And Queen Elizabeth rather than be accounted of the feminine gender, claimed it as her prerogative to be of all three. “A prime officer with a White Staff coming into her presence” she willed him to bestow a place then vacant upon a person whom she named. “May it please your Highness Madam,” said the Lord, “the disposal of that place pertaineth to me by virtue of this White Staff.” “True,” replied the Queen, “yet I never gave you your office so absolutely, but that I still reserved myself of the Quorum.” “Of the Quarum, Madam,” returned the Lord, presuming, somewhat too far, upon her favour.—Whereat she snatched the staff in some anger out of his hand, and told him “he should acknowledge her of the Quorum, Quorum, Quorum before he had it again.”
It was well known indeed to Philosophers, he said, that the female is an imperfection or default in nature, whose constant design is to form a male; but where strength and temperament are wanting—a defective production is the result. Aristotle therefore calls Woman a Monster, and Plato makes it a question whether she ought not to be ranked among irrational creatures. There were Greek Philosophers, who (rightly in his judgment) derived the name of Ἀθηνῆ from Θῆλυς and alpha privativa, as implying that the Goddess of wisdom, though Goddess, was nevertheless no female, having nothing of female imperfection. And a book unjustly ascribed to the learned Acidalius was published in Latin, and afterwards in French, to prove that women were not reasonable creatures, but distinguished from men by this specific difference, as well as in sex.
Mahomet too was not the only person who has supposed that women have no souls. In this Christian and reformed country, the question was propounded to the British Apollo whether there is now, or will be at the resurrection any females in Heaven—since, says the questioner, there seems to be no need of them there! The Society of Gentlemen who, (in imitation of John Dunton, his brother-in-law the elder Wesley, and their coadjutors,) had undertaken in this Journal to answer all questions, returned a grave reply, that sexes being corporeal distinctions there could be no such distinction among the souls which are now in bliss; neither could it exist after the resurrection, for they who partook of eternal life neither marry nor are given in marriage.
That same Society supposed the Devil to be an Hermaphrodite, for though by his roughness they said he might be thought of the masculine gender, they were led to that opinion because he appeared so often in petticoats.
CHAPTER CCVII.
FRACAS WITH THE GENDER FEMININE.—THE DOCTOR'S DEFENCE.
If there sit twelve women at the table, let a dozen of them be—as they are.
TIMON OF ATHENS.