Days & Strengths in
A Woman’s Life

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They said read, mark, learn & inwardly digest (alas How few inwardly digest anything they read!) and there is always something wrong with ones digestion
Hans Anderson’s fable of the Emperor & his new clothes, & when thoroughly inspired with that return to it will not make a bad stepping stone to the study of [indecipherable] the old masters, or anything else which it is considered the right thing to admire & adore –he had a vast knowledge of human nature [indecipherable] Hans Andersen
The wisest Drs. in the S water say we eat too much to digest properly
Mrs. Browning said we read too much to think properly

There’s nothing so sad as a [indecipherable] that cant eat [indecipherable]
[sentence inverted]

Oct. 7th 1889

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The edge is taken off so many things by the consciousness that they are for publication like photographs directly we feel the camera staring at us, we cease to be natural we cannot look Ourselves so I find if I try to write for papers -- I lose my enthusiasm after awhile I feel what sort of English is this how will this be regarded? Whereas here I can sweep everything down & there is no camera!

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I am going to write a Journal, I have been thinking of it for some time, I hesitated over a blank book the other day marked 3/6, & then rejected it, I met with this one for 10d1/2 & it decided me! Ah 10d1/2 what will you bring me, Any comfort! Any honour! Any relief! Any grief! Will this be eventually my friend or foe –or will it be begun, & then cast aside? or will it be a continual resource, a friend to whom I can unburden some of the thoughts that often surge in my intellect & heart? I have been reading Amiel’s Journal, it was a resource to him, a friend, a comfort & many will read it & find in it as I do an answer to the echoes in their own hearts: To some it may be enough to read & think over the thoughts of others – To me comes often an almost uncontrollable desire to write, write, write - But I seem to lack expression, to relieve myself with dashing down of certain thoughts, & then, & then! Other things flow round me. I often wish to finish

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what I have begun to round off the sharp angles to make a good beginning or a better ending – bit I am not satisfied & if I am not who wd. be! Then when I wait come other thoughts, for to every enthusiasm there is another side , reason is inexorable and with a calm voice demands this one sided enthusiasm to pause & asks what is truth? Here I need think of nothing, but write in my enthusiastic moods & write again my reasoning moods, and the result? Who knows! A great deal of rubbish written, but perhaps it will be a safety valve & I shall be able to keep my individualities more for my journal, & may & not allow them to assert themselves so much as perhaps they have hitherto have done to the discomfort & perhaps annoyance of my fellow creatures. One can but make the experiment, & if I, who am too much inclined to reserve & bottling up my griefs & troubles to feed upon my own heart, find here a safety valve, I shall become more cheerful & others will at once benefit by that for the cheerful

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are the sunshine of the earth, if only their cheerfulness does not jar upon you at the wrong time![?] I have often said and often thought that in Love and unselfishness lie the reformation of all evil in the world If everyone loved unselfishly what wd. be needed more, And yet the perfectly unselfish lose individuality they merge themselves into the lives & wishes of others. What is the happy medium, how reached? I have been reading Ibsen lately "The Dolls House" etc – He is the prophet as it were of womans individuality – But he was to me one sided, crooked as it were working up noble thoughts & truths with something which is not nature. Wd not Nora have done better if she had staid with her husband & children, & in doing her dutyies to them worked out in some her own individuality also – instead of forsaking them to go away by herself to work it out – wd. she ever find it by herself? Wd. she ever improve if her first step was to forsake her plain duty? Nora is no true woman, she is the victim[?] of the brain of man, a noble man who sees something is wrong in the relations between man & woman in the married state who sees how womans Individuality is crushed and crucifid by man; & he creates a

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woman of his own to work out his theory – others will work it out better light haze —but all honor to the Pioneer; who at present getting any amount of abuse for immorality! No doubt many men think it immoral for women to depart in the least from the type that they have contemplated for ages – The woman who thinks it her duty to marry & bear children obey her husband – encourage in every way his animal instincts by being a slave to them pampering him in selfishness Bah! Men will only rise higher as women do --& when women learn that the wretched "Enid" like behaviour is unworthy of any woman -- Give the men Love as much as you can Love of any kind, true Love, be it friendship or a wifes or a sister or mothers Love but don’t let it be servile, don’t let its tend only to sympathise with mans lower & selfish nature. chiefly & sometimes only
Oct 8th
My birthday! Much love & kindness sorrows, bitter & everlasting I have had in life, for I cannot forget but oh

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much happiness, much Love – a strangely romantic life, a life full of interest, & full of the lives of others – The scenes have shifted continually – it is as if my life had been brought thro’ every human experience almost, & why? Perhaps the better to understand & sympathise with others -- I have been reading Alice Hopkins amongst the "working men”, it stirs ones heart – It is real. The very sense of humour she has shows how true how real is her knowledge of humanity, for who can understand human nature unless they can look at it from the humourous as well as the pathetic side – My heart reverts to my hours past with in the N --- Hospital & the lives that then came in contact with my own, now scattered far & wide, perhaps never to meet again – I have turned over their old letters of the Patients to me & wished that I cd. Burn them without reading them over, but I cannot yet! I wonder if in these Patients, Sailors, miners etc – there still lives a remembrance of myself & my sisters, and with it an influence for good?

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It may be so! One wd. think ones life worth living of it was so, if one cd. feel one had was had been a means somehow or other to help people to believe all their lives long on Love, goodness, unselfishness, --
Oct. 11th
I wd. like to write every day but alas, what a crowded life mine is, & certainly it is better it shd. Be spent for others than in this new & perhaps selfish resource—

Now some letters to write & yet how many remain unwritten! Now a friend to go to see, now friends to see at home! I do not care for many acquaintances or only fro those who may eventually become friends, I like life to be real, & I love humanity, but the highest pleasure in it seems to me to be the interchange of the thoughts of ones mind, & heart,-- with the poor & common people ones intercourse is real, one has a real purpose in seeing them, one can really sympathise with them & there is no artificiality in conversation – but in the

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mere rapid round of calls on mere acquaintances, what waste unless it ever tends to friendship? What artificial conversation, one asks questions of which one does not need or care to know the answers, & yet to a certain extent the “society racket” as my young men friends call it, may be useful & good if it leads to a few more being gathered in the real life of friends – what a ludicrous idea of happiness it is merely to do as others, do merely to have this or that taste because others have it! – How much happier people wd. be if they lived their own lives, & arranged their own houses, [indecipherable] or their pleasures to their own ideas & likings, “Oh dear, what a nuisance we must go out this evening”! is often the weary exclamation & that to a house where you are not cared for or needed but “You must go” – what slaves society people are – if only a few will have & wise enough to [indecipherable] live on their own lives regardless of anyone but their friends or those to whom they cd. show kindness, or give how much happier people wd. be – If you have an evening

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at home, & people are told to come any with at that evening just as they like you feel well if they come they like to come & the ‘Social racket’ is somewhat amended even by such a simple thing as this—

I was talking to T.R. last night, & somehow we drifted as I & they often do in to chat talk on love & marriage – How is it that the Intellectual young have of the present day find it so hard to believe in Love – might love to be an unreasoning passion, & if it is is it likely to end in happiness. What is love, & when are you in Love, how can you know it”? they ask me – I say do not only be carried away by beauty, after marriage you will need something more than a pretty face to look at – try to find a sympathetic soul – Feel that the girl you love cd. be a friend companion as well as a wife – That is all very well, how are we to know, to find out. We see them the girls just now & then at Balls, or picnics etc. How are we to find out their real Natures

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& characters? It is hard for them I acknowledge & then the life long misery if a gaslight passion is mistaken for the real Love but men must become more less animal & women more intellectual before we indecipherable can exclaim marriage is no longer “a failure” -- & both must become more unselfish, especially the men – we none of us shd. live altogether for ourselves -- not how much we shd. assert our own individuality, how much surrender for the love of others? Who can say?

If a man has intellect & sympathies above the common, it is seldom his nature is satisfied with a wife who can only administer to his lower nature, even if she also sets an example of purity love & unselfishness – women are strong in their Heart affections, they are not more moral perhaps than men but their morality is from an entirely different standpoint – Men care more for truth and women for Love (of the pure & heavenly type) perhaps every virtue may after all be only small

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branches of flowing from these two “Truth & Love”—

Mans spiritual side nature is best reached through his Intellectual nature – womans spiritual nature thro’ her affections Each advances to the spiritual from by a different road is it therefore much wonder that women & men are now at a period when they do not understand or are dissatisfied with each other

Each ishas advanced very much from the true animal type, they seek for & need something beyond – women are often disgusted & saddened by the lower animal type of mans love, men are disgusted by woman’s narrow intellectual range -- & it is ludicrous to them that a woman shd. think in material forms & ceremonies, real religion & spiritual comprehension exists -- Their A mans conception of God is far higher than a womans from their intellectually spiritual view – Whilst pure & Divine Love is better understood by her – But Love alone may become narrow, idiotic

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& maudlin – it needs sense & intellect Truth to stand beside it, Truth is as the strong tree, Love the ivy that clings round it & covers it with beauty & eternal freshness -- The man Truth alone by itself is base & stern, not worth living for & man needs to make more, far more divine & heavenly love not only for all humanity but for God also – It is a sign of improvement, & higher life that men & women shd. be dissatisfied with life as it is, that marriage as it alas too often is shd. grate upon their higher & nobler natures women also all feeling it from their point of view -- Ibsen stands out as an old Pioneer trying to clear a path but he is not as wise as he is enthusiastic and others after him will show that it is not enough to assert a woman’s individuality, it is something but not enough – she must not sacrifice her love & unselfishness; it will never be any gain to lose them – but she must add to them Intellect & Truth -- & must learn

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to comprehend mans spiritual nature from that path & that alone as well as her own & when she indecipherable has done this will not man also improve. She is the stronger for good because the the heart Spirit & Heart combined with intellect must be stronger than the more intellect & animal nature of man whose affections are not so developed –

Are Have not women’s affections been developed to do through many ages at the expense of their intellectual & spiritual natures, They have been too much like sweet kindly natured animals, & their affections alone have saved them, because thro’ them they have reached Spirituality, if onesided still Spirituality—

 I remember years ago walking in the Streets of N with my sister, we saw on a doorstep 2 children, both had empty black bottles in their The boy was tipping his up to drink! The little

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girl had wrapped her pinafore round her bottle & was nursing it as a baby in her arms! My sister made a sketch of the scene & called it “A parable of Life”! –

What pictures one sees in the streets! Today I saw a little barelegged dancing on the pavement yelling out to a passing Bus Papphar Pappah Pappah!—Papa was driving the Bus, & condescended to gaze round at his excited little kiddums!

Oct.13th I spoke very strongly against Strikes and Unions the other day, I have always had a prejudice against them, why shd. men make slaves of themselves, why shd. they punish another man because he chooses to work longer than themselves? Y R was defending them, & next time we met I said That perhaps it was true that the very fact of having a prejudice showed a wrong state of mind that if we find we have a prejudice we at once may infer that we are in some decree wrong --

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These unions seem selfish and narrow it is true, but perhaps they are an improvement – At first the individual man thought only of himself, & his own family, now his sympathies include all who work with him, is not this an advance? May not his sympathies gain wisdom & breadth by degrees, & may not they rise to a higher & wider plain, from which he may work for the good of Humanity as a whole, & there may be a universal Union

I was also talking the other day to S A. He says there is no such thing as duty that moral responsibility is a growth of ages, What is good for society that the individual must submit to do or to leave undone – I said I cd, more easily give up my belief in God than in a Right and Wrong. Duty seems to me to be the backbone of society existence – There are many mistaken ideas of duty, but so there are about truth. To do the right to be honorable & true & loving & get love seems to be a thing apart from duty something we cannot help.

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Alas how hard it is to be misunderstood & judged badly & unjustly by those one loves. What harder trial except perhaps to see love die altogether as it does in some. – As a child my heart throbbed with a desire to do right & to be loved & loved again – often & often have I felt particularly the sense of injustice that I was misunderstood & wrongly judged -- & outwardly cold & stony

Ah what a sea of restlessness & misery surged inside that rocky exterior – Poor little child thy affections seem much the same tho’ thy mind has expanded--, I knew thee once so well, poor little restless heart, long long ago! Was it really years & years ago that the soft grass by the river & sand covred thy hot cheek, that the soft rush of the river over its pebbly & the rush rush rush of the swamp oaks bending over thee spoke to thee in melancholy & pathetic peacefulness & soothed the wild throbbing of thy heart, like many another child how sweet death seemed to thee if only it wd. come & take thee & wring the hearts of the apparently cruel ones who had

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been so you thought been so unkind & to thee not who really once ’misunderstood’ – And now there is no river, no swamp oaks, no green soft grass – Death better known alas, is not so lovely nor so desirable & if we wish for it;We [indecipherable] it is not to wring the hearts of those we love, we know so well what sorrow is, sorrow & regret & we wd only wish Thee to take us when our work is done somewhere to rest rest forever & like is weary & even love is it worth living for eternally? The river murmurs & gurgles on, the swamp oaks are gone, torn away by floods & winds & storms & born ny a rushing flooded river to the sea – And the child, she too has been tossed about on the sea of life, & the river is but a memory, not far down at the bottom of the sea it is still & quiet, more peaceful than the river, Perhaps the swamp oaks lie there

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Dec

Long since I touched pen or wrote a word here & wherefore? I have had a letter from a friend who has been asked to assure a young girl of a future state – She speaks of studying theology & battling with problems! I seems to me ones duty is to take each thing & think it out oneself, we cannot get much real help from books in some ways – xtianity has been a stage in the development of the world, but we must not look upon it as the one revelation. Each age has had its revelations, those best suited to it. If xtianity now fails to satisfy the highest & most cultured thought of the age, then does not that show that it has had its day in that form? The Truth & goodness in it can never die Mahometanism was a revelation of a lower type, imperfect but best suited to those particular people & their needs – If not, cd. it ever have taken a firm hold of so many thousands for so long? It was not so high & fine a revelation as xtianity

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A crystalised creed, a religion without growth, is it not stagnant, dead? Why shd. we suppose that of all things around us religion shd. be the only thing remaining stationary. 1800 years, & no advance? Nor a higher more spiritual religion? Surely we are ripe for it almost? Historical truths interesting but? All theological books begin to argue from a foregone conclusion Let us leave the material for the spiritual, keep all that is love & truth we need no more dogmas, but far more Love & truth, at home & abroad are we not on the eve of a great change a more spiritual religion The scaffolding is it needed much longer, the scaffolding which consists of religious doctrines etc, do not they often hide the perfect building, the Palace of Love & truth, do not people often think that mistake the scaffolding now for the Building! Is faith a clog to truth? The people that are sure, have they ever thought or do they trust all to Faith like the RCs the only consistent Church people –

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Janry 6th

Oh my journal, my journal how I neglect you. Days pass & I never write a word in you. What a busy life mine is & how full of interruptions – Now today what has happened & how all my plans for the day have been upset – After breakfast I confess to having sat down with the paper, got N to practice & write a letter of thanks for that delightful book “Tom Brown's school days” – I watered my plants in the verandah, no bush house needs water today, & I wandered round my garden pulling up a few weeds on the principle that “a stitch in time saves nine” – An interchange of flowers with my neighbour over the fence. She told me of her little boys delinquencies I murmur something about I wonder people are not afraid to have children & so we get into a chat on the things of life for about ten minutes & then tear ourselves away to our various duties –She told me of a Clergyman who has a delicate wife with 5 small children

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& who says spoke to her severely for her own desire never to have any more children Those she had were responsibility enough etc -- He wd. not mind if he had twenty They were the ”Gifts of God,” & he hoped they wd be useful members of society –
“The Gifts of God”! How men deceive themselves, no doubt one might call some of them a gift of God, but if it is a gift it is a gift to the women who bear all the burden & suffering
“The Gifts of God” with a sickly wife hardly able to manage the little turbulent human steps that confront her Bah! The results Sir of yr. own selfishness & animal self indulgence though you are a clergyman! Heavens if women knew more they wd. surely never marry for ought but Love; & if men are selfish & exacting it is I say partly our fault we are the rulers of the world, the moral strength of it & how do we behave, we

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bring up our brothers, sons & husbands to be selfish, We give them devotion we "give in" to them, it is the "easiest way" my neighbour says. But is this fulfilling our life. We can see most of us how wrong it is to spoil children but few of us see realise that all men are only children of a larger growth & shd. not be spoiled either. Oh let us not lose our loving hearts our unselfishness. But love without wisdom degenerates into folly; & unselfishness carried to excess destroys that very individuality in us which wd. benefit our men. They are very children for animal pleasures, & we must forsooth give them all we can to satisfy them, & eventuate these desires, We are content with cold mutton, they must have a hot dinner well served whether we have a good cook or are minus a cook at all! I know people who live on others. Their tradesman, Their old

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widowed mothers, anyone in fact who is weak & foolish enough to indulge them & who regularly have a baby once a year! The gifts of God! It is a little too much to think that be any can believe that nonsense nowadays & to think that such people can persuade themselves that God sends them children under such circumstances.

Everything is a will "For every effect there is a cause if we like to look for it, scientifically or otherwise, & our lives & their results are in our own hands a good deal more than we like to believe they are - The world will never alter" said my neighbour with a sigh - and yet it may alter, The spirit of man grows & develops with ages -- The Woman will no longer marry for ought but Love when she has no longer the temptation to marry for a Home

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but can make it for herself -- & if people marry for Love, why shd. not sympathy & communion of soul & spirit suffice them, & if they want children adopt some of the many that are now homeless & without affection & Love - What folly! I can hear the man laugh, some a little angrily well nous venous, if we live for to can ever see see 1990! in spirit.
I flew away to plant some cuttings & change the pots of ferns in the house, order the dinner, buy from the inevitable chinaman, some one call, a friend, I sit beside her I feel grieved for her & hers, the Mother is dead, the Mother who understood everyone & sympathised with all - The poor old Father lives bereft of the companion of a life time - Ah what for these is not the assurance of another world of happiness - My friend speaks of it with confidence - Her confidence

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makes me doubt - If people doubt I feel more confidence - I am always for the other side "Les femmes sont toujours pour les causes vaincues"! Strange she is sweet & nice & good & yet how absorbed she is in herself The grief it has been to her, The effect it has had on her, What she did to comfort to sympathise - No mention of the sisters who gave all their lives to the Invalid -- & yet why criticise, I fear I've too much of the critical It is nobler to see the good than the weak side of people - It is nobler because it is really I believe truer & also far harder - The Post came my hand was full of letters, it generally is when that Post comes - One I opened at once - Ah my mother is better, I can now go on listening to my friend poor child, I hope the change will do her good & amp she will return refreshes & strengthened -

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She goes I return to my letters - A bill with concepts for the boys Education, I don't mind the pounds, but that 6/9 or 7/6 for stationary always provokes me & makes me think evil of humanity What an imposition it is -- & one later to be imposed upon for 1/- it will better to give away £1 That is my Scotch blood I imagine - A letter from an old friend whose husband was once my Lover - whose marriage I've always been glad of - She loved him fr. the first & I cd. never love him except as a friend & as a friends I have them both & one of their children is my godchild that reminds me what a comical thing "godchild" is yet I have several & I feel it is someone I have to take a special interest in in the family of a friend -- special interests do us good wd. not our life's interest & purpose evaporate aimlessly over too large a surface & I love humanity, to have special interests among its myriads pleases & interests me

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A letter fr. my friend who keeps a girls school, so warm hearted, so right, so affectionate one of the few constantly sincere Irish people I have known - The Irish are charming - but it is not their characteristic to be deeply & constantly true I think - She is poetical, clever, sympathetic & though a friend of my later years I have a very warm corner for her in my heart - She loves flowers as I do some people do not - such things are bonds of sympathy --& then she is a woman who thinks, & whom it is a pleasure to talk & argue with -- & alack so many women never use their intellect or reason at all, though their hearts are developed to a tremendous extent. In fact some seem to have no reason - or rather they allow their affection for old ways, thoughts & old established forms & ceremonies to swallow up all attempts at reason - I've felt that myself with individuals, if I loved them I wd. not allow their faults

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not even to myself - but I think I am intellectually honest as a rule, I hope so --and If our mind, spirit , body & heart cd. all be developed equally, but we never get the balance, & perhaps if we did it wd. not be rather dead levelish & uninteresting, & yet I hope not, for surely The fates it is what we tend to.

Then there was another letter, from that odd odd little soul whom no one loves & who provokes everyone The strangest character, it even provokes me to think of her, for she stands out as the one piece of humanity I've tried tried to love & can't. & yet she is not bad nor vicious - Well my letters done I fly to mend some clothes, a ring a man at the door ! Oh these men at the door who can't get work who are in distress, who have slept out all night etc. etc. What is true & what is not true in their tales. Do they need any food, yes? Well that I never refuse them, but oh how harrowing it is to know what else to do, if you give money are you encouraging vice & drink or are you really lending a helping hand to a fellow creature

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we never know, we never can find out. I know I've been cheated over & over again, but perhaps it is better to be cheated than hard & chance sending away anyone who really needs help - "Why don't you go to the big houses" I said, "to the rich people? Why come to these small cottages" Oh mam he said, these people I've been to the big houses but the 'aristocracy' here are like the aristocracy in England it is only the middle class that give you any help & sympathy"! The aristocracy the middle class, it amused me awfully -- & I cd. not resist giving him 1/- to be mistaken for the middle class in Australia tho' I did live in a cottage! Most of the big houses near were occupied not by people that I considered very much the middle class or below it, & I flattered myself that tho' I did live in a cottage I belonged by right of many many years in a family of gentle blood in this land essentially to the

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real old aristocracy (if there is any) of the colony - For many generations back my people have been of gentle blood, & well amongst the people gentle folk of the county in the old days -- What does it matter? Yes, it matters a bit, we have we old gentlefolk a far greater sympathy for the poor, a better way of treating our servants than any most of the "risen people" & no one knows it better than the "common" or poor people the difference between the real old gentlefolk & the risen people. Of course there are exceptions - All honor to the risen & rising people for rising. Better for a country to be free from a set aristocracy & free from the snobbery that necessarily exists in a country like England. Here everyone can rise to the top if they like & have the go in them, everyone can rise, & though money is alas too great a factor in society here as it is everywhere yet the need for hold of toadism[?] & snobbery are as a matter of course not so apparent or so frequent; we see the type here

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but seldom amongst the Australian born They have lived in a free country, free from a titled aristocracy some of whose [indecipherable] flower in my own [indecipherable] a county society, a set of conventionalisms too long, they are more free to think to act. They are necessarily more natural & when they are liberal minded as well & not narrow & conceited they are people worth knowing. Here is a digression! but to go on with The Man He I asked him where he came from? "a place called London" he said in a melancholy & tremulous voice - I made him repeat it "A place called London" There was not the faintest shade of humour in his face - I thought I must be mistaken & said "Is there a place called that in this country". Oh no its in England! In England! you poor unfortunate miserable man I suppose he thought we had never heard of it "A place called London"! He had been a clerk in a good house in London of which he gave me the name

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But he gave up the situation & came out here, thinking Australia a grand place & no doubt that he wd. make his fortune! Poor fool he soon found his mistake.

Has & Is this one result of Australia's generosity to the Dock laborers! No wonder they think a place where the working man can subscribe thousands of pounds for their relief, must be a rich country. What if I told them that the same working man (many of them) who subscribed so liberally to this fund left many a bill unpaid, many a wife was left without the needful, though you may be sure that the "generosity" seldom went so far as to deprive the man of anything he needed for a single day - His beer & his tobacco will not be curtailed you may be sure - A poor widow, a struggling honest brave little soul, who keeps a grocer shop told me herself many who gave to that fund cd. find no money to pay her her bills! Charity begins at home with a vengeance

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My dear old journal I have been meandering on I think I will write a book some day, it shall be called Days and Thoughts in a woman's Life"! Again another interruption a friend off to the North tomorrow with his wife & family, seeking fortune in another climate, not knowing a soul where he is going - His health demands it - I had four letters of introduction written for him - I hope he may get something - SOON -- -- Then came lunch - then I mended the long neglected jacket whilst my mother skimmed over one of Scotts novels to my little nephew. Skimmed over the love passages! Of course he only cares for the fighting! We women have a real interest in love affairs, I find myself turning over the pages in a biography to see what the love affairs where were! They are the real things to us! & who knows but we are right, they are the real life - Jan 7th -- But the day in my own life how did it end! Someone called at the instance of Mrs W, to see me, to see if I cd. help

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her in getting pupils for reading - Her father had been a great reader. That he might thoroughly acquire a knowledge of the Eng. language he studied the Dictny. for two years, never looking at any other book! I cd. not help saying "Two years! I shd. have died of ennui"! Though perhaps the old Scotchman who wished to see Sir W Scott cd. have existed on such mental food, He waited for Sir W in the study & when Sir W entered he found him reading a Dictionary & asked him how he liked his book - "Vera good vara good, but the stories are unco short" was the reply

Janry 14
I went to see "Friends" last night at the Criterion. I did not like it as well as I thought I shd. it seemed to me very unequal - such broad sort of burlesque sometimes - Titterage[?] as usual splendid - his facial expression is so good. The real part of the story is good. The wife who thinks to find pure dis-interested lofty friendship in a man not her husband

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and then she finds that the mans friendship is not as hers - She has gone too far & she suddenly realises what feelings she has raised in the man How natural, how true to life. How often women disappointed & sometimes disgusted with the animalism in man long for that communion of soul & spirit whilst the husband is quite content to have no more ecstasies no more rapturous love making - He cannot help up to "agony point" as a womans more highly strung nature can He is quite happy with the humdrum life, good dinners, wife looking pretty & being moderately affectionate and she - oh she feels that the soul has gone, love has she believed in it, & dreamt of it - The love that seemed like heaven & earth in one - She finds that she is expected to be minister

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to her husbands appetites as she wd. furnish him a good dinner.at Everything has become common place -- & ordinary, & his he is content! satisfied! her heart is aching for that sweet unearthly love She wants love without sensuality not sensuality without love. Oh how she longs for it, dreams she has found it another a friend & too often wakes to find it a more dreadful delusion than ever more before. Men are all the same,her The only friendship possible between men & women is the friendship between the young man & the woman years older than himself or the The only friendship which partakes of the entirely spiritual & intellectual Oh woman wonan perhaps is a 1000 years hence yr dream of love may last a life time, but now it is not as a day in one's life! The sun rises, and the sun sets, and the day is gone for ever & ever

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& well for those whose day is followed by even stars & moonlight
Janry 29

I must write today write write if only for a time, it is a relief. I feel intense overstrung . Oh woman woman what are you made of, everything is so in earnest to you, you feel so deeply & so wildly
What shall I write about, what shall I choose of all the things which today are weighing on my soul. The loved one that is ill, with an illness that seems worse than death, nay that is worse than death. It is better to see the body die than the Intellect, --Why all these things --, Is there a God who loves & yet & yet such things can be - If there is a God is he not a sad God a God that weeps & sighs, whose heart aches with sorrow to think of all the misery & heartaches He must inflict - What if they are only for a time, Do our hearts ache the less because we have

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perhaps to whip a child we love as I had to do the other day, I knew that in an hour he wd. forget it & it wd. be over but I - it is two days since & still my heart is aching. Oh God, if you are a God of Love as I am a woman of Love have you not always an aching miserable heart? or are you so unlike us that we cannot even conceive You, or what You think of, or how You feel, if indeed You feel at all - I wd. think that you are all Love & that you are sorrow also , & yet perhaps to see to the End & that end is happiness wd. temper the sorrow as ours is never tempered -- It is a day of shifting clouds & wind & sunshine, a day like the days in our hearts one minute a gleam of gladness, another one of misery or pain now one of storm & darkness, even so shift the scenes in our innermost

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hearts & perpetual change is still the law if nature within & without
Oh my friend, my heart is mourning over you, our talk the other night was not satisfactory, though yr. sweetness & friendship was - What harm is it to flirt with a married woman who has deliberately made a dead set at you? Why shd. you not have some fun? Why shd. you not gather in yr. experiences of life just the same as most other men - why not & yet & yet; ought we not try to avoid some temptations, & not rush into them purposely - let us not go out of our way to meet them they can it ever be good for a man to be the instrument of a womans folly & sin even if he keeps his level head - women make & mar mans life -- & I shudder to think of the precipice a man stands on when he is much with a woman whose object is to snare men to her by exciting their passion & not their

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love or respect - She plays upon their worst nature & the more it is played upon the more it will be brought out is it not so? My God, [indecipherable] what can we do to raise men while such women live & play their arts for mans destruction and then again this woman is my friend & I have not only to be ashamed of womanhood in her but personally my heart aches to think she shd. so degrade herself - To inspire men to love & respect you not as they wd. respect a saint perhaps but as they wd. love & respect one in whom whose weaknesses they felt [indecipherable] human nature & fellowship, To inspire love Ah what better on earth, but if I cd. choose it wd. be always a passionless love, a love of tenderness & deep affection but void of that animalism called passion - some think this love wd. be cold & icy

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thing, why shd it be! Some say then we shd have no more hand clasps, no kisses, no marks of outward affection. I cannot see it, we love to kiss a child over & over again, we love to feel a hand clasp, we cd throw our arms around those we love & press them to our hearts & yet be without a tinge of passion – so called [indecipherable]. R came in last night & I was thinking of all these things, & when he spoke of love, I said I am sick of love so called – oh if men cd love as women do - & he was horrified – "what sin to speak so, you who always advocate love & tells us there is such a thing & we shall find it”. But he did not know all that had put me in that mood, all the feeling of disgust & weariness I had. Beautiful & adoring love seems

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to shine in a mans eyes, & make his voice tender & his soul as the soul of the immortals & then you see (as Helen saw. Poor Helen of “the fatal charm”!)

“The Brute rise up within them” & you feel that their love is not as your love & that you are near in body but far apart in spirit far far apart – Oh how worse than death must be the wife life of many a wife, why do they not die, how can they live even to endure the sensuality of the man you love wd be hard enough but the man you don’t love, that must be terrible. It is well I never married, well for me & well for the man I might have married. I cd not have lived the life that men think women shd live – wd I have died! Wd I have grown wicked & sought in another a love which I thought seemed pure & lofty, as many & many another woman has done

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& then awoke to find it the same the very same as the love she had left – What possibilities one feel within oneself, that circumstances might have brought out – I cd have been a Joan of Arc, & faced death & danger with an enthusiasm. Every kind of wickedness (not one perhaps seem possible under other circumstances & yet perhaps I might have been strong enough to resist – oh poor humanity! We shd never despise or scorn each other, in us also all the seed germs of everything evil & if we are in touch with all humanity we feel such & such under other circumstances might we have been also, not only the good & noble, but the vile & degraded. R. spoke last night of my influence for good, & last night it did not seem to make me feel happy to think I had any I'm afraid. He spo “What do I do, what can I do” I said, if I were to ask the men to

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give up a pleasure in yr life that was not good for you. smg such as having fun or flirtation with a woman who was not good wd you do it? - & if you did do give it up for my sake, wd you not wish for it all the time? He said very truly to ask us to give up anything for yr sake is not the best way, to influence us by showing us the contrast that is best”. A negat passive not an active influence, an almost unconscious influence is this then the best? & yet is it not terribly dangerous to weild a power you are unconscious of – oh it is just this one must just try to be good loving & true & the rest leave to God – O shd not have said try to be loving – one has to try to be good, but loving comes without trying – It is to strive to be unselfish in ones love & yet true to oneself & themselves (ones friends) & leave the rest to God. Ah I hope there is a God a personal sweet loving God who will take care of those one loves

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when we ourselves can do nothing nothing. Oh my friend, my friend if you knew my heart ached when you yielded to a married womans wiles wd you yield to them any the less? Wd you be strong to resist, & by resisting do yourself & her also good. You have yr influence in the world as I have mine & if one yields to ones selfish desire for ones own pleasure or excitement does not one lose something, & does not & the life that has been attracted to us in whatever way do we not help to mar it? or to help it to mar itself? I am a woman but I try to look on yr side my man friend, I try to be largeminded but this is all I see – Do you love me enough to resist what I cd never ask you to resist for my sake. Have I such influence over you that you cd no longer take pleasure in it when you saw the way I felt, if not then my influence with you is not much.

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I have found such pleasure in yr affection above my other men friends – I have had too much of mens love so called, & am weary of it – In you I found a close affection & sweet friendship which circumstances time can never change to passion, I found in you the passionless love & affection which women all long for but so seldom find - & your future has often held my thoughts. I cd resign you to the sweet woman I hope will some day be yr wife, & love her I hope dearly, but you have not found her yet, but it is another thing to see you absorbed by a flirt who cares for nothing but herself in her pursuit of men. Reading nothing but sensational novels will wd it not spoil us for any good reading, associating with such a woman ever so little seeing that she wishes to flirt with you, does will not that give you a taste for [indecipherable] an excitement which may make a love which is not wicked appear tame & uninteresting?

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[Page 50]

Nov 18th

I've been thinking of what men are always saying "Women never know what they want" - Men do but women don't, how is this? I think it is because we want just as much to be happy as men do, we want also to be good, especially to them, we want them to be happy, & we want them (if not to be very good) yet to believe in goodness, in love, in purity in unselfishness - and sometimes these things cross over & our minds are in a conflict, oh how we long to be happy, but if we are happy will those we love be happy? If we do this, will we be good & right? if we snatch our happiness even if it makes the man or men we love happy will it make them believe as much as ever in womans goodness & unselfishness, & if however bad they are, they still believe in that

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in their womankind, or even in one woman is it not something? The bad woman, or utterly selfish knows what she wants, she sees it before her & she "goes for it" regardless of consequences to anyone, & regardless of anything save her own selfish pleasure for the time being - The man knows what he wants he is not torn to pieces by conflicting emotions - he does not feel as if the goodness & happiness of women depended on him, he is only concerned with his own happiness & his own idea of duty or morality. The womans idea of it all is not much to him, she shd look on things as he does, or she does not love him! & she - of in one breath she will feel, W Ah, I wd love to be selfish just this once! Ah I want as much as ever to be good - Ah if I am happy will it

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be for his best happiness, ah if I make him happy, am I thinking more of his happiness than his duty shall I not help his life to be all it ought to be in the future as well as now -? Shall I do anything to make him happy, but at the same time that may make him think "Women are all the same" & make him lost his sense belief in the goodness of women & their unselfishness - Alas we are torn a thousand ways we have not only our own lives but the lives of others on our souls, & we stand sometimes hesitating; or if one day we seem wilful & selfish the next we will leave that behind & be our best & highest selves. How calm must be the life of the uncomplex mind! The woman who always knows she is good & acting up to her "principles" - But some of us, seem to have all natures of former generations ground into one in

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our poor unfortunate mind, & we wish, & we long, & we try & we don't try, & we do not understand ourselves, & small blame if no-one else does - we only know we love people, & we want to be good, but most of all we want to make those we love happy, yes & good also, & which is best? Oh to be good - & which are we trying most to make them? Alas to be happy! And oh we long if we love them to have some little share, ah even a big share in making them hapy & we wake up sometimes & find we are in this as selfish as the rest of the world, why this ego! Why o why - ? The people that are content with the ego they are the happy - but we who are struggling with the ego and the selfish love & the unselfish love with the love for the Individual they [like so?} Love for Humanity - What of us? We learn that the only lasting

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happiness (if there is any lasting happiness?) is in duty, to do what one believes to be right - and then often other peoples ideas of right & wrong clash with ours, & it comes again - Is this "what is right what wrong"? How much [indecipherable] again must he stand [indecipherable], how much give up to please & satisfy others, to whom we owe much! The women who have their ideas strongly implanted of goodness, & morality & purity, how often do their ideas clash with that of the man or even men they love, & how much must be kept, how much retained. The woman who lives up to her ideas in cold calm satisfaction & tortures the man she loves, who feels he can no more move her in her ideas of duty (it may be going to church or anything else) than he can move a rock, does she do as much good after all as the woman who gives up some of her ideas for love's sake?

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& who wd rather bear the torture of self reproach even than let clouds & gloom fall on the face of the man she loves - & feel that he is divided from her because forsooth she cannot stoop to his level? Ah my God what age is this, full of conflicting thoughts; of old the wars used to be physical, now they are mental & like the wars of old they are never decided, & at an end - the castle is taken one day it is given up the next to the enemy The conflict may be fierce & the fight desperate, but the goal is never won.

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I've been dreaming about the "Love of the Future" What a feeling seems to be rising up about divorce for anything is everything - for being free, not tied in anything to each other - Women are pitied for being tied to brutal husbands, they must be released & so on & so on - As Phelps the American minister says "To make people happy, not to make them good seems our great endeavour" What good & pure woman wd ever be happy married again whilst her 1st husband lived! Shd people not always be looking for their happiness, their own happiness. Let them think a bit of trying to make the happiness of others & surely if there are children their good & happiness ought to come first with the parents - who have lived their lives, & if they've made their mistakes shd they not try to make the best of them & instead of vainly trying to erase them

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But oh the love of the Future! it might be that then there will be no need for marriage ceremonies, no need for any law, because there will be such perfect Love. Perhaps in all advanced & cultured people it will be all spiritual & intellectual. Is not the animal part of our nature becoming less & less?Do we not see in the world already many men & many women who if they cannot marry for love don't marry at all - In the far Future will the cultured & highest men & women love but not many? jealousy & selfish love no longer exist with them? Love, be pure, radiant, lofty & soulfull! If we allow that[indecipherable] man is descended developed from the ape, & so on from the lowest forms of animal life - may we not in hundreds of years look back at man as he now is in 1890 with

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the same disgust that we now look back upon the Ape!

The ape full of animal joy & vigour might have remonstrated with the philosophic & metaphysical old ape when the latter prophecied that in the future it might be these wd be pure joys in being a man "What! give up this joynes [like so] & careless existence, this living for the day - this revelling in all animal joys this freedom of movement, even the joy of swinging by ones tail gone gone! - & what to be "man", puzzled with thoughts & problems, man with his desire for money & the foolish things it can buy, man with his sorrows, if keener joys, what folly"! Very truly in all changes even changes for 'greater development' all elements of loss - but on the whole, who wd not be the man? & who envies The Ape? - now now?

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Does man ever long for the tail that was then so useful & ornamental? & will he hereafter long for anything he now longs for, except pure , pure Truth? Love in its noblest & highest form & Truth - Intellectual truth - will he even be able to conceive an existence which found joy & pleasure in the things men now find joy & pleasure in?

Teeth are no longer needed now by man to crunch & tear flesh from bones or to gnaw roots, therefore they are gradually decaying; food is soft & delicately cooked & teeth are no longer much required - are they not therefore by order of nature gradually becoming non existent we may no doubt still preserve them in a rudimentary form in the man of the future, but the desire to use them ceasing, will not nature

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cease to supply them? Our animal faculties are all dying out - The savage sees & hears and moves as the man of culture never can. The dog can distinguish the smell of each individual, his scent is so keen, - The spiritual nature needs no longer these faculties which rather encumber being confined as it were to organs which can do so much & no more - But the will is confined by no organ as in animals, & when the will is developed shall we not be able to see & hear & speak at by mere efforts of will, & be [indecipherable] creatures of animal organs no more? Spiritual beings, with only the essence, pure & refined of the animal nature left? - But oh I dream, I dream, I dream.

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I've just heard a sermon preached by a spiritual looking man, above the ordinary. He spoke of reason being not sufficient in itself, we needed something more - & he said Faith was what we needed. It seems so me that Love is what we need - Reason & Love, Truth & Love are there any other virtues? Are not all other so called virtues emanations for these, which our complexity divises we are like the greeks still, they made gods out of every stone & tree, do we not make 1000 virtues & vices where there are only two Love & Truth - & vices? Are there any really? Does not all evil come from the simple want of Love & Truth? In fact from selfishness & ignorance? He spoke of our becoming as "little children" what better could we be - If the numan being is not as good as the child, is not creation a failure - & God's work a blunder? Of course some children

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are better than some from people but surely the human being who has lived & lived, & sinned & conquered is a higher being than the little child who has not passed thro' the fires & who is good because Temptation has never come? - & never been realized?

Do I believe in the inspiration of the Bible? No, not as people generally understand it - I believe that God inspires all good in the Bible, Shakspeare, the Koran or any other book - no doubt as Spencer says Jesus, Shakspeare, Mahomet were the product of the ages before them, their ancestors, their country, their surroundings but still I think also with Carlyle there is a great man. Theory, that the hand of God especially touches the being who is indeed also the product of the ages, & that every book, Bible & all is mingled with human ignorance,

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human weakness - but the good the noble, god is there also & can be discerned from all ages & to all ages by the mind of reason & the heart of Love - But let us discriminate & not adore the rubbish that is mingled with the gold - Pure gold is seldom found, we have to assay, to take trouble [like so?], to purify it from its surroundings.

May 20th
How intensely sometimes thoughts come to us, our hearts throb with them & to speak of them, to unite is a relief. - I was talking to C today, who calleth Erin Father or Motherland - He spoke of defining "Literature" advertisements are not literature & leading articles may or may not be! Are Dictionaries I asked? & was answered no - then a literature of Science - to which some of Darwin's works he thought belonged Ah we are always wanting to classify [indecipherable] & define, & get in [indecipherable]

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& classifications we seem as far off & in involved as ever - I like talking to C - he has [indecipherable] & often helps me he has on the whole a good critical faculty & good taste, but there is a wee bit too much of conventional ideas as regards what is good or bad in so called literature: & yet perhaps I worry him - He asked me if I had read "Unspoken Thoughts" forgetting that I had lent it to him -I said I liked most of it very much, but some things I did not like - The idea in the last poem I cd not like, that idea which seems often so prevalent now
"Thy love I am - thy wife I cannot be
"To wear the yoke of servitude - &c -
No woman who ever really loved ever thought at that supreme moment that it was possible to change, the woman who cd calmly calculate on change in her love never loved - C argued people do change, the majority do, do they not? It may be so no doubt, but for this poem to place it before us as an Ideal.

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If the inferior ones change, the law seems good for them to help them bound to those of a higher & more spiritual nature can the thought come, can the reality ever come of change? He instanced Brownings poem, the artist & his wife & the artists women he thought he loved who gave him a frame to paint a face in - That seemed to me a proof of the usefulness of being bound to ones wife, for after all he found out he loved noone so well as the wife afterall & then again if people have made mistakes & find they are bound to those they find they do not love, is it not their duty to consider how to make the best of their mistake - ah when will pure unselfishness reign? Surely parents shd in such cases think first of their children - It might be far far in the future that people shd be so good & noble that all law wd be swept away & with it all

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need for marriage ceremonies for then each wd be a law unto themselves but the world is not good enough for that, & will not be for many & many a long day I fear -

A thought of Victor Hugos
"Love lightens up the Infinite". Can we not see by its Power things Reason can never teach us? Reason plods on loves "swifter instinct threads the electric wire." Both are needed - Reason will some day plod to where Love has flown, Reason makes the Road for Humanity to thread. Love sometimes shows the way - Will Science ever combine these forces? I have said to GR - "Beware of materializing the good in human form lest the Humanity that is by no means perfect shd fail & then you shd with the failure deem you have also lost the good. No we can only

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materialise it in our actions, our lives recognize it & encourage it in others. Pure gold is not seldom found without dross. Humanity is not pure gold yet. Every virtue can be reduced to Love & Truth, every vice to Ignorance or Selfishness. Why not simplify to children & let all their efforts go to a great endeavour to be unselfish & to seek for Truth truthfully. Children need many laws many constraints So does the childhood of the world, The ancients made many gods, we make many virtues many vices, many laws - Is it because we have not yet been able to see the whole but only part by part, bit by bit as we are able. Was 'all the light too great for us too bright at once - There is a truth in every part but we cannot see Love & Truth in its Beauty till we see the whole.

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Men must bring Love into their Business, women bring reason into their love - men cultivate the affections, women the reason. How much is needed of both.

I suggested to my aged aunt today that clothes were a conventionality, in some countries we wear the neck uncovered & are not shocked in others to expose the neck is a disgrace but it is not so to expose the legs I said wd it not be a real ideal state, a purer & more innocent state if we gradually left off all garments. Clothes are not a mark of innocence. The world is not good enough for this either yet, but it may be - I think she was a bit shocked till I suggested Adam & Eve live in the garden & not ashamed, & they were then in their fine innocence is it not so? How we are bound in with traditions & customs. They actually become morality to us -

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I saw Camille last night, I felt rather low spirited before I went & the play made me completely miserable all the more because it was acted wonderfully - Mrs Brown Potter surpassed herself & was wonderful in her acting - One innocent sweet girl told me the play did her good? What good? Oh it is a wretched play, & there comes into it false sentiment which seems the worse kind of falseness because it is so dangerous - First of all you are introduced to woman in her greatest degradation enough in itself to make you miserable How helpless we all seem to do any good or help woman to rise when once she is there - we feel ashamed miserable, powerless - Granted that Camille feels love at last, granted that she makes a noble sacrifice in giving up the young man at his fathers request, what next comes?

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Instead of her love which was so great, great enough for such a sacrifice, forcing her to fly to poverty & honest life, forcing her to flee, she actually goes & sells her body to another man, suicide wd have been a glorious martyrdom compared to this. She deprives her lover of any earthly happiness she cd have brought him by their mutual love, & ruins all his belief in womanhood & drives him almost to madness - "Love" is defiled in this play, it is done sacrilege to "Love" cd never drive a woman to give herself over to another man "Love" wd have died first - Here is the miserable blot on this play - The acting was wonderful, the dresses beautiful - The play miserable & wretched to a degree - and then that it shd be considered a beautiful & desirable climax that

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the young men in the play shd love such women, shd wish to marry them, for it is not only Camille but there is a marriage at the end, a young man to Camilles friend. Is it not disgusting that at the end Armand shd clasp her his arms with joy as if nothing had happened as if she had never sold herself to the count - What virtue there was in her sacrifice was all ruined by that miserable sale to that man - cd degradation farther go than in the scene where she enters beautifully dressed on the arm of the man she had sold herself to - a man she hates? Good God it made me shudder.

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May

How weary I felt last night, how exhausted, thought exhausts & wearies & there seems an end to all things sometimes. Oh change, change how I hate you in everything great, in love how bitter you are, in death in life – How intensely I used to love my little books, how I used to look over them, to feel they are mine. My jewellery all presents from dear ones, how I loved each thing, what miserable pang it wd. have been to lose one piece of it & now I simply like them love for them has died out of my heart, they give me no more delight. My garden, my ferns, my drawing room each in turn has given me such real delights, & I cd. look at them with pleasure – but now they seem almost a trouble to me & I mechanically seem

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to look after them & arrange –

There was in all sorrow & trouble once Eternity to look forward to.There at least we shall be happy. There at least all will be well. Am I so sure of this now? if there is a loving God yes, yes I do believe it true & just for all the world, but for myself do I care about it now? That others shd. have future compensation, future joy I wd. love to think but for myself I think when my life is ended I shall be glad to rest eternally. Heaven itself seems to contain nothing worth going on living for -- & yet though this may seem a melancholy mood of today, the thought has been growing upon me by degrees. I may be that given fresh life, fresh worth, given a power for good & so help others, one might

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not wish for “the eternal & unawakening sleep”. It resolves itself again into Gods will be done & if one is of use one shd. wish to live even an eternity. I know D feels something this way but I dare not tell him I do, he wd. grieve to think I had thoughts as melancholy as his own –

I cried & sobbed yesterday till I cd. cry no more ---, restrained tears make you feel worse, but a good cry sometimes is like a storm, it clears the air—a calm melancholy may follow the storm, but it is no longer restless misery – I shd. like friends to come nearly every evening one evening to have them all together – the other evening indecipherable separate, or only two or three so that one can enter into their lives & hearts. I feel I have a

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growing attachment to men they are so reasonable, so different in many ways to oneself – I always loved women, but now often their society leaves one melancholy. Their lives, their thoughts, their troubles are often too much a reflex of ones own, but men are different – Then their love & adoration is so inspiriting – there seems to be something in it which helps you to be what they think whereas the love & adoration of women seems to depress you often you fell as if they wd. certainly find out sooner or later their idea of you was mistaken, & love you less & yet I have known only one woman who did this. I am miserable without Love it is after all the only thing I really care for – to love & be beloved. Anything which has no human interest is at once

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a thing of dust & ashes – Ah dear men, dear women that I love I wd. wish for you all to find (if you have not done so already) [indecipherable] the love & perfect sympathy of a kindred soul, an affinity different & yet alike. There is no joy like that that earth can give – A soul that beats with yours in perfect sympathy & love. It is a different happiness to love everyone for you feel the element of change in it – They cannot they must not always love you best, you desire you wish for them to find their kindred souls, & if you cd. find for each their soul, yr. work wd. end & with the end of worth the end of all desire for life – but away with my pen I will write letters now, my heart is feeding on itself & destroying its own vitality & therefore its usefulness for others

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For me, no love wd ever satisfy me with a lasting joy unless it was love in everything but free from all animalism, love in sympathy, joy in each others company, love even in kisses and hand clasps, but love of all exalted & heavenly type.

I believe many women feel this. Oh if men cd remain men & yet love like women! -

May 3rd

My future dream of love between men & women wd be that the most civilized, the highest & noblest shd live together in love & sympathy & no thought of any animal pleasure else - that it might be there wd be no marriage ceremony (& yet I think it better to have [indecipherable] that they shd be a law to themselves That they shd if they needed children take into their homes

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& hearts some poor child of parents who wd still live in the world, people who wd still be so uncivilized as to have children. Perhaps some might have one, or two, some none at all - & those who were exalted enough to have none wd still have the child to keep & guard & love for they wd take those of others - & so there wd gradually be less people in the world. Men should be as pure as women, that is the man of the advance guard, the higher type. Someone said the other day that we women did not care really if a man was pure or not, or if he had led any immoral life: we never enquired if we were going to marry him &c. Enquired why he never dream of such a thing, we believe all men pure unless we know them to be otherwise -

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girls never dream of such a thing or few men wd ever have wives for even I felt a horror come over me, & cd not sleep when I thought that it had even been said we wd make light of it - It seemed as if one wd rather be friends with a murderer, a thief anything than touch the hand of a man whose life was immoral, who cd care for passion without love. Arrange Love as you will, if it is faithfull & true Love it does not much matter if there are to be marriage ceremonies in the future or no - not to change from one to another seems to me the most horrifying thing that cd ever come on to the earth, the most degrading to both women & men.

God grant it may never be -

"For in much wisdom is much grief. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" -

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Camile makes a wicked action seem refined & heroic hence its falseness.

Sunday - June 1st

Why does this subject haunt me? Why unless it is that that Odines play & then the talk the other night make me realise it all more - we women wd never dream that any man we loved & came in contact with cd care for any of these things, cd fail to look upon them with honor. Wd they not agree with us about murderers & other criminals, & this this which is worse, which degrades woman, which turns man into worse than a Beast - for men to live on take pleasure in the sins of women, for women to profit in that Odines way by the sins of men - - I wake up & I think of those words "The men you care for are just as bad in that way as anyone else" & I have to sit up and my heart beats & throbs what they? is it possible? I had thought it was only men of another type

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men who wd not feel themselves fit to associate with pure minded women - It seems to me as if lifes illusions vanish just as the tints in the sky vanish as the sun rises higher & higher Why are we not all working against this evil, why do we smile, why do we laugh, why do we think of our gardens, our fences, our dress our drawing rooms, our pleasant reading & light conversation? - Is this life, might not we to be giving our souls & bodies to sweep this evil away - to purify our women & men - But what is best to do, what can we do. If men love us, & we seem to them & they say we are a good influence in their lives, how is it our influence is powerless here, how is it that we are unable to make them purer?

[Page 82]

I have often felt if I had no longer home duties, or any one to whom I was bound to take care of, I cd give up everything to one object & work for my life at it & this object above everything I ever dreamt of thought of but how? in what way? I remember with a bitter pang, a hopeless feeling the girl we had fr the Industrial School who was apprenticed to us for so many years - we made her love us, we loved her, & yet the day her engagement was up she left us & went on the streets & we cd do nothing to save her. These girls seem to have these impulses of goodness, wickedness was an excitement to them, sometimes even goodness was, & on excitement they lived - But that the men one loves, the men one trusts & one calls friends that they shd not sympathise with us in our keenest desires, that they shd desire such women shd still be in the world & that they

[Page 83]

shd ever find any pleasure in such wickedness My God it is too terrible -

Oh if men have these strong passions & cannot find some woman they can love & live with, cannot they remain pure till they do? Are there not means by which such passions can be swept out of the system - Oh how I wd love & honour men who if they felt they cd not remain pure in any other way did this & swept out of their system any such desires - Did not some do it long ago for "the kingdom of heavens sake"; & cd there be found no men now or in the future who wd do it for the sake of Humanity? & yet as noble wd be there who cd be complete masters of their passions & kept them down with glorious resolution, who wd feel that

[Page 84]

death was better than having any hand in the degradation of woman or even Humanity in themselves. Let girls know more if that will indeed help them to make the world purer if that will indeed make them realize what men are so often, & make them refuse to link their lives with anyone who then they might know, was impure.

Is it indeed so that one may do good even on this very subject by being true & pure oneself, by teaching men to love a beautiful & holy love, by exercising an influence in this way unconscious perhaps but true oh if it might be - for I always feel that I might be perfectly unable to do good amongst that class - Being of a lower grade, & type, do they not need a lower type of religion ... cd one whose religion is a sort of ideal a spiritual religion lead them?

[Page 85]

Wd they not need one who might indeed be good devoted & unselfish, but [indecipherable] & full of enthusiasm, one who wd feel sure always that they led aright & taught aright - one who cd preach a sort of material Hell & Heaven to them, ah it may be some are for some work, others for other work, & yet all may be the same work, the raising of Humanity from the mud, some may influence the better class, some the lower. God grant I mayindecipherable be doing some work after all - What despair what misery I felt, it seemed to me, as if there was nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for, if all Humanity was only more wicked, more horrible than I had known & thought. But it was perhaps the shock of it all made me feel so useless. Is it not a higher state of things that it shd be that men shd have one wife, before

[Page 86]

they had many, if that has bought about a low state of society in another way, yet still on the whole it is a great advance - Then again these divorce laws that seem to me so horrible, it may be they lead to right reform, for it is no true marriage to live together & hate each other. The only foundation for men & woman to live together is Love & Love alone.

Then again, suppose even they every marriage law was swept away, wd it not still be the ideal, (more purified more noble) that man shd be faithful to one woman even if that horrible thing True Love prevailed, it wd only prevail with a lower stratum in society, those nearer the mud - & those nearer the stars & all things pure & good wd live by choice always in the most beautiful sympathy & Love faithful to each other - & by degrees in time the rest wd be raised - & the ideal of one age wd become

[Page 87]

the common place practise of the next age - oh I feel as if this were really true & as if all hope was not gone out of life - Have I been, am I always too hard on men in this respect - Have we all developed fr the Beasts, & have they any laws & are they wicked? Men are more animal than we are, we simply cannot realise or understand their position I do suppose - but slowly & yet surely they will rise, reforms will not come from the laws made, but from the real man becoming more spiritual, less animal, as each age rolls on - Even in evils changes for the better, we see an evil, perhaps a new & fresh evil that follows on its heels but on the whole we will find the change is progress, the animals are being raised higher & higher, & all

[Page 88]

becoming more & more spiritual. Oh how happy these thoughts make me - without the thought that the world is growing better I cd not believe in a god or hope in any Future, but if creation is no mistake, no failure, but is a glorious progression, a wonderful development then indeed I can believe in a personal & loving God. But oh my sisters, my sisters who can tell? What man can dream, what it is to us to think of yr degradation & to think that it is realized by every man we meet! I cd even sympathise with the fanatic whoever he was, that went about killing those women - I rejoiced when I heard another was dead I felt that even I cd understand & feel for a fanatic who wd try to kill all of them out of the world, so that Humanity mighrt no longer be disgraced & they might be indecipherable rescued from such a life even

[Page 89]

by death & then perhaps begin again fresh in another world with a better chance. But God sees the great whole & we only see a Past, & He works all things well I do believe, whether He is a Personal God, or an a great good a Providence &c, how can we understand? No it is only the narrow minded who can presume to define God - it is at any rate the good the noble the true, the Love to which we are all evolving

Oh dear men that I love I feel often I know too much evil now ever to be really happy again - wd to God you were all pure, & that to you all, passion without Love wd be as horrifying & degrading as it certainly will be to the man of the Future - Is it better to know the truth about you or is it better to go on believing in the sweet illusion that you are, you men, I see & know, as pure as women ah how my heart beats with pain & I feel, "Oh that this fearful thought had never entered my heart, that I had never said anything to make me think of this.

[Page 90]

June

C was talking of defining Literature the other day, I lent him Mrs [indecipherable] He said it was good & natural but was not literature. Why? I asked “because it is short. “No E. Poe's tales are short but they are literature”. Why these I asked, what reason? “I can give none” he said. People must only read good literature & then they will soon learn to distinguish the difference. But surely I said if you can give no reason why then the matter cannot be definite, the individual decides what he or she think literature, there is no rule of course dictionaries are not literature afterwards I spoke to O, he said every work of imagination is literature the manner not the matter.. Every novel, poem, story, - only facts are not literature. Scientific or medical botanical works only dealing with facts are not literature. The Scientific man & the Literary man are distinguished apart

[Page 91]

& yet the Scientific may be literary it depends on the thought in it separate frm mere facts –

(Thinks that whatever books will last as classics will be literature” it is a narrow definition –

O says if we are to wait till 2 hundred years or 20 decide what is literature now it is very absurd. How can we tell now what gooks will stand the test of ages, & become classical – Can we not use our own judgement? What is this other think but waiting for the opinion of so many generations of men, what are the opinion of the first men who say a thing is good. The men of today who pick out a think as original & good, must be followed by a few generations of fools who echo what they say have said - & then the work becomes classic, literature. It were better to use our own judgement now - What use are we if we cannot use our own judgement. OC objects to the horrible [indecipherable] process of books such as “Looking Backward” contrary to nature, nature cd never have that horrifying dead level –

[Page 92]

I spoke to OC last night of my idea of the great difference that education [indecipherable] had made between men & women how men gain the Spiritual chiefly thro’ the path of truth, their intellect having been more developed and women gain Spirituality chiefly thro’ their affections their heart – which has been more developed & so by different paths they walk the Spiritual. Oh for the two paths to be thrown into one & that they might there walk together hand in hand, can there ever be perfect love & sympathy till this is so? Women always want more than men to grasp something definite & tangible in religion in their thoughts of God & the Infinite - & therefore they materialize such subjects, & fall short of Spirituality, while in the affections they walk a height of Spirituality to which men can not as yet attain. Their love can be pure & unselfish, ideal & spiritual, devoted. It rises far above all materialism –

[Page 93]

Intellectually they are not as yet so developed, they grasp details & judge of great things by the small or by one small details that come before their eyes – hence they lack Spirituality in the Intellect – To them Religion is a material think – God is a good man (repenting that He made Man! Wrath! Etc) religion consists in Houses made with hands, Priests, books – old views to which their affections cling – They wrap themselves round in a rainbow cloud of illusions & deep affections & see not the large general view without which all truth & therefore all Love & Spirituality cannot be gained – Do they forget what the great Jesus said neither here nor at Jeruas The hour cometh & now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit & in Truth. God is a Spirit & they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit & in Truth.” By love/the Heart alone do they attain to Spirituality. Whereas men reach that higher Spirituality through the Intellect – They take

[Page 94]

from their far greater knowledge larger & loftier views of their God. They look upon things in the world as God wd from the stars above or alas often in the light of their own selfish desires. but then again not altogether as But then again they often pass over & neglect the details, the little things – and can their large general view be all the Truth without looking as women do at the little things – the side of the heart & affections? Oh for men to gain more love, more unselfishness to be able to bring their affections & heart into their business matters & not only reserve it for their Homes men to learn develop more love, women more intellect, they are both capable of doing so, and then break down the barriers between the two paths, away with the mists & fogs of unrealities & let there be one path for men & women to walk upon hand in hand – The path of Truth & Love, they cannot be perfect without each other, & they both lead to the same haven the higher Spirituality.

[Page 95]

If men cd realise that no system can be the Right, the Good, which does not embrace Love to the Individual as well as Humanity. That Love & unselfish devotion shd guide their conduct in Politics, business, pleasure. That Truths & hard Facts can never be lead to good beyond a certain stage till Love comes in, a guiding light without which the highest good and development of Humanity can never be attained - and women Truth is gained in particles here & there can be no perfection in Truth till Love cements them all together – and women, ah if they cd see that Love can never be perfect without Truth that Truth on all subjects especially those subjects which really concern men & women can never - shd never be disregarded, that love and sympathy can never reign anything but partially in the most loving womans heart till she realizes all things as they are not as she wishes, or believes they are or ought to be!

[Page 96]

That she must realise that the very fact of a prejudice indicates a wandering from & often a positive dislike to Truth, & therefore a failure in the highest Love & Spirituality. Strange as it may seem it is for the sake of that Loves sake, & Spirituality that I wd advise women to [indecipherable] read not only the Gospel of Love which Christ spoke to us but the Gospel of the Intellect which is found in J S Mill & Herbert Spencer &c – Love & Truth are like woman & man they are dual & can never be perfect without each other – we need the Truth, but not alone, we must see every Truth by the light of Love – First came the animal, then the Heart & Affections, then the Intellect Lastly the Spirit – who knows but that we Humanity may develop something higher still than Spirit, & something higher again & so on a continuous development in to that vast work to all Eternity – Think of the wonders at our feet, even the Earth worms were formed the study of years &c

[Page 97]

The patient Darwin, Pasteur a while both about them has not exhausted the subject for Pasteur has more to tell us of their influence on the welfare of Humanity – Think again of the Universe, & its countless stars, their – The Heavens re The Heavens which have been compared to “an immense sea, the broad expanse of which glitters with gold dust or diamonds”. Our Sun himself a “Star of the Milky Way”. For 2000 years men have patiently devoted themselves to the study of Astronomy, & the healthy mind, the more they prove that in that seems to the inexperienced eye a mass of confusion there is a beautiful order, a complete oneness. – and in all nature we find the same [indecipherable] endless variety and wonder a seeming complexity when we gaze as we often must as yet upon partial truths, but the undeniable above all a one a oneness, or at one a unity, law, oneness

[Page 98]

gradual evolution & development – Think of these wonders, & say is/are not the man or woman presumptuous who think they can dispose of the great problems of Human life & Death & their Future in a few trite or orthodox phrases – presumptuous if they believe that consider perhaps greater & more spiritual minds than there own) “wicked” or wrong to believe that all we can need to know of God & Him is shut up in the covers of a Bible, that His revelations to man ceased 1800 years ago. It were strange indeed if in religion alone there was shd be no advance no development – God, Nature does not work in this way in other we can prove Even to contemplate the Bible as an inspired Book, we so The orthodox must & do now allow that the morality teachings of the New Testament are a great advance upon the teachings in the Old Test.

[Page 99]

Can we be sure that we know the perfect Truth about anything even things material! How

Flower in the crannied wall
I pluck you out of the crannies,
Hold you here, root & all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I cd understand
what you are, root & all, & all in all,
I shd know what God and man is.

Let not any man think that it is not better for a womans loving heart to know more & more of Truth - Let not woman think that she can ever teach influence man wholly for Love till she has learnt more of Truth without which love is imperfect. And oh man, dear selfish man think not that you cannot have any reason wholly to despise a woman who was are only put into the world to profit by woman & her unselfish love & devotion has only been

[Page 100]

created for yr profit & pleasure you can even Learn it from her if you will, I mean that intellectually you have only partial tru strive to learn it of from her, even as she must strive to learn Truth from you - You are will never attain to perfect Truth till you can view intellectual things by the light of Love - There is nothing wholly separate in nature The simplicity of a complete oneness runs connects all things & each thing depends on another every other to make the perfect whole. The Spirituality which is Love & Truth.

Love between man & woman, the highest Love; the first thing? Reforms begin with individuals & then spread thro' the world. Perfection of Love between the sexes will react on all, & they will love others more because they love each other perfectly. Thro' their mutual love & sympathy they will better understand & sympathise with every living man & woman.

[Page 101]

The animal in us may die out as all animal, but that which is born of the animal nature in us, so to speak, will live on, all that is good and noble in it will live on in us, - wlso we wd lose something, we do not want to lose anything entirely his will to that wd seem contrary to the working of nature -, we wish to do with the animal as we wd with the Intellect - discard by degrees all that is indecipherable only for the time & the age, & that particular state of development in Humanity, but keep ever the higher nobler true part which is for all time - The part in Perhaps the oyster, fish, plant, animal, insect &c which we may have developed from & which is everlasting eternal & not a thing of a certain time - & so on & on till we may discover that these are worlds beyond even intellect & Spirituality, developments for which as yet we have no name, no conception - cd an oyster conceive of intellect or Spirit? So also perhaps we can as

[Page 102]

easily imagine, developments to be desired (age & gained beyond even perfect Love Truth & Spirituality! This thought is mine I wish I cd work it out better - The thought is as the thought of the stars travelling on thro' space in endless revolutions, stars within stars, worlds upon worlds, travelling round each other in immense space, & all travelling on again where, whither? - Oh endless variety, oh wondrous & infinite space, worlds upon worlds, stars upon stars!. & sp om the world of thought what space, what infinite variety, what wonderful worlds advancing on & on where & whither? & can any atom of earth conceive that such questions all we need know of religion God, the Future, life, & Death can be measured with the 3 inch rule of their small intellect, & can be contained in a few books, written by men -

God speaks thro' the Bible no doubt as He speaks thro' everything, everything that we see in nature, everything that we see in books, Art or poetry or Humanity, everything that is not for an age not for all time, The Spiritual -

[Page 103]

Talking of "purity Leagues" it seems to me that work done in influencing people to be more spiritual & to leave their animal nature behind or rather let it be balanced by the Intellectual & Spiritual, is worth more to do good than any public paper or league. It seems especially distasteful that any woman shd work publicly in such a matter wd laws made make things much better? Some people are as the animals & the only way is to develop their hearts, minds & spirits & so counterbalance the animal. & this like all great reforms can only be done by slow degrees - each individual can help of course, for it is the Individual that forms the nation - Nature works slowly & gradually, & do we not follow most the way of God when we do it in this way - looking after the things that come to our hands & not thinking we can do anything better by trying quick & sweeping reforms. What are those lines of Kingsleys
Do the thing that's nearest [like so]
Help lame dogs over styles"

[Page 104]

The private work of each Individual seems a silent yet strong way to work, perhaps the touch influences one individual goes like an electric touch thro' all humanity. I am out of sympathy with any public movement or League in this matter amongst women - Have we the truth in Darwins Theory, are people as get much as the animals whom we do not blame or accuse of sin with the human form perhaps comes the germ of a spirit which the more it develops the more it adds to the complexity & perhaps perplexity of the lower human creature - Will a day come in the far future when the higher natures will consider eating & drinking wrong & wicked, gross & yet not blame it in animals - Perhaps only the lower types will indulge in it at all or perhaps only men & they will tell women that to eat is a law of nature & they only follow nature when they eat - That houses for eating may be considered

[Page 105]

places of sin & shame, & that it may seem as marvellous that people cd have met together to eat & drink & not thought it harmful but good! - Perhaps by strength of will power alone we may be able to sustain life in a more spiritual organization than we now have - Teeth will soon be a thing of the past, perhaps they will become more rudimentary signs of what has been & so all the organs which have their limits may be virtually done away & sight hearing may be unlimited & all things depend not on the power of any organ but merely on the power of the will - Is not all evil negative good? & the best way to combat it is not to fight against the evil as if it were a real thing, but to encourage & develop the good? To fight against evil is only perhaps fighting against the air, it is not a positive thing but only absence of good.
Browning says -
How evil, did mind desiring
Powers object to end pursued

[Page 106]

were haply as cloud across
good's orb, no orb itself.

Therefore to fight against evil as evil is it to waste precious time, which might have been spent bringing out & developing the good? The world may not be advanced enough for this yet as it is not for the Love that "thinketh no evil & believeth all things". Nothing does people so much good as to be believed in & loved & perhaps that is how god manages to love everyone because He sees that being as the animals their genre of spirit is only a baby thing & has not much power yet.

I read a story of a man in America, a guard of a train, no smoking carriages allowed - he was asked how he cd prevent the smoking oh, I always, say if you are a gentleman sir you wont get me into any trouble by this, then they always stop directly.

Did not this guard discover that the antidote to a certain evil was to bring out a certain victual or don't try to cut or bang a fever out of you, they try

[Page 109]

antidotes.

Man whilst possessing rapidly attaining to the Spiritual thro' the intellectual has not encouraged women to do so & women attaining to the Spiritual the affections have not so far led men to do likewise - each has so far monopolized their own domain & the time has now come that they shd share with each other their Spiritual attainments - mans intellectual views under his spiritual views less material his conception of god & his large views of things of of life & thought mount up a page on the things of the world with from a height which grasps might wholes , whilst woman grasping at the few facts she sees around her, & not looking from afar is far more material & not earthly from her intellectually spiritual side - & then again it is man who is more material in his affections, since woman mounts up to the throne of god as it were & comes with a love which is

[Page 110]

of the Spirit, & man drags behind & seldom his love is too much a material thing a selfish comfort which is confined to his own individuality as a private man & which [indecipherable] often ignores love completely in his business relations, though in a general way he may be a kind enough fellow who will subscribe to many char wholesale charities. How different they are these men & women! & even supposing men they at length join hands over that dual spirituality indecipherable will indecipherable there not be developments beyond & beyond again, for which we have now no words, no thoughts, & then again will they not converge, each learning their own lesson, till at last they are enabled to blend it as it were into each other – How often we hear it said, yes when women are this, or men are that, everything will be at a dead level & totally uninteresting. Trust nature whose very joy is variety that this will never be so, & let us conceive if we can regions in the Infinite evolution of Humanity nature which are as yet closed to us because we are not ready for them.

[Page 111]

There are some things which men & women can never learn apart from each other but when the time has arrived they must reach each other what separately they have already learnt themselves unconsciously often it is taught they influence, educate & teach each other, & then the world wakes up to find that it is done. And yet even the things they learn from each other never affect them entirely in the same way. Take any thoughtful book, & the thoughts upon that book from indecipherable a man & woman, equally intellectual, & who may appears to agree in the main on the opinions of the writer & yet the thoughts of the man will not be as the thoughts of the woman in the finer phases, flowers, roses, they may both present to us, but the colouring will not be the same & yet they may be equally beautiful

[Page 112]

A Self an Individuality

There is a the last of us self, an individuality which we shd keep intact & resign to no man or woman under any circumstances It is that Self in us which is our Spirituality, a thing something not apart from our physical, intellectual or heart nature, & yet a something but which proceeds as it were from all these but which is as it were that the higher Self of in all these contained the spiritual essence which of all these which will [indecipherable] exists in Humanity live when the greater part in of each of these parts elements has died away or became subdued to the Spiritual.
The “Self” which is our specialty that part in us which is for a part of God, which if we think by the God in us which each trust & we shdguard regard as we the Jews of old regard the Holy of Holys, as sacred trust Let us give up (if necessary for the sake of others) our physical ease comfort or enjoyment these things can be parted with to the [indecipherable] to deny self in this way for others & not the detriment of Spirituality is a higher life, but let us never, man or woman, give up

[Page 113]

or never sell to others our bodies in so far as they are bound to our spirits to others under in the name of Love as Mrs Linden did when she married forsook the poor man she loved & married the man she did not love for the sake of “a helpless mother & two little brothers” It Looked grand & good but she found her mistake “[indecipherable] once a person has sold herself for the sake of others never does so again” and those men or women who for to gain physical enjoyment comfort for or money, parting or comfort those men or women who in this way part with the spiritual in the physical to gain them are departing depart their higher physical self, The love & in so doing are false to themselves, yes & to all Humanity. Again the woman or man who with regard to the affections – To see others preferred to ourselves without jealousy even to make opportunities for those we dearly love & wd naturally wish to keep to ourselves, or without [indecipherable] of its results, never to pain those we love others not showing to them any results of this evil [indecipherable] or any of its baneful results; here is a field of sacrifice especially for the deeply loving heart, but & it can be done without any sacrifice of the Heart’s Spirituality – But

[Page 114]

to “Spirit” a man. A love verging on the maudlin, which spoils the man, woman or child, because we love & makes them selfish -- This is the sacrifice or that the heart spiritual in us; & will lead to no god result for those for whom we make the sacrifice, This is no high strong [indecipherable] it is a the miserable weakness

Then with regard to the Intellect we can here also deny ourselves & sacrifice self we can patiently listen to & try even to sympathise the intellectual views of others who are opposed to us in thought; we can show intellectual tolerance even to the intolerant, & yet never depart from our own “Intellectual Truth” that which is true to us much room for the unselfishlyness Intellectual here in these days of keen debate? But the spiritually hi Intellectual must remain untouched – we must never [indecipherable] that higher self our Truth Intellectual to the world or conventionality [indecipherable] love for others & desire to please them, nor to that ogre “orthodox belief”, It was better for

[Page 115]

R Elsmere to leave the church than where he had comfort & ease, better for him even to grieve the heart of the his good but intellectually narrow minded wife that to be untrue to his Intellectual Self & that part of it which was If we are untrue to even one portion of that higher Self in whether Body, Heart or Intellect, we are untrue to the Spiritual our God God in Self & by so much we are [indecipherable cramp the growth in us & development of the Spiritual which dwells in each all three elements what sort of creature is wd the the man or woman who be who wd sacrifice every part of their whole Self for others! wd there be any morality, truth or pure Love left? wd they not injure others instead of doing them good – But the Love which in most lofty to oneself men & women who benefit their kind most are those who keeping their Spiritual Individuality intact who get & impress others in a remarkable degree with the Self in them & yet always find some to act towards others with an a lofty & unselfish Love, & sacrifice to them

[Page 116]

in the way I have indicated (but in no other way). their bodies hearts, & intellects such as these raise all Humanity to [indecipherable] & their emotionally because they are true to true to Truth & true to Love. & so strengthening both &so even [indecipherable] as God wd which when separately are always partially[?] misleading, but continued [?] are the very essence of God --

[Page 117]

Individuality & Unselfishness

We are betrayed by what is false within [Meredith]. Is our first duty to ourselves or to others? Which is the grander life? To assist our Individuality or to be perfectly unselfish? Truth says to us “Be yrself”. Love says give yrself up for others” Men possess more Truth, women more Love, each Man is prone to assert his individuality at the expense of Love, & woman to resign her Individuality at the expense of Truth. Each sex has encouraged the other in their separate groves of feeling and it is certain that the evil produced in this ill balanced state of affairs is equal on both sides for the men too selfish in themselves at any rate at least promote the growth of unselfishness in women, & the women by accepting the position encourage in every way the superabundant growth of selfishness in men – thus why shd truth & love be at war within us? Why shd not men learn to glorify their Individuality

[Page 118]

with more Love & woman less with more Truth, or in exceptional instances vice, versa?

There is in each one of us a Self, an Individuality which we Shd keep intact & resign to no man or woman it is that self in us which is a thing not apart from our physical, intellectual & heart & nature, but which proceeds from all these, & is the higher self in all these combined that spiritual self which is our own speciality. The god in us, our sacred must, which we Shd regard as the Jews of Old regarded the Holy of Holies. Take first, that element in us which is the Body - can we not give up if necessary for the sake of others, our physical ease, comfort or enjoyment, our time, our Money? To deny self for others in this way is a higher life, these things can be parted with to the increase, not the detriment of Spirituality - But let us never, men or woman, sacrifice our bodies to others

[Page 119]

in so far as those bodies are sacrificed in opposition to our Spirits, in so far as we degrade the Spiritual element in them by so doing - Nora was right to assert her Individuality, but when Helmer makes an offer to her, which for a man to make was to show love spiritual, man's highest and best, seldom attained to - where he does this and she refuses, not trusting him - she fails in unselfish Love & therefore in her highest individuality and becomes hard and cruel in her assertion of Self. Better for himself, better for Helmer, if she had like Christina "believed in" the mans noble nature, thereby doing her part to make that nobler nature no longer an Ideal, but a living Reality - Nora in over asserting her Individuality, fails in Love, not love to Helmer as her husband (no one cd grudge her these) but in love to him as a human being. Mrs Linden on the contrary had sacrificed Love. When she forsook

[Page 120]

the poor man she loved, and married the rich man she did not love for the sake of a "helpless Mother & two little Brothers. It looked grand, good & unselfish but she found her mistakes.

"Nils a person who has once sold herself for the sake of others, never does so again"... and so in as much as we men or women part with the spiritual in the Body for mere physical enjoyment comfort, money, position, or the benefit & approval of friends, we are false to ourselves to the "Star within us" yes, & to all Humanity with regard to the affections here also we have a field for sacrifice - To allow others to be preferred to ourselves without jealousy or any of its baneful results is a trial of unselfish Love especially to the deeply loving or ambitious heart but it can be done & with no sacrifice to much & the Hearts Spirituality. But a Love in which there is no Individuality verges on the maudlin.

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It injures the man, woman or child it loves - This becomes the more of sacrifice of the Heart Spiritual. It is no strong unselfishness it is a miserable weakness, ill balanced love in which directs no self respect and in whose atmosphere withers away. Such as these, As Emerson says "Shun the nigged battle of Fate where strength is born". Then with regard to the Intellect - there also we can sacrifice ourselves, & unselfish Love can be shown. We can patiently listed to and even try partially to sympathise with and learn something from the intellectual views of others, who are opposed to us in thoughts, we can show intellectual tolerance even to the intolerant Hard eno' sometimes in these days of keen debate but the Spiritually Intellectual must remain ours. We must never sacrifice that which is true for us to the world, or to conventionality or even to love for others, no

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even to that Idol of the woman and the Priest - orthodox beliefs - It was better for N Elsmeel to forsake the Church, where he had comfort peace, better for him even to grieve the heart of his good but narrow minded wife (narrow minded because she cd not rejoice to see him act according to that which was true for him better for Elsemeel to do this than to be untrue to himself.

If we men & women are untrue to even one portion of that self in us we are untrue to love and our god & by so much we cramp the growth in us, and development of the Spiritual[ity] which dwells in all these elements and belongs equally to truth & love (we cannot be untrue to one without being untrue to the other.

What sort of creature will the man or woman be, who wd sacrifice every part of their whole self for others! Wd there be any morality truth or pure love left? Wd they not injure others instead of doing them good? Let us listed to the outside

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voices the thoughts of others which come to us in words or books - they also have their Heart in the Spiritual & will help us, not if we are wholly guided by them, but if they help us to evolve and understand the voice which speaks from within "That divine idea which each of us represent" - Emerson

The men & women who benefit each other most are those who preserve their individuality in a remarkable degree, & yet act towards others with lofty and unselfish Love. Such as these raise their fellow creatures in as much as they are ever ready to sacrifice to them. Their bodies, hearts & intellects yet not withstanding this remain true to themselves. True to truth & true to Love, combining both and truly becoming as it were a part of that electric moment whereby the very essence of God

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or the good is impacted to all Humanity & by whom the Ideal is made the Real Nardoo.

Is not our Individuality as likely to suffer from our theories as our conventionalism?

How many men & women think that other men or women have not some virtue because they do not display it in the way they display it themselves or they wd like others to display it - but the virtue may be there all the same only their special way of being generous, brave, or delicate may be different to Others & therefore not understood by them. Oh if we cd love believe in people & let them be themselves & not our idea of what they shd be!

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Surely the Spirit is everything, do we not feel that Shelley was essentially an intensely spiritual man, & yet if another sort of man had acted so we cd see that there was no spirituality but only coarseness in his actions? Is not this the "Dolls House" again oh if we loved & believed that each one had every virtue wd we not find it & develop it by believing in it. What variety in everything & yet what oneness. Is this so?

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A Belief in the highest and noblest Love is better tan having the actual materialization of a lower kind of Love. The ideal shd never be parted with for a lower ideal, such as others are content with!! What have we to do with others is the thing which belong to our own Individuality.

Physical manifestations of Love deteriorate the Spiritual in Love. How beautiful is the boys the young mans love, when he feels he does not even care to kiss his loved one's hand! Is not this Love worth all the fierce passionate manifestation of the man, one is of the Spiritual. The other has grown into an earthly thing, some of the spiritual may remain in it, nay often does, hit the dust of earth has soiled the silverwings, the bloom has gone. Happy are those whose Love remains in the Spiritual.

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How cruel of the boy to catapult & and shoot birds etc, how hateful the initial love for seeing fighting etc - How hateful the love of "sport". The unfortunate both hunted over these, the poor stags - unless a creature is harmful why hunt it - & yet all this shows a present need for something - If it does not come out in men & boys in this way will it not come out in some worse way? cruelty & torture wrong but simple sport may have better then go in it than we know - are we not apt in this age to find too soft, must not boys be vigorous & brave? A boy with superabundant vigour will be always in mischief, & the man will he not go in for all sorts of things sport, betting (oh how I hate betting!) & yet these things may make for good if the man is not cruel or dishonorable. The merchant is a gambler on a larger scale - it is his life worth notice as the racing or betting are for a day or so or a year or so & soon over - remember always

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If as human nature must not be checked too much all at once, just in a few things, it must - & it shd be always under control, teach self control, but beware of lowering a mans morality or a boys rather by talking to him as if Things which were sins which are not sins - Lies, cruelty, selfishness brutality - dishonourable conduct doubtful them once 'for with forgetfulness, Idleness untidiness or mere boyish vigor & or be careful with men - remember they are human not too high a standard at first, let them be human creatures & get noble - ask god how much there is to learn - everywhere, everywhere a paradox!

What about the Love of the Future, is it to lose its individuality & be merged into the love of Humanity, no, no - let us still be individuals, & love our dear ones more than all else - but let the love of Humanity be our religion

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Love for one, beautiful, Spiritual or even for the lovely, why shd it not enhance the love for Humanity, the religion of the Future? Why shd individual love ever lessen that general love - anymore than religion & love of Church, Heaven be ever lessened the love of wife for her husband or husband for wife? As for selfishness & jealously will they exist when we are good enough to love all - why shd one love in respect with another, may not all be good & all beautiful if really love? Jealously proceeds from ignorance & narrow mindedness & is incapable of existing in the noblest & most developed minds - all Love is beautiful, must be so, physical manifestations of it often deteriorate love & make it seem another thing. Or for Love, love to all, in less or great degree, beautiful exceedingly intense to our great affinity & our lesser affinities, & get no one ever dream of jealously feeling "I am loved as no other is for I am - & he is he, or she is she!" Others may

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love him (or her) but what is that to me. My love other love (or his love) is our own individual possession & has nought to do with the rest of humanity only except as all love in us acts again on them - Oh beautiful Love you are always noble always to be respected & adored always! Never call love foolish or other - It is never so - its manifestations (physical) may or may not be so, but it is in itself holy, beautiful & sweet - never despise it, thank god for the love anyone love makes us as gods - It is only near she who cannot or does not love that is to be pitied - more blessed is it to give than to receive more blessed to love than be beloved.

I have had Ibsen's Rosmersholm. It is simple, powerful & like all he writes it makes one think. There is a touch of the Spiritual teaching of Tolstoi in it. What does Ibsen think of Tolstoi - I wd like to know!

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Rosmer is weak - The woman is purified by her love for him - She feels love at last & feels her past is a degraded past & not worthy of the love - & has the old home, the influence of the sombre place & people no effect on her? Has it Sapped away her energy & made her less vigorously bad. Poor thing dreadful about Dr West - or that such things shd be - What remedy What? except a noble resolve to die & other than do ought for our own selfish pleasure or profit which shall injure humanity, here or hereafter. Humanity is a vague generality to some - It must become so as a living religion & it must become to us all that the old Faith was to the Xtians - oh god how long, how long - never can we see it - we live in the sad age - the age whose old delusions are past, where wheat has been reaped & cast on one side - our land is ploughed up seeds are sown - but it all looks black & barren - the golden crops are

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gone - the waving grass is no more & the green shoots will come forth in another time to gladden the hearts of another generation - but for us there is only the knowledge that the seed is sown & we hope hope & must for the Future - Rosmersholm wd say don't put new wine into old bottles - they cannot stand it - & yet there must always be an Age when the men & women must suffer & be like stepping stones of those that have to come - We are in an age of doubt & melancholy - but we live for that are to come - They will see the beautiful result of the seed we have sown in tears, & they shall reap in joy! Fit indeed is this age for the sowing of the seed from which shall arise the new religion of the Love of Humanity - for such a result shall we not be glad to suffer

If for love humanity had not too much at once of Ibsen he looks on the worst side of human nature, and it cannot fail to be depressing -

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Everyone has originality, every one has s self which unlike all else - some more, some less.

There is an originality of character as well as Intellect, & in some who possess both the originality & force of character the letter does not give the Intellect fair play.

[Independence of Thought & Independence of Action]

"The fatal gift of beauty" might we not add the fatal charm of "adaptability" & yet beauty & adaptability are the things women most prized by men - to have these gifts & yet keep ones highest & noblest individuality intact who can do it?

Is there not a spiritual side to all things material?

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Nov 1890
Sunday

I've been reading the beautiful Litany & the words of Christ - beautiful christs fr life, fr words, they are dearer to me than the thoughts of god, you were much a man before or time - How have we departed from yr Spirit you who said god must be worshipped in "Spirits & in Truth". In Spirits & we look round & see material worship - churches, fashion, etc, the bending of knees the singing of hymns & psalms - with most [of] all has degenerated into form - Where is the Spirit and the "Truth"? Those that seek most earnestly for it, & use the reason god has given them to strive to find it - they are told that they have no faith - "Faith" as the church teaches it is the fog that obscures the truth. Truth as is evolved & ever progressive - Faith wd have us believe that its found all Truth 1,200 years ago & that nothing has been found out since - I read the parable of the good Samaritan - "and they neighbour as thyself" - What men on earth wd like to see women loving

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their neighbors (if a man) as themselves. So much is it the fashion to think that a woman shd only love her husband or relatives - "I love such a woman", yes, we may say that, not "I love such a man" is looked at with 'honor' I remember as a girl I said to the horror of those who heard me I was fond of a young man & so I was, I was not in love" with him but I loved him with the love of friendship & what shame in love - love is the most beautiful thin on earth. Let us love men as well as women & not be ashamed to say so, glory in love. Physical manifestations are another thing, & shd be reserved for certain men, the lover, the husband, Father, Brother. The world is not good enough either to do without them altogether or to bestow them all we love without evil consequences. Another thing I read was the marriage service - How amusing it is to hear men & women also advocate the "obey" in the marriage service - how is it so

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few are found even to mention the vow "with all my worldly goods I thee endow" - There is a great deal of reservation with the best of men here. I do not advocate either promise, I think they are both foolish nonsense & not to be kept - "with half my worldly goods I thee endow" wd he right if it was honestly kept to - & as for the obey no women shd - promise to obey anyone - a child must obey, not even [indecipherable] I wd not too often demand it - we scarcely respect the Individuality of children enough - but obey is a depradation between grownup people - we request our servant we do not demand - obey is for slaves - Then the first part of the service - Marriage instituted for children "the procreation of children" well for the world if this idea was swept away, well if "children" were never the result of any marriage unless husband & wife really earnestly desired to bring a soul into the world & felt that they cd undertake to bring up & educate it properly.

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It is not the fearful responsibility of bringing a soul into the world that is in their hearts, it is only self indulgence on one or both sides - never never shd children be one of the results of marriage unless the result is looked upon from the very first with serious awe & love - People shd no longer be born by chance & haphazard marriage shd be more general because the expense of a family shd never be a necessary consequence of marriage - a child shd never be born unless both husband & wife were prepared from the first to incur the great responsibility. The second reason in the marriage service for matrimony is too disgusting a reason. Imagine any woman looking upon that as a reason for marrying a man - What man except of the lowest & most sensual type wd have the assurance to marry for that reason & with what honor Wd a woman contemplate the thought that she was married for that reason - the third reason shd be the first & only reason and only reason & here is a strong instance of the

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world's progression - good men & worthy framed this service - but their minds were not wholly civilised, semi-barbarism was the attitude of their mind with regard to women, love & marriage - the animal was stronger in the world then - for woman now of advanced & noble mind cd sit down & frame such a service - That many good men wd defend it now is true, but that is because they have an idea that the prayer both most be kept in statu quo - & that it is more the will of god than even the Bible!
so strangely will men delude themselves & custom & habit become as a god. The prayer that they may have children, how disgusting! How hypocritical for how can hearts join in this prayer. For men or women desire children when they are first married, & why shd this prayer be read as a matter of course - If parental love is strong in both their hearts but it is seldom in a young mans heart, let them pray if they wish for children - who wd blame them - But let their pray be sacred & holy

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to themselves & not a frightful public thing which is in itself a farce, because no one in church (hardly) really prays such a thing for them - nor can wish it on that first day of their marriage. There is something horrible & unsacred about it - Poor little children - having all brought into the world, what can yr lives be when nobody thought of you & yr life to be is with you in that first beginning - Is it any wonder you are selfish & indulgent when fr very beginning has been so - If yr coming into the world was a religious ceremony between yr parents, & the thought of you & a desire to make you noble & good, a benefit to humanity was in their hearts fr the first, wd not you be a nobler & better creature fr the first? Wd not these be more of the real spiritual religion in this than in all the worship of churches & singing of psalms & hymns, & bending of knees, one is a part of life & the other is no part of life, but an idol set up, Baal or Jumbo! The world has found that Pan, Baal & Jumbo are not necessary

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for them! but few human beings have found that that part of life is not necessary to them, especially men - & perhaps it were well if those did not live; or no perhaps it were happier if those did not live who found it otherwise - & whose natures are not in conformity with human nature as it is. May they be in conformity with human nature as it will be who can tell? To be sad, because you cannot be a butterfly, & take life as others do, is that lost - is any sorrow lost? Is not all sorrow all suffering, all pain for others as 'well as yrself. this intense desire in the hearts of many women for love wholly spiritual. May indeed sadden the souls of those who possess it, for they seem in the world & yet not of it - But are they pioneers of what is to be? or are they fanatics? Who recoiling from the extreme of the thing, go to the extreme of another - ages alone can answer this, ages of evolution & progress - "The happy medium" & yet and yet:

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yes we walked down the narrow dirty street in the coaly city, & on the doorstep of the inevitable Terrace house, with its unsavoury surroundings we saw "The Parable of Life". My sister and I - we both stopped, we gazed, I laughed but there were tears in my eyes - & she murmured "yes it is a parable of Life". Two urchins sat on the doorstop, a goat munched a old cabbage in the gutter just below - The children were dirty, ragged, barefooted, one a boy, & one a girl. Side by side on the doorstep, just long enough to hold them with two empty black bottles for their toys. What was the parable - The little girl was nestling her bottle wrapped in a ragged pinafore to her bosom - the boy with his head back was tipping his bottle up to his mouth! Behold the little mother, the caretaker the nurse - Behold the boys Father of the man, full of his own importance, swelling in animal pleasures. This ideal the ideal of self indulgence - hers of self sacrifice

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His of indulgence in his Individuality regardless of others - Hers a sacrifice of her Individuality - and an over regard for others. Both extremes become vices & both extremes foster in others the vices to which they the opposites
another year; how strangely the though of Death has haunted me of late - I wd fain put all in order so that my going might not give trouble to others, & in certain small spaces of time I seize so many letters & destroy them all! I linger sometimes over a kind expression or a loving word & think "not yet" at one time I cd not bear to tear up a letter from any friend but now I am in a measure hardened. They must go. I thought today oh for a love which will always flow like a River into the hearts of others - so love them & never think of "how do they love me? How much do they love me? If it might be that they might ever find n me a sure & certain love never clouded over by their own failings or their own moods. Oh this love that desire return, that feels too proud to show itself when there seems to be no return, or very little - It is more

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blessed to give than to receive - & so the woman's life is more blessed than the man's as a rule - but if love is wise, as well as tender can there ever be too much of it for anyone - can it ever fail to do good? to cheer and help ones fellow creatures on their way. Their way? short or long we cannot measure it - To leave in the hearts we leave behind the feeling that they were loved by us & that we tho' not unmindful of their faults, were still more mindful of their true & noble nature, this were to die happy. "Their true & noble nature" It is still their belief that goodness is the desire of every human heart - that naturally all are good & noble, but ill balanced virtues or the nondevelopment of certain virtue germs constitute in a nature. What we call evil - That is one reason why we women shd cultivate other virtues besides selfsacrifice & utter unselfishness our possession of them does not trust to the cultivation of them in men. They also shd be unselfish and

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unselfish in the daily routine of Life we must give up our exclusive right (as it will) to these virtues & let men have their share, & we must cultivate the germs of those virtues which are as yet more prominent in men than in ourselves, & often become in them vices - Let us learn of each other, & balance each other -

I feel as if I had much to say & yet am too stupid to miss today - It is hot - it has been lonely for though many are away for their holidays, we are at home. The travellers fill up the Blank with fresh scenes & fresh faces but for us there is in spite of extra work [indecipherable] - a little aching void and letters hard seen like angels visits few & far between -

I was talking today with K about the Poverty in this country - My belief that no one used [to] be poor unless thro' sickness - How many things people think they must have which they cd easily do without - When I was a child I remember bread & treacle night & morning was my fare & a mug of milk & water

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I never saw spirits beer or wine in the house - I never saw jams, potted meats or any luxuries in the way of food - Toys were unknown to us, unless we made them ourselves. Even now I have the cherished relic of that old rag doll my ingenious sister made for me, and her many garments made from so many scraps! "My little lady" she was always called, she never was a child, but always full "grown up" with her long dresses, bonnets etc. I never cd either throw or give her away because there always seemed something human about her - My sister's little lady was tossed up too infamously one sad day and fell somewhere under the eaves of the house, into a pigeon's nest perhaps, and was seen no more. Had we any other toys in those far off days, I can remember none, except the paintbox & our [indecipherable] which were a never failing source of delight, a box of old clothes, we used to [indecipherable] about it when we played our games of which the characters were all written in a book. Very few "Childrens books" Grimms Fairy

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Tales"

& a few others, not many books of other kinds. Shakspeare" was often read aloud to us & became as a household word - The Pilgrims Progress, William Tell.

I can recall even now how my heart used to burn within me when the reading was over, & how in the old garden each thrilling scene was acted over & over again - oh old garden, you cd not have been very beautiful but how well I remember you. Seen through the dim vistas of the past perhaps you glow in the roseate hues of a setting sun, or is it that the rising sun of life & hope still casts upon you that lovely and tender tinge whose birth is of the early dawn - I see the oleanders loaded with their gorgeous blossoming & under their branches the gold and silver chrysalis. They may be common elsewhere but I never saw it, and then the yellow jasamine bushes with their sweet flowers, which fill every-

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one on the ground till it became golden & the little blk ants hurried to & fro with their loads of honey gathered from the fallen blossoms & we children used to borrow needles which soon became [indecipherable] sticky & at last pins from a long suffering mother to thread the flowers with long golden scented necklaces worthy to have decked the barge of Cleopatra. Then there were the olive trees with their black & green berries. The black ones used to stain our mouths as we refreshed ourselves with them when we climbed up the branches. The little [indecipherable] rose with its sweet pink blossoms, the white Iris which also was often beheaded when doing duty for jesters men or the Russians or some other ferocious foe. The white Pomegranate with its pretty blossoms in contrast to the beautiful red one, whose fruit was a practical illustration of the Proverb "all is not gold that glitters" Then those dear little bulbs "babianas" we called them, which came up mysteriously & then as mysteriously disappeared

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again why or wherefore we cd not tell, but they were always designated "Mamas' flowers" because they will peculiarly precious & mysterious.

Janr 1891

My letter on woman suffrage in todays paper - oh how lovely to be able to speak even a few of ones thoughts to the world! To sow a few seeds of what one believes will develop into the flowers of Reform & progress - It is to be one with the gods - A newspaper! Now some scorn the idea, it is so common a thing to unite in it is vulgar & common - ah despise not the day of small things - are not newspapers more widely read by Humanity than anything else. Can we not reach their ears & hearts more in this way than any other? If so you may as well despise the common man & say he is not worth so much as the gentlemen! We have to learn with
St Peter than nothing is "common or unclean" unless the Spirits of man or woman makes it so. The material things are only materials to be used by the Spirit or Heart. A newspaper may

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be glorified by noble ideas & earnest souls a 19 century may be desecrated! Away with vulgarity! The vulgarity of supposing that there is any vulgarity except in the action of the snob man or woman acting in any material whatever. Oh I have felt today as I sometimes do feel that I am loved of men & woman that I have a power, a something which influences - god grant it may never be used but for good - What is this ? is it a sort of imperial assumption combined with love, love, love. I cannot tell, it makes me tremble sometimes & feel as humble as the dust. I love them, & they love me - I yet there is a something beside - I know not what, oh how good, now kind, how sweet they all are to me, men & women - How I love them. How I love them. They all help me, they all teach me something. How differently I love them. According to their Natures. The self in them is

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so different – Does it seem strange to you that some women I love I do not care to kiss, & some men I cd throw my arms round them, some women I love to kiss, some men I cd – not endure the thought of physical contact except by a handshake & yet I care for them & really love them. It is strange the physical attraction I cannot account for it.

But I really think physical manifestations are of little moment, & that if the world was good enough – oh, mark you that good enough it wd be of small account. Whether we embraced man or woman – The world is censorious – men are horribly jealous women are conventional. Perhaps as yet it is as well [indecipherable] could I but I swear that it is but the spirit that makes any physical manifestation such as a kiss evil in itself whether given to man or woman by man or woman.

Some think I despise men, but I don’t – I love them. I think they can teach us much – they do teach us much – I think they are more childish than woman, easier influenced than they think by bad or good women.

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Their virtues are their own, their faults are the result of our bad management of them & we must change that, & develop what now seems evil into good – so that they shall not only possess their own virtues but ours also & we shall also learn of them – Their companionship when intellectual is most invigorating to the Intellect of woman because she feels that under their influence she is developing herself. What greater gift can you bestow in any one, what greater happiness than to draw out & develop their nobler & higher natural intellectual, spiritual or their affections – you ennoble them at once, & they feel the charm & delight of the Influence – It is not the same thing if you are showing forth yr own talents oh oh no, it is to develop the talents & charms & good feelings of others, & the nobler side of their nature that constitutes the invigorating delight of companionship and this is where men & women do each other so much good because each

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draws out the better, or least developed half of the other & to be so drawn out must be as a plant feels when it grows & perishes under the rays of the sun or the softening influence of the rain – wd that I cd bring men & women more together - of all creatures on earth they are most separate as regards sex - bad it is because the very fact of sex has separated them. Let that thought of sex be buried as a first consideration, let men & women be companions in every walk of life then shall we know a life we know not now! A Life of Realities!

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I thought I cd write a novel about a women who beautiful and attractive had stirred through life without marriage because of her belief in Love & her honor of marriage without its …. That late in life when about 30 she shd meet a man of a gay and happy nature, bright, selfish & yet a strange character a mixture of adaptabilities with its fatal charm, of real sweetness & yet the desire to be loved eternally balanced by selfish motives – They shd love – he shd be younger than she by 10 years. She from the first wd fight against the love, wd feel that was madness to love one so much younger than herself & why? because she cd forsee that any woman managing a man younger than herself binds him to that which he may afterwards find a chain, ie.a prison house, ah how peaceful to be so found, where women find this, why do they not end life forever & chance the love

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beyond earth rather than stay in the cold past with a remembrance of a departed summer. He wd feel with her marriage was not for them – but by degrees he wd persuade her to let him call her by her name, then to kiss that lovely hand & those arms so white & beautiful. Only love they love - and she she wd think that at last the dream of my life is realised. This man I love does not like all others desire to marry me, he loves me in the spiritual way that I have long desired to be love in. His love is as the love of a woman for man & on this dream of bliss beautifly born of the intensely spiritual. She floats as on a cloud. He comes not often, some day she says to him he will love & marry but not yet, meantime they love! He seem to love his name & mine, she feels sometimes sad & says “Oh hope do you no harm, or keep you from one you might to find all happiness in. But he laughingly denies any hope or thought of marriage with anyone and then one evening comes when they are together on beautiful he murmurs

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he kisses the white neck & lovely arms “dearest” he murmurs – keep me tonight so loved across the [indecipherable], but had often cursed on as bad a night, once before he had staid when it passed torrents of rain. “Keep me tonight” – yes, yes certainly if you will she murmured half wondering that he had proposed it and they sat talking till eleven. My Brother will look for you, may we stay longer? He kneels at her feet & clasps her round. Dearest wife as he says looking at it with passionate love – give me yourself. “Myself? she stammers, marvelling, wondering confused – Myself? nay than had I nothing else to give – promise me, promise me Dearest Darling, you have promised kissing her passionately, Much Much I have promised nothing – my Darling you must go upstairs, goodnight – Oh no I will stay with you – let me see all [indecipherable] be mine – what are you saying, she murmurs startled & confused, you are mad tonight. Is there no such thing as virtue? go give

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He frowns as pleased & amazed - never before had she seen such love in his life as tonight & now all is changed. What is the animal nature prominent in every man. It is that which brightens their eyes and makes them so sweet loving away with the tonight & yet his face is changed no longer does he love She refuses & he is angry. What was this yr love, oh god she murmurs & the cold sweat breaks out upon her now half panting in her arms he bears her to the sofa. How cd you think if promise he said – otherwise she cried & I thought I had found my dream, the dream of my life, the spiritual love of woman. He bows his head overcome. A moment before they were as one soul in each others arms & now they are separated by a great gulf – Wd to god she says, that men loved as women do? Wd to god he said that women loved as men do – you will never forgive me and you she cries with anguish “will love me now no more if it is on this that the love depends

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blank page

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blank page with the word, “censored” written across it

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Some wd have us believe that there is no such thing as Real, Right or Wrong that all Right & Wrong to the world is made merely by the usages of Society for their convenience & varies infinitely at different times… This is only a half truth. Even as we are a development of the ages so is the Eternal & immortal Right become Society has developed it so far that does not make it any less a great truth, we ourselves perhaps come to Dust, but it does not follow that we are still dust, or limits the possibilities of what we shall be. We have had no doubt the germ of the eternal Right or good in us from the first, & have been advancing on till we come to our present age – The Right or wrong of today will not we hope be the Right & wrong of a hundred pass hence – no we hope advance will have been made, & that we

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may have a higher standard & a nobler & more spiritual idea of Rights as we hope to have a nobler even more Spiritual Love. Is there not Truth such a Thing as Truth apart fr Society; dictum? If we go against the laws of nature do not we suffer for it. It wd seem to me that Truth and Love are the Eternal Right & that humanity is slowly developing them. When did the first idea of Right or Wrong enter the Savage heart? Beasts have they apart from man & his education of them any idea of Right or wrong? The Sentinels appointed by monkeys or birds etc they have surely an idea of duty & is not that Right? Is it that it begins with this, goes on to the case of the tribe, then families, nations the Patriotism, family love – all these things foreshadow the Spiritual Rights which may be Love for all humanity – unselfish Love

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who can tell to what the Spirit of man may evolve through generations & yet underlying the continual changes may ever be assuming various forms & shapes the same ides, the eternal Right the good, undeveloped & of a low type at first, but a advancing gradually from the grosser form to the spiritual – we say that it is wrong to steal may the time come when we may think the taking advantage of another in commerce all the commercial traffic of today which largely consists in buying cheap & selling dear [indecipherable] when we may look upon this as we now look upon the Thief marriage without Love & such things may be regarded by Society from a loftier standpoint. Let us distinguish between the real & Eternal good & Right & the mere temporary garments with which it is clothed fr age to age – which often slip awry – wear out & have to be replaced by new ones

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Shd we ever compare things except perhaps in a merely temporary way – each thing is itself Why compare? We do it too much & then we look upon things in a light which is not their own & so we fail to grasp the Truth about them.

The rights of men & women, of course they obtain them fr Society, in a former age Slavery an improvement on the way all prisoners used to be killed and eaten in some ages things not Right but right perhaps for the people there because they had no higher ideal.

With regard to the Land question, to resume al land wd be a breach of Honor in this country which the govt have gathered in huge sums of money fr the sale of land. Is it not better for the people to feel there is a Public Honor, & that to preserve that is better than Public prosperity? We cannot judge matters often by immediate results. The results of the woman’s suffrage might be mixed with evil at first – when gold

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was first discovered or rather the discovery made public. What were the results for the country? It appeared at first Ruin! Ships were deserted no sailors cd be got Policemen left their work, everyone seemed crazy & all seemed to rush to the Diggings the old inhabitants shook their heads & prophesied ruin for the country this the gold & yet they were moving. The gold discovery was really in the end the making of the country. A child is whipped not for the immediate results of the howling but for the other result to make it a good child.

The Chinese, the Negro have grand qualities the European Nations each to so great edifice – The chinese – self denial Endurance they both multiply & prosper which they yet may they not be the foundation perhaps of the humanity of the Future? What Roman, what great wd have imagined that tho barbarians wd have become the European nations & that they wd sink before them & become a nation of the Past

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might it not be that these modern barbarians may become through time the future humanity of the world – gathering into their strong souls our talents, our virtues & encumbering them with their own.

Is the difference between men & women that men love to be happy & women love to make men happy! Is that again that men live to eat and enjoy themselves, women eat to live & live to be enjoyed by others.

On that love of the future that I dream of, that evolution of the higher & purer state – How angry how vehement men are do you suggest a future without animalism & women? If we question them there is nothing they wd love better – Charles Lamb wrote an essay on the delights of sucking pig! why shd not eating & its pleasures exist in a future state. It was

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not possible for woman to write such an essay or conceive the idea. Women wd be too glad, only glad to see every animal pleasure over & done with. Why in this feeling all men & women so apart, so utterly apart.

Is love indeed the one thing that forms & evolves in the world - such Romans Egyptians will you not as far on as we are in metaphysics & philosophy – in science we progress but is that that we are nearer Truth & Love lives & forms, even animals are protected now & cared for & women are no longer goods & chattels in the eyes of the noblest men – on Love beautiful Love are you proving more universal Love of Humanity the Religion of the Future. But that does not put away love special and endearing between the man & the woman – might it not be that to completely will they sympathise & be one in soul that selfishness &

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jealousy will be no longer be possible. The organic life, the limitation of organs left behind – the ages that are given us to limit our vision, the ears to limit our hearing – why not other organs also which limit our creative faculties – why shd it not be that the spirit of man & woman bound together by love & complete sympathy shd not by force of will alone will to see & they will see, will to hear & they will hear yea even the music of the speres - & the music which colors make – that then the eye may not no longer existing – may no longer prevent us from seeing those waves which make sound - & art & music color & sound may no longer serve my apartness but may be blended into perfection – we are like children now with spelling words we know perfectly perhaps this & that thing in the knowledge of the world even as children know the meaning of words, but what when all

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those words are blended into say a sonnet of Shakespeares! The children are not ready yet! Child there is music in that word you have learnt the meaning of! Music? Yes some day you will see that these words combined together by a great poet will make music & bring thoughts which as yet you dream not of – we have so much apartness in our knowledge we are like specialists, but everything is well connected with everything else we maintain in its lovely grandness & the tiny mosquito that buzzes [indecipherable]from you – the whole we see not yet in anything nor the connection showing how one thing is but a part of another – the great oneness we have yet to learn in something more than as an indefinite & vague supposition – and that willpower why shd it not be that when two souls beat as one – when Love exalts the man & woman into complete sympathy & spiritual union that they shd create another soul by willpower, joyessly, solemnly - & with honest love – having also reasoned out that such a being wd be good for the world – then oh what a path that

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soul wd enter life, expressly willed to come by 2 loving souls, willed to come for its own sake – not brought by chance into existence thru the indulgence of a mere animal passion, but brought as it were on the very wings of love spiritual without a taint of selfishness - or on the mans part - or sigh of self sacrifice upon the womans part – brought by the earnest loving wish of two souls whose wills to create that other must be as one will - might not this be? - dreams, dreams, dreams!

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Is not the truth always found between 2 opinions, one says morality is merely developed for the good of Society – some that is Intuition – Is it not both - God through all, letting us develop ourselves & get the inspiration which belongs to some and get the Perfect Good, the God Ideal far far away, not yet comprehensible to even the most pure & advanced thinker. Who knows the things that shall be? Who can measure the thoughts that lie hidden in the mists of the Future even as a Butterfly with its beauty, its color, its grace, its life, & lies hidden in the chrysalis – “The new life the new thoughts the new Love, the or rather the greater not the new – is developed gradually from the old – Thou knowest not how, but thou shalt know hereafter – Despise not the chrysalis nor even the caterpillar, without

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them the Butterfly radiant in Beauty & wonderful in graceful poetry of motion cd not exist – ah wonderful world, with yr wonderful Life, above around & even in us, how little we understand all yr marvel & all yr beauty. Now & then a student in yr mysteries tells us some observation some fact belonging to the common organisms around us - & we see as in a lightening flash something of the things that are & perhaps of those that will be. Oh how ignorant we are, how little we know.

The Passion is always desirable & agreeable to man whether sanctified by Love or otherwise. To women it is a thing of evil, shame & honor unless when sanctified by Love, & then even it must be married love – How different men & women are, In this one thing can they ever will they ever understand each others point of view –

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“A sword shall pierce thro’ thine own heart also that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” Sunday May 1st

“He used to be my sternest critic as well as [indecipherable], telling me that in a party like ours, which our own education & knowledge were above those whom we led, it was very easy to join in discriminate praise & unbounded admiration; & on the other hand we received equally in discriminate abuse & hatred”. It was needful then to be our own harshest judges & to be sure we knew thoroughly every subject that we taught. At the time I discovered that I had a gift of speech, & began to taste the intoxication of easily won applause his criticism & trained judgment were of priceless service to me.”

On Bradlaugh by Annie Besant, Review of Reviews for March 14th. I read this May 8th Friday the day on the Wednesday I had delivered my 1st speech & I can truly say the cause is dearest to me

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& next to that that I may be allowed to do something for the world & the country. Is dear to me, as a child oh how I felt I cd have been something to my country if I had a chance – Have I the chance now? If so God help me to do right - & to influence anyone for Love & Truth.

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May

Oh my journal I turn to you tonight for my heart feels sad & lonely – My speech is published & gone to the world will it do any good? Do I believe in human nature too much? Ah no, for the very belief in it brings out the good – will any women seeing how I believe in them be all I know they can be, strive to be – I thought of a picture yesterday, if I cd but paint! It is as if every man had a serpent twined round him the Serpent of Passion, & when men & women love, this serpent coils round the woman drawing her near to the man – She longs for the mans own arms to draw her to his heart. She hates the serpent & wd tear it away if she cd & trample on it & murder kill it – But every man loves his serpent – He thinks it a part of himself, it has become a part of himself. But oh God how the woman gets

[Page 174]

to hate it, how evermore it rears its hateful head, & its gleaming eyes, & comes between the man & woman, the husband & wife, that love – “It is more to you than I am this serpent” – the woman cries but seldom aloud, she knows he cannot bear to hear this creature abused, she knows he thinks “love me love my serpent” - & she she speaks with bated breath or not at all – Was there ever a man yet that tore the serpent away, instead of hugging it to his heart & clasped the woman he loved to his heart with his own strong arms, loving her for loves sake - some men stretch out one arm & the serpent does the rest, & the woman is clasped tightly & more tightly in its coils – till she gets to think “it is no use if I love him & stay by him, I must put up with the Serpent” – but her heart faints within her & she hates it, hates it, hates it. Oh God what love

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women have to bear with the Serpent for the love of man! And sometimes it seems as if it was all Serpent, & the young girls who held her arms out to the man she loved, knows of no Serpent nor feels its coils round her at first. And then she wakes to what? No wonder marriage is a failure! No wonder Divorce, indifference, misery are rampant - & Love stands weeping by, -
“Ah” she murmurs “there is no Serpent here” & she turns to another man. “Here let me rest & be loved even as I love” – but no it cannot be, there is no love in man apart from the Serpent Passion, none; none! jealousy, indifference, selfishness, mad anger, these are the products of the sounds softly hissed into man’s ear by his serpent – When shall we teach him to love love for love’s sake - Oh woman, when when?

[Page 176]

The forms & ceremonies of Religion are becoming dogs to Unity and Spiritual Religions [indecipherable]. This was the thought I had coming home today – shall we not in due time cast off all grosser materialisms, are they not all close when we attain to a higher plane as it were in the progress of Humanity? There may be no doubt there is, material in thought. Thoughts may be particles which emanate from the brain or Spirit life of others, germs which float in Thought Waves and permeate the minds fitted, prepared to receive them. How else can we account for Thoughts rising in many hearts in various parts of the world at the same time! Oh how little we know what marvels are yet to be understood. Dear Edison who knows but that same day you may be able to gather in the thoughts of the past (even Shakespeares perhaps) & give them to the souls of the Present.

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Take a book Shakespeare had read & touched; his thoughts may be clustering on these pages, a

Again in Love, the children, ah if they cd be born with by mutual thought & Love, if such as these cd only have thought thro the power of mutual Love & entire sympathy, to bring children into the world - & all things shd be powerless to obtain them - -

[Page 178]

Dec 17 1893 Sunday

I have not written in these for so long So long I have been too busy, but some how tonight I have taken it up It will relieve me perhaps – I have been sitting on the step by the Library – The half moon shone on me thro’ the Pepper tree, ah how beautiful, how peaceful – The moon & the tree will be there when I am dead – I read Mrs Butlers life of her husband for an hour & a half to Mama, & my throat feels weak & relaxed. I can never read aloud more than an hour & often less without misery wretched throat, & I feel so depressed & tired. The tails about the poor girls interest me most – The continental trips Mama – How little when I think of it does anyone understand or sympathise with me – I really think of all living people the dear old Dr understands me best, & Millie & Aunt Rose in someways sympathise most with me –
How alone I am in the midst

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of friends & relatives, kind & often most loving, how alone I must interest myself in the things they come for, I must sympathise with their joys & sorrows – but of myself & my joys or my sorrows how little they know for I am reserved about myself - & then it is to some a personal injury if I want any of my individuality to myself if I want to live my own life now & then –
I am tired tonight, responsibility of so many often weighs on one There is no escape from it, no not for an hour or no change, no rest for years – and yet within; amidst the whirl of outside faces, household duties, business bills, letters, garden – attendance on Mama -within my own passionate earnest thoughts all alone to myself, all alone

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with never a sympathizer, hugged close to my heart, & closer in the still hours where I am alone in body as well as Spirit – I am not selfish, but too many make enormous demands on me, & it is hard to satisfy all - & my own dear work that all seem jealous of is done at night when every one else is asleep – Sometimes my strange loneliness of Spirit comes over me – Jesus would have understood & helped me no other man, none - To the friends, relatives, to the household, beggars, poor, all are giving out, giving out sympathy, & taking none in – only strengthened by any sign of love or appreciation or gratitude – I am myself not understood, tho’ people think so as long as I understand & sympathise with them.

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Life is too short to waste in the adoration of one man!

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on the New York elevated railroad smoking is not permitted in any car. When I asked a conductor how he was able to enforce this rule considering that on every other railway smoking was practised, he answered, “ I always say when anyone seems disposed to insist “Sir, I am sure that if you are a gentleman you will not wish to bring me into a difficulty,” & then they always leave off.”

We have this anecdote in Bryce’s American Condolence.

Had not This guard had discovered that the best antidote for a certain evil was to bring out a certain virtue? To believe in & encourage the higher nature of any man or woman even for a day, is better more effective than fighting against their sins for a whole month.

[Page 185]

How all these stirrings in the hearts of people, divorce etc all seem to tend to the separation of man & woman & their not marrying so much, but really it tends to their higher & more perfect union - sympathy, love not only physical but of the heart spirit, & [indecipherable]. Just as the apparent destruction of an old religion, its temples, its gods is only the step which must be taken before the higher development is established – the old wheat is rooted out, the earth ploughed up. Ah we say Leave Leave the old stuff & those green weeds & thistles, at least they are green - & tools & [indecipherable] The seed must be sewn for the fresh crop – The past has served its time & with its seeds we will raise a new & luxuriant crop which shall take the place of the old one & in its time die out & give place to another.

[Page 186]

I like everything steeped in Humanity even the books I read, the markings & thoughts of other minds, seem to raise a thousand times more thoughts, the face stone becomes a palace, the seed a tree. Give me not only above, but the real thoughts of other men upon that book – Let me see all points of view, every thought that can emanate from the first thoughts – This is intellectual delight – The real thought of a man or woman is more to me than any fact in the universe. The fact seems a dead thing without the thoughts that spring from it. It is like the bare dusty earth, it is of little interest, but where the verdure springs when the trees grow it becomes clothed with beauty & majesty – it lives.

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“Oh wonderful creature! A woman of reason” Lord Peterborough

“Love can hope, where Reason wd despair” Lord Lyttleton

Disguise our bondage as we will
Tis woman, woman rules us still Moore

Evil is wrought by want of thought
As well as want of heart Hood

Oh Sir thou canst not love! Love hath no rights
It doth not know the word Heart of the world

Heart strings a touch untunes, a touch repairs ditto

Man has his will but woman has her way Holmes

“The more we know, the better we forgive
Who’eer feels deeply, feels for all we live. Madame de Stall

[Page 188]

Whilst reasons spirit
While Mans dull spirit toils in [indecipherable] fire
Womans swift instinct threads the electric wire Holmes
Love’s swifter

Love is not love which alters when it
Alteration finds Shakspeare

To err is human, to forgive divine Pope

Those who trust us, educate us G Eliot

[Page 189]

[Page 190]

[Page 191]

[Page 192]

Which will accede develop as they leave always acceded developed in odd even directives changing even the surface of affairs so that [rest of page indecipherable]

[Page 193]

[indecipherable] The law of Life in growth & we must also take into account in a matter of prophecy that nothing pass remaining in all [indecipherable] those many contingencies which and side issues which have arisen & will in all prophecy still arise in all directions in the near & far future changing the surface of affairs evolving in new circumstances & environments. better suited and fitting the new state of society & the [indecipherable]to suit the growth of and so allowing that mysterious forces more liberty for the growth of that mysterious

[Page 194]

of that wonderful as yet mysterious forces which we call The Spirit of Memory whose [indecipherable]

[Page 195]

Immortality when we have learnt how not to die
Distinct aversion to many phases of life distinctly animal repulsive

The generation of thought between two sympathetic minds & the concentration of will power people the world with ‘Thought misschances’

[Page 196]

astronomy
Bacteriology exact science
W Spence
Edison
[indecipherable]
men & women advance toward spirituality [indecipherable] the force spirit in all material matters all Spirit

[Page 197]

The Law of Life is growth so we mus Nothing remains
The same rulers doomed to die; even [indecipherable] have their Progressive [indecipherable] So in a matter of prophecy we must take into account those the many contingencies & side issues which indecipherable discoveries in science, contingencies & side issues which have arisen in the past & we may normally suppose will arise in the near & far future, changing the surface of affairs, evolving new circumstances, new environments [indecipherable], The great glacial Projects & [indecipherable] which sweeps along

[Page 198]

with its all partial syste reforms affecting them as they affect it
Partial reform is not so
Nail the whole of human progress than the evolution of the Earth on its axis is the whole of the resolution of the Solar System is the whole of astronomy or all the limit of [indecipherable] or all which has to do with the condition of the planet.
Evolution a unit in a myriad of com complex forces
we cannot [indecipherable]

[Page 199]

[Page 200]

Things “built” beyond Mortal thought
Far in the unaffected

[Page 201]

[indecipherable]
Grimm
Rose & Ring
Sandfort & Merton
Frank & Rosamund

Frank Fairleigh
Evenings at Home
Swiss Family Robinson
Anderson Mermaid
Persian Tales
Tales of the Cenci
Simple Susan

[Page 202]

London amusements in 1702
Exact copy of a playbill issued from a theatre in 1702 – At the Bear garden in Hockley-in the-Hole, near Clerkenwell Green – These also give notice to all gentlemen, gamesters & others on this present Monday (being 27th April 1702) a great match is to be fought by a bald faced dog (of Middlesex) against a yellow dog of Cow Cross for a guinea each dog, live bets goes out of hand which goes fairest

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& furthest in wins all; being a general day of sport by all(the old gamesters) & a great mad bull to be turned loose in the game place, with fireworks all over him& 2 or 3 cats tied to his tail, & dogs after him – Also other varieties of bull-baiting & bear- baiting
Beginning at two of the clock –

[Page 204]

every day commonplace vivid in the contrast of Night & Day evident evil & evident good – The peoples of the w Earth may
The Sun is visible to a larger circle in the changes of the atmosphere of the Seasons. The moods chasten & [indecipherable] out of men. While it is but the comparative few who think or note the invisible but no less certain Progress of the whole Solar System Moods in what is now to us a mysterious moment towards a still more mysterious goal

[Page 205]

no doubt these would be a dead level if men & woman the Leaders always men & women, the leaders of Thought Progress & Reform remained stationary dragging the majority up to them But this is impossible But just as the Earth revolving on its own axis – revolves around the Sun & amp its System are travelling on into Space – So the progress of evolution is visible to the ordinary mortal

[Page 206]

Imagine who only take into account a partial & [indecipherable] progress & not the hundred myriad contingencies that arise in all directions changing the even the surface of affairs, so that prophecies as to the result of the action of remaining is calculated widened knowledge of the as yet mysterious sources which all continual coming into play shorts

[Page 207]

& calculated without consideration of the [indecipherable] general progress & momentum which sweeps along with it all partial onesso that it is in affecting them as they affect it so that one cannot prophecy what will be the sure result of any premat given movement in the world.the unforeseen contingencies thoughts, actions, poetry[?] in science which will revolutionise the world

Because you want to help women to [indecipherable] fight for Austr----

[Page 208]

Since trifles make the sum of human things & half our misery from our foibles springs

[Page 209]

To those who only take into account the partial view of limited & partial material evolution of The perfect for newer rocks (as deposited in Lorky Haltwed [?] for instance stagnation becomes the inevitable result and no allowance is made Such & such objects having been attained, stimulus vanishes & there is nothing more to strive for. A Blake [indecipherable] This men absolute force on to the laws of nature will continually demand change & growth

Amp women satisfied & happy in material comfort & good fellowship is a state of affairs which may readily we now & then see in the present & may surely see in the Future not for the great mass of humanity there will always remain contain be the unattained the Ideal, which which though unattainable in their present present existence will be [indecipherable]realized in a

[Page 210]

future federation who will again see the hills afar off which where like the [indecipherable] Youth in Excelsior they are compelled to ascend by a mysterious spiritual force to ascend The It is [indecipherable] necessary in [indecipherable] The future [indecipherable] evolution & the myriad contingencies

But just as I will astronomy reveals to us the whole Solar System is in constant invisible & wondrous movement towards a still more mysterious goal, so evol the Theory of Evolution reveals to us that in accordance with the the wonderful unity in nature the Progress of Man is also a threefold progress & he has evolved from a simple protoplasm to the complex creature Modern

[Page 211]

[indecipherable]

our ears our eyes far from being given us to hear & see with are given to us to limit our hearing to rests and our vision & to confine our thoughts

and so it is that
In this short paper I wd. desire to talk upon the possibilities of scientific discovery as applied to those forces in nature which are all as yet invisible [indecipherable] I must [indecipherable] that I wd. draw yr. attention to the fact that science which in the words of Spencer is much a higher development [indecipherable] Poetry & [indecipherable] spirituality Taking into consideration When we contemplate the evolution of the Human Species we generally

[Page 212]

confine ourselves to thoughts of the advance of Man from a formless protoplasm to a type of animal which is certainly many degrees in advance of the monkey but this deals only with the visible [indecipherable] The intellect [indecipherable] & spiritual sense which we possess is a development of the ages & that in the threefold sense of Body Mind; Heart & Spirit we must still

ever & continually progress [indecipherable] The exceptions which prove the advance – and the very passionate attempts to glorify the body which we see in the writings of Swinbourne & Walt Whitman & value only

[Page 213]

Future of Human race compered to Earths progress thro space

[Page 214]

in evolution which sweeps on with all [indecipherable] lesser [indecipherable] reforms even as old the huge & viewless march of solar systems strips away with it conveys our planet with all else into the vast eternity of space

In this the
The laws of nature that continually as they expand [indecipherable] our minds
infinite variety not on as [indecipherable] if we extend our [indecipherable] we observe in all things also an “infinite unit” so that we continually [indecipherable] declare as Tennyson did of the Flower—[indecipherable]Flower & also an ‘infinite unity’ [indecipherable] Flower in the crannied wall what if I cd. understand you use root & all & shd. know what God & men[?] is

[Page 215]

The future of the Human Race has always been a subject ripe with [indecipherable] subject of interest to the Thinking[?] World We are [indecipherable] writers like Bellamy [indecipherable] But I oth There is that progress which concerns itself with The [indecipherable] things of today [indecipherable] & which like the Earth’s diurnal revolution There is again still Progress an evolution which looks further ahead & [indecipherable] further producing with books

[Page 216]

as Bellamys & Morriss may be confus to the pro like the earths yearly progress round the sun [indecipherable] was [indecipherable] is of flower growth & is [indecipherable] is visible to us only in the landmarks of History & [indecipherable] stimulates such books as William morris nowhere & Bellamys looking backward

[Page 217]

[Page 218]

[Page 219]

The intensity of forces & the mystery of them all means to large end

I believe that metaphysical or spiritual laws will similar to physical laws & [indecipherable] the laws which we observe to rule that part of nature which we observe is evident to our senses we may judge of those which rule that part of nature are evident to our perceptions
               “
The engineer turns the great forces of nature to the use & convenience of Man
To turn the hearts & minds of men in right direction
Weights & velocity as applied to spiritual forces

[Page 220]

A glorious thought, helper of human efforts
To feel that Spiritual efforts of Man for the Right are scientifically demonstrable as of mighty & apparently miraculous effect
Machines used to inspire awe & reverence
Gods machine is Man Mrs R’s friend Mr Ballard
the movements of thought which produce the movements vital[?] surface” B. we create thoughts, thoughts actual material, beware what we think. Our thought goes forth to humanity permeating the atmosphere This thought. R Scott

[Page 221]

Kant says---

There will come a day when it will be demonstrated that the human soul throughout its terrestrial existence lives in a communion actual & amp indissoluble with the immaterial world of Spirits. That this world acts upon our own thro’ influences & impressions of which man has no consciousness today, but which he will recognize at some future time---

A great thought grows, it is vaporous material we cannot see, it grows, take the thoughts of Mill, Shelly – Ar they grow live hear as we do, multiply till they spread over the world we say thoughts are in the air” true so they are, we breathe them with our souls – They become one with our thought many & interesting, producing thoughts again – Some die out, they are needed but for a time –
RS

[Page 222]

Who wd permit Man to say Woman is my property-- I can have my will do her at any time or place suggested by –

Cannot a woman be free unless she have gold to buy Freedom in law courts?
Who of you who love men would let the men of the earth be begotten of lust or Hell thought on the bodies of the women of the Earth unwilling participants of the hellish act.”
Ballard
It is a sin to [indecipherable] a monster [indecipherable] if that monster be yr Father
No thieves if men loved each other & gave to each other freely
Must not kill a man yet may murder a Native?
give no love in yr peril to a man yr don’t love

[Page 223]

“Human notions on all great [indecipherable] come in waves”.
“A thought deeply pondered over & settled a battle won not won by me but by them”
                          Mrs [indecipherable] Ballard

Thoughts children Ballard says & I said it also before

The new wave of the ocean of Love rolling round the earth
                               Ballard

Let women teach men the letters of the law of love

Who that loves men wd kill men. The rich & let others stand invent Hell bind people together who do not love Have children by women who do not love them
Buy love with money & sell it in the market to the Scouting submit women to see if they are clean eno for the embraces of monsters called men

[Page 226]

 no such thing as sound
objectivity or colour
is there any materialization
Do we not dream now to wake again
                                 Keats
No organs boots as watches

[Page 227]

The sexual love of the Future

In all advanced & higher class people will be spiritual & intellectual The animal part of our Natures is becoming less & less prominent
In the Future men &women will love but not marry, jealousy & selfish love will no longer exist. Love will be pure & radiant, lofty & soulfull -- We can allow that the body of man is descended from the ape and so on from the lowest forms of animal life – May we not in 100s of years look back at man as he now is with the same disgust

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that we now look back up at the ape – The lowest forms of animal life control the two [indecipherable]together in the higher development they are in divided – May not the highest development of all find the animal parts of mans woman non existent -- we see now that the human race have rudimentary organs which such as the nail once useful to them with lower state of animal existence now no longer needed

The teeth no longer needed to crush & tear flesh from bones, all gradually decaying -- Nature Food is soft & delicately cooked & tender; teeth are no longer much needed -- Nature They therefore in order of nature gradually become non existent We may no doubt preserve them as rudiments in the man of the future, but the designs [?] ceasing Nature ceases to supply the organ except in a rudimentary form

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[This page so overwritten and struck out as to be indecipherable]

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[This page so overwritten and struck out as to be indecipherable]

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We cannot conceive it is unscientific to allow that there is anything deeper natural it is only in accordance with all unity in nature science to believe that the with the ancient Greeks of old Greeks that [indecipherable] a Spirit or rather a germ of Spirituality abides in every rock, till [2 indecipherable] an from the “Ultimate scientific ideas” writes Herbert Spencer all representative of realities which cannot be comprehended’ & to the uttermost region of discourse must ever arise the question what lies beyond”?

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[ four lines indecipherable]
That [indecipherable the [indecipherable] may be able to distinguish the colors &even forms which belong to every sound & enjoy those ethereal sounds & forms which of necessity belongs to every color
It is true say writes John Symonds that the transition from the inorganic to the organic has not yet been seized [?] but we are all forced to admit that inorganic Nature must also be implicated in the process of mental development

If we are Evolutionists we are driven to the conclusion that mind was potentially present in the primordial elements out of which all life organic or inorganic emerged “& that there is thought implicit orexplicit in all products of the universe” The capacity for form coming first then the capacity for Life and then after that progressive consciousness in addition to form “ or I w and I wd add to this progressive Spirituality which no doubt is but a higher from of consciousness

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[Leaf 1 written over and indecipherable]
It was a remarkable saying of Edison that he believed that someday a God would be proved by chemistry and when we see even he could never have fathomed all the inductions the abortive or otherwise that wd be follow on his invention of the Phonograph
In Pro[indecipherable] Garners research in to the language of monkeys we see such another link in that chain which will bind us in sympathy to the beasts &birds so that at length Sport will become to all

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as it is now to many a relic of barbarism and to feed on these creatures will be as repulsive to us as cannibalism now is –
In the Phonograph & in visible registration of sound has led up to another instrumentality we see visions of ma Nigel [indecipherable] advanced instruments which may capture register sounds that may once have vibrated in ancient Halls & gathered around historic walls pictures or books
The pictures scenes & sounds of the Past

may be thus scientif revealed to us & history become a branch of scientific pursuits -- even and the Indeed it is not now contrary to the laws of Nature which Buckle declares have their “sole seat origin & [indecipherable] in the Human Mind” to suppose that even thoughts have an eternal substance & all is yet invisible microbes whose presence once who may yet hover on whose vitality may live (when proceeding from a mind such as Shakespeare’s)

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We all generally err by reading and out of proportion to what we think E.B. Browning

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personal small details which a woman never misses Who will not say that the large view is not the truer & nobler for a close attention first to the details

On humanity how much we need every element in you , The old who restrain the or even by opposition & argument help us to sift the new ideas, The child who never having lived in any Grove startles us by [indecipherable] thought How did God make hisself?

& yet indulging in all this [indecipherable] complexity other wheels within wheels here again a oneness & simplicity which resolves itself with the

Seek Truth, seek Love in these things & in these only will humanity find Peace & joy – It is again the complexity & detail The glorious simplicity of the Large view

It oh men & women cd draw you together Love Truth it will worth all the agony I’ve endured to force

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orthodox material notions blind us to the Spiritual

God repeated that he made man – A man who even rejects that he made anything wd feel that he had been a bungler & made a mistake, Is this a spiritual view of God the All Good the All Perfect

[indecipherable] education, Shakespeare The Moon H Spencer sociology & Mill Liberty

Tolstoi as wrong in thinking there shd be no animal element in love as a woman’s may be

Why this eternal wail against men Is behind us in Spirituality in some respects, they are far before us spiritual tho’ the intellect

We can learn of them much & even in our own [indecipherable] domain of the [indecipherable] Heart for adopting mens intellectual & large views [indecipherable] we not only increase our intellectual development but we actually increase our charity & Love
Each element is developed in the highest sense by the development of each other – So men by looking on our side & learning from us to have more unselfish Love develop not only their hearts but their intellect then [indecipherable] also, which are narrowed by indecipherable] & aging as a thing only of their own point of view, looking as they often do at the large general view and not seeing the

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little children that word no more, teach them only to be unselfish & loving & let them so find happiness, but speak to them not of its being a thing to be lorned for or desired—Happiness yes you refrain fr speaking to yr sons & showing them the warp of Spirituality

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we do it for Love
They for money

because you think they must be happy as their Fathers were Happy! That word when sought is the devils curse
Happiness is what every man seeks for himself & so he rolls even the woman he loves under the chain of wheels of his passions & desires

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for money & sometimes oh God where she does not love she sells herself for Peace peace where there is no love – The war the conflict between the animal & the Spiritual within us were easily conquered. Not for Love sweet, cruel Love that destroys our individuality & whispers give give so long as you can make yr darling happy -- Ah that word “happy” what has not been suffered for yr sake – Mothers teach yo

What is it to the soul of woman when she finds that those endearing words those shining looks of love only mean “give me yrself – give me yrself”? – They do only mean that for at no other time do they appear – Sweet , loving, calm companionship may be the lot of some women at other times – but the live intense love their high strong souls cd live on ragtime in the spiritual for evermore & weary not, & think & think you not that they soon mark the difference in the behaviour of the man they love -- & think the less ah the less

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of a love that is only intense when it is prompted by the animal within. Oh women women how many aching hearts, how many unspoken thoughts testify to my words – mad words, improper some men wh say [indecipherable] to you whether you allow it or no still sounds an echo in yr heart of hearts – Is this what I was loved for, the woman sighs! is this all he cares for? no often she knows it is not all but bitter to her is the thought that it is the greatest joy to him

The chief part of Love as he feels it – Bitterly she feels it & I I raise these thoughts in his heart -- I who wd lead him up to the heaven of heavens I who wd long only to have over him a spiritual influence or an influence intellectual & aesthetic That I shd raise in him these animal passions is a degradation. & yet she sells herself again & again for Love even as the prostitute does

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Satisfaction – self self is their God & our God is Love – Love as we dream of it, Love as we feel it – and God has made us so & made us so different are what is wrong is us & we often sacrifice our very sense of morality & Love & the man we love it is not wrong for them for they do not consider it so? [indecipherable] yet the day will come when we shall lead them to love as we love & passion shall only live in the hearts of the uncivilized & uneducated & we shall take their children into our arms & love them as our own –
Do we see a light beyond -- a far off light which says The animal shall be no more & the Spiritual Love of women shall permeate the world

Her letter
I am thinking of you yes, I am thinking of you, is there a moment in the day when yr image is not before me & yr personality heating penetrating my soul with every throb of my heart. Ah God how little you love me, how little, when a mans eyes shine with rapture what does it [indecipherable]? Is the consummation of yr kiss my animal passion In yr arms I am happy, there is nothing more to wish for, except that to be in those arms, to feel those kisses, & endearing words might last forever we women have no wish no desire for aught else, we

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long to do anything in the world to please the man we love, to make him happy – Ah why is does yr soul float away to the earthly when we are together in sweet love & spiritual union – Why do yr eyes look such love & why do yr endearing words come so passionately often & so intense in their loving expression – alas yr tenderness passion & warm love melts my heart away to the very abandon of tenderness and the Song in my heart is oh Darling darling what would I not do to make

you happy But the very whispering of the approach of the earthly passion in such a moment seems sacrilege – It seems to you only natural to me even did I allow yr longings realization it wd seem as if Love beautiful Love no Cupid but a angel woman had been stained with laval dust & wept while the angel of self sacrifice strives to kiss & comfort her Oh why she it be that the only Love that brings together the Souls of Man & Woman shd serve afterwards to sever them, because each thought the others dream was like their own – Do men ever give anything? They take take, but it is woman who gives! They desire us what for? Their earthly

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friendship the social relation which above all fr her leads to enlighten & elevate her mean [?] character & is least liable to any base allot –

Those who see our best & noblest nature! and in wh & seeing it help us to realize it also & help us to be in some measure as noble & good as they believe us to be! Oh Ah who Oh if we but knew the power we wield over all we those we meet with in Life for good or evil – How easy it is to see the faults of oth people! Mrs. So & So is so vain! Miss So & So is so vulgar & so we criticise their little failings & we gaze

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at them with cold & unsympathetic eyes & they in turn feel we in that strange magnetic way that we do not think much of them & that perhaps their faults are seen by us, & so like as far as our influence their hearts harden defiantly & they are the worse & not the better for our scorn for their failings, but oh for those whose with no ways all ways of love whose wh souls seek the

goodness & beauty in human nature & believe evil to nothing likewise a negation; They are the people who develop good in others because they show people they believe in them & also does not realize how delihtfull [indecipherable] it is to have loved & believed in their human nature who has not felt the better & nobler for it? Everyone has a noble desire for goodness, everyone is naturally & if only we let us all recognize this & by see by realizing the good in [indecipherable] him help to develop it who hum

though wise enough to discriminate & see the evil when our the faults & failings that with a tender loving pity & yet sympathy & get to see more than this, see

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John Bunyan and others upon our ancestors or the ancestors of our chief companions & so again upon ourselves Then again there is the influence of those who have had power of us as teachers children. Those who are intimate with us, those who are almost strangers to us – Those who dislike us or whom we think dislike us! Those & whose dislike & we have a bad opinion we have a strong inclination to live up to as far as they are concerned! But best of all the influence of those that love us, those who think well of us –

We are influenced more by books or companions according to our individual disposition & according also to the mood we are in. Some people seldom read at all, others are great readers, some people are extremely sociable others the reverse so that it is a very complicated question & I doubt if we cd analyse our own personal experience truly & answer the question truly even for ourselves for we are often most influenced when we are least conscious of it as children we our plastic minds are strongly influenced yet

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are seldom not aware of it nor are we often conscious in after years how power the influence of companion or book has been—Then again Coleridge somewhere remarks with regard to books, how differently they influence people, Some he says absorb the contents of a book as a sponge absorbs water & give it back out again just as they received it only a little dirtier!
On the whole I am inclined t think that in

this 19 century we are most influenced by books directly & indirectly for have not books influenced almost every companion who in his or her turn influenced us again – What influence immeasurable influence has been on our parents, grandparents etc by books, & then again these influence & act on us! Who can measure the influence of the books of the Bible
The writings of S Shakespeare, Spencer

[Transcribed by Helen Monaghan, Allanah Jarman for the State Library of New South Wales]