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Women's Selfishness

Women's Selfishness image
Parent Issue
Day
27
Month
October
Year
1882
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

In comparing one race with another, we allfeelthatselfishnes3 is nota characteristic of race. But this observation suggests one striking exception to its general drift. You may say one person is more selflsh than another, but you may not say this of any group of persons till you come to the very largest in which you can divide the persoDal world. It is not easy to make any generalization about men and wonien, for everyone Is either a man or a woman, and knows his or her own sex in a different manner and a different degree f rom what he does tlieopposite; but we think the general opinión may, in this case, be taken as its own justi[ication;and it appears to us that in nn-in Pfiannn{ci fliiu et TilO f. i af ITlM 1 ATI Pï. OU LUC J. VOUtJPVsvu Ultio givuv utuuuv vva v- ists of tvuth and cliarity or of what we have called the non-preferential element in love. Men aro about as much more true than women, as worneu are more unselfish than men. We do not mean that if you could reckon np all the lies that are told in a year, you would flnd that the greater number liad a female origin. When it comes to conscious deceit, we should suppo3e that men and women were pretty much alike. "We mean that a man's words and thoughts ordinarily staud in a much closer relation to lif e than a womman's do, and that to some extent this explaius bis being much less ready to make sacriüces than a voman is. For the habit of assuming any excellence has opposite effects, according to the ■wam Iiofixröon mir mrtra.l iifYïtiiVn ÍHíl that excellence. We actually widen the cliasm, if it be already 30 wide that tho profession must be callee! false. l$ut sincere words are actions; and in profesaing a readiness for self-sacriüce even without knowiag fully to what vre may, to some extent, be approaching; is it not possible to imagine a person boundoverto a self-sacriflcing life by proíessions that rnight be called unreal? Every human being must discover, when it comes to the point, Chat the expectation of surrendering tho pleaaaut things of life, without reluctance or difficulty, is mere ignorance of what sacriQce means; but an engagement to betray no reluctanco or difliculty may possibly tend to diminish these feelings, unless they be very great. And, iu f act, there i3 a great deal of this unselfi3hnes3 among womeD) - faithfulness, we mean, to an ideal that is to some extent illusory. "Iu a matter so utterly insignificant as anytMng personal to one's self," as we once lieard said, by a brilliant and cultivated woman, -'oue would not, of course, think it wortb while to hesitate." ïhe life, long siuce concluded, was not by any uieans in such glaring contradiclion with that piece of fantastic morality as we should be apt to imagine. And perhaps manyof the inconsistenties we find in complex human Ut tU 111. V ■íli7 w v-i-i'-- j -.v-" ing tliat it is not impossible that bolh these effeets should be found in the same persoD, so that at one moment a woman should be more unselíish because she has put herself in a posilion in wbich self-sacriüce is a neceasity.and that the next moment her natural impulses should yet ruah back upoii her with a rebound, and her prof essed readiuess to share a ernst with her husband should uo more suggest any saerifice of her wishes to lus, than the sight of "your obedient ser vaat" at the end of a letter suggests the discharge of some menial office. In that fluctuating ebb and flow which we fcnow as character, the influence of exaggerated prof essions may tend botli to weaken and to strenethen our moral lifo, and nonebut the eye that reads ül hearts can discern whicli influence la to give the ultímate bias to the spirit which feela both. ■

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat