s and Maxims_, p. 12,
Note.]

This is just the view which the ancients took of woman, and the view
which people in the East take now; and their judgment as to her proper
position is much more correct than ours, with our old French notions
of gallantry and our preposterous system of reverence--that highest
product of Teutonico-Christian stupidity. These notions have served
only to make women more arrogant and overbearing; so that one is
occasionally reminded of the holy apes in Benares, who in the
consciousness of their sanctity and inviolable position, think they
can do exactly as they please.

But in the West, the woman, and especially the _lady_, finds herself
in a false position; for woman, rightly called by the ancients,
_sexus sequior_, is by no means fit to be the object of our honor and
veneration, or to hold her head higher than man and be on equal terms
with him. The consequences of this false position are sufficiently
obvious. Accordingly, it would be a very desirable thing if this
Number-Two of the human race were in Europe also relegated to her
natural place, and an end put to that lady nuisance, which not only
moves all Asia to laughter, but would have been ridiculed by Greece
and Rome as well. It is impossible to calculate the good effects which
such a change would bring about in our social, civil and political
arrangements. There would be no necessity for the Salic law: it would
be a superfluous truism. In Europe the _lady_, strictly so-called, is
a being who should not exist at all; she should be either a housewife
or a girl who hopes to become one; and she should be brought up, not
to be arrogant, but to be thrifty and submissive. It is just because
there are such people as _ladies_ in Europe that the women of the
lower classes, that is to say, the great majority of the sex, are much
more unhappy than they are in the East. And even Lord Byron says:
_Thought of the state of women under the ancient Greeks--convenient
enough. Present state, a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalric
and the feudal ages--artificial and unnatural. They ought to mind
home--and be well fed and clothed--but not mixed in society. Well
educated, too, in religion--but to read neither poetry nor politics--
nothing but books of piety and cookery. Music--drawing--dancing--also
a little gardening and ploughing now and then. I have seen them
mending the roads in Epirus with good success. Why not, as well as
hay-making and milking_?