NOTES, &c.

WOMAN FREE.

NOTES, &c.

2.—“Science calm moves...”

“Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.”—George Eliot (“Middlemarch,” Chap. LXXIII.)

3.—“Research and reason...”

As indicated by Professor Oliver T. Lodge, “It is but a platitude to say that our clear and conscious aim should always be truth, and that no lower or meaner standard should ever be allowed to obtrude itself before us. Our ancestors fought hard and suffered much for the privilege of free and open inquiry, for the right of conducting investigation untrammelled by prejudice and foregone conclusions, and they were ready to examine into any phenomenon which presented itself.... Fear of avowing interest or of examining into unorthodox facts is, I venture to say, not in accordance with the highest traditions of the scientific attitude.”—(Address as President of the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association, 1891.)

See also the words of Richard Jefferies:—“Research proceeds upon the same old lines and runs in the ancient grooves.... But there should be no limit placed on the mind.... Most injurious of all is the continuous circling on the same path, and it is from this that I wish to free my mind.”—(“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. X.)

5.—“...part revealed.”

“We are still the early settlers in a beautiful world, whose capabilities, imperfectly known as yet, wait until higher developments of man can understand them fully, and apply the result to the general good.”—Professor T. Rupert Jones (Address as President of the Geological Section of the British Association, 1891).

3.—“...keener conscience...”

“C’est l’incarnation de l’idée qui se dresse tout à coup en face des vieilles traditions obstinées et insuffisantes et elle vient ... poser sa revendication personelle et nécessaire contre les lois jadis excellentes, mais qui, les mœurs s’étant modifiées, apparaissent subitement comme des injustices et des barbaries.”—A. Dumas fils (“Les Femmes qui Tuent et les Femmes qui Votent,” p. 25).

7.—“...monitor’s still voice.”—Conf.Wordsworth;

“Taught both by what she” (Nature) “shows, and what conceals,Never to blend our pleasure or our prideWith sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”(“Hart-Leap Well.”)

“Taught both by what she” (Nature) “shows, and what conceals,

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”

(“Hart-Leap Well.”)

1.—“...prehistoric hour.”

“The preface of general history must be compiled from the materials presented by barbarism. Happily, if we may say so, these materials are abundant. So unequally has the species been developed, that almost every conceivable phase of progress may be studied, as somewhere observed and recorded. And thus the philosopher, fenced from mistake as to the order of development, by the inter-connection of the stages and their shadings into one another by gentle gradations, may draw a clear and decided outline of the course of human progress in times long antecedent to those to which even philology can make reference.”—M’Lennan (“Primitive Marriage,” p. 9)....

Id.... “I will confine myself to these examples, gleaned from all parts, and which it would be easy to multiply. They amply suffice to establish that, in primitive societies, woman, being held in very low esteem, is absolutely reduced to the level of chattels and of domestic animals; that she represents a booty like any other; that her master can use and abuse her without fear. But in these bestial practices there is nothing which approaches even distantly to marriage, and we are not in the least warranted to call these brutal rapes marriages.”—Letourneau (“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. VI.).

2.—“...woman thrall...”

“Woman was the first human being that tasted bondage. Woman was a slave before the slave existed.”—August Bebel (“Woman,” Chap. I.).

Id.... “From the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by man, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Woman,” Chap. I.).

Id.... “In every country, and in every time, woman, organically weaker than man, has been more or less enslaved by him.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. XI.).

Id....

“It raised up the humble and fallen, gave spirit and strength to the poor,And is freeing from slavery Woman, the slave of all ages gone by.”—C. G. Leland (“The Return of the Gods”).

“It raised up the humble and fallen, gave spirit and strength to the poor,

And is freeing from slavery Woman, the slave of all ages gone by.”

—C. G. Leland (“The Return of the Gods”).

3.—“...heinous skill.”

“It is pitiful to reflect that man’s vaunted superiority over the brute, the greater activity of his brain, and the subtler cunning of his hand, have for so long lent themselves to the oppression that has resulted in such pernicious consequences, and in the still existent slavery, social and physical, of the female of his own species.”—Ben Elmy (“Studies in Materialism,” Chap. III.).

8.—“...soulless gloom.”

Compare the following picture of the somewhat parallel condition of a lower race at the present time:—

“Natives may well call the monkey sire Maharaja, for he is the very type and incarnation of savage and sensual despotism. They are right, too, in making their Hanuman red, for the old male’s face is of the dusky red you see in some elderly, overfed human faces. Like human Maharajas, they have their tragedies and mayhap their romances. One morning there came a monkey chieftain, weak and limping, having evidently been worsted in a severe fight with another of his own kind. One hand hung powerless, his face and eyes bore terrible traces of battle, and he hirpled slowly along with a pathetic air of suffering, supporting himself on the shoulder of a female, a wife, the only member of his clan who had remained faithful to him after his defeat. We threw them bread and raisins, and the wounded warrior carefully stowed the greater part away in his cheek pouch. The faithful wife, seeing her opportunity, sprang on him, holding fast his one sound hand, and, opening his mouth, she deftly scooped out the store of raisins. Then she sat and ate them very calmly at a safe distance, while he mowed and chattered in impotent rage. He knew that without her help he could not reach home, and was fain to wait with what patience he might till the raisins were finished. It was a sad sight, but, like more sad sights, touched with the light of comedy. This was probably her first chance of disobedience or of self-assertion in her whole life, and I am afraid she thoroughly enjoyed it. Then she led him away.”—J. Lockwood Kipling (“Beast and Man in India”).

1.—“...Evolution...”

“We now know that Nature, as an anthropomorphic being, does not exist; that the great forces called natural are unconscious; that their blind action results, however, in the world of life, in a choice, a selection, a progressive evolution, or, to sum up, in the survival of the individuals best adapted to the conditions of their existence.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. I., Part II.).

Id.... “Robert Chambers’s common-sense view of evolution as a process of continued growing.”—Professor Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson (“The Evolution of Sex,” p. 302).

3.—“By Art...”

“Other implements of Palæolithic age are formed of bone and horn. Among these are harpoon-heads, barbed on one or both sides, awls, pins, and needles with well-formed eyes. But by far the most noteworthy objects of this class are the fragments of bone, horn, ivory, and stone, which exhibit outlined and even shaded sketches of various animals. These engravings have been made with a sharp-pointed implement, and are often wonderfully characteristic representations of the creatures they pourtray. The figures are sometimes single, in other cases they are drawn in groups. We find representations of a fish, a seal, an ibex, the red-deer, the great Irish elk or deer, the bison, the horse, the cave-bear, the reindeer, and the mammoth or woolly elephant. Besides engravings, we meet also with sculptures.... It is impossible to say to what use all these objects were put. Some of them may have been handles for knives, while others are mere fragments, and only vague guesses can be made as to the nature of the original implements. It is highly probable, however, that many of these works of art may have been designed simply as such, for the pleasure and amusement of the draughtsman and his fellows.”—James Geikie (“Prehistoric Europe,” Chap. II.).

Id.... The culture or appreciation of Art is ofitself evidence of a higher nature in man; “a soul, a psyche, a something which aspires,” as Richard Jefferies calls it. For though the professional pursuit of Art may be occasionally not unmingled with mercenary motives, or with the pourtrayal of incentives to lower desire, yet the ultimate appeal of every truly beautiful picture or object of Art is, at any rate, not to man’s mercenary or meaner nature. As Jefferies again says, “The ascetics are the only persons who are impure. The soul is the higher even by gazing on beauty.”—(“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. VII.)

7.—“...the soul...”

“The mind of man is infinite. Beyond this, man has a soul. I do not use this word in the common-sense which circumstances have given to it. I use it as the only term to express that inner consciousness which aspires.”—Richard Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. IX.).

8.—“...from lower flush of lust.”

“The fact to be insisted upon is this, that the vague sexual attraction of the lowest organisms has been evolved into a definite reproductive impulse, into a desire often predominating over even that of self-preservation; that this, again, enhanced by more and more subtle additions, passes by a gentle gradient into the love of the highest animals, and of the average human individual.”—Geddes and Thomson (“Evolution of Sex,” p. 267).

5, 6.—“The voice erst roused by hunger or by rage,Now tells the nobler passions of the age.”

5, 6.—“The voice erst roused by hunger or by rage,

Now tells the nobler passions of the age.”

“The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when, with his varied tones and cadences, he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which, at an extremely remote period, his half-human ancestors aroused each other’s ardent passions during their mutual courtship and rivalry.”—Darwin (“The Descent of Man,” Chap. XIX.).

7.—“...with love’s language is uplifted love.”

Language is thought, we are told; so also is love. And thus the reciprocal and cumulative action of love, thought, and language stands a corollary to Max Müller’s words:—“Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate.”—(“Science of Language,” Lect. IX.)

Id.... “Even the rude Australian girl (aborigine) sings in a strain of romantic affliction:

‘I shall never see my darling again.’”

—Westermarck (“History of Human Marriage,” p. 503).

Id.... “And again, another benefit accrues to the race from marriages of affection. Do not your ancient epics which sing of love sing also of noble deeds and acts of heroism on the part both of men and women, actuated by a pure affection for each other? Alike in your dramas and in those of Shakespeare, and of all great writers, love is the great motive power which impels to deeds of prowess, the spring of noble actions, of unselfish devotion, of words and thoughts which have enriched all later generations, the onesentiment which elevates marriage amongst mankind to something infinitely higher and purer than the gratification of a mere animal instinct.”—Dr. Edith Pechey Phipson (Address to the Hindoos of Bombay on Child Marriage, 1891, p. 14).

8.—“...selfless thought.”

“Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;Smote the chord of Self that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.”—Tennyson (“Locksley Hall”).

“Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.”

—Tennyson (“Locksley Hall”).

7.—“...Neglecting none...”

“We are entering into an order of things in which justice will be the primary virtue, grounded on equal, but also on sympathetic association; having its roots no longer in the instinct of equals for self-protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them; and no one being now left out, but an equal measure being extended to all.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 80).

4.—“...clogged...man’s power...”

“He has reaped the usual reward of selfishness, the gratification of immediate low desires has frustrated the future attainment of higher aspirations.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (Address to Hindoos).

5, 6.—“Egypt or Greece in vain sought heavenly light,While woman’s soul was held from equal flight.”

5, 6.—“Egypt or Greece in vain sought heavenly light,

While woman’s soul was held from equal flight.”

In Egypt “the art (of literature) was practised only by the priests, as the painted history plainly declares.... No female is depicted in the act of reading.... The Greek world was composed of municipal aristocracies, societies of gentlemen living in towns, with their farms in the neighbourhood, and having all their work done for them by slaves. They themselves had nothing to do but to cultivate their bodies by exercise in the gymnasium, and their minds by conversation in the market-place. They lived out of doors, whilst their wives remained shut up at home. In Greece a lady could only enter society by adopting a mode of life which in England usually facilitates her exit.”—Winwood Reade (“The Martyrdom of Man,” pp. 35, 71).

8.—“...subjugated wife...”

At Athens “the free citizen women lived in strict and almost Oriental recluseness, as well after being married as when single. Everything which concerned their lives, their happiness, or their rights, was determined or managed for them by their male relatives; and they seem to have been destitute of all mental culture and accomplishments.”—Grote (“History of Greece,” Vol. VI., p. 133).

1.—“Marriage which might have been a mateship sweet.”

“In vain Plato urged that young men and women shouldbe more frequently permitted to meet one another, so that there should be less enmity and indifference in the married life.” (“Nomoi,” Book VI.)—Westermarck (“History of Human Marriage,” p. 361).

2.—“...equal souls...”

“The feeling which makes husband and wife true companions for better and worse, can grow up only in societies where the altruistic sentiments of man are strong enough to make him recognise woman as his equal, and where she is not shut up as an exotic plant in a greenhouse, but is allowed to associate freely with men. In this direction European civilisation has been advancing for centuries.”—Westermarck (loc. cit.). (See also Note XIX., 6.)

7, 8.—“Her only hope of thought or learning wide,Some freer lot to seek than yoke forlorn of bride.”

7, 8.—“Her only hope of thought or learning wide,

Some freer lot to seek than yoke forlorn of bride.”

In Greece “the modest women were confined to their own apartments, and were visited only by their husbands and nearest relations.... The courtesans of Athens, by living in public, and conversing freely with all ranks of people, upon all manner of subjects, acquired, by degrees, a knowledge of history, of philosophy, of policy, and a taste in the whole circle of the arts. Their ideas were more extensive and various, and their conversation was more sprightly and entertaining than anything that was to be found among the virtuous part of the sex. Hence their houses became the schools of elegance; that of Aspasia was the resort of Socrates and Pericles, and, as Greece was governed by eloquent men, over whom the courtesans had an influence,the latter also influenced public affairs.”—Alexander Walker (“Woman, as to Mind,” &c., p. 334).

3.—“...craving mental food...”

That the quest of knowledge and intellectual power was literally the incentive to many a woman who accepted the life ofhetairais indisputable. Westermarck says:—“It seems to me much more reasonable to suppose that if, in Athens and India, courtesans were respected and sought after by the principal men, it was because they were the only educated women.”—(“History of Marriage,” p. 81.)

And Letourneau remarks:—“Religious prostitution, which was widely spread in Greek antiquity, has been also found in India, where every temple of renown had its bayadères, the only women in India to whom, until quite recently, any instruction was given.”—(“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. III.)

5, 6.—“Conceding that, might lead a learned life—A license vetoed to the legal wife.”

5, 6.—“Conceding that, might lead a learned life—

A license vetoed to the legal wife.”

“Hetairai, famous at once for their beauty and intellect such as Phryne, Laïs of Corinth, Gnathæna, and Aspasia, were objects of universal admiration among the most distinguished Greeks. They were admitted to their assemblies and banquets, while the ‘honest’ women of Greece were, without exception, confined to the house.... A considerable number of women preferred the greater freedom which they enjoyedas Hetairaito marriage, and carried on the trade of prostitution as a means of livelihood. In unrestrainedintercourse with men, the more intelligent of theHetairai, who were doubtless often of good birth, acquired a far greater degree of versatility and culture than that possessed by the majority of married women, living in a state of enforced ignorance and bondage. This invested theHetairaiwith a greater charm for the men, in addition to the arts which they employed in the special exercise of their profession. This explains the fact that many of them enjoyed the esteem of some of the most distinguished and eminent men of Greece, to whom they stood in a relationship of influential intimacy, a position held by no legitimate wife. The names of theseHetairaiare famous to the present day, while one enquires in vain after the names of the legitimate wives.”—August Bebel (“Woman,” Chap. I.).

7.—“...wealth, or ... fame.”

E.g., Phryne, who offered to rebuild the wall of Thebes; and Laïs, commemorated in the adage, “Non cuivis hominum contingit adire Corinthum.” And as to even modern “fame,” a writer so merciless concerning her own sex as Mrs. Lynn Linton can yet say, “Agnes Sorel, like Aspasia, was one of the rare instances in history where failure in chastity did not include moral degradation nor unpatriotic self-consideration.”—(Nineteenth Century, July, 1891, p. 84.)

8.—“...the tinge of shame.”

Why indeed should shame have attached specially to those women, more highly cultured and better treated than wives; and whose sole impeachment could be that they rejected the still lower serfdom of wedded bondage?

XIII.

2.—“To him who fixed the gages of the fight.”

“If we could imagine a Bossuet or a Fénélon figuring among the followers of Ninon de Lenclos, and publicly giving her counsel on the subject of her professional duties, and the means of securing adorers, this would be hardly less strange than the relation which really existed between Socrates and the courtesan Theodota.”—Lecky (“History of European Morals,” Vol. II., p. 280).

8.—“The waste of woman worth...”

Since these words were written, a letter from Mrs. Mona Caird has been published by the “Women’s Emancipation Union,” in which is said:—“So far from giving safety and balance to the ‘natural forces,’ these time-honoured restrictions, springing from a narrow theory which took its rise in a pre-scientific age, are fraught with the gravest dangers, creating a perpetual struggle and unrest, filling society with the perturbations and morbid developments of powers that ought to be spending themselves freely and healthfully on their natural objects. Anyone who has looked a little below the surface of women’s lives can testify to the general unrest and nervous exhaustion ormalaiseamong them, although each would probably refer her suffering to some cause peculiar to herself and her circumstances, never dreaming that she was the victim of an evil that gnaws at the very heart of society, making of almost every woman the heroine of a silent tragedy. I think few keen observers will deny that it isalmost always the women of placid temperament, with very little sensibility, who are happy and contented; those of more highly wrought nervous systems and imaginative faculty, who are nevertheless capable of far greater joy than their calmer sisters, in nine cases out of ten are secretly intensely miserable. And the cause of this is not eternal and unalterable. The nervously organised being isnotcreated to be miserable; but when intense vital energy is thwarted and misdirected—so long as the energy lasts—there must be intense suffering.... It is only when resignation sets in, when the ruling order convinces at last and tires out the rebel nerves and the keen intelligence, that we know that the living forces are defeated, and that death has come to quiet the suffering. All this is waste of human force, and far worse than waste.”

Id.... Alexandre Dumas fils says:—“Celles-là voient, de jour en jour, en sondant l’horizon toujours le même, s’effeuiller dans l’isolement, dans l’inaction, dans l’impuissance, les facultés divines qui leur avaient d’abord fait faire de si beaux rêves et dont il leur semble que l’expansion eût pu être matériellement et moralement si profitable aux autres et à elles-memes.”—(“Les Femmes qui Tuent et les Femmes qui Votent,” p. 107).

Id.... And Lady Florence Dixie has written:—“Nature gives strength and beauty to man, and Nature gives strength and beauty to woman. In this latter instance man flies in the face of Nature, and declares that she must be artificially restrained. Woman must not be allowed to grow up strong like man, because if she did the fact would establish her equality with him, and this cannot be tolerated.So the boy and man are allowed freedom of body, and are trained up to become muscular and strong, while the woman, by artificial, not natural, laws, is bidden to remain inactive and passive, and, in consequence, weak and undeveloped. Mentally it is the same. Nature has unmistakably given to woman a greater amount of brain power. This is at once perceivable in childhood. For instance, on the stage, girls are always employed in preference to boys, for they are considered brighter and sharper in intellect and brain power. Yet man deliberately sets himself to stunt that early evidence of mental capacity by laying down the law that woman’s education shall be on a lower level than that of man’s; that natural truths, which all women should early learn, should be hidden from her; and that while men may be taught everything, women must only acquire a narrow and imperfect knowledge both of life and of Nature’s laws. I maintain that this procedure is arbitrary and cruel, and false to Nature. I characterise it by the strong word of infamous. It has been the means of sending to their graves, unknown, unknelled, and unnamed, thousands of women whose high intellects have been wasted, and whose powers for good have been paralysed and undeveloped.”—(“Gloriana: or, the Revolution of 1900,” p. 130.)

Id.... Buckle gives numerous instances which support the foregoing assertions, saying himself on the point:—“That women are more deductive than men, because they think quicker than men, is a proposition which some persons will not relish, and yet it may be proved in a variety of ways. Indeed, nothing could prevent its being universally admitted except the fact that the remarkable rapidity withwhich women think is obscured by that miserable, that contemptible, that preposterous system called their education, in which valuable things are carefully kept from them, and trifling things carefully taught to them, until their fine and nimble minds are irreparably injured.”—(“Miscellaneous Works,” Vol. I., p. 8, “On the influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge.”)

Id.... As a man of straightforward common-sense, Sydney Smith has left a name unsurpassed in our literary history. Here is something of what he says on this question of woman’s intellect and its waste:—“As the matter stands at present, half the talent in the universe runs to waste, and is totally unprofitable. It would have been almost as well for the world, hitherto, that women, instead of possessing the capacities they do at present, should have been born wholly destitute of wit, genius, and every other attribute of mind of which men make so eminent a use; and the ideas of use and possession are so united together that, because it has been the custom in almost all countries to give to women a different and worse education than to men, the notion has obtained that they do not possess faculties which they do not cultivate.”—(“Essay on Female Education.”)

Id.... Hear also John Ruskin on the relative intellect or capacity of women:—“Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear and harmonious idea (and it must be harmonious if it is true) of what womanly mind and virtue are in power and office, with respect to man’s; and how their relations, rightly accepted, aid and increase the vigour, and honour, and authority of both.... Let us see whether the greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted ofall ages are agreed in anywise on this point.... And first let us take Shakespeare; ... there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless purpose.... Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare’s testimony to the position and character of women in human life. He represents them as infallibly faithful and wise counsellors, incorruptibly just and pure examples, strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save.... I ask you next to receive the witness of Walter Scott.... So that, in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches over or educates his mistress.

“Now I could multiply witness upon witness of this kind upon you, if I had time. Nay, I could go back into the mythical teaching of the most ancient times, and show you how the great people, how that great Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver’s shuttle; and how the name and form of that spirit adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, became that Athena of the olive-helm and cloudy shield, to whose faith you owe, down to this date, whatever you hold most precious in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue.

“But I will not wander into this distant and mythical element; I will only ask you to give the legitimate value to the testimony of these great poets and men of the world, consistent as you see it is on this head. I will ask you whether it can be supposed that these men, in the main work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious andidle view of the relations between man and woman; nay, worse than fictitious or idle, for a thing may be imaginary yet desirable, if it were possible; but this, their ideal of women, is, according to our common idea of the marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, is not to guide nor even to think for herself. The man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power. Is it not somewhat important to make up our minds on this matter? Are Shakespeare and Æschylus, Dante and Homer merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse than dolls, unnatural visions, the realisation of which, were it possible, would bring anarchy into all households, and ruin into all affections? Are all these great men mistaken, or, are we?”—(“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 125,et seq.)

Truly, in the face of these things, Tennyson had reason concerning his fellow men, when he wrote:—

“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers....”(“Locksley Hall.”)

“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers....”

(“Locksley Hall.”)

3.—“...lostling...”

Between the most culturedhetairaiand the poor outcast as here shown, were many intervening or coalescing grades. Instance, as one of the phases, the following sketch of an Indian courtesan:—“Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world. Lilith was her very-great-grandmama, and that was before the days of Eve, as everyone knows. In the West, people say rude thingsabout Lalun’s profession, and write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to young people, in order that morality may be preserved. In the East, where the profession is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody writes lectures or takes any notice.”—Rudyard Kipling (“On the City Wall”).

Id.—“...worse than brutal woes...”

Dumas fils, who knew well whereof he wrote, tells of “Les femmes du peuple et de la campagne, suant du matin au soir pour gagner le pain quotidien, le dos courbé, domptées par la misère:” of whom some of the daughters“sortent du groupe par le chemin tentant et facile de la prostitution, mais où le labeur est encore plus rude.”—(“Les Femmes qui Tuent et les Femmes qui Votent,” p. 101.)As historical instance of depth of wretched degradation,conf.mediæval privilege of “scortum ante mortem,” conceded to some of even the vilest and lowest of criminals condemned to capital punishment. Though such a condition is barely more than parallel to the pitch of infamy of modern times, as instanced in a quotation reproduced by John Ruskin, in “Sesame and Lilies,” p. 91, first ed.:—

“The salons of Mme. C., who did the honours with clever imitative grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts, in fact, with the samemalecompany as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor the supper-tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisiandemi-monde, I copy themenuof the supper which wasserved to all the guests (about 200) seated, at four o’clock. Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, Lafitte, Tokay, and Champagne of the finest vintages were served most lavishly throughout the morning. After supper dancing was resumed with increased animation, and the ball terminated with achaine diaboliqueand acancan d’enferat seven in the morning.”—(Morning Post, March 10th, 1865.)

To which perhaps the most fitting comment is certain words of Letourneau’s:—“It is important to make a distinction. The resemblance between the moral coarseness of the savage and the depravation of the civilised man is quite superficial.... The brutality of the savage has nothing in common with the moral retrogression of the civilised man, struck with decay.... The posterity of the savage may, with the aid of time and culture, attain to great moral elevation, for there are vital forces within him which are fresh and intact. The primitive man is still young, and he possesses many latent energies susceptible of development. In short, the savage is a child, while the civilised man, whose moral nature is corrupt, presents to us rather the picture of decrepit old age.”—(“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. V.)

If M. Letourneau will apply his strictures as to senility and decay to so-called “Society” and its system, rather than to the individual, he will find many thinkers, both of his own and other nationalities, agree with his conclusion. Yet not death, but reform, is the righter event to indicate. And by what means that reform may be ensured is, at least in part, clearly set forth in the following passage from a paper recently published by the Women’s Printing Society:—

“My positive belief is that women, and women alone, will be able to reverse the world’s verdict, but they must change their method of reform in two important matters.

“First and foremost, every mother must teach her daughters the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the relations of the sexes, the condition of social opinion, the historical, physiological, ethical aspects of the question. She must train herself so as to be able to teach the young minds these solemn, serious aspects of life, in such a way that the world may learn that the innocence of ignorance is inferior to the purity of right-minded, fearless knowledge. She must strengthen the minds and form the judgment of her daughters, so that they may demand reciprocal purity in those whom they would espouse.

“I fully understand the difficulty of teaching our pure-minded, delicately-nurtured daughters the terrible lessons of this seamy side of life. I am a mother of daughters myself, and I know the cost at which the courage has to be obtained, but in this matter each mother must help another. What a mighty force is influence! What help is conveyed by pressure of opinion! How often do I remember with gratitude the words which I once read as quoted of Mrs. John Stuart Mill, who taught her little daughter to have the courage to hear what other little girls had to bear. How gladly I acknowledge the stimulus of that example to myself, and therefore I would urge all women to SPEAK OUT. Do not be afraid. You will not lose your womanliness. You will not lose your purity. You will not have your sensibilities blunted by such rough use. No, “To the pure all things are pure.” We must reach the mass through the unit, it is the individual who helps to move the world.

“We must teach and train the mind of every woman with whom we come in contact, for we have mighty work to do. A no less deed than to reverse the judgment of the whole world on the subject of purity. I do not believe it is possible for men to accomplish any radical reform in this matter. It belongs to women—I was going to say exclusively—but I will modify my assertion; and if women do not speak out more courageously in the future than they have done in the past, I believe there is but slight chance of any further amelioration in the condition of society than those which are such an inadequate return at the present time, for all the love and money expended on them.”

And the same writer says, on a still more recent occasion: “I find no words strong enough to denounce the sin of silence amongst women on these social evils; and I have come to feel that the best proof of the subjection and degradation of my sex lies in the opinions often expressed by so-called Christian and pure womenabout other women. If their judgments were not perverted, if their wills were not broken, if their consciences were not asleep, and if their souls were not enslaved, they would not, they could not, hold their peace and let the havoc go on with women and children as it does.”—Mrs. Laura E. Morgan-Browne (“Woman’s Herald”, 27th Feb., 1892).

Mrs. Morgan-Browne is, perhaps, not more than needfully severe on the almost criminal reticence of women; yet man must certainly take the greater share of blame for the social “double morality” which condemns irrevocably a woman, and leaves practically unscathed a man, for the same act. It is male-made laws and rules that have resulted in the perverted judgments, broken wills, sleeping consciences, and enslaved souls, which both sexes may deplore. Charles Kingsley pointed a cogent truth when he said that “Women will never obtain moral equity until they have civil equality.” (See also Note XXXV., 6.)

2.—“...woman’s griefs with man of barbarous breed.”

“In all barbarous societies the subjection of woman is more or less severe; customs or coarse laws have regulated the savagery of the first anarchic ages; they have doubtlessset up a barrier against primitive ferocity, they have interdicted certain absolutely terrible abuses of force, but they have only replaced these by a servitude which is still very heavy, is often iniquitous, and no longer permits to legally-possessed women those escapes, or capriciously accorded liberties, which were tolerated in savage life.”—Letourneau (“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. XIV.).

4.—“Crippled and crushed by cruelty and toil.”

Some of this crippling has been of set purpose, as well as the simple result of brutal male recklessness. Instance the distortion of the feet of high-born female children in China, the tradition concerning which is that the practice was initiated and enjoined by an emperor of old, one of whose wives had (literally) “run away” from him. A somewhat similar precaution would seem to be indicated as a very probable source of the persistent and almost universal incommodity and incumbrance of the dress of woman as compared with that of man.

Dr. Thomas Inman, in his “Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names,” Vol. I., p. 53, seems to indicate a different, yet closely allied, origin and motive for the impeding form of woman’s clothing, the subordinate status of woman being always the purpose in view.

Id.... “Even supposing a woman to give no encouragement to her admirers, many plots are always laid to carry her off. In the encounters which result from these, she is almost certain to receive some violent injury, for each of the combatants orders her to follow him, and, in the event of her refusing, throws a spear at her. The earlylife of a young woman at all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of captivities to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wandering in strange families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females amongst whom she is brought, a stranger, by her captor; and rarely do you see a form of unusual grace and elegance but it is marked and scarred by the furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders several hundred miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off successively to distant and more distant points.”—Sir George Grey (“Travels in North-Western Australia,” 1841, Vol. II., p. 249; quoted in M’Lennan on “Primitive Marriage,” p. 75).

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