usually meet with so little sympathy, that few persons are aware of
the great amount of unhappiness even now produced by the feeling of
a wasted life. The case will be even more frequent, as increased
cultivation creates a greater and greater disproportion between the
ideas and faculties- of women, and the scope which society allows
to their activity.   When we consider the positive evil caused to
the disqualified half of the human race by their
disqualification--first in the loss of the most inspiriting and
elevating kind of personal enjoyment, and next in the weariness,
disappointment, and profound dissatisfaction with life, which are
so often the substitute for it; one feels that among all the
lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the
inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson
which they more need, than not to add to the evils which nature
inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one
another. Their vain fears only substitute other and worse evils for
those which they are idly apprehensive of: while every restraint on
the freedom of conduct of any of their human fellow-creatures
(otherwise than by making them responsible for any evil actually
caused by it), dries up pro tanto the principal fountain of human
happiness, and leaves the species less rich, to an inappreciable
degree, in all that makes life valuable to the individual human
being.

[End]
.