TWO:Fortunately, the dialectic method proved stronger than its own creators, and, once set going, introduced feelings and ex160periences of which they had never dreamed, within the horizon of philosophic consciousness. It was found that if women had much to learn, much also might be learned from them. Their wishes could not be taken into account without giving a greatly increased prominence in the guidance of conduct to such sentiments as fidelity, purity, and pity; and to that extent the religion which they helped to establish has, at least in principle, left no room for any further progress. On the other hand, it is only by reason that the more exclusively feminine impulses can be freed from their primitive narrowness and elevated into truly human emotions. Love, when left to itself, causes more pain than pleasure, for the words of the old idyl still remain true which associate it with jealousy as cruel as the grave; pity, without prevision, creates more suffering than it relieves; and blind fidelity is instinctively opposed even to the most beneficent changes. We are still suffering from the excessive preponderance which Catholicism gave to the ideas of women; but we need not listen to those who tell us that the varied experiences of humanity cannot be organised into a rational, consistent, self-supporting whole.
TWO:It has been the object thus far to show that machines, processes, and mechanical manipulation generally may be systematised and generalised to a greater or less extent, and that a failure to reduce mechanical manipulation and machine construction to certain rules and principles can mainly be ascribed to our want of knowledge, and not to any inherent difficulty or condition which prevents such solution. The same proposition is applicable to invention, with the difference that invention, in its true sense, may admit of generalisation more readily than machine processes.
