in any of these discussions is so valuable as
the fact of the discussion itself. There is no discussion where there is
no wrong. Nothing so indicates wrong as this morbid self-inspection. The
complaints are a perpetual protest, the defences a perpetual confession.
It is too late to ignore the question, and once opened, it can be
settled only on absolute and permanent principles. There is a wrong; but
where? Does woman already know too much, or too little? Was she created
for man's subject, or his equal? Shall she have the alphabet, or not?

Ancient mythology, which undertook to explain everything, easily
accounted for the social and political disabilities of woman. Goguet
quotes the story from St. Augustine, who got it from Varro. Cecrops,
building Athens, saw starting from the earth an olive-plant and a
fountain, side by side. The Delphic oracle said, that this indicated a
strife between Minerva and Neptune for the honor of giving a name to the
city, and that the people must decide between them. Cecrops thereupon
assembled the men, and the women also, who then had a right to vote; and
the result was that Minerva carried the election by a glorious majority
of one. Then Attica was overflowed and laid waste; of course the
citizens attributed the calamity to Neptune, and resolved to punish the
women. It was therefore determined that in future they should not vote,
nor should any child bear the name of its mother.

Thus easily did mythology explain all troublesome inconsistencies. But
it is much that it should even have recognized them, at so early an
epoch, as needing explanation. When we ask for a less symbolical
elucidation, it lies within our reach. At least, it is not hard to take
the first steps into the mystery. There are, to be sure, some flowers of
rhetoric in the way. The obstacle to the participation of woman in the
alphabet, or in any other privilege, has been thought by some to be the
fear of impairing her delicacy, or of destroying her domesticity, or of
confounding the distinction between the sexes. We think otherwise. These
have been plausible excuses; they have even been genuine, though minor,
anxieties. But the whole thing, we take it, had always one simple,
intelligible basis,--sheer contempt for the supposed intellectual
inferiority of woman. She was not to be taught, because she was not
worth teaching. The learned Acidalius, aforesaid, was in the majority.
According to Aristotle and the Peripatetics, wo