FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   >>  
raft and the secret of superstition. Women are everywhere the chief, and in some places the only, supporters of religion. Even in Paris, where Freethinkers abound, the women go to church and favor the priest. Naturally, they impress their own views on the children, for while the father's influence is fitful through his absence from home, the mother's is constant and therefore permanent. Again and again the clergy have restored their broken power by the hold upon that sex which men pretend to think the weaker, although they are obviously the sovereigns of every generation. Men may resolve to go where they please, but if they cannot take the women with them they will never make the journey. Women do not resist progress, they simply stand still, and by their real, though disguised, rule over the family, they keep the world with them. Freethinkers should look this fact in the face. Blinking it is futile. Whoever does that imitates the hunted ostrich, who does not escape his doom by hiding his head. The whole question lies in a nutshell. Where one sex is, the other will be; and there is a terrible, yet withal a beautiful, truth in the upshot of Mill's argument, that if men do not lift women up, women will drag men down. In the education and elevation of women, then, lies the great hope of the future. Leading Freethinkers have always seen this. Shelley's great cry, "Can man be free if woman be a slave?" is one witness, and Mill's great essay on _The Subjection of Women_ is another. Go where you will, you find the priests courting the women. They act thus, not because they despise men, or fear them, but because they (often unconsciously) feel that when they have captured the "weaker" sex, the other becomes a speedy prey. Perhaps a dim perception of this truth hovered in the minds of those who composed the story of the Fall. The serpent does not bother about Adam. He just makes sure of Eve, and she settles her "stronger" half. Milton makes Adam reluct and wrangle, but it is easy to see he will succumb to his wife's persuasions. He swears he won't eat, but Eve draws him all the time with a silken string, mightier than the biggest cable. When the Christian monks were proselytising at Rome, they were hated, says Jortin, "as beggarly impostors and hungry Greeks who seduced ladies of fortune and quality." Hated, yes; but what did the hatred avail? The women were won, and the game was over. Men growled, but they had to yield. The
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   >>  



Top keywords:
Freethinkers
 

weaker

 
composed
 

Perhaps

 
hovered
 

serpent

 

perception

 
settles
 

stronger

 

bother


speedy
 

priests

 

courting

 

Subjection

 

witness

 
unconsciously
 

captured

 
places
 
despise
 

Milton


wrangle

 

hungry

 

impostors

 

Greeks

 

seduced

 

ladies

 

beggarly

 

Jortin

 

fortune

 

quality


growled
 

hatred

 

proselytising

 
swears
 

persuasions

 

secret

 

succumb

 

superstition

 
biggest
 
Christian

mightier

 

silken

 
string
 

reluct

 

journey

 

children

 

father

 

fitful

 

influence

 

resist