The Influence of Judaism upon the Intellectual Development of Mankind.

 (By Bernhard Pomeranz.)

(Translated for The Hebrew by P.B.)

Who is there that is not familiar with the wonderful story of the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert? The historic narrative describes how the “pillar of fire” lighted their journeyings by night and the “ pillar of cloud ” protected their wanderings by day. This is symbolical of the later history of God’s chosen people.

For nearly two thousand years, the history of our race has been one of perpetual wandering through a wilderness of exile. The “ pillar of fire ” has been the symbol of that ardent enthusiasm for the national or Jewish ideal, which has sustained and guided us through the long nights of oppression and fanatical persecution. But, with the dawn of a brighter day, when the sun of tolerance, liberty and equality rises over us, we observe the “ pillar of cloud,” symbolical of selfishness, materialism, and indifferentism which have cast their shadow over the higher aims and ideals which should animate us.

The anti-Semitic movement which, in recent times, has sprung up in many continental centres, may prove after all a blessing in disguise, and serve to fan into flame the smouldering embers of a holy patriotism and enthusiasm, causing us to rally once more round the standard of Judaism. Then may we cry unto our enemies and detractors, “You have desired our death, but the Lord has made it our blessing.”

The activity of our enemies teaches a useful lesson, teaches us our duty, what we should do and what we should leave undone; the faults we should renounce, the virtues we should cultivate.

The best source whence to gain counsel and advice is the history of our own people, for therein we find the reflection of the spirit, the tendency and the destiny of our race.

Historia Magistra Vitæ said the Romans : That which is experience to the individual is to a nation its history. History lays bare to us the life of a nation and teaches us to adapt to our future conduct the lessons of the past; as was said by Israel’s greatest prophet to the people : “ Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations.”

The study of our National History is not only useful, but it is also interesting in the highest degree. There are two powerful reasons which make Jewish history particularly attractive, and its study so fascinating. Firstly: The history of nearly every nation other than our own is the history of a single race or nation, of its origin and development, a record of its relations with its neighbours, its successes and its failures; its decay and final extinction or absorption into another race. But the history of our people on the other hand brings us into contact with all the nations of the world, and is therefore universal. We meet with the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Persians; our ancestors lived in the Greek, Macedonian and Roman Empires ; we came into contact with all the national groups formed during the middle ages, and are citizens at this day in every country of the globe. We meet all on our way in the study of the history of our eternal race.

Secondly : Israel was the first nation to lay the foundation of a so-called Philosophy of History. It was the first to perceive, underlying the struggles of rival nationalities and in the complications of national policies, a universal principle; and, recognising in its existence, a distinct purpose, proclaimed its history to be, and to be intended as such, a sure guide for all the world. Again, it was Israel that first formulated the axiom that “nations prosper by virtue and perish by vice.” It is, therefore, the originator of the fundamental principles of the world’s moral code. Neither the ancient mythologies nor heathen histories teach anything like that. Hesiod and Homer are silent about it just as are Herodotus and Tacitus. In the Homeric songs it is written that the gods do interfere with the destinies of nations and direct them according to their fancies and the end of the Trojan war is described as the realisation of the will of Zeus. But all we can learn is that the gods favored some above others from pure fancy, without a moral motive, without any regard to right and justice, and frequently in opposition to justice and morality.

I shall now endeavour to show when and how Judaism has influenced the moral and intellectual development of mankind and impressed it with the stamp of its own spirit, the understanding of which will also be an indication of the proper conception of our duty and a guidance for our conduct in the present and future.

The spirit, the essence of Judaism, can briefly be characterised in the words of the prophet, “ Love truth, love peace !” Judaism appeals to the mind and to the heart of man. Its fundamental doctrine is the unity of God, as the highest principle of the world ; the existence of fixed laws in nature and the unity of all forces and of all spirits. Judaism demands peace, peace of the man within himself, peace with his fellow man, and in its last consequence, the peace of the world. The whole tendency of Judaism is contained in two words : Monotheism and Messianism. To realise and to carry to victory these ideas, is its destiny in accordance with the prophecy: “You will carry the light of civilisation before all mankind.”

Let us now observe by the light of history when and how Israel has borne this spirit into the world. For this purpose we may divide our history into three epochs :

1. The Mosaic era to the return from the Babylonian exile.

 2. The Talmudic-Neo-platonic period.

 3. The time of our dispersion.

During the first epoch of Jewish national life, the influence of Judaism upon the non-Jewish world was, as a matter of course, limited, During that time our nation was preparing itself for its high mission, its literature was in a state of development. It was during this period that the ideas relating to God and Man underwent a process of fermentation and purification in the mind and heart of our people. But even at that time, this great intellectual movement, initiated chiefly by the prophets, had considerable influence upon other nations living in the neighbourhood of Canaan. This monotheistic doctrine pierced the dense clouds of Asiatic heathenism in every direction, and the God inspired Seers of Israel not only directed their fiery denunciations at their own race, but also at the inhabitants of the surrounding countries.

Through the Babylonian exile, and later under the rule of the Persians, the Jews came into close contact with the Babylonians and the Persians. Conflicting influences now asserted themselves—civilization and enlightenment from Judaism, darkness and corruption from those nations of whom we read in the Talmud: “ The names of the Angels, as they appear in the book of Daniel, they have borrowed from the Babylonian mythology, and thus grafted a foreign branch upon their own tribe.”

Part II.

It was only during the second epoch of Jewish national life that the influence of Jewish ideas made itself felt upon the heathen world. This was effected by the Bible, by means of its Greek translation, the Septuagint.

The Holy Writ, this book of books (of which even Goethe, the “ great heathen,” said that to it he owed in a great measure his education), was to the heathen world, up to the end of the third century, a book sealed with “ seven seals.” It was by its translation into Greek, the language understood and spoken by the civilized peoples of that time, that its contents became accessible to all civilized nations and the common property of mankind. “ The Septuagint,” says a prominent writer, “was the first apostle whom Judaism sent out to convert the world.”

One can imagine the powerful and even startling impression this work must have exercised upon the people of those days. A new field of thought, conception and principle was opened at once to the heathen world. Especially were the philosophical and cultured Greeks and Alexandrians struck by this original work of human intellect, feeling partly attracted yet partly repulsed by it, until the school of the Neo-Platonics, with their great and noble thinker, Philo, as leader, made them acquainted with the spirit of the sacred writings and, by means of an allegorical explanation of its contents, brought into harmony the Jewish with the Greek philosophical conceptions.

Even at that period we find Judaism at work welding the ideas of the Orient with those of the Occident by influencing the Neo-Platonism in Egypt through the Jewish philosophical school at Alexandria, and also by impressing its character upon the “ Gnosis ” through the Essenes, the forerunners of the Kabbala, in Palestine.

In such manner the ground was prepared for the growth of a new doctrine, Christianity. By lifting the Bible out of the prescribed circle of the Hebrew scholars to whom alone its language was intelligible, and by the endeavours of the Jewish savants of Alexandria to accommodate the sacred writings to the philosophical mind of the Greek thinkers, the conviction gradually took hold of the heathen world’s representatives, that they had hitherto lived in utter darkness, and that a better and truer doctrine was now before them. They became conscious of the littleness of their mythology, and the depravity of their morals, but they were deficient in moral strength to elevate themselves to the ideal height of the Jewish doctrine. Then arose men who undertook the work of mediators, who, in order to introduce part of the Jewish doctrine into heathenism, made concessions to the latter, diluting Judaism to make it tasteful to the heathens, and thus originated a religion which, thanks to the duplicity of its character, was able to propagate and make its way in the world, but which, still in consequence of its duplicity, became necessarily the enemy of its parent, Judaism. But not only indirectly by Christianity did Judaism give a great impulse to the intellectual life of mankind, but for a lengthened period it had a direct influence upon the mind and heart of the deeply agitated heathen world.

For it is an erroneous impression, that Judaism intended to remain a national religion only without showing any inclination to proselytism. This opinion is founded upon the fact, that, with the sole exception of the converting of the Idumaces by force, Judaism has never made proselytes by fire or sword. That the aspiration to become a universal religion, as announced by the prophets, did exist and that about two hundred years before and after the Christian era the doors of Judaism were open and thousands of heathens became converts—of this there is no doubt whatever. It is proved by the many stories of conversion, which Talmudic tradition has preserved ; also by the writings of contemporary Greek and roman authorities, who censure the apostasy of their countrymen and appear angry at the influence and adoption by them of Jewish spirit. For many of these proselytes, particularly for the “ metuentes,” who only observed certain Jewish morals and customs, without having accepted the totem of the union, Judaism was in most instances only a state of transition from heathenism to Christianity. Yet many became Jews pure and simple and remained true Jews for ever. It was only in later times, when experience showed the instability of conversion, politically as well as from a religious point of view, that Judaism ceased its efforts at proselytising and expressed just anger at the disappointments experienced, in the words : “Proselytes are the most dangerous disease on the body Judaic.”

This seclusion from the outside world was in reality the result of obedience to the law of self preservation as, after the loss of their political independence the Jews were scattered over countries, where the new creed gradually took firm root, and with increasing strength and power, lessened its tolerance. The new creed did not feel secure in the possession of its inheritance, as long as there existed a people who denied its right of ownership. It was therefore a vital matter either to christianise the Jews or to eradicate them absolutely and entirely. That was the cause of the first missionary mania, of the period of hatred and destruction that evolved canonical laws against the Jews, and the bloody persecutions and fanatical disputations.

But this struggle, which on the part of Judaism was purely defensive and carried on with intellectual weapons only, assisted considerably in the strengthening of the Jewish ideas and their propagation amongst mankind. Already the disputations from which the Church expected great advantages, had an opposite effect and caused doubts in many a Christian’s heart. This gave birth to a new branch of literature, called Apologetics, intended originally only to serve as a means of defence against the attacks of religious opponents. From this branch, even non-Jewish opponents of the Church took their sharpest weapons of attack. From the publication of the contra-gospels, written by Jews in the second century, and causing much trouble to the fathers of the Church, up to the time of Frederic the Great, Voltaire and other freethinkers ; all the opponents of the established Church found material for their effective and disintegrating polemics in the writings of the Jewish philosophers.

This circumstance explains the fury of the Church against Jewish literature and its endeavours to destroy by fire the Talmud and other literary products of Jewish intellect. But these endeavours of the Church missed their aim.

Here again we see Judaism exercising a lasting influence upon the modern world. The strife, provoked by the Church against the value of the writings of the Jews of that period, caused Reuchlin and other men well versed in Hebrew, to defend Jewish literature. A great literary battle was fought for and against it. The most prominent men of that age and the representatives of the universities entered the arena, and the strife ended with an unquestionable victory for Jewish literature and saw the appearance of a man, who was destined, with Bible in hand, to make a breach in the rotten walls of the Church—the appearance of Martin Luther.

Part III.

The Reformation, which founded the Protestant Church, was, as regards Judaism, a great step towards the truth and a return to the ancient faith. The more any sect frees itself from superstition and dogma, the nearer it approaches the original source of religion, the doctrine of Judaism. One of the consequences of the reformation was the deeper study of the Hebrew language by Christian learned men, and a deeper insight into our literature by the help of the works of Jewish linguists and commentators, such as Raschi, Ebsn Esra and Kimchi, who materially assisted in the understanding of our sacred writings and the fructification of contemporary Christian writers with the Jewish spirit.

A revolution, similar to that effected in the Occident by Judaism giving an impulse to Christianity, was accomplished, seven hundred years later, in the Orient by the foundation of the Mahomedan religion.

It is well known that Mahomed communicated to a great extent with Jewish learned men, and was made acquainted by them with the Bible and the hagadic part of the Talmud. It was this acquaintance with the Jewish sacred writings, that induced him to free his fellow natives from heathenism and convert them to Monotheism. Mahomed, says Renan, was at a certain time of his life a Jew, and it can be maintained he remained a Jew all his life long. The Koran is imbued by a Jewish spirit. Mahomed has made the Jewish ideas with all their traditions and rites conform to the intellect and feeling of the Arabs, he “ Arabified " Judaism. In company with these “ Jewdified ” Arabs, with the Moors of the Pyrenaic peninsula, the Jews worked hard during the middle ages to preserve science to the world. This is one of the greatest services Judaism has done to mankind. Whereas over the whole of Europe there was entire darkness ; as with the call: “ God wills it ” crusades were undertaken and tens of thousands of families put to death, while wonders and relics are almost the only theme under discussion over the whole of the Occident; while Christianity was submerged in a bottomless abyss of superstition without the slightest inclination for the investigation of truth and science : during all that time the Jews remained on the path of science and worked to increase human knowledge. There existed during those times a legion of deep Jewish thinkers, prominent physicians, natural philosophers, and last, but by no means least, translators of the Greek and Arabic literature for the benefit of Europeans.

By translating the works of the Greek philosophers and naturalists into Arabic, and the philosophical and medical works of Arabic thinkers and savants into Latin, they provided the Occident with a knowledge of classical antiquity, and by doing so and also by making Europe acquainted with the philosophy and natural science of the Moors, they greatly assisted in the revival of science in Europe and became thus the standard bearers of Humanism in the fifteenth century.

And from another quarter the enlightening influence of the Jewish-Spanish school made itself felt, by giving birth to one of the greatest thinkers Judaism ever has produced, Spinoza. Spinoza, prompted by the writings of Ebn Esra, lays, through his Biblical and political treatises, the foundation of a rational investigation of the Bible and thus becomes the apostle of freedom of conscience. Urged thereto by the works of Maimonides and a study of the Kabala, he introduces with his “ Ethica more geometrico demonstrata” a mathematical method of investigating the science of metaphysics, and becomes the principal founder of modern philosophy.

During the 18th century the tendency of religious thought be came more liberal, more tolerant. This tolerance emanated from puritanical, Bible-loving England. It made itself appreciated throughout France and Germany where Lessing and Herder were the champions of the newly awakened freedom of thought. These liberal ideas were closely allied to the spirit of Judaism and were more in sympathy with the teachings of the Old Testament rather than the New.

Renan, not without reason and justice, calls the prophets the first true socialists. These prophets, who detested injustice, who had fiery words of condemnation for every kind of oppression, exploitation and slavery, who with all the enthusiasm of their great souls preached absolute equality in the eyes of the law and the possible perfect equality of ownership; these prophets who, as a means to counteract undue accumulation of property, had instituted the year of release :—these prophets gave to the world the socialistic idea three thousand years ago. It was the office of their successors, such men as Lassalle and Marx, to make the spark a blazing flame.

Thus we see Judaism during the whole course of its history in the workshop of humanity, industrious, courageous and untiring, working for the realisation of its ideals : truth and peace ; unity as a principle of the world, and unity as a principle for life.

And not without success.

Unity as a principle of the world is accepted to-day and taught by modern science ; in unity as a principle of life in the progress of humanity the better part of mankind already believes.

If these ideals are not yet fully realized it is not the fault of Judaism, but the cause is heathen sensuality, in the chains of which the larger part of mankind is still fastened, for, as the poet says:

Dass in der Wiege

Die Menschheit noch liege

Beweisen zur Genüge :

Mönch, Sclave und Kriege.

Therefore our mission is not yet finished. Therefore it will be our duty to fight with all our power against the spirit of darkness and injustice, against narrowminded dogmatism and bigotry, the greatest enemies of enlightenment, progress and Judaism.

Australasian Hebrew (Sydney, NSW ),  November 1896 

u/nla.news-article261028086

INFANTICIDE

 BY LADY COOK ( NEE TENNESSEE C. CLAFLIN)

The death of a little child appeals to our tenderest sympathies. its delicate mute face, and clasped hands fill us with infinite pity. We fight against the fell diseases which blast these sweetest buds of our race, and crush the parents' fondest hopes. It may be our minds go back to Bethlehem, with its smiling babe lying upon Mary's breast. Other infants also, "from two years old and under," hang from the bosoms or play about the knees of other mothers. Suddenly the quiet Judaean village is a scene of infantile slaughter. Swarthy warriors convert it into the shambles of innocence, and the mothers are bathed with their children's blood. The Church commemorates this event on "The Innocents' Day." For ages poets have sung it, and painters depicted it. Yet two hundred little ones perished on that memorable occasion. There is a far larger number— thousands for hundreds — annually done to death in this country, more foully murdered than those, but neither Church, nor poet, nor painter, immortalises their innocent sufferings. Instead of Pagan soldiery butchering Jewish children, Christian mothers slaughter their own babes. Those did it at the command of the Prince, in order to save his throne. These perform it themselves, usually from shame, from fear, from broken hearts. And we are so well-bred, from the Archbishop down, that we keep our prayers and our wailings for the small Bethlehemite massacre nineteen hundred years ago, and discreetly pass by our own English "Innocents" to-day without a word or a tear.

 Week after week our coroners point out the national infamy of these murders, but no one heedeth. Day after day adds to the number of the ghastly roll. Can nothing be done to stay them, or are these also among the things which must not be enquired into ? There must be something fundamentally wrong when so many mothers are impelled to outrage the natural instincts of maternity. That feeling, which governs alike the incubation of the lowly earwig and the stately pheasant ; which throbs the same in the breast of the little mouse-mother or the high-born patron — that universal impulse which conserves the family, the species, the race—cannot be diverted except by some great mental or moral catastrophe unless our moral sentiments and our laws also operate against it. There are two forms of infanticide — one before birth and the other after. Both have been almost universally practised from the earliest times, and both are common, in foreign countries and in England to-day. Speaking of the former, Mr Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," tells us that "A long chain of writers, both Pagan and Christian, represent the practice as avowed and almost universal. They describe it as resulting, not simply from licentiousness or from poverty, but even from so slight a motive as vanity, which made mothers shrink from the disfigurement of childbirth. They speak of a mother who had never destroyed her unborn offering as deserving of signal praise, and they assure that the frequency of the crime was such that it gave rise to a regular profession." We have amongst us similar licentiousness and poverty, married women — many of high degree — similarly vain, and a sufficient number of medical men and midwives employed in this practice to constitute it a profession.

 It would seem strange that so abhorrent a custom should have largely depended upon a metaphysical subtlety, did we not know that most of our abominations have a like origin. It was a moot question with Pagan and Christian philosophers as to the time, when the foetus " acquires the nature, and therefore the rights of a separate being;" in other words, when does it possess a soul? Plutarch, in one of his treatises, has a remarkable collection of ancient speculations on this topic. The Stoics made the soul and respiration commence together. The Justinian code fixes the union at forty days after conception. Thus no law in Greece condemned abortion and the Roman law did not punish it when voluntary until towards the end of the second century. For it was thought that the foetus "was but a part of the mother," and that she had the same right to remove it as if it were a wen. Yet the practice met with much disapproval, although so general. Ovid reproached Corinna for having been guilty of the act. A niece of Domitian died in consequence of the same. Seneca praised Holvia for not having resorted to it. Another writer classed it as a degree worse than a mother's putting out her children to nurse ; others described it as positively criminal. It was one of the practical glories of Christianity, however, that it condemned this crime from the first, and denounced it as positive murder, although the theologic speculations which afterwards supported this reformation were most revolting. Thus a Queen of Portugal, sister to our Henry V., when her life was in danger refused a medicine to accelerate the birth of her unborn child, on the ground that " she would not purchase her temporal life by the eternal damnation of her soul." For the theologians taught that from the moment of animation the foetus became an immortal being doomed for Adam's sin, if it perished unborn and unbaptised, to be " cast into the abyss of hell." By the legislation of modern times, however, "it is treated as a distinct being from the moment of conception," and to destroy it at any period is an act of murder.

 The destruction of children after birth, which we term infanticide, has been, perhaps, a more widespread custom than the other. Exposition was the habitual practice of poor parents, especially in the case of female infants, and whenever those of either sex were weak or deformed. Nor was this considered inconsistent with humanity. Men like Chremes in one of Terence's plays, could enjoin their wives to kill their offspring if they happened to be girls, and yet boast magniloquently, "I am a man, and deem nothing belonging to humanity beneath my notice." No doubt the Roman "gods" — to whom the practice was common — applauded vehemently. But we must not judge of these times by modern notions, for, excepting Germany chiefly, Europe was overrun with infanticide, just as China and other Asiatic nations are to day. One of our missionaries to the Celestial Empires relates that he saw not long ago this notice set up by the owner of a pool there :— "Ladies are requested not to drown their female infants in this pond." The policy of the Greeks was to restrain population ; that of Republican Rome to encourage it. But the Empire, with its sensuality and its extremes of wealth and poverty, made infanticide common, and laws were made to provide against it. Exposure, however, was not condemned, and children thus abandoned became the absolute property, without power of redemption, of those who found them. Their masters generally made a profit of the females when grown by compelling them to an infamous life, so that their fathers preferred their daughters to be killed rather than exposed. Exposure, however, was considered a venial offence, practised, as Lecky says, " on a gigantic scale, and with absolute impunity," and formed a considerable source of pecuniary speculation to the collectors of foundlings. Subsequently, but tardily and with much caution, the church provided for many of these little outcasts. Tradition says that Pope Innocent III. had been shocked at hearing that infants had been drawn into the nets of fishermen from the Tiber. A somewhat similar story is told of Gregory the Great, when he enforced his decretals on celibacy upon the clergy. Happening to draw his fish-ponds, the heads of more than six thousand infants were found in them—" the offspring of ecclesiastics, destroyed to avoid detection." But there is no doubt that a good monk, Guy de Montpellier, was the first author of foundling hospitals, and, although designed for legitimate children, they eventually became devoted to the illegitimate.

We are confronted with an almost insoluble problem— the conflict between physical and moral needs on the one hand, and social requirements and laws on the other. Concupiscence is strongest when reason and self-control are immature, and is greater than the welfare of man requires. Men, therefore, have formed two codes of morality — one for themselves, in which great laxity is permitted ; the other for women, in which no deviation is allowed except under pain of utter degradation. The taste of wine by a Roman matron was at one time counted next to adultery. By the same arbitrary rule, the indulgence of a natural instinct by an unmarried woman, is a crime never to be forgiven. We admit no extenuating circumstances—no margin for frailty, for inexperience, or youthful passion, or the intoxication of a sincere and unselfish love. We have only one reply—Anathema ! And hosts of infanticides are the result.

 Besides this, to quote Mr Leckey's eloquent words, " There has arisen in society a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak ; who counterfeits with a cold heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the passive instrument of lust. . . On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people. . . If the terrible censure which English public opinion passes upon every instance of female frailty in some degree diminishes their number, it does not prevent them from being extremely numerous, and it immeasurably aggravates the suffering they produce. Acts which, in other European countries would excite only a slight and transient emotion, spread in England over a wide circle, all the bitterness of unmitigated anguish. . . . Infanticide is greatly multiplied, and a vast proportion of those whose reputation and lives have been blasted by one momentary sin are hurled into the abyss of habitual prostitution — a condition which, owing to the sentence of public opinion, and the neglect of legislators, is in no other European country so hopelessly vicious or so irrevocable."

 In Spain, where the standard of female chastity is low, infanticide is almost unknown. We do not advocate imitation of Spanish habits. On the contrary, we would see our own raised. One thing is certain ; either the standard for men must be lifted, or that for women lowered. It is for the men to say which. The issue lies with them. But those terrible crimes which disgrace our country cannot be permitted to go on for ever.

Mount Alexander Mail, Thursday 9 May 1895 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article198258453

SHOULD WIVES OBEY THEIR HUSBANDS ?

 [By Lady Cook, nee Tennessee C. Claflin.]

If any of your readers would desire to see what were the old world views of the proper relations and duties of husbands and wives, they should read a letter in the "Star" under the above heading, signed " Homo." It is obviously a joke, but I prefer to treat it seriously. The writer appears to be a fair specimen of the ancient Tory Churchman, and how he found his way into the " Star " Heaven only knows. He dishes up the same stale assertions and arguments that formed a leading part of the intellectual banquet of his predecessors a few generations ago. These have been exploded over and over. But it appears there are some beings still so obtuse that nothing short of a miracle can convince them. Insensible to reason, deaf to argument, and cocksure of their errors, they cling to the fallacies of their great grandfathers with limpet like tenacity. Were it not that a few weak minds might possibly be led astray by them, I should not trouble to reply to their absurdities. 

The statement respecting the " New Women" that "they all agree in claiming to do what they like, to say what they like, and to wear what they like," is entirely contrary to the truth. For they claim nothing opposed to sound reason, good sense, and propriety. Theirs are not the claims of wanton wilfulness, but equitable demands based upon intelligent conviction. If there are any so ill-informed as " Homo," I will tell them what we want. We require that the laws should deal with men and women alike, making no distinction between sex and sex ; that marriage should be a civil contract, and that, each partner should have equal rights, privileges, and responsibilities; that under this contract the wife shall be no longer regarded as a "chattel" or matrimonial slave, but a free partner, ruling in her department while the husband rules in his ; that obedience should be equal and reciprocal, each yielding to the authority of the other where his or her special functions are concerned ; that the wife shall have the same liberty as her husband to choose what she shall eat, drink, and wear, but may not imitate him in excesses or in transgressing the limits of propriety or good sense ; that the same purity of conduct which men demand from women should be demanded from the men. These are the most salient points in our programme, and the objections to them are : that husbands protect their wives from all anxieties in the battle of life, and ninety-nine married women out of every hundred have none whatever ; that women vow obedience in marriage ; that "one must rule, and the question is, Which ?" ; that the vast majority of women have less sense than men ; that "if the most gifted women of the world are put in competition with the most gifted men the result is pitiable so far as the weaker sex is concerned." To all this we give an emphatic denial.  

Would to God that only one married woman in a hundred had " no anxiety." Would to God that men were the gifted and generous creatures that they are represented to be. In that case we should never have heard of women's rights and wrongs. But it is because men have egregiously failed in their duties that women have risen to a sense of higher responsibilities and demand a freer life. Woman has always been more or less the slave of man, treated first as a chattel, and next as a child ; kept ever in subjection in some form or another ; denied freedom of occupation and liberal education ; refused the common rights of the lowest freeman ; beaten by brutes, and trampled down by her country's laws. But by her abilities and address, and the growing sense of justice, she has begun to emancipate herself from foul restraints. And the day is not far distant when she will disdain to be the mere toy or drudge of man, and will stand with him, shoulder to shoulder, as his intellectual peer and social equal — the worthy helpmeet of the worthiest.

 I can fearlessly appeal to your readers as to their personal knowledge of the numerous anxieties which beset every married woman as soon as the honeymoon is over, and frequently before. The anxieties of child-bearing, nursing, and household management belong to rich and poor, and are by no means slight. In the case of the poor, who form the majority, there is added the responsibility of assisting the husband in his scanty earnings by some outside employment. Thousands of indigent wives have to care for a family and work besides, and excessive child-bearing, insufficient nourishment, and hard labor, break down the health of the strongest young mothers. The anxieties of mere household control and family training are far more wearing than the routine of ordinary business.

 "The vow of obedience" which occurs in the English Church services is simply part of an old ecclesiastical formula which has outlived its meaning.

 The man says " With all my worldly goods I thee endow," but neither of them, unless they are very simple, mean or do anything of the sort. As to the alleged necessity that one of the two should rule, this does not exist where two are of one mind and strive to please each other by every act of love, as in a real marriage. But if it is a case of master and servant, or even of a sold or purchased wife, the disparity between these may excuse marital authority over the wife. St. Paul wrote in regard to such, and to a condition of semi-slavery which existed in his time, but we wholly repudiate the application of his Oriental ideas to the case of a free English woman.

 Women, of course, do not understand those subjects which they have not studied as do the men who have. They have been carefully excluded from many avocations which men regard as belonging to themselves, and therefore, on topics relating to these, women are ignorant and may seem foolish. But it is equally the same with men when they discuss women's affairs. Suum cuinque.

 Give, however, boys and girls, maidens and youths, women and men, the same opportunities, and the result will not "be pitiable so far as the weaker sex is concerned." The noble individuals who assist in boycotting woman and dwarfing her faculties by forbidding them to be exercised are the first to make invidious comparisons between the sexes. These cowards lash us for the faults of their own system, and for which they alone are responsible. But those of us who have thrown off our shackles and asserted our independence have already proved that women can compete successfully with men in everything when the conditions are equal. The men know this, and shudder to see the " rod of empire" sliding from their grasp. We claim too much, forsooth, because we ask for the rights of citizens, freedom of occupation, freedom of knowledge and equality before the laws. If we were to claim a tithe of what men assume as a matter of course, the audacity of it would astound the strongest minded woman. Theirs is a one-sided arrangement; giving themselves a monopoly of power, privilege and pleasure. If some of them think this can go on for ever, they are mistaken. For, come what may, we women will alter it and equalise matters, and this will be to their advantage as well as ours.

 Husbands have no more right to exact obedience from wives than wives from husbands. Each should yield when the laws of love and right demand it, but, as the lawyers say, without prejudice.

Ovens and Murray Advertiser (Beechworth, Vic. : 1855 - 1955), Saturday 12 January 1895 

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article201544305

Women and Progress.

 By Lady Cook, nee Tennessee Claflin.

To many there might not at first blush appear to be any necessary connection between women and progress, yet a slight study of the past is sufficient to show that the position of one is a sure measure of that of the other. The moral and political status of any country has always depended upon the position held by woman there. The nearer she is to the condition of a slave, the more generally degraded is the whole nation; thus the degree of her freedom is significant of a country's worth and durability. No people and no scheme of progress ever succeeded and became lasting which did not include the advancement of woman equally with man.

The oldest and best known nation of antiquity was Egypt. In her day she was the most polished and most civilized of all peoples. Her learning, her science, her military and political abilities, her handicrafts and mechanical appliances amaze the student of to-day. He rubs his eyes and asks, " Was this really an ancient or a modern country, this land of nineteenth century conveniences, this home of established government hoary with antiquity and of institutions venerable with age,this preceptress and mother of art and learning throughout the whole of the known world ? The answer is simple: She was the first to recognise the equality of the sexes. Her marriage contracts prove that an Egyptian wife then was in many respects in a better position than a wife in most European countries now. The medical profession was mostly practised by women, and thus we find that the mortality of mothers, of infants, and children, was surprisingly small. In that charming little story, " The Doctors of Hopland," by Dr. Conan Doyle, we have a case where a gifted and skilful lady practitioner quite annihilated those common prejudices against female doctors, even when entertained by a sore male competitor, one Dr. Ripley, a country surgeon of the old school. The fiction that amuses and surprises the novel-reading English of this tail-end of the nineteenth century was a common matter of every-day fact in Egypt more than four thousand years ago. Women also occupied conspicuous positions in the State Church. As priestesses they officiated in all its ceremonies and were most frequently the vehicles of the divine oracles. They contributed largely to the founding of national literature, and even in Plato's day the sacred books of Isis were considered to be about ten thousand years old. A Greek sage, when in Egypt, having boasted of the divine descent of the mushroom royalty of his country, the high priest rebuked him by exhibiting the statues of 300 of his predecessors in that office in one long unbroken line, all high priests, and all the sons of men. What other state in the world ever surpassed this for good government—that is, a government most suitable to its people —or for steady durability ? But there, in that remote day, the wife was almost as free as the husband and had similar social rights. Contrary to all modern usages of the east, she could dine in public with him, and facetious painters occasionally depicted her in various stages of intoxication. While monogamy was the rule, polygamy, though exceptional, was also lawful, and the double system seems to have worked well. The reformation of Mahomet excluded women from its system, denied them education and civil rights, shut them out from its churches and its immortal Paradise, and ranked them with the lower animals. The result was a rapid and fatal degradation of the race, and national impoverishment both mentally and materially. The descendants of a wealthy, learned, and high-spirited people, the most distinguished in ancient history, became the ignorant and feeble fellaheen of Egypt, than whom, under Turkish rule, no more miserable class ever existed.

In Greece the doctrine of the natural equality of the sexes was indulged in only by a few philosophers, particularly by Plato. Education and free intercourse of women were left to courtesans. Toil and seclusion and abundant ignorance formed the condition of the mothers and sisters of the citizens.

With all her masculine vigor and glory Greece fell, gradually atrophied, because one half of her had been, of set purpose, intellectually and politically paralysed. Not long ago the wife of a wealthy Greek peasant sought protection against the cruelty of her husband. He had bound her almost naked to a stake in the street in cold weather, and urged the passers-by to strike her, chastising them when they refused. The court exonerated the husband on the ground of the wife's insubordination. "We cannot afford," it said, " to teach a woman to disobey the commands of her husband."

And Rome, proud Rome, began nobly, but ended in degradation. In her early days her women could boast of numerous privileges of which they were afterwards deprived. As their liberties became narrowed social depravity increased. The nobility of her matrons and the purity of her daughters became things of the past. Female ignorance became a virtue, and every accomplishment in art or learning was regarded as fit only for women of loose morals. Music, dancing, singing, reading were all interdicted. Under Christianized Rome and the institution of Canon Law, the position of women not in Rome only but throughout all Christendom was still more degraded. All pretense to equal rights was swept away. The Church held and taught that woman was created to serve man and to submit to his desires. Even to-day the English law, in the spirit of the Canon Law, holds that a wife is the servant of her husband.

Official Christianity described the most innocent relations of the sexes as naturally corrupt.

Nature was subordinated to a depraved theology. Kingsley says, " The Christian Church was swamped by hysteria from the third to the sixteenth century." The Reformation left woman little better than before. Luther gave as his opinion and that of six other great reformers that polygamy was nowhere condemned by the Bible. As to education, "No gown or garment," he said, "worse became a woman than that she should be wise.

That popular clergyman, the Rev. Knox Little, in his "Sermon to Women," 1880, says, " There is no crime that a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him. It is her duty to subject herself to him always, and no crime that he can commit justifies her lack of obedience. If he be a bad and wicked man she may gently remonstrate with him, but refuse him never!"

It is not to Christianity, but to science, not to our preachers, but to our thinkers, that the race owes its progression, and that the bonds of women are being loosened. No great English woman has ever appeared but some dignitary of the church has attempted to smother her or her schemes of reform. Mary Somerville was publicly denounced by Dean Cockburn of York ; and as late as April 24th, 1884, Dean Burgon wrote in a Liberal paper, "The Daily News," against the proposed admission of women to examinations for honors at Oxford University. He described it as "a moral revolution disastrous to a woman's best interests." He went on to give the purpose of creation, how she was designed to be " the complement of man's being," "his chiefest earthly joy," " but all this will be brought to an end if you teach her to try to be (what she can never become) man's equal, much less man's superior. Henceforth she will have to be kept down," and so on according to the old formula. Do these good gentlemen really believe that their christian offices require them to oppose, tooth and nail, every attempt towards woman's advancement ? We suppose they do. An American song goes :—

" There was a man who had a clock,

 His name was Mathew Mears,

He wound it reg'lar every night

For four and twenty years,

And when this precious time-piece proved

 An eight-day clock to be,

A madder man than Mathew Mears

 You wouldn't wish to see."

So when the end comes and woman's cause prevails, will they not feel like Mr. Mears, that they have been mistaken in their timepiece and have been engaged in supererogatory efforts to wind up the public clock ? Let us turn from such puling specimens of manhood who would keep women in perpetual servitude, to one of our great thinkers and giants in progress, the late Professor Huxley. In his " Lay Sermons"  he says: "What is the first step towards a better state of things ?" We reply, " emancipate girls. Recognise the fact that they share the senses, perceptions, feelings, reasoning powers, and emotions of boys, and that the mind of the average girl is less different from that of the average boy than the mind of one boy is from that of another. . . . . Let those women who feel inclined to do so descend into the arena of life; let them, if they so please, become merchants, barristers, politicans. Let them have a fair field."

The last sentence contains the whole secret of social progress : " Let them have a fair field!" How otherwise can the male half of the community endure in freedom and preserve the integrity of their manhood ? " Man ! be it yours to help them on to good!" And although Jeremy Bentham laid it down that " No Government ever yielded a right unless bullied into it," heaven forbid that the same be said of our brothers and husbands. Let them yield in good time and give the woman's cause a fair field, for her cause is not hers only, but man's also. Whatever uplifts her will elevate him. Her increase of usefulness will stimulate him. As was remarked by a powerful writer: " Society is raised by every new right that women gain."

Let us have a fair field ! This is all we ask, and we will be content with nothing less. The finger of evolution, which touches everything, is laid tenderly upon women. They have on their side all the elements of progress, and its spirit stirs within them. They are fighting not for themselves alone, but for the future of humanity. Let them have a fair field !

Bowral Free Press and Berrima District Intelligencer (NSW : 1884 - 1901), Saturday 8 May 1897

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article112450381

BOTH SIDES.

 [BY LADY COOK, NEE TENNESSEE CLAFLIN.]

Partiality is more frequently a misfortune than a vice. Men are partial by habit, by education, by their locality, and by the religious and social prejudices which they acquire from their infancy. With the majority it is a matter of extreme difficulty to divest themselves of erroneous ideas and misleading sympathies. They have been so used to regard things from a particular standpoint and to hear only one side of a question, that correct judgment and its consequent diffusion of justice are well nigh impossible. Whether right or wrong, they follow the old tracks, rely upon old customs, and seldom deviate much from the principles of their fathers. And the stubbornness with which they do all this generates bitter variances and perpetuates ancient wrongs. Hence a proselyte is almost as rare as if we were a nation of Gentoos, and any man who dares, however conscientiously, to become one in politics, religion, or principles is anathematised as a renegade, a heretic, or a turn coat.

 We have seen men shudder at the suggestion of a change of opinion, just as they might shudder at impending disgrace. They were afraid to hear the other side, afraid to read certain books, afraid to have their ideas submitted to the conflict of reasoning and facts. And they considered this cowardly fear a proof of the strength of their convictions ! They boasted that nothing could alter them, that whatever might be said, there they stood, and would stick to their guns. What was this but stark madness, the folly of fools or lunatics ?

 There are others who theoretically admit the unwisdom of one-sidedness and yet adhere to it. Some among them are constantly trumpeting aloud " Hear both sides," but when put to the practical test they still only want to hear one — their own. Satisfied that those who think with them are right, and all the rest of the world wrong, they deem it their duty to turn a deaf ear to the opinions of those apposed to them, no matter how moderately or how good-naturedly expressed. Nay, they go farther — for, as a rule, the weaker their arguments the ruder and the more violent is their opposition. They seem to adopt the old maxim of pleading : when you have no case abuse the other side. Surely this is the vainest egotism.

 We call ourselves Christians because we have been brought up among those who call themselves by that name. Had we been born and bred Arabs in Arabia we should have been Mahometans, and if of some other breed in another part of the world, then something else. It is a little humiliating to think that our faith depends upon our blood or geographical distribution, and that the sublimest truths should be confined to our locality. In this most people resemble the ancient Jews. Their God was the only true God ; their faith the true faith ; they alone were God's people, and the little land of Canaan was his peculiar freehold, a holy land which it was sacrilege and perdition for the Gentiles to possess. But no Deity worthy of worship can be contained within the walls of a temple or the boundaries of a country. Neither is truth local, but universal, and may be found or missed wherever man exists.

 No one can hear both sides properly unless he does it with an open mind. But impartiality is the rarest of gifts, and can only be possessed by a clear head, and a sound heart fired with a quenchless love of truth. Once these are attained the rest is easy. As Dr. South said in one of his sermons : " Impartiality strips the mind of prejudice and passion, keeps it tight and even from the bias of interest and desire ; and so presents it like a rasa tabula equally disposed to the reception of all truth. So that the soul lies prepared, and open to entertain it ; and prepossessed with nothing that can oppose or thrust it out."

 A celebrated doctor, who must be nameless, being overwearied with his gigantic labors in Scriptural translation, said the other day, while in warm discussion with a notable jew : " I wish to heaven Moses had never been born." " And I," retorted the Jew, " wish the Virgin Mary had miscarried." Of course it is conceivable that either or both of these circumstances might have happened, and in such case it would be curious to speculate as to what would have been the course of human events. Neither Judaism nor Christianity have altered human nature, although they have greatly influenced a large section of human conduct. And whatever enthusiasts in either faith may think, it is a fair subject for consideration as to whether they have, on the whole, been of more benefit than injury to the world. The suggestion may not be approved by many, but then these are the people who never will hear both sides. I am convinced, however, from what we know of the general operations of the human mind and the history of mankind, that truth would have lived and been attainable by man just the same, even though Judaism and Christianity had never existed. For if Truth could be suppressed or destroyed by the accidental, then she would be unworthy of human pursuit. But, if self-contained, immortal, and unchangeable, as we believe her to be, no accident, actual or conceivable, is able to shake her power or stability.

 The propriety of hearing both sides is not only an advantage to ourselves but to others also. In this way alone can we become enlightened and just. There are many social questions of great interest being discussed just now, questions which will have an important bearing on the welfare of future generations. But instead of considering them in a candid and fair spirit, with a generous willingness to listen calmly to opposite views, we see the partisans, for or against, intolerant of criticism, heated by passion, and often blind with polemical fury. We see them eager to suppress the facts against themselves, and to magnify those in their favor. Nor are people of the greatest pretensions to learning, goodwill and piety exempt from these weaknesses. In their eyes the sacredness or intended beneficence of their cause excuses everything. Thus we notice that the members of Oxford University — grave professors, clergymen, and Fellows, many of them — have determined by a majority to refuse academical degrees to the women students who have studied or qualified for them. We have not heard that they entered into any conference with these ladies to ascertain what they could urge on their own behalf. With some honorable exception, and notably among these was Dr. Temple, the Master of Trinity, they simply took an old-time view, the men's view, and put a sort of ban upon those courageous young women who are struggling hard in the face of unnecessary difficulties for the attainment of the higher education. Oxford had an opportunity to do honor to herself, and has missed it — so much the worse for Oxford.

Again, there is the drink question, a subject of momentous consequence, but not to be settled by intolerance, injustice, or compulsion on one side or the other. Teetotalers hold meetings and bolster each other up, and licensed victuallers and their friends do the same. But we never hear of both parties coming together to discuss their differences amicably, and to find a reasonable and common line of action. Neither of them wants to hear the other side, whether at their meetings or in their periodicals. But it is certain that until they do this the bitter struggle will continue.

 Wherever we turn, it is just the same. The questions in which women are virtually interested are scoffed at and pooh-poohed by those men who have never studied them, and know nothing about them. The very term "women's rights," which should appeal to every man's sense of justice and to every chivalrous feeling, is a term of reproach. But men of the highest intelligence, who have approached them with an unbiassed mind, have become their warmest advocates. And if men generally would only hear both sides, the number of supporters which, in spite of all, is growing rapidly, would increase by leaps and bounds. We are very proud of our laws, and many persons think them as near perfection as can be. But the judges know otherwise. Only a few days ago Mr. Justice Mathew said at the Birmingham Assizes that the state of our criminal law was a hundred years behind the times. He pointed out that there is no court of Criminal Appeal, and in criminal charges only on one side is heard.

  Audi alteram partem is an ancient but worthy motto, and applicable to every circumstance in which our judgment is concerned. Ah ! If we could only adopt it generally and adhere to it rigidly ! If we could obey the dictates of conscience, of reason, and of justice, and respond freely to our better impulses, how much wrong and misery would be avoided in the world, and what a nobler play would be given to the generous instincts of humanity. Then the Virgin of the heavens might return to earth again, and the golden age of the poets be renewed.

1897

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article200528292

THE IDEAL WOMAN.

 

[By LADY COOK, nee TENNESSEE CLAFLIN.]

Wherever we look on the works of mediaeval art, we see numberless conceptions of the Madonna and Child. No two of them may be alike, yet they all portray the painter's idea of pure maternity and joyous innocence. Mary may be a Dutch blonde, or an Italian brunette, or even a hard German housewife of the old school; but plain or beautiful, she is always honest, clear-eyed, placid, content. And the child, the infant Hercules, of the Christian faith, he who must cleanse the Augean stables of the world, the wrestler, the serpent stranger, the heir of infinite potentialities lies toying with the breast of his mother. How utterly human it all is! The bride of God is a Syrian peasant girl; the son of God, a helpless naked infant. How supremely happy, too, she appears, as she gazes calmly down into the eyes of her boy ! What joy is there like that of a mother ? Joseph is not always present, and when he is, it is only as a decent accessory, he looks awkward, his office appears to have ceased. Usually, if not always, there is a look in his face expressive of deep thought, as one who would say, "This the man-Christ who is born to redeem the race, and set a perfect example for all men and women to follow." Yet there seems to be a doubt in his mind as to the conception, the beginning, the great mystery. The artist never knows exactly how or where to pose him. The child, however, is an obvious necessity, but holds a secondary place. Mary is the centre, all eyes turn to her. On a thousand canvasses she stands out the saintly type of the glorified human mother. As the ages proceed our ideals must either advance or retrograde. There is no middle position. The Roman Church removed the gods for her saints, and substituted the Virgin for Bona Dea. But, as Paganism gave way to Christianity, so the mystical theology of nineteen centuries is rapidly vanishing under the firm light of modern scientific research. What is false will be abandoned. The time has come when the Virgin must be respected and revered for the great good which she accomplished by bringing the grand man Christ into the world, and henceforth all mothers must look to her as offering the noblest possible example for them to follow and imitate, in order that they, too, may bring into the world pure and lovable children, worthy of being called the images of God.

 There are in our country three million wives at least, and, unless poverty has compelled, thousands of their children have never known their mother's breasts. Three million women, all vowed to the duties of maternity, and the greater number of them deficient in nourishment and its elementary requirements. And why ? Because they have undergone no kind of preparatory training, because they are ignorant of themselves and of their duties; because, too frequently, they were wedded from sordid motives and to unsuitable men ; because when love should have entered as a God, he came as a beast. Heace, the untold wretchedness of their loveless lives, the daily miseries that destroy their homes; to say nothing of shameless adulteries, widespread prostitution, loathsome diseases, and early deaths. Our Law Courts reveal but a very small fraction of the existing social corruption. Could we see the whole at once, we should recoil with horror at the sight. Throughout all nature, reproduction is the highest function of every living thing, and to it all other functions are more or less subsidiary. Maternity is thus the supreme effort of the supreme organism, neither to be undertaken lightly or without forethought. Yet the mothers of our marriageable girls have rarely given their daughters any information as to sexual relations. Prudishness or false modesty restrains. Consequently, their knowledge acquired by experience, often comes too late to prevent unhappy results. The same girls may not study physiology. They must not learn how they were produced, and how they are formed. They are thus a ready prey of all who can take advantage of their ignorance.

 The period arrives when the girl, young, fair, innocent, but intensely ignorant of all she ought to know, is thrown by conventional marriage into the arms of a man whose habits and thoughts have nothing in common with hers. Even a roue—and roues now-a-days are both young and numerous—is not refused if he happen to have a satisfactory income. In the latter case, even if she does not become physically tainted, she must become morally so—frequently both—and her offspring must inherit and reproduce at maturity the virtue derived from its father. Lovely and innocent as she may be, she is not the typical mother, nor is her boy the Christ. Syria never produced our ideal. In that ignorant and despotic region she could not have existed. Only poets and painters have had occasional glimpses at her. The typical mother can neither be a slave nor a genetrix of slaves. She is the free, the perfect woman, who has been embraced by the divine man.

 All that substracts from the freedom of woman hinders her development, and therefore lessens her value as a wife and a mother. For this reason we do not cease to advocate the necessity of equal rights and equal laws for the sexes before society can possibly improve in purity and in happiness, and before woman can rise to her true dignity. Although the duties of men and women differ, the status of both in the eye of the law and of society should be the same, and nothing should be required of the one which is not also demanded of the other. For instance, let man continue to regard chastity as indispensable in women, but let women also require the same from men. And let her, if modest, regard as a profound insult a proposal from anyone whose delicacy and power of appreciation her purity have been destroyed by contact with lust and infamy. Too long has woman been enslaved, the toy and victim of man. But the dawn of her emancipation has come. A few have already seen the light, the bonds which enswathed woman's faculties are being loosened ; may they soon drop off. Then we shall see her lovelier than anything sculptured by Grecian chisel, calm-browed as Athen, majestic as Hebe, light-limbed and strong of mind, joyous, serene, loyal, true of heart and purpose, irradiated with a wise intelligence, despising shame and frivolities, tender with a woman's sweetest tenderness, loving simple truth—a noble mother raised to a higher pedestal. This is the true ideal woman, capable, too, of realization. This is the true mate of the true man, and worthy of daring the world's hero.

Yorke's Peninsula Advertiser (SA : 1878 - 1922), Friday 20 July 1894

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article216328043

MATERNITY AS IT SHOULD BE

 [By LADY COOK (NEE TENNESSEE CLAFLIN) in the London Citizen. ]

When the sculptor, painter, or poet desires to present us with the loveliest object of contemplation, he gives his ideal of a fair woman. He presents her in all her naked glory. How she breathes from the marble, glows upon the canvas, shines on the page. Her pose, her contour, her symmetry, her bewitching curves, her divine beauty of body and soul, fill us with admiration and delight. For the true artist discovers hidden charms and gives us eyes wherewith to see. He shows us woman, not as she is, but as she will be. For he is nothing if he be not prophetic. He eliminates all that is vulgar or debasing, and unites the perfections of many in one. And whether we call her Venus or Virgin, we forget the frailties of the one and the sorrows of the other as we gaze upon their loveliness.

How we sigh for the lost treasures of art, for those earlier conceptions which foreshadowed so much. How we execrate the barbarous hands that neglected, mutilated, and destroyed the priceless object lessons of humanity. Statues, paintings, and poems have perished. Even Campaspe has not survived. Others, however, have supplied their place, and although there is much that is meretricious, there is also much that is genuine. Shakespeare alone has given us a whole gallery of lovely and lovable women—all the creation of his own brain. No such beings had existed until he formed them, so sweet, so sympathetic, and laughter-loving, so nimble and graceful in body and in mind. Intellectual gymnasts, bright eyed and rosy-lipped were they, but, above all, intensely womanly, and nothing like the coarse-mouthed, beef-eating, beer-guzzling damsels and matrons who crowded on dry days into the Blackfriars Theatre. Yet on the retina of his mental eye these humanly perfect maidens were distinctly pictured, and his description of them has been for us a standard of true womanliness by which our wives and daughters have been raised immeasurably higher.

When we turn from these ideals to the realities that surround us, from what woman might be to what she is, we are profoundly shocked. We then realize, to some degree, how enormous are the efforts required to raise her to her true position. We enquire why her elevation is so slow, what are the obstacles that hinder her development, and why she continues to be the inferior and slave rather than the equal of man, thus involving society in calamity upon calamity.

The history of women is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman is her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.

For there must have been a time, however remote, when the sexes were equal, and when the male performed many of the functions, such as suckling, which now devolve upon the female. But during her frequent periods of gestation she may have become physically unfitted to cope with the male, and this, in a time when sexual intercourse was promiscuous, must have materially assisted him in reducing her to slavery. Thus, as soon as property was recognised, women became the booty and chattels of men, and a rude form of marriage was instituted. As in the song of Deborah and Barak:—"Have they not sped! Have they not divided the spoil, to every man a damsel or two?"

Next the theologians stept forth and gave a religious sanction to public custom. Thus we read in Genesis, " And the Lord God said, ' It is not good that the men should be alone; I will make an help meet for him.' " This accords with the Mohammedan idea that woman exists solely for the comfort and gratification of man on earth as the houris do in heaven. After the fall we read:—"Unto the woman he said, ' I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.' " Christianity through Paul's teaching also gave its sanction to the existing ideas. Speaking of public worship he says, " For a man, indeed, ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man; neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man." Who can calculate the injury done to woman by this authoritative assertion of her inferiority, and that, too, among a people like the gay inhabitants of Corinth, where she enjoyed the highest freedom then known ? This unhappy position of hers was universal. In some parts it still exists as at first, in others it has been more or less modified ; but nowhere, not even with us, with all our boasted civilisation and Christianity, has she become free. The shackles of her ancient slavery still cling to her and retard her mental, moral, and physical development.

Need we wonder, then, at the sad spectacle which humanity offers us ? Its hideous wars, its social abominations, its foul creeds, its treacheries, vices, wants, diseases, lusts, tyrannies, and crimes are the natural outcome of the subjugation of one-half of the human race by the other.

And what is the panacea proposed by our sapient reformers ? The right of parochial voting, forsooth, woman suffrage, the liberty to engage her abilities in any sphere of employment for which she may be capable. All these, of course, are right in their way, but, when granted, would leave her almost as much in servitude as before. We claim for her infinitely more. We demand for her perfect equality with man in all things—that she should be free as he is free. And we do this not in her interests alone, but in his also, and equally. For the absolute freedom of woman will be the dawn of the day of man's regeneration. In raising her he will elevate himself.

Let us regard for a moment a few of the inequalities under which our countrywomen labour, and we will begin with them from the beginning. They must not, as girls, have the same liberty of movement as boys. They may not even walk out alone; they must not talk the same language, learn the same lessons, nor indulge in the same sports. Boys may be careless and boisterous; girls must be prim and demure. Boys may range field and forest; girls must walk pathways in pairs. Boys are natural; girls must be artificial. And this from no incapacity on the girls' part; for, if permitted, they could rival boys in play and work. Having arrived at puberty, their bonds are tightened just as their dresses are lengthened. They may not speak to one of the other sex until he has first been formally introduced by a friend or relative. They are so carefully guarded that they compensate themselves by clandestine methods. Already the girl is a slave, and she practises a slave's devices. She becomes an adept at subterfuge and hypocrisy.

At length, when marriageable, marriage is sought, but she may not make it known. Should she meet the man into whose hands alone she could gladly place her destinies, she must exhibit no preference. She may feel that he would make her the most suitable life-companion, she may ardently desire that he should be the father of her children, but she must conceal it all. He may propose, she not. And thus, longing to be a wife and mother, she must wither in her virginity unless chance direct an offer. Or an alternative presents itself. She is sought in marriage, so-called, by a man for whom she has no regard, who is in no way qualified to make her happy, but whose means are equal to her rank. He may have run through a long career of vice, and be physically and mentally enervated and diseased. She may really loathe him, but she is taught by her own parents to regard him as an eligible partner, being no worse than so many others, and she ultimately weds him from sheer submission to their authority. What was the devotion of Jephtha's daughter to this ? One stroke of the sacrificial knife and all was over, but the other endures a lifelong martyrdom. And this is marriage, this mournful conjunction of decrepitude and strength, of lust and innocence, of foulness and purity. Scheming relatives may fling the healthy, happy, ingenuous maiden into the arms of a diseased roue, and the law will allow it, and the Church bless it.

But true marriage is a spiritual and mental exosmose and endosmose ; each gives of its own to each until both are alike. It is a natural and spontaneous union of ideas, aims, and sympathies. In the alembic of love two natures, the complements of each other, are unconsciously and invisibly united more firmly than in any chemical union. For the marriage ceremony is not marriage, but is merely the public profession of an accomplished fact, otherwise it is morally fraudulent. And if love do not precede the ceremony no real marriage exists.

Even at the altars of our churches woman is deceived and defrauded. "With all my wordly goods I thee endow," says the husband. Does he do so ? She goes forth to be the partner of his life, the mistress of his household, the mother of his children. But all his worldly goods are still absolutely his. She has, with his consent, simply a use in common during his life, and he can will away from her everything he possesses, and leave her penniless and destitute after years of wifely service, during which her care and industry may have multiplied his "goods" exceedingly. Her jewels and trinkets, if dubbed "heirlooms," will be taken from her, and should she have no son, then a stranger, if her husband's nearest relative, may dispossess her of the home where she has passed her wedded life. Where there are sons and daughters the disparity between the sexes is still maintained. The great idea is ever Man—never Woman. For him are the titles, freeholds, factories, partnerships, and all good things ; for her, little or nothing. And yet how many daughters are superior to the sons, and how many women are there whose learning and abilities would adorn any office and any position. Over and over have women proved their aptitude for business, and their power to compete with men successfully in any walk of life. Yet the avenues to wealth, honours, and titles are closed to them. The bar, the pulpit, the medical profession, the professorial chair, the exchange, the mart, are rigorously guarded against them. Art and literature alone have accorded them a qualified admittance, and already both have been enriched by their genius.

Their statutable disqualifications are too many to enumerate. They may not sit on a jury nor in Parliament, nor be members of a Town or County Council. The suffrage is denied them, although, they are taxed with men, and form more than one-half of the population.

If we would see the spirit in which honourable men, when their sex monopolizes the Legislature, can make laws for women, we need only turn to the "Contagious Diseases Act," an Act which would be admirable if it applied impartially to both sexes, but which is grossly tyrannous when applied only to one. Under its provisions women of immoral life were registered by the police, and were compelled to present themselves at stated times for frequent medical inspection, and to undergo hospital treatment if diseased. Yet men of equally immoral life, and known to be similarly diseased, were subject neither to inspection nor treatment—penalties for the woman, immunity for the man. But why should he be privileged to contaminate and poison at will, and she imprisoned for the same ?

We English are unsurpassed in the art of breeding the inferior animals— from a salmon to a shorthorn, from a pigeon to a racehorse. The method is no secret. All understand it. Healthy animals only with the best points are selected, and free from hereditary taint. They are mated carefully, and the strains are preserved pure from all deteriorating blood and damaging conditions. But in the breeding of the highest animal these salutary maxims are ignored. And men of natural affection and intelligence bestow more pains on the mating of their dogs than on that of their daughters.

Our workhouses, prisons, refuges, penitentiaries, and lunatic asylums bear sad witness to these inequitable laws and customs. There are crowded hosts of unhappy women, thousands of them mere girls, victims without redress of man's lust and heartlessness. There they wear out their pitiful and cheerless days to the end, too many of them dowered with the fatal gift of beauty.

Usually it is the ardent girl of generous disposition, the least calculating and most artless, who is persuaded to yield to an illicit love. Nature is strong in her, and affection predominates. Her embraces go with her heart. If society and the law are compassionate to any, they should be tender to her. But both are implacable. She is appalled by their unrelenting severity, and in her mad terror is often impelled to destroy the witness of her shame. Hence infanticide abounds in a Christian land. But should she spare her innocent offspring, the law still pursues him. He cannot inherit except by will, and if he die intestate the Crown seizes all his property.

Kadina and Wallaroo Times (SA : 1888 - 1954), Wednesday 17 January 1894

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article109150057