e
case even with historians of enlightened times, who have the gallantry
to allow woman to be a component part of creation, we can hardly
wonder that in darker days she should be utterly and entirely
overlooked.

Mohammed asserted that women had no souls; and moreover, that, setting
aside the "diviner part," there had only existed _four_ of whom the
mundane qualifications entitled them to any degree of approbation.
Before him, Aristotle had asserted that Nature only formed women when
and because she found that the imperfection of matter did not permit
her to carry on the world without them.

This complimentary doctrine has not wanted supporters. "Des hommes
tres sages ont ecrit que la Nature, dont l'intention et le dessein est
toujours de tendre a la perfection, ne produirait s'il etait possible,
jamais que des hommes, et que quand il nait une femme c'est un monstre
dans l'ordre de ses productions, ne expressement contre sa volonte:
ils ajoutent, que, comme on voit naitre un homme aveugle, boiteux, ou
avec quelqu'autre defaut nature; et comme on voit a certains arbres
des fruits qui ne murissent jamais; ainsi l'on peut dire que la femme
est un animal produit par accident et par le hasard."[1]

Without touching upon this extreme assertion that woman is but "un
monstre," an animal produced by chance, we may observe briefly, that
women have ever, with some few exceptions,[2] been considered as a
degraded and humiliated race, until the promulgation of the Christian
religion elevated them in society: and that this distinction still
exists is evident from the difference at this moment exhibited between
the countries professing Mohammedanism and those professing
Christianity.

Still, though in our happy country it is now pretty generally allowed
that women are "des creatures humaines," it is no new remark that they
are comparatively lightly thought of by the "nobler" gender. This is
absolutely the case even in those countries where civilization and
refinement have elevated the sex to a higher grade in society than
they ever before reached. Women are courted, flattered, caressed,
extolled; but still the difference is there, and the "lords of the
creation" take care that it shall be understood. Their own
pursuits--public, are the theme of the historian--private, of the
biographer; nay, the every-day circumstances of life--their
dinners--their speeches--their toasts--and their _post coenam_
eloquence, are noted down for imm