But though the essential of the woman"s task is universality,

this does not, of course, prevent her from having one or two severe
though largely wholesome prejudices
But though the essential of the woman"s task is universality,
this does not, of course, prevent her from having one or two severe
though largely wholesome prejudices. She has, on the whole,
been more conscious than man that she is only one half of humanity;
but she has expressed it (if one may say so of a lady) by getting her
teeth into the two or three things which she thinks she stands for.
I would observe here in parenthesis that much of the recent
official trouble about women has arisen from the fact that they
transfer to things of doubt and reason that sacred stubbornness
only proper to the primary things which a woman was set to guard.
One"s own children, one"s own altar, ought to be a matter of principle--
or if you like, a matter of prejudice. On the other hand,
who wrote Junius"s Letters ought not to be a principle or a prejudice,
it ought to be a matter of free and almost indifferent inquiry.
But take an energetic modern girl secretary to a league
to show that George III wrote Junius, and in three months she
will believe it, too, out of mere loyalty to her employers.
Modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of domesticity.
They fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home, and develop
a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm.
That is why they do office work so well; and that is why they ought
not to do it.

HABIT ECONOMIZES MORAL EFFORT

HABIT ECONOMIZES MORAL EFFORT.--To have to decide each time the question
comes up whether we will attend to this lecture or sermon or lesson;
whether we will persevere and go through this piece of disagreeable work
which we have begun; whether we will go to the trouble of being
courteous and kind to this or that poor or unlovely or dirty
fellow-mortal; whether we will take this road because it looks easy, or
that one because we know it to be the one we ought to take; whether we
will be strictly fair and honest when we might just as well be the
opposite; whether we will resist the temptation which dares us; whether
we will do this duty, hard though it is, which confronts us--to have to
decide each of these questions every time it presents itself is to put
too large a proportion of our thought and energy on things which should
take care of themselves. For all these things should early become so
nearly habitual that they can be settled with the very minimum of
expenditure of energy when they arise.