The Hawaiian gazette., 1869-01-27

THE RELATIVE POSITION OF THE SEXES
We are foolish, and without excuse foolish,
in speaking of the superiority of one sex to
the other, as If they could be compared in
similar things. Each has what the other has
not Sach completes the other, and is com
pleted by the other; they arc in noihingalike,
and the happiness and perfection Of both
depends on each asking and receiving from
the other what the other only can give.
Now their seperate characters are briefly
these: The man power is active, progressive,
defensive. He is eminentIy the doer, the
creator, the discoverer, the defender His in
tellect is for speculation and invention; his
energy for adventure, for war and for con-
quest, wherever war is Just, wherever con-
quest is necessary. But the womans power is
for rule not for battle, and her intellect is not
for invention or creation, but for sweet order
ing, arrangement and decision. She sees the
qualities of things, their claims and their pa-
ces Her great function is praise; she enters
into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the
crown of contest. By her Office and place
she is protected from all danger and tcmpta-
ton.
The man, in his rough work in the open
world, must encounter all peril and trial; to
him, therefore, the failure, and the offence,
the inevitable error; often he must be wOun-
ded and subdued, often misled, and always
hardened. But he guards the woman from
all this; within his house, as ruled by her,
unless she herself has sought it, need enter no
danger, no temptation, no cause of error or
offence.
This is the true nature of home-it is the
place of peace; the shelter from all terror,
doubt and division. In SO far as it is not this
il is not home; so far as the anxieties of the
outer life penetrate into il, and the inconsis-
tently-ninded, unknown, uDloved, or hostile
society of the outer world is allowed by
either husband or wife to cross the TIRES
hold, il ceases to be home; it is then only
part of that outer world which you have
rooted over and lighted fire in. But so far as
it is a sacred place, vestal temple, temple
of the earth watched over by house hold
gods, before whose faces none may come
but those whom they can receive and love
so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types
only of nobler shade and light-shade us of
the rock in weary land, aud light as of the
Pharos in the stormy sea; so far it vindicates
the name and fulfils the praise of home.
And wherever n true wife comes, this
home is always around her. The stars only
may be over her head; the glowworin in the
nightcold grass may be the only fire at her
foot; but home is yet wherever she is and
for noble woman it stretches far around her
better than ceiled with cedar, or painted with
vermillion, shedding its quiet light far, for
those who else were homeless.
This. then, we believe to be-will you not
admit it to be?-the woman's true place and
power But do you not see that, to fulfill
this, she must, as far as one can use such
terms of human creature-be incapable of
errors So far as she rules, all must be right
or nothing is. She must be enduringly, in
corruptibly good; instinctively, infalibly
wise, not for elfdevelopement, but for self
renunciation-wise, not that she may set her
self above her husband, but that she may
never fall from his side-wise, not with the
narrowness of insolent and loveless pride,
but with the passionate gentleness of an inf
nitely variable, because infinitely applicable,
modesty of serviee-the true changefulness of