You are, then, to base your demand for woman's civil rights upon her simple humanity,—the value of the soul itself.
If you deny this foundation for her, you deny it for yourselves, and the Declaration of Independence is only an impertinent pretence.
It may not be easy to push this truth home, and force your friends and neighbors to consider it; but, once convinced in your own minds, you cannot escape from the responsibility.
Wendell Phillips once told us of an old catechism, printed, I think, at Venice in 1563, which contained the following question and answer:—
Q. How shall I show my obedience to God?
A. By never doing any thing which is disagreeable to my neighbor.
Is it possible that this catechism is still in general use?
Fashionable morality is of so loose a sort, that to do any thing disagreeable to one's neighbor is still, in the estimation of most people, the unpardonable sin. People who are capable of hesitating on that account need not be greatly anxious about their responsibility.
Our cause does not need them; resting, not on timid self-deceivers, but on immutable truth, and the hallowed recognition of woman herself.
Society still cries, like King John in the play,—