clear case of annihilation .
In proportion as Buckle approaches the truth , its splendour blinds him , and he is incapable of depicting it for us exactly in the ratio of his own consciousness . The ideal , he says , is greater than the actual . What does this mean ? It means that the conscious perception of creation lurking in the mind of the creature is greater than emanations of the creation by the direct power of the Creator . Consider both in the same remoteness of abstraction ,
the ideal and the actual , and both are manifestations of the power of God , in their origin equal , and equal in their value for the human race . The power of the poet to call up ideas from imperfect data is imagination ; the power of the machinist to conjure up a constructive engine out of the imperfect suggestions of fact is imagination . The ideal and the actual are , as Buckle would correctly say , but the complements of each other , and neither will work perfectly without the other . facts and
But how can a man who has studied the the history of the subject venture upon the assertion that the influence of woman is exerted principally in imparting to man a larger share of imagination ? That women possess more ' lively imagination' and greater ' quickness of intellect ? ' He might as well say that women possess a greater amount- of inductive power , and a more vigorous contractility of muscle . Detail is against him , and so are the broadest facts . If women have a more lively imagination , where are their poetical works ? ' Speaking of the sex generally , it might be said that they are aliens to Parnassus , unknown in that parish . If there have
been female poets , they are wonders—the exception that proves the rule . Are there any female painters ? Titian ' s daughter has left us some few works , and we know not how much Titian touched . Angelica Kaufman feebly traced feeble outlines , and daubed them with feeble colours . The most vigorous female artist , the one vigorous female artist , is Rosa Bonlieur , a truly powerful painter ; a woman handsome and delicate , with the countenance and carnage of a young naval officer . And when we turn to music , where ' imagination'
appears in its purest form , most separated from the inductive or the actual , there the genius of Woman is entirely silent : there is no temalc composer . Where arc the female teachers , the professors ? Nay , where is the one woman who , in conversation , shows anything of those qualities which come under the two words united ' quickness' and ' intellect ?' If you find her , you will discover that she possesses the qualities in a remarkable degree only as a woman . What woman could play flic part of barrister , not only for five minutes , but for live hours or for five days ? The monster is unknown—thank God ! .
Bucklo ' s truths are greater and better than his arguments . It is the fact , as he says , that there is a coming struggle to lift tlio veil of truth which will task all the faculties of man , and need the imaginative powers to assist the inductive powers in the struggle . It is the fact that the strugglo will need the support of the affections as well as of the imagination ; that man will need the help of woman in that joint labour , but not because she possesses his faculties in a higher degree ; nor will he gain anything by the attempt ol some ' reformers' to make woman man . If we have somo doubt as to the
mode in which the influence of woinun wasexeroised il ^ LliHSLiiiS-S ^ a £ T ° 3 ° f Greek and Roman , civilization , we have horiTasl ^ tl ^ B € ^ firwl » Td'lrtlrerilniddlo ~ conferred upon mankind , in breaking up the pedantries of philosophy and imperialism—none aa to the nature of the chivalry which grew out of the middle ages . If tho Greek philosophy incited man to study tho influences And beauties of life about him , if Christianity taught him to lovo his brother as himself , it was chivalry which taught him to prize that which was stronger though ' weaker ; ' and it ia
modern philosophy which is teaching us , by a com bination of -past wisdoms , that the male ana female mind are not the one higher than the other , are no ! opposed to each other . George Sand pointed oul the fact that they are in their nature different . Their true relation is best described by a knight ' errant in our own day . Says John Jacob , writing to a lady , " Leave all effects of study and cultivation out of the question , and _ , believe me , that no human intellect , much less my poor understanding , is highei or better than your own . Though , as a man ' s , my intelligence may differ somewhat from youi womanly understanding , yet in this , as in all else , you may be well assured that the sexes are not superior and inferior the one to the other , but complementary to each other . "
Man ' s nature is the iron engine , woman ' s gives the steam , the motive power . But there is anothe : reason why man ' s understanding cannot go alone More complex , quicker , profounder , in the brut < sense stronger , it can and does grasp a multitude of questions , facts , inferences , conclusions and ideas , which contradict , distract , confound , and en tangle each other ; it is only when man brings back his own struggling data to the test of healthy instinct , natural affection , and * clearer judgment , that he is made certain , by the final test , of the truth which he himself has worked out ^ to the last stage but one . One quality , in which woman excels man . it is that furnishes that last test—simplicity . The poet says of ' Nature '—
Her prentice nan she tried on man , And then she made the lasses , O ! But the philosopher who raises his contemplations above ' nature' might be inclined to guess that , whichever was made first , woman was more the direct and favourite work of God , retaining more of his own nature and less spoiled by the world of mail . And stronger , quicker , more agile though he be , in intellect , imagination , and idea , no man is wise until his half-understanding is made complete by that which is more simple , stronger in its consciousness of God ' s unspoken laws , and endowed with the diviae right that is reserved to it . of making the intellect wnich seeks it perfect .
The Oaths Bill Debate. The Admission Of ...
THE OATHS BILL DEBATE . The admission of the Jews into Parliament is a matter past all discussion . It is too late in the day to argue on the exact intention of the existing oaths or on the possible unchristianizing of the Legislature . We wonder that any one replied to Mr . Newdegate and Mr . Walpole , except that the North Warwickshire gentleman fell into gross misstatements of fact , and turned the debate into a comedy by malevolent interpretations of passages in the Talmud . The real question is whether the bill is to pass this session , and , if not , whether the House of Commons will assert itself against the
domination of the House of Lords . If Lord Derby has so profound a respect for majorities as lie professed when consenting against his declared views to legislate without delay for India , may he not agree to waive his privilege of obstruction , and so put an end to an unseemly conflict between the two branches of the Legislature ? If he persists in opposition , when and how is the war of opinions to end ? Is Lord John Russell sincere ? Sir John Pakington has recorded his conviction that Baron Rothschild may be admitted by a resolution of the House of Commons . Sir Richard Bethell , the late Attorney-General , has nledercd himself to base a
motion upon that view of the case . Mr . Duncombe and Mr . Dillwyn are propared to act if these honourable gontlumen fail , and will Lord John Russell sliiik into the rear of Religious Liberty ? That is now tho main and almost the only point to bo considered . Polemics have gone far enough . No one wishes to convince Mr . Newdcgatc or Lord Clielinsford . The simple truth is that the elected representatives of tho nation have a duty to perform by abolishing a disability originating in accident and perpetuated by fanaticism , and that the country expects them to perform this duty in one way or another .
—,No^Makksjjl 0^P.Pm^Nj^T Hrje:R^ The In...
— , NO ^ mAKKSJJL 0 ^ P . pM ^ NJ ^ T HRJE : r ^ The intervention of tho British press has effected the liberation of Mr . Watt and Mr . Pnrko at Naples . Lord Malmesbury appears in tho House of Poors like Lord Castlcrongli walking down the floor with tho pence of Paris in his hand , and hereditary legislators cheer the vindicated honour of the country . But tho release of the imprisoned Englishmen is due to no minister and to no party . The
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 27, 1858, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27031858/page/13/
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