To Miss Grace Norton.

[July 17, 1869.]

. . . But I know you will forgive this trifling when I confess to you that I am debarred from any but the most serious and necessary talk, by the continuance of a cold which has begun to show unmistakable signs of being based on, and in league with, a whooping-cough,—caught, at my last visit to Milton, from the little Thayers. What a fall is this! To say nothing of the fate of livelier talk, — to have even the maturest utterances of experience and calm reflection, constantly interrupted by the loud and impertinent explosions and strangulations which I suffer in common with infants! Can you wonder that I do not preserve my wonted gravity with the unimpeded pen? On Monday, I mean to seek a remedy in a new treatment lately introduced in France, and also found very successful by Dr. George Hayward, of Boston, though long known, he says (in the “Medical Journal”), to the English; instead of flying to some watering place or to the mountain air, I shall seek relief in the exhalations of the lime-vats of the Cambridge gas-house. . . .

I felt [in reading Mill’s “Subjection of Women”] what I suppose is a very common aversion to being completely convinced by cold logic, with only a little irony for sauce, — with not one word of persuasion, no warmth of eloquence. But, being convinced, I am now persuaded that I agreed substantially with Mr. Mill before. The main points of the argument are familiar grounds with a student of Mr. Mill’s writings. First, his scepticism, — in the true Socratic sense, — his detection of opinions as founded on a false persuasion of knowledge.

He points out the impossibility of knowing, without such experimentation as the subject has never received, what the nature of women is, or of men either, as distinguished from the highly artificialized characteristics which are due to tradition and custom. I rebelled against his tracing historically the legal subjection of woman in marriage, and her other disabilities, solely to the worst dispositions of barbarians, — to their love of domineering. I fancied that I had seen in little boys and girls differences which guided them, as by instinct, to choose from the very first the means, and to exert the social powers and influences, which were calculated to gain for them their greatest successes as men and women. But, on reflection, I found, with only indirect aid from Mr. Mill, that I had probably overestimated the simplicity of the natures of boys and girls; that I had not considered what little heaps of traditions and customs they really are, after all; how subtly observant and sympathetic they are; how constantly, though unwittingly, parents and nurses, friends and teachers, are impressing them with artificialities of feeling and manner, thought and expression, — while they have nothing to unlearn, no a priori prejudices to stand in the way of the most rapid acquisition of whatever is not opposed to their simple common nature: so that, as soon as they begin to regard themselves as little men and women, — as they do almost as soon as they begin to speak, —they begin to command and to coax, to frown and to smile, and to play ruler or subject, according as their ample experience points the way to their advantage. How difficult to find, then, the nature that lies back of all culture, or to find the difference of sex, if any, which belongs to it. Indeed, we may define the human being as one whose nature, as we know it, descends mainly by other channels than those of the blood, — in the spiritual and invisible currents of an extremely complex, artificial life, without which the human nature is immediately lost in the brute, and with reference to which the original nature is more a receptive than a productive power; though, possibly, human life might spring anew from an untaught infant colony.

Next, we come to Mr. Mill’s familiar position, “the law of liberty,” —which is allied to his scepticism. Let this unknown nature, whatever it may be, make itself known through perfect freedom to work itself out; unless it prove on trial to be bad, that is, positively injurious, and not merely contrary to custom. The stupidity of not merely anticipating without trial, but also re-enacting, the supposed laws of human nature, is shown up in this happy way. “One thing we may be certain of, that what is contrary to women’s nature to do they never will be made to do by giving their nature free play. The anxiety of mankind to interfere in behalf of nature for fear lest nature should not succeed in effecting its purpose, is an altogether unnecessary solicitude,” &c. And so he challenges the marriage laws to show some better origin for their justification than the old barbaric dogma that might not only does, but should, make right.

He acknowledges that all other barbarities, like slavery and absolute government in their various forms, which have yielded to modern civilization, have been compelled to yield. The legal subjection of women is an anomaly in the highest civilization, the one barbarity which has had too much strength in it to be overcome by the forces of civilization. And it seemed to me at first that herein was a necessity which made any thing more than mere mitigations by civilized laws an Utopian project. The relation of a superior will to an inferior one might be rendered in a high degree attractive and the source of great happiness and great virtues. Indeed, the virtues of chivalry and generosity are founded on such relations. Will the world resign all its romantic virtues to the humdrum of loving equality and justice? The possession of tyrannical power, with the virtue to refrain from its abuse, is an attractive position and

character, not only to those who have them, but also to those who are their objects; so much so that, as Mr. Mill says, “It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power;” and he adds that it would be cruel to inquire, “how great a place in most men this sentiment fills, even in religious devotion.” Slavery, in its worst forms, exhibits fidelity and devotion in the greatest degrees. “These individual feelings nowhere rise to such luxuriant height as under the most atrocious institutions.” So then, we must part with the devotion, fidelity, and gratitude, along with the chivalry, gallantry, and generosity, that depend for their existence on human institutions, — except in that last exercise of them, the abolition of the institutions. There will still be room enough for these virtues in the accidental and unavoidable inequalities of life.

But how are men to be forced or induced to make this sacrifice? Mr. Mill does not dwell so long or so clearly on the answer as could be wished. To prove the reasonableness and probable advantage of the sacrifice, is enough with him; but his hope seems to be this, — that adherents of the cause can be found in sufficient numbers in the powerful and offending sex to divide it against itself; that those who hate slavish worship, and the possession as well as the exercise of tyrannical power, will some day outnumber, or at any rate outweigh, the barbarians in civilized society, and will put such worship and power out of existence, — irrevocably out of their own, as well as the barbarian’s possession; and out of men’s religious ideas also.

You see that what I think on the question is so nearly like Mr. Mill’s thought, that I have hardly done more than epitomize parts of the essay. . . . Radical positions on the

details of policy, such as women’s claims to the suffrage and to various professional pursuits, are far less solidly founded than general radical positions of principle, which, while disclaiming a profound knowledge or insight of human nature, yet demand a profounder inquiry into it and a freer play for it; which regard all legal and social restrictions, not founded in an ascertained necessity, as shabby impertinences. Indignant protests against barbarism and presumptuous ignorance from such radicals as Mr. Mill are far more efficacious than the undignified clamorous assumptions of another class. It is a characteristic quality of Mr. Mill, shown both in his speculative and practical writings, that he is far less solicitous to separate himself from those with whom he agrees in main tendencies, though differing in details, than most thinkers are. In philosophy, he is much less sectarian than Huxley or Spencer, and does not reprobate Comte; and in social reforms he is much more charitable toward silly radicals than I should be, but for his example. The main, and far the most important, division of opinion to him is the one which separates the modern from the ancient world in faith and practice. Probably, his more profound radicalism, beginning simply in the removal of time-honored obstacles, will ultimately work greater changes than any the silly radicals now dream of, or any I dare to predict. So I cannot yet treat “the whole question.” No doubt, the scheming radical has his use, if in nothing else at least in this, that he familiarizes prejudiced minds with possible changes, and so makes them easier if they happen to be judicious. That they may be judicious, or at any rate worth testing in spite of their novelty, is the extent of my radicalism at present.