The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1881-03-30


ments which smooth and soften manners
and cultivate the finer impulses Even
though the masculine intellect is concerned
in gratifying the indulgence of these tastes
yet il is in response 10 feminine demands
that modern art and the more poetic and hui
man side of literature largely hourishes. 1t
is women rather than men who are inter
ested in decorative art; in the general fur
nishing and the graceful and delicate ap-
pendages of refined and attractive homes
in embroidery and pottery and carving
They give great, impetus and large support TO
musical education. and are musically sensi-
tive and susceptible. Women are generous
patrons of the lighter and more delicate
phases of Hterature-of poetry, biography
and especially of fiction, all of which COM
pose large proportion of the whole body of
literature. Women are worshipful and re-
ligious. But for them the Church would
die. They are the vital and reviving ele-
ment of all congregations of whatsoever
denomination.
But for womans interests in these various
forms OF human development, art would
fad expression chiefly in architecture, in
massive buildings, or in structures devoted
merely to material and mechanical uses
Literature would be short of much of its
grace. IL would be harder, graver, far less
imaginative. Even feminine apparel
where some reform would be gladly well
coined, would assume a too severe too
sober, too neutral and depressing form
and hue. In place of much that is cheer
full enlivening. hopeful and stimulating in
all these respects, We would have q deaden-
ing and superfiuous gravity. Art would be
supplanted by mechanism; poetry by his
tory and political philosophy; religion by
science.
Should the hopes of some women be real
lied and the feminine mind become alb
sorbed in politics to the extent of exercising
refined and reforming influence therein,
one might reasonably expec to see these
superfine and, il you choose superficial, at
tributes of human society, sacrificed, in pro-
portion to the importance which politics as
sumed. 1t is not meant that the two are nee
eSsarily incongruous, but that the human
mind is, with comparatively few exceptions,
incapacitated for a wide compass and COM
hensive grasp. If the time and attention
which earnest, conscientious and serious
minded men now give to the cultivation of
their imagination or of their artistic in
stincts, or of their love of beauty, or of their
religious sentiments, be given to political
science, to government, and to the art of
governing. il would be at the expense of this
other set of faculties and tastes
This is now observable in respect to men.
As rule, those most interested in art and
| the drama, in literature, music and eccle-
SlaStlcal affairs, are not interested In political
science or in practical Government The
painter, actor, dramatist, poet, musician,
and even the preacher. except on the moral
and sentimental side, generally not only
ignore, but repudiate, politics. They are
bored by the subject. They seldom find in
it anything worthy of their attention, re-
garding it chiefly as stupid quarrels and
conflicts which possess no imaginative in
terest, until IL rises to the dramatic phase of
war, assassination or intrigue, by which il is
invested with the romance that appeals TO
imaginative sensitiveness.
Women, if not as imaginative in creative
artas men, are more susceptible to the in
fiuences which stimulate the imaginative
faculty than men are. They are more sym
pathetic than men. Hence they are inter
eSted in those features of life which have an
immediate social interest rather than in a
broader political one. If they become in
terested in politics, they will be inevitably
exposed to feel less interest in literature and
the fine arts. Even if politics are improved
thereby, it will be at the expense of these
finer manifestations of the human mind;
and for the reason that these harmonic more
entirely with feminine moods and express
more happily feminine instincts, women are
not likely to abandon them for politics or
political science.