* See Appendix G, 1-4.
** See Appendix U.
*** See Clifford's "Scientific Basis of Morals," p. 25
**** See Morley's "Diderot," p. 190.
In the Church schools and "universities" to-day it is quite pathetic to hear the professors wrestle with geology and Genesis, and cut their astronomy to fit Joshua. If in one of these institutions for the petrifaction of the human mind there is a teacher who is either not nimble enough to escape the conclusions of a bright pupil or too honest to try, he is at once found to be "incompetent as an instructor," and is dropped from the faculty. I know one case where it took twenty years to discover that a professor was not able to teach geology—and it took a heresy-hunter with a Bible to do it then.
But it is the claim of the Church in regard to the education of women with which I have to do here.
Women in Greece and Rome under Pagan rule had become learned and influential to an unparalleled degree.*
The early Fathers of the Church found women thirsty for knowledge and eager for opportunities to learn. They thereupon set about making it disreputable for a woman to know anything,** and in order to clinch their prohibition the Church asserted that woman was unable to learn, had not the mental capacity,*** was created without mental power and for purely physical purposes.
* See Lecky, Milman, Diderot, Morley, Christian, and others.
** "In the fourth century we find that holy men in council
gravely argued the question, and that too with abundant
confidence in their ability and power to decide the whole
matter: 'Ought women to be called human beings?' A wise
and pious father in the Church, after deliberating solemnly
and long on the vexed question of women, finally concluded:
'The female sex is not a fault in itself, but a fact in
nature for which women themselves are not to blame;' but he
graciously cherished the opinion that women will be
permitted to rise as men, at the resurrection. A few
centuries later the masculine mind underwent great agitation
over the question: 'Would it be consistent with the duties
and uses of women for them to learn the alphabet?' And in
America, after Bridget Gaffort had donated the first plot of
ground for a public school, girls were still denied the
advantages of such schools. The questions—'Shall women be
allowed to enter colleges?' and 'Shall they be admitted
into the professions?' have been as hotly contested as has
been the question of their humanity."
—Gamble.
*** "There existed at the same time in this celebrated city a
class of women, the glory of whose intellectual brilliancy
still survives; and when Alcibiades drew around him the
first philosophers and statesmen of Greece, 'it was a virtue
to applaud Aspasia;' of whom it has been said that she
lectured publicly on rhetoric and philosophy with such
ability that Socrates and Alcibiades gathered wisdom from
her lips, and so marked was her genius for statesmanship
that Pericles afterward married her and allowed her to
govern Athens, then at the height of its glory and power.
Numerous examples might be cited in which Athenian women
rendered material aid to the state."
—Gamble.
It was maintained that her "sphere" was clearly defined, and that it was purely and solely an animal one; and worst of all it was stoutly asserted that her greatest crime had always been a desire for wisdom, and that it was this desire which brought the penalty of labor and death into this world.*
With such a belief it is hardly strange that the education of girls was looked upon as a crime; and with such a record it is almost incredible effrontery that enables the Church to-day to claim credit for the education of women,** If she were to educate every woman living, free of charge, in every branch of known knowledge, she could not repay woman for what she has deprived her of in the past, or efface the indignity she has already offered.***
* See Morley's "Diderot," p. 76; Lea's "Sacerdotal
Celibacy;" Lecky's "European Morals."
** See Appendix H, 1 to 4.
*** Lecky, "European Morals," p. 310.