To women peculiarly it belongs to oppose the doctrines and methods of vivisectionists, for to the practitioners of that school were due the arguments or assumptions which sufficed to introduce for a while into our country the vile system of according a licence to male dissoluteness and female subjection—under a pretext of public morality and “scientific” sanction—known on the continent as the “police des mœurs,” and in sundry Naval and Military stations of England and Ireland as the “Contagious Diseases Acts.”
LV.
8.—“... from Love’s might alone all thoughts of Wisdom grow.”
“Hast thou considered how the beginning of all thought worthy the name is love; and the wise head never yet was, without first the generous heart?”—Carlyle (“French Revolution,” Vol. III., p. 375).
LVI.
5.—“With woman honoured, rises man to height.”
“If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically governed; if order is preserved without oppression, if cultivation is extended, and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that principality is under a woman’s rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo Governments.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 100 note).
6.—“With her degraded, sinks again in night.”
“And you who have departed from the common tradition, how have you fared in the race of life? Are your men as brave and fearlessly truthful, are your women as courageous and honest as in the old days of ‘the maiden’s choice’? Are the little worn-out child-wives of to-day likely to have descendants like those of the damsels of your ancient epics? Where are the deeds of high emprise, of daring valour, and of patient persistence of the youths who were fired by the pure love of a woman? Ah! gentlemen, with love life departs; there is no vitality in married life without affection, and when love, the great incentive to action, disappears from the family, leaving dry the streams of affection which should flow between the children and parents, what must come of the race?”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos”).
Id.... “From all we know of the laws of life and its development it would appear one of the foolishest things on earth for men to fancy that they can debase the intellect lobes of women, and at the same time exalt their own. No breeder of cattle or horses would think of debasing the qualities, in the females, which he would desire to possess in the males.