Whatever is mysterious is regarded by the world at large as pronouncedly bearing one of two characters -- it is wholly evil and diabolic, or it is partially - mitigated evil, and is then called "a dispensation of providence." Each of these strikes the mind with a kind of terror as above or beyond the action of law. Mysterious things are misunderstood. Correct judgment is always based on correct understanding of the thing, person, or motive to be judged. The more profound the ignorance, the more deeply is a mystery considered. The phenomenon of an eclipse is looked upon by savages with fear; a pestilence occurring among the ignorant civilized is deemed a direct punishment for sin. the savage pounds rude instruments and offers sacrifice to propitiate the fish that is about to swallow the moon. The scarcely less ignorant civilized devotees holds a fast and offers prayer to avert the pestilence, all unknowing that broken sanitary laws have caused the disease. So ignorance regards mystery and evil as synonymous.

            Mysteries, if long continued, tend to produce useless disregard of accustomed habits, of religious teaching, and even of life itself. An impotent spirit of defiance, the secondary effects of fear, seizes upon men. The savage and the idolater reproach their gods, refuse them worship, and even deal blows upon the senseless image of wood or stone. Even the child, who does not comprehend why he is hurt when he falls, strikes or kicks the inanimate thing which wounded him. He fears it, he defies it; with this fear and this defiance are mingled the germs of hate. Mystery, fear, hate, defiance -- this is the order in which the mind is affected.

            Woman is to man the great mystery of life. Because of this mystery, she has been well hated, well adored, well abused, deeply misrepresented. Because of this mystery, so much has been written of her functions, her capacities, her position, present and future. Bachelors and married men, beardless boys and octogenarians, philosophers and fools, priests and poets, the scientist and the ignoramus, alike make women the subject of their essays, their sermons, their songs, their diatribes.

            The Church long held her up to scorn, denied her its sacred offices, refused her at times even admittance to its house of worship, taught her to feel shame at her very being, denied her the right to her own children[,] deprived her of freedom of conscience, and [begin p. 566] placed itself between her and her own direct approach to her Savior.

            The law stepped in where the Church stopped, and, as Montesquieu says, without asking her if she desired punishment, it made her amenable to statutes, many of which were contrary to the inherent laws of her being. Morally dissected, in search of a soul, she has been physically dissected, that her maternal frame might be held to view as weak, as unenduring, as incapable of accomplishing her desires of progress. Yet these impotent and impudent examiners and anathematizers have one and all failed to learn the secrets of her being. Those are known to herself alone, and she does not hasten to reveal them. Her powers are not lessened that she does not proclaim what she is; the world is her own, and when the hour comes she will take possession of her own.

            Woman's essential character is woman -- that which especially makes her woman instead of man -- those inclinations, and emotions, and capabilities, which, though human, are totally unlike masculine thoughts and ideas, and are even now, as in past ages, hidden from man. Neither Auguste Comte nor Herbert Spencer has gained new light from the present age of light and though, but, philosophers though they are, they speak of woman as did the Christian Church and civilized legislation.

            Goethe might well cry "More light!" for even he, light of Germany that he was, died unknowing woman. Michelet dared much, but his wisdom was of the earth, earthy.

            Men have necessarily looked at woman from an objective standpoint. Those to whom a glance has been partially vouchsafed, still touch not, see not, the inmost. Into the outer court of the temple they may come, and may at times have approached the inner court, but into the holy of holies but one enters -- herself. She alone is priestess and evangel of all its mysteries. To the wisest of men woman is an extraneous being, scarcely deemed an essentially component part of humanity, though recognized as necessary to its existence and increase. Her first right to herself is scarcely dreamed of. "Society itself is not recognized as existing for her, only in so far as she is represented by man," and he proclaims without sense of shame, of injustice, or of ignorance, that "upon the all-sufficiency of man alone the foundations of law are based."

            Having thus brought himself so closely before his own eye, it has been practicably impossible for man as man to comprehend woman as woman.

            But even while man so continuously fixes woman's status as inferior to his own, he is as constantly dissatisfied with his own decisions, constantly distrusts his own judgment. He cannot lay his own ghost of belief that is judgment has played him false. If woman is what man has so often declared her to be, if her place in life and her lack of capabilities are self-evident, these facts need no repeated iteration, more than does the fact that night succeeds day, or that two and two makes four. Self-evident truths require no proving, only doubtful ones.

            The Sphinx, world-known emblem of all mystery, propounder of that wondrous riddle that led so many men to death, was a woman. That her husband, the Phoenician Cadmus, should have become the inventor of letters, seems no longer strange when we remember the wise inspirer by his side. Modern science teaches the close interchangeableness of the senses. If taste and smell are closely alike, and intimately connected with nutrition, so the more subtle form of touch, that invisible yet fully perceptible aura, that impression which the approach of individuals makes upon us, that is borne upon the pages of a letter, that comes with a gift, that clusters around a bouquet, that clings to a few withered leaves, has its interest upon the brain, in irritating it, dulling it, or inspiriting it to action.

            "Our set" signifies much more than certain forms and fashions; unknowingly, each member recognizes the compatibility between them. Neither friendship nor love can bud or blossom without there first exists receptivity of touch. It cannot be forced more than can oil and water be homogeneously mingled. The error of man through the ages has arisen from his belief that might could force incompatibility into homogeneity.

            Society having ignored woman as a factor, making of her but a fraction, religion and legislation having seized upon her in order to define her powers and her rights, we look back through history in search of the result.

            As pliable as the smoke which your breath can blow aside, woman has seemingly bent to fill every place man has assigned her; yet, like the smoke, she has risen above every sphere pointed out as hers, and, beyond man's sight, sought her own place to work.

            It has long been a theme of discussion as to whether character or education has done most in determining course in life. Many have felt in unison with the Frenchman's epitaph, "Born a man, died a grocer." Education blighted him, but long, persistent effort has as yet failed to make woman the being she has been so often portrayed. However true it may be that in individual cases woman has seemed what she has so persistently been declared to be, still, as a whole, woman has lived true to herself. All the dwarfing and stunting of a tree cannot make it less than a tree: when air and light are given it, and freedom comes to spread its branches abroad, and to send its tiny rootlets afar in search of food and moisture, it then shows its character, it then becomes what it naturally is, not what others would force it to be. Woman, like this tree, has her own secrets of growth and of manifestation to the world.

            A condition of theological and political slavery seems not the easiest to rise from, yet even here the fable of the seed and the oak may apply. To bend before the storm is not to break from it; the first necessity of life being to live, woman during the ages accepted the part education pressed upon her, yet man has never rested content. Though having declared her position to be unchangeful, educationally, industrially, legally, in the Church, the state, the family -- yet man has never rested content with his own decision. His role in life has ever been based upon self-esteem, hers upon enforced self-depreciation.

            The doctrine of total depravity was laid upon her shoulders as its originator, even though in the plenitude of his claims for himself man recognized the devil as masculine. Having preempted the Godhead, it might have been though his Satanic majesty would have been set off as the feminine portion of spiritual beings; but, fortunately perhaps, man's grasp after power led him to acknowledge the devil as not only masculine but as possessing a father alone -- i.e., Satan. But woman was still made to suffer under this belief: she was, more than man, deemed subject to demoniac possession, and witches were ever believed to be tenfold more numerous than wizards. Did this theory arise from man's belief in his own powers of fascination, in his conception of the superiority of the masculine over the feminine? or did each man recognize the fact of himself being well up to the wiles of the devil?

            The Christian Church, through man, having also bidden woman stand aside from the sacerdotal office, in various decretals taught her defilement through those peculiarities of her physical being she holds not in common with man, for ages placed the legality of marriage dependent upon sacerdotal sanction, at the same moment teaching lessened respect for married women, holding virgins above mothers. Denying her entrance to the priesthood, it punished her for all ineligibilities of its own making. Yet woman's mysterious power remained unsubdued, and, despite all contempt, all obloquy, she seized upon the Church, and in union of Virgin Mother compelled the most holy adoration of herself under both forms. Elevated even above the Godhead, this divine Mother was at least held to possess controlling power over the Divine Son himself. Did man ever more fully show his belief in his own theories as to woman? Could he ever more fully prove his own intuitive sense of her mysterious power?

            Through ages no slave was permitted to be a warrior. As long as hair symbolized freedom among the Gauls, and unwalled towns proclaimed it among German tribes, so in later feudal times the right of fighting was emblematic of freedom. This age has not outgrown feudal beliefs. Woman did not fight then, woman does not fight now, yet renowned woman warriors have existed in all ages and among many nations. Man has not here fathomed woman's power; he forgets that of the four most ancient, the four most celebrated warriors of antiquity, one was a woman, and one was incited to his conquering course through a woman's prophecy. He forgets that nations of female warriors have existed: inventors of weapons, founders of cities, conquerors of countries. He forgets that among the very few decisive battles of the world's history -- battles which have changed the course of civilization for centuries, one at least, and that in modern times, was gained by a woman. Yet woman is a preserver rather than a destroyer; she loves peace rather than war, yet as warrior [begin page 567] she has again and again baffled man's judgment of her. It seems her delight to show him he has not read her where he though he knew her best.

            After the modern revival of learning, education was ignored for woman, and an education was ignored for woman, and an attempt in France during the eighteenth century to instruct girls met with the most violent opposition, and the father of the maiden who originated this daring idea assembled a council of famous doctors to decide whether or not his daughter was possessed of a devil; and yet the learned Hypatia, in the second century of the Christian era, taught philosophy in the famous Alexandrian school, and the wisest men of Europe, and of Asia, and of Africa, sat as learners at her feet.

            Thus through the ages has woman ever outrun the estimate of man. In vain has he striven to fathom her ways, her powers; in vain have been his erudition, his casuistry, his threats, his entreaties, his prophecies. Woman hears them all, but she heeds not. Conscious of her powers, she looks upon the world as her own; she listens to man, but consults with her own heart. She is the Benjamin of life: youngest of God's creatures, she feels that she is to receive double portion as best beloved. The mystery of the divine Iris [sic] is her mystery, and that olden Egyptian inscription upon this goddess is also hers -- "I am all that has been, all that shall be, and none among men has yet raised my veil."

Bibliography

Montesquieu, unidentified work
Auguste Comte, unidentified work
Herbert Spencer, unidentified work