Mill be satisfied with, if he was not
satisfied with that?
Perhaps Mr. Mill might have asked why the argument had not been
pushed to its logical conclusion. Clearly, if we are to trust the
analogy of human institutions, we must remember that laws are, as
a matter of fact, not dispensed by lawgivers, but passed by Act
of Parliament. Miss Nightingale, however, with all her experience
of public life, never stopped to consider the question whether
God might not be a Limited Monarchy.Yet her conception of God was
certainly not orthodox. She felt towards Him as she might have
felt towards a glorified sanitary engineer; and in some of her
speculations she seems hardly to distinguish between the Deity
and the Drains. As one turns over these singular pages, one has
the impression that Miss Nightingale has got the Almighty too
into her clutches, and that, if He is not careful, she will kill
Him with overwork.
Then, suddenly, in the very midst of the ramifying generalities
of her metaphysical disquisitions, there is an unexpected turn
and the reader is plunged all at once into something particular,
something personal, something impregnated with intense
experience-- a virulent invective upon the position of women in
the upper ranks of society. Forgetful alike of her high argument
and of the artisans, the bitter creature rails through a hundred
pages of close print at the falsities of family life, the
ineptitudes of marriage, the emptinesses of convention, in the
spirit of an Ibsen or a Samuel Butler.
Pages:
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242