is achieving intellectual and physical
liberty. It is refreshing to know that here, in our country, there are
thousands of women who think and express their own thoughts--who are
thoroughly free and thoroughly conscientious--who have neither been
narrowed nor corrupted by a heartless creed--who do not worship a being
in heaven whom they would shudderingly loathe on earth. Women who do
not stand before the altar of a cruel faith with downcast eyes of timid
acquiescence, and pay to impudent authority the tribute of a thoughtless
yes. They are no longer satisfied with being told. They examine for
themselves. They have ceased to be the prisoners of society--the
satisfied serfs of husbands or the echoes of priests. They demand the
rights that naturally belong to intelligent human beings. If wives, they
wish to be the equals of husbands--if mothers, they wish to rear their
children in the atmosphere of love, liberty and philosophy. They believe
that woman can discharge all her duties without the aid of superstition,
and preserve all that is true, pure and tender without sacrificing in
the temple of absurdity the convictions of the soul.

Woman is not the intellectual inferior of man. She has lacked--not
mind--but opportunity. In the long night of barbarism physical strength,
and the cruelty to use it, were the badges of superiority. Muscle was
more than mind. In the ignorant age of Faith the loving nature of woman
was abused, her conscience was rendered morbid and diseased. It might
almost be said that she was betrayed by her own virtues. At best, she
secured, not opportunity, but flattery, the preface to degradation. She
was deprived of liberty and without that nothing is worth the having.
She was taught to obey without question, and to believe without thought.
There were universities for men before the alphabet had been taught
to woman. At the intellectual feast there were no places for wives and
mothers. Even now they sit at the second table and eat the crusts and
crumbs. The schools for women, at the present time, are just far
enough behind those for men to fall heirs to the discarded. On the same
principle, when a doctrine becomes too absurd for the pulpit, it is
given to the Sunday School. The ages of muscle and miracle--of fists and
faith--are passing away. Minerva occupies at last a higher niche than
Hercules. Now, a word is stronger than a blow.

At last we see women who depend upon themselves--who stand self poised