In England,
Anthony Gibson wrote a book, in 1599, called "A Woman's Woorth, defended
against all the Men in the World, proouing them to be more Perfect,
Excellent, and Absolute in all Vertuous Actions than any Man of what
Qualitie soever, _Interlarded with Poetry." Per contra,_ the learned
Acidalius published a book in Latin and afterwards in French, to prove
that women are not reasonable creatures. Modern theologians are at worst
merely sub-acid, and do not always say so, if they think so. Meanwhile
most persons have been content to leave the world to go on its old
course, in this matter as in others, and have thus acquiesced in that
stern judicial decree, with which Timon of Athens sums up all his curses
upon womankind,--"If there sit twelve women at the table, let a dozen of
them be--as they are."
Ancient or modern, nothing in any of these discussions is so valuable as
the fact of the discussion itself. There is no discussion where there is
no wrong. Nothing so indicates wrong as this morbid self-inspection. The
complaints are a perpetual protest, the defences a perpetual confession.
It is too late to ignore the question, and once opened, it can be
settled only on absolute and permanent principles. There is a wrong; but
where? Does woman already know too much, or too little? Was she created
for man's subject, or his equal? Shall she have the alphabet, or not?
Ancient mythology, which undertook to explain everything, easily
accounted for the social and political disabilities of woman.
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