** See Appendix U.

*** See Clifford's "Scientific Basis of Morals," p. 25

**** See Morley's "Diderot," p. 190.

***** See Ibid, p. 126.

In the Church schools and "universities" to-day it is quite pathetic
to hear the professors wrestle with geology and Genesis, and cut
their astronomy to fit Joshua. If in one of these institutions for the
petrifaction of the human mind there is a teacher who is either not
nimble enough to escape the conclusions of a bright pupil or too honest
to try, he is at once found to be "incompetent as an instructor," and is
dropped from the faculty. I know one case where it took twenty years to
discover that a professor was not able to teach geology--and it took a
heresy-hunter with a Bible to do it then.

But it is the claim of the Church in regard to the education of women
with which I have to do here.

Women in Greece and Rome under Pagan rule had become learned and
influential to an unparalleled degree.*

The early Fathers of the Church found women thirsty for knowledge and
eager for opportunities to learn. They thereupon set about making it
disreputable for a woman to know anything,** and in order to clinch
their prohibition the Church asserted that woman was unable to learn,
had not the mental capacity,*** was created without mental power and for
purely physical purposes.

* See Lecky, Milman, Diderot, Morley, Christian, and others.

** "In the fourth century we find that holy men in council
gravely argued the question, and that too with abundant
confidence in their ability and power to decide the whole
matter: 'Ought women to be called human beings?' A wise
and pious father in the Church, after deliberating solemnly
and long on the vexed question of women, finally concluded:
'The female sex is not a fault in itself, but a fact in
nature for which women themselves are not to blame;' but he
graciously cherished the opinion that women will be
permitted to rise as men, at the resurrection. A few
centuries later the masculine mind underwent great agitation
over the question: 'Would it be consistent with the duties
and uses of women for them to learn the alphabet?' And in
America, after Bridget Gaffort had donated the first plot of
ground for a public school, girls were still denied the
advantages of such schools. The questions--'Shall women be
allowed to enter colleges?' and