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Page 64
THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN ON SOCIETY.[103]
"Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, women always give
the tone to morals. Whether slaves or free, they reign, because their
empire is that of the affections. This influence, however, is more or
less salutary, according to the degree of esteem in which they are
held:--they make men what they are. It seems as though Nature had made
man's intellect depend upon their dignity, as she has made his happiness
depend upon their virtue. This, then, is the law of eternal
justice,--man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into
degradation: he cannot elevate her without at the same time elevating
himself. Let us cast our eyes over the globe! Let us observe those two
great divisions of the human race, the East and the West. Half the old
world remains in a state of inanity, under the oppression of a rude
civilization: the women there are slaves; the other advances in
equalization and intelligence: the women there are free and honoured.
"If we wish, then, to know the political and moral condition of a
state, we must ask what rank women hold in it. Their influence embraces
the whole life. A wife,--a mother,--two magical words, comprising the
sweetest sources of man's felicity. Theirs is the reign of beauty, of
love, of reason. Always a reign! A man takes counsel with his wife; he
obeys his mother; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live, and
the ideas which he has received from her become principles stronger even
than his passions.
"The reality of the power is not disputed; but it may be objected that
it is confined in its operation to the family circle: as if the
aggregate of families did not constitute the nation! The man carries
with him to the forum the notions which the woman has discussed with him
by the domestic hearth. His strength there realizes what her gentle
insinuations inspired. It is sometimes urged as matter of complaint that
the business of women is confined to the domestic arrangements of the
household: and it is not recollected that from the household of every
citizen issue forth the errors and prejudices which govern the world!
"If, then, there be an incontestable fact, it is the influence of women:
an influence extended, with various modifications, through the whole of
life. Such being the case, the question arises, by what inconceivable
negligence a power of universal operation has been overlooked by
moralists, who, in their various plans for the amelioration of mankind,
have scarcely deigned to mention this potent agent. Yet evidence,
historical and parallel, proves that such negligence has lost to mankind
the most influential of all agencies. The fact of its existence cannot
be disputed; it is, therefore, of the greatest importance that its
nature should be rightly understood, and that it be directed to right
objects."[104]
It would not be uninteresting to trace the action and reaction by which
women have degraded and been degraded--alternately the source and the
victims of mistaken social principles; but it would be foreign to the
design and compass of this work to do so. The subject, indeed, would
afford matter for a philosophical treatise of deep interest, rather than
for a chapter of a small work. A rapid historical sketch, and a few
deductions which seem to bear upon the main point, are all that can be
here attempted.
The gospel announced on this, as on every other subject, a grand
comprehensive principle, which it was to be the work of ages (perhaps of
eternity) to develop. The rescue of this degraded half of the human race
was henceforth the ascertained will of the Almighty. But a long series
of years were to elapse before this will worked out its issues. Its
decrees, with the noble doctrines of which it formed a part, lay buried
beneath the ruins of human intellect. But they were only buried, not
destroyed; and rose, like wildflowers on a ruined edifice, to adorn the
irregularity which they could not conceal. The fantastic institutions of
chivalry which it is now the fashion to deride (how unjustly!) were
among the first scions of this plant of heavenly origin. They bore the
impress of heaven, faint and distorted indeed, but not to be mistaken!
Devotion to an ideal good,--self-sacrifice,--subjugation of selfish and
sensual feelings; wherever these principles are found, disguised,
disfigured though they be, they are not of the earth,--earthly. They,
like the fabled amaranth, are plants which are not indigenous here
below! The seeds must come from above, from the source of all that is
pure, of all that is good! Of these principles the gospel was the remote
source: women were the disseminators. "Shut up in their castellated
towers, they civilized the warriors who despised their weakness, and
rendered less barbarous the passions and prejudices which themselves
shared."[105] It was they who directed the savage passions and brute
force of men to an unselfish aim, the defence of the weak, and added to
courage the only virtue then recognised--humanity. "Thus chivalry
prepared the way for law, and civilization had its source in
gallantry."[106]
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