=Routine.=--The reverse of the irradiations of love in woman is constituted by her failings, which we have already partly indicated. We may add that her intelligence is usually superficial, that she attributes an exaggerated importance to trifles, that she often does not understand the object of ideal conceptions, and remains attached by routine to all her hobbies. This routine represents in feminine psychology the excess of a tenacious will applied only to the repetition of what has been taught. In the family, woman constitutes the conservative element because sentiment in her much more than in man, combined with persevering tenacity, predominates over intelligence; but sentiments represent everywhere and always the conservative element in the human mind.
This is why woman is the strongest supporter of dogmas, customs, fashions, prejudices and mysticism. It is not that she herself is more disposed than man to mystic beliefs, but these when once dogmatized dazzle the eyes of the suffering with visions of compensation in a better world. In this way a number of unhappy or disappointed women are affected with religious exaltation and thus cling to the hope of happiness after death which they believe will compensate them for the vicissitudes of their existence.
The other reverses of the feminine character, such as want of logic, obstinacy, love of trinkets, etc., result from the fundamental weakness of the feminine mind which we have just analyzed. Moreover, the social dependence in which man has placed woman, both from the legal and educational points of view, tend to increase her failings. Many people fear that women's suffrage would hinder progress, for the reasons we have just indicated, but they forget that the actual suffrage of men is to a great extent exercised by their wives, indirectly and unconsciously. This fact alone shows that the education, and legal emancipation of women can only be beneficial to progress, especially as they would contribute to the education of men, too prone to degenerate on account of their presumptuous and tyrannical autocracy.
Woman has an instinctive admiration for men of high intellect and lofty sentiments, and strives to imitate those who provoke her admiration, and carry out their ideas. Let us therefore give women their proper rights, equal to ours, at the same time giving them a higher education and the same free instruction as ourselves; we shall then see them abandon the obscure paths of mysticism, to devote themselves to social progress.