stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which
the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance
The shortest way of summarizing the position is to say that woman
stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which
the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance.
The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet"s;
but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic"s. There must
in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still;
there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable.
And many of the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts
of this position of the woman as the center and pillar of health.
Much of what is called her subservience, and even her pliability,
is merely the subservience and pliability of a universal remedy;
she varies as medicines vary, with the disease. She has
to be an optimist to the morbid husband, a salutary pessimist
to the happy-go-lucky husband. She has to prevent the Quixote
from being put upon, and the bully from putting upon others.
The French King wrote--
