FOOTNOTES:
[32] Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, September, 1866, p. 191. New York Monthly Medical Journal, November, 1866, p. 156.
[33] Prize Essay of the American Medical Association, p. 79.
[34] Percival. Medical Ethics, p. 79.
[35] Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Managers of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, pp. 33 to 37. Legislative Document. Albany, 1867.
[36] Criminal Abortion in America. Philadelphia, 1860. Title-page.
V. Are these Rights Absolute, or Reciprocal, with Duties?
In the first place, let us see under what circumstances the rights I have now described were assumed, and whether it was by the power of the strong over the weak, or from a belief that woman was in reality inferior to man, as well as physically not as fully developed, or whether it was from a belief that such assumption was intended by the Creator, and inculcated both by natural and revealed religion, and in the latter instance by both the old and the newer Scripture.
Probably all these arguments have weighed, but stronger than these even has been possession, that nine points of the law. Custom, handed down from father to son, from time immemorial, has sanctioned what so often results in tyranny. Appeals are made to Genesis, to the Proverbs, and to the Acts of the Apostles, and it is asserted that the inferiority of woman is thus proved to a demonstration, just as the Bible has been made to evidence the divinity of the institution of slavery, and to disprove—for some still assert this—the truths of geology, astronomy, and all other natural science. If no man should put asunder those whom God has joined, we must confess, in all conjugal matters at least, their full equality; and in relinquishing the title of lord and master, we must also waive the point of unreasoning and blind obedience, and so shall we gain the more complete obedience where such is really to be desired.
It is very probable—for such are the teachings of the most philosophical anatomists of our time—that, so far as the mere structure of her body is concerned, woman has not attained so advanced a stage of development as man. It is even alleged, by thoughtful embryologists, that every man during the earliest period of his existence was once a woman; that is to say, that in the fœtal condition his was at one time identical with the female type, and that this was subsequently outgrown. There is no doubt that many facts support this opinion, as the persistence, for instance, in every man, of a minute and undeveloped womb,[37] useless, save as furnishing one of those homologies so abounding in the plan of creation. Suppose, however, that we grant all this, and that in purely intellectual matters woman varies normally from man, as she does in physical strength; we must yet allow that in moral vigor, in religious aspiration, and faith, and in all purely emotional attributes, she far excels him. It is not from accident that the chaste and good of all ages have selected the female rather than the male as their ideal of angels and saints in heaven; but it is in tacit yet universal recognition of her superiority in certain matters over us. We men are of the earth, earthy, but they the gift of God; and such, in the tradition, did Adam see in the beautiful mother of mankind. Well for us all that she gave to him of the tree of knowledge, else, if that tradition be true, we ourselves had never been.