Men, Women, and Gods Part 19

Appendix J.

1. "We are continually told that civilization and Christianity have restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual bond-servant of her husband; no less so, as far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called. She vows a lifelong obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it all through her life by law.

Casuists may say that the obligation of obedience stops short of partic.i.p.ation in crime, but it certainly extends to everything else. She can do no act whatever but by his permission, at least tacit. She can acquire no property but _for him_; the instant it becomes hers, even if by inheritance, it becomes _ipso facto_ his. In this respect the wife's position under the common law of England is worse than that of slaves in the laws of many countries; by the _Roman_ law, for example, a slave might have _peculium_, which, to a certain extent, the law guaranteed him for his exclusive use."--Mill.

2. Speaking of self-wors.h.i.+p which leads to brutality toward others, Mill says: "Christianity will never practically teach it" (the equality of human beings) "while it sanctions inst.i.tutions grounded on an arbitrary preference for one human being over another."

"The morality of the first ages rested on the obligation to submit to power; that of the ages next following, on the right of the weak to the forbearance and protection of the strong. How much longer is one form of society and life to content itself with the morality made for another?

We have had the morality of submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity; the time is now come for the morality of justice."

--Ibid.

"Inst.i.tutions, books, education, society all go on training human beings for the old, long after the new has come; much more when it is only coming."--Ibid.

"There have been abundance of people, in all ages of Christianity, who tried... to convert us into a sort of Christian Mussulmans, with the Bible for a Koran, prohibiting all improvement; and great has been their power, and many have had to sacrifice their lives in resisting them. But they have been resisted, _and the resistance has made us what we are, and will yet make us what we are to be_."--Ibid.

Appendix K

"In this tendency [to depreciate extremely the character and position of women] we may detect in part the influence of the earlier Jewish writings, in which it is probable that most impartial observers will detect evident traces of the common oriental depreciation of women.

The custom of money-purchase to the father of the bride was admitted.

Polygamy was authorized, and practised by the wisest men on an enormous scale. A woman was regarded as the origin of human ills. A period of purification was appointed after the birth of every child; but, _by a very significant provision, it was twice as long in the case of a female as of a male child_ (Levit. xii. 1-5). _The badness of men_, a Jewish writer emphatically declared, _is better than the goodness of women_ (Ecclesiasticus xlii. 14). The types of female excellence exhibited in the early period of Jewish history are in general _of a low order, and certainly far inferior_ to those of Roman history or Greek poetry; and _the warmest eulogy of a woman in the Old Testament is probably that which was bestowed upon her who, with circ.u.mstances of the most exaggerated treachery, had murdered the sleeping fugitive who had taken refuge under her roof,_"--Lecky, "European Morals," vol 1, p. 357.

Appendix L.

1. "Mr. F. Newman, who looks on toleration as the result of intellectual progress, says: 'Nevertheless, not only does the Old Testament justify b.l.o.o.d.y persecution, but the New teaches that G.o.d will visit men with fiery vengeance _for holding an erroneous creed_."--Buckle.

2. "The first great consequence of the decline of priestly influence was the rise of toleration.... I suspect that the _impolicy_ of persecution was perceived before its wickedness. "--Ibid.

3. "While a mult.i.tude of scientific discoveries, critical and historical researches, and educational reforms have brought thinking men face to face with religious problems of extreme importance, _women have been almost absolutely excluded from their influence_."--Lechy.

4. "The domestic unhappiness arising from difference of belief was probably almost or altogether unknown in the world before the introduction of Christianity.... _The deep, and widening chasm between the religious opinions of most highly educated men, and of the immense majority of women is painfully apparent_. Whenever any strong religious fervor fell upon a husband or a wife, its first effect was to make a happy union impossible."--Ibid.

5. "The combined influence of the Jewish writings [Old Testament] and of that ascetic feeling which treated woman as the chief source of temptation to man, caused her degradation.... In the writings of the Fathers, woman was represented as the door of h.e.l.l, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman. She should live in continual penance, _on account of the curse she has brought into the world_. She should be ashamed of her dress, _and especially ashamed of her beauty_."--Ibid.

Appendix M.

1. "The writers of the Middle Ages are full of accounts of nunneries that were like brothels.... The inveterate prevalence of incest among the clergy rendered it necessary again and again to issue the most stringent enactments that priests should not be permitted to live with their _mothers or sisters_.... An Italian bishop of the tenth century enigmatically described the morals of his time, when he declared, that if he were to enforce the canons against unchaste people administering ecclesiastical rites, no one would be left in the Church except the boys."--Lecky.

2. In the middle of the sixteenth century ''the majority of the clergy were nearly illiterate, and many of them addicted to drunkenness and low vices.--Hallam, "Const. Hist, of Eng."

3. "The clergy have ruined Italy."--Brougham, "Pol. Phil."

4. "It was a significant prudence of many of the lay Catholics, who were accustomed to insist that their priests should take a concubine _for the protection of the families of the paris.h.i.+oners_.... It can hardly be questioned that the extreme frequency of illicit connections among the clergy _tended during many centuries most actively to lower the moral tone of the laity_.... An impure chast.i.ty was fostered, which continually looked upon marriage in its coa.r.s.est light.... Another injurious consequence, resulting, in a great measure, from asceticism, was a tendency to depreciate extremely the character and the position of woman."--Lecky.

Appendix N.

1. "The great and main duty which a wife, as a wife, ought to learn, and so learn as to practise it, is to be subject to her own husband....

There is not any husband to whom this honor of submission is not due; no personal infirmity, frowardness of nature; no, not even on the point of religion, doth deprive him of it."--Fergusson on "the Epistles."

2. "The sum of a wife's duty unto her husband is subjection.

"--Abernethy.

3. "We shall be told, perhaps, that religion imposes the duty of obedience [upon wives]; as every established fact _which is too bad to admit of any other defense, is always presented to us as an injunction of religion. The Church, it is true, enjoins it in her formularies_."--Mill.

"The principle of the modern movement in morals and in politics, is that conduct, and conduct alone, ent.i.tles to respect: that not what men are, but what they do const.i.tutes their claim to deference; that, above all, _merit and not birth is the only rightful claim to power and authority_."--Ibid.

"Taking the care of people's lives out of their own hands, and relieving them from the consequences of their own acts, _saps the very foundation_ of the self-respect and self-control which are the essential conditions both of individual prosperity and of social virtue."--Ibid.

"Inferior cla.s.ses of men always, at heart, feel disrespect toward those who are subject to their power."--Ibid.

4. "Among those causes of human improvement that are of most importance to the general welfare, must be included the total annihilation of the prejudices which have established between the s.e.xes an inequality of right, _fatal even to the party which it favors_. In vain might we seek for motives to justify the principle, in difference of physical organization, of intellect, or of moral sensibility. It had at first no other origin but abuse of strength, _and all the attempts which have since been made to support it_ are idle sophisms."--"Progress of the Human Mind," _Condorcet_.

5. Notwithstanding the work of such men as the Encyclopedists of France and other liberal thinkers for the proper recognition of women, the Church had held her grip so tight that upon the pa.s.sage of the bill, as late as 1848, giving to married women the right to own their own property, the most doleful prophesies went up as to the just retribution that would fall upon women for their wicked insubordination, and upon the men who had defied divine commands so far as to pa.s.s such a law. A recent writer tells us that Wm. A. Stokes, in talking to a lady whom he blamed for its pa.s.sage, said: "We hold you responsible for that law, and I tell you now you will live to rue the day when you opened such a Pandora's box in your native State, and cast such an apple of discord into every family of the State."

And the sermons that were preached against it--the prophecies of deacon and preacher--were so numerous, so denunciatory, and so violent that they form a queer and interesting chapter in the history of the att.i.tude of the Church toward women, and ill.u.s.trate, in our own time, how persistent it has been in its efforts to prevent woman from sharing in the benefits of the higher civilization of the nineteenth century.

But fortunately for women, Infidels are more numerous than they ever were before, and the power of the Church is dying of dry rot, or as Col.

Ingersoll wittily says, of the combined influence of softening of the brain and ossification of the heart.

Appendix O.

"St. Gregory the Great describes the virtue of a priest, _who through motives of piety had discarded his wife_... Their wives, in _immense numbers_, were driven forth with hatred and with scorn... Pope Urban II.

_gave license_ to the n.o.bles _to reduce to slavery the wives_ of priests who refused to abandon them."--Lecky.

Appendix P.

1. "Hallam denies that respect for women is due to Christianity.

"--Buckle.