Elizabeth Cady Stanton | Speeches & Writings File | Speech: "The Antagonism of Sex," World Congress of Representative Women, May 16, 1893 With article of same title THE NATIONAL BULLETIN. Governments Derive Their Just Powers From the Consent of the Governed Vol. 2. WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 1983. No. 6. Published monthly at the office of THE WOMAN'S TRIBUNE, Washington, D. C. Subscription price 15 cents per annum: 10 cts.; for 25 copies of each number; 30 cts. per 100; $2.50 per 1,000. THE NATIONAL BULLETIN is to supply Woman Suffrage Societies with information and argumeut at a low price. Each month something of interest will be presented which should have a wide distribution. The Antagonism of Sex. [Given at the World's Congress of Representative Women, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, May 16, 1893.] Much as the antagonism of different tribes, families, nations and religions, has done all along the line of progress to check human development, the antagonism of sex has been more bitter and insidious, more dangerous and demoralizing than all other influences together. Historians tell us there was a period in the evolution of the race, when woman reigned supreme, deciding not only the limitations of her own rights and duties, but of man's also, treating him with more or less tyranny, as the customs of the time permitted. Woman's dynasty lasted for centuries, when through many and protracted struggles, man gained supremacy, and used his power with ten-fold more tyranny over woman than he had suffered at her hands. These two experiments have proved equally unsatisfactory to the subject sex, and now fair minded men and women are advocating a united government in State and Church, in which the sexes will be equally represented. In reply to this demand, we are told that woman always has been, and always must be in subordination to man. Neither of these assertions is true. All the signs of the times point to the decadence of the Patriarchate or father-age and to woman's speedy emancipation. The long period of freedom that woman enjoyed at the dawn of civilization, called the Matriarchate or mother-age. is no mere dream of the past but a fact well established by modern historians. The period of woman's supremacy lasted through many centuries undisputed, accepted as natural and proper wherever it existed. It was plainly traceable among the Aryans, the Germans, the Persians, and indications of it are still seen among uncivilized tribes and nations. Careful historians now show that the greatest civilizing power all along the pathway of natural development has been found in the wisdom and tender sentiments growing out of motherhood. For the protection of herself and her children, woman made the first home in the caves of the earth; then huts with trees in the sunshine. She made the first attempts at agriculture; raised grain, fruits and hers which she learned to use in sickness. She was her own physician ; all that was known of the medical art was in her hands. She domesticated the cow and goat and from the necessities of her children learned the use of milk. The women cultivated the arts of peace, the sentiments of kinship and all there was of human love and home life. The necessities of motherhood were the real source of all the earliest attempts at civilization. What man achieved at that period was due to the contest for food with his fellows and the wild beasts. He simply invented and improved weapons of warfare; but the woman, handicapped as he appeared to be by child bearing, became on this very account the main factor in human progress. The man's contributions at this early period are nothing as compared to woman's. Her varied responsibilities as mother, bread winner, protector, defender of a group of helpless children, raised her to intellectual and industrial supremacy and made her the teacher and ruler of man. With such perfect freedom; independent, self-reliant, strong vigorous in mind and body, the old legends of contest between men and women for supremacy are not such idle dreams as some would have us suppose. Very dark shadows indeed do such figures as those of Ildico, Fredegunde and Brunhilde cast across the pages of history, Such women were only paralleled by the Clytemnestra and Medea of a like phase in Greek development. Among the Germans, too, the poets represent the contest between men and women for the mastery. Woudan replaces Hellja; Siegfried conquers Brunhilde; Beobulf, the offspring of Grindel and Thor, fights with Gialp and Griep, the daughters of Geirrod. One great element of physical and mental vigor is freedom, which women have never enjoyed except under the Matriarchate. The Amazons, the present body guard of the King of Dahomey, the astounding powers of endurance exhibited by domestic servants, the peasant girls of Southern Germany and Italy, and the fishwomen at Boulogne, all point to the great strength when once the physique has been developed. With such personal independence and superiority, such authority in the national councils, in religious faith, and at the fireside, with the absolute control of her own home, property and children, how did it come to pass that the mother was at last dethroned 146 and womanhood degraded in every nation on the globe? The mother’s labors had from an early period been re-inforced by those of her sons whose tastes led them to agriculture and the herding of cattle, to domestic life rather than that of the wandering nomad existence of the wily hunter, but this class was proportionally small. However, in process of time the home with its increasing comforts and attractions, fire, cooked food, and woman’s tender care in old age, sickness and death, the innocent prattle of children, the mother’s songs and stories, her religious faith and services, all appealed to the better feelings of the wily hunter also, and men began to think, when weary of the battle and the chase, that they would like a permanent foothold in some family group besides the one into which they were born. As soon as monogamic marriage appeared, with property and descent in the male line, and men found themselves comfortably ensconced in a home of their own, they began little by little to make aggressions, and in time completely dominated woman, leaving her no remnant of authority anywhere, neither in the home, at the altar, nor in the councils of the nation. But the victory of man over woman was not easily accomplished. It took long centuries to fully confirm it, and traces of the mother age remained throughout Mediaeval times. The permanency of sex relations among the agriculturalists and the necessity for organization in matters of defence, which must be entrusted mainly to men, were the beginnings of the father age. For though women had been compelled to fight for their own protection and were abundantly able to maintain the contest, yet wars for territory and conquests over other tribes and nations were opposed by all the tenderest sentiments of their nature. Hence they naturally of their own accord withdrew from the councils of war and the battle field, and still acted as angels of mercy to minister to the wounded and the dying. Thus man became ruler, tribal organizer, tribal father, before his position of sexual father was recognized. While the mother still ruled the house, “the Alvater” ruled the fight, though oftimes guided by the women. Driven from the commanding position of home mother, and deprived of her rights to property and children, the last fortress of the Teutonic woman was her sacerdotal privileges. She remained wholly as priestess. She had charge of the tribal sacrifice and the tribunal religion. From this last refuge she was driven by the introduction of the Christian religion, with its narrow Pauline doctrine, which made women mentally and physically the inferior of man, and lawfully in subjection to him. The spirit of the church in its contempt for women, as shown in the Scriptures, in Paul’s Epistles and the Pentateuch, the hatred of the fathers manifested in their ecclesiastical canons, and in the doctrines of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft, destroyed man’s respect for women and legalized the burning, drowning and torturing of women by the thousands. Women and their religious duties became objects of hatred to the Christian missionaries and of alternate scorn and fear to pious ascetics and monks. The priestess mother became something impure, associated with the devil; her lore an infernal incantation, and her cooking a brewing of poison, nay her very existence a source of sin to man. Thus woman, as mother and priestess, became woman as witch. The witch trials of the Middle ages, wherein thousands of women were condemned to the stake, were the very real traces of the contest between man and women. Christianity putting the religious weapon into man’s hand, made his conquest complete. But woman did not yield without prolonged resistance and a courageous final struggle. Driven from the home an outlaw and wanderer everywhere, ostracized by the State, condemned by the courts, crucified by the church, the supreme power of the mother of the race was conquered only by the angel of death; and the dark ages told her funeral knell. Thus in fraud, violence and superstition, the Patriarchate or father age, was established in a more cruel antagonism of sex than ever known before. With the scepter of power in his hands, man enforced one lesson in government and religion, in the civil and canon law, the subordination of woman. While they chanted the glory of motherhood in all their cathedrals round the globe, the contempt they taught for womankind was only equaled by the fear of her as a spirit of evil. Church and State united to make her subjection sure; Catholic and Protestant alike joined in the persecution. Luther and Calvin vied with St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine in their denunciations of the sex, while bishops and judges presided over witch trials far into the eighteenth century. The antagonism of sex under the Patriarchate has been so pronounced and persistent that the hateful fact cannot be doubted or denied. In the general advancement of civilization in the last century, woman has of necessity had some share. Laws and customs have been modified; opinions as to her nature and capacity essentially liberalized, but owing to the artificial conditions of her life, her civil and social evolution has been as unnatural, as would be that of a flower from its bud, or a bird from its egg, under an exhausted receiver. Hence her idiosyncrasies have been the puzzle of philosophers and the jest of wits in all ages. Every step in the progress she has taken has been met with ridicule, and opposition. Men have been unwilling to have her play a part in any role in which they were successful. Even such men as Carlyle and Wordsworth, of our own times had no patience with the literary ambition of women. The antagonism of sex amounted to such personal dislike, that they could hardly tolerate the presence of an authoress. It is said that after Miss Martineau took up her residence in Wordsworth’s neighborhood, this abhorrence to authoresses sometimes took such active expression that the deaf lady was frequently obliged to see what she could not hear, and perforce to recognize that her presence was unwelcome at Rydal Mount. On one occasion, after unsparingly condemning the work of Miss Sedgewick, he concludes his criticism thus: “Such productions add to my dislike of literary ladies —indeed, make me almost detest the name.” And farther on, we find the rather sweeping announcement that “blue stockingism is at enmity with true refinement of mind.” This last was said in reference to Sara Coleridge. On several occasions, of late years, French students in various institutions of learning have openly manifested their hostility to the presence of women at their lectures. Some eight years ago, when the late Prof. Caro, author of “L’Idee de Dieu,” drew from his philosophic lectures such fashionable and feminine crowds to the College de France, the students who were neither fashionable nor feminine invented a nickname for the ladies whose worship of M. Caro was the joke of the period. They were called “Carolines.” But the ladies were not to be ridiculed out of their taste for philosophy which they had so suddenly acquired; the lecture room became more than ever crowded by them. At length the students’ displeasure at this invasion broke out in a demonstration against the lecturer, whose attempts to speak were met with cries of “A bas Caro!” What took place then has been repeated recently at the Sorbonne. The students, becoming more and more irritated by the presence of ladies at M. Laroumiet’s lectures on French literature, interrupted the proceedings by singing songs which it is said were not selected on account of their fitness for feminine ears. They also imitated the clucking of hens with a veri-similitude that would have caused complete deception in the poultry- yard. When the lecturer asked for an explanation of this demonstration, the students shouted in reply, “No women, no women!” Over 200 young men united in these vulgar demonstrations. Similar insults have been offered women in London, Edinburg, Philadelphia and New York. While some men with untiring patience train elephants, horses and dogs to perform all manner of wonderful feats, others do all in their power to repress the ambition of women for higher educational advantages; and such is the conceit of these literary gentlemen that they imagine that women are struggling, not so much for a complete development of all their own faculties, as to rival men in their attainments. Heine, the German poet, says, “all authoresses write with one eye on their paper, and one on some man, except the Countess Hahn Hahn and she has but one eye.” Of women, as orators, men with no gift in that art themselves, have been equally free in their criticisms. Old Sam Johnson once said, “Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog standing on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised that it is done at all.” A complete collection of the sayings of great men about women, would make a very amusing document. I hope some of our younger coadjutors will make the attempt for our next national convention. Occupying the vantage ground we do today, we can afford to laugh at these spiteful criticisms. Voltaire’s satires on the antagonism of sex are worthy of note even in our day. “For more than a thousand years,” he says, “women have had the right to burn themselves; who of you would dare to change a law consecrated by time? Is there anything more respectable than ancient abuse?” “Reason is more respectable than ancient abuse,” replied Zadig, one of Voltaire’s heroes. But alas! how few will use their reason in combating the prejudices of custom and education. The antagonism of sex is so subtle and contradictory in its influences, that philosophers prefer to deny the hateful fact, instead of explaining the cause of its existence. But a little observation of national and family life shows us, that the more intimate the personal interests, the more bitter the antagonism, when roused by the love of domination. In church and family, quarters where all the most spiritual and tender influences are supposed to govern, we find the most irreconcilable hostility; and still more between the sexes by just so much as the relations of man and woman are identical and productive of the highest happiness of the race. Discord in the family produces disorder in all human affairs. If the masculine and feminine elements are not evenly balanced, we have just that disturbance in the world of thought, that we should have in the material world if it were possible to disturb the equilibrium of the centripetal and centrifugal forces. It is this antagonism of sex that is the chief cause of the present chaotic conditions of society. In think all reasonable men and women must be ready for the third experiment in government, in which the sexes shall have equal power. As their interests are identical, their highest happiness is in their perfect union with each other, no longer rivals striving for supremacy, but mutual helpers to a higher development, co-workers for a purer civilization. Having rehearsed the wrongs of women on our platform for the last half century, they are too well known to need repetition at this time. Mid the grandeur of our surroundings, and the great events we are here to celebrate, let us forget the sorrows and struggles of the past and turn with pleasure to the next form of civilization, whose rising sun already gilds the mountain tops of Wyoming and the venerable dome of St. Paul’s. England and America have vied with each other during the last half century in extending the civil and political rights of women. It is now four centuries since Columbus discovered America, and it has taken the descendants of the little colonies that followed in his wake all these years to discover that the chief factor in civilization is the mother of the race. Such has been woman’s progress in the last century, that it is too late now for her enemies to discuss her disabilities; the size of her brain, her emotional tendencies, her lack of reason, or to call “halt” to her onward march. Her recognition as a citizen in Wyoming has changed her status in the State from a subject to a sovereign; her status in the church has changed from a penitent at the confessional and the veiled soprano in the choir, to a priest at the altar, administering the sacraments and expounding the Scriptures; in the college she takes the highest prizes, in literature and mathematics; in the courts she has shown her knowledge of jurisprudence and constitutional law; and as physician she has an assured place in every nation on the globe. Thus she has proved her capacity wherever she has had the opportunity. With gymnasiums and the many schools we now have for physical culture, another generation will give us the grand women of the Matriarchate once more. And now woman claims her title deed to one half this Western Continent, which but for the faith and the jewels of Queen Isabella, the brave discoverer might never have reached. The honor accorded to woman in this great Exposition in the Queen City of the West, is one of the most encouraging signs of the times and marks the coming of that era prophecied by one of America’s greatest orators; “The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history” said Wendell Phillips” is that line of Tacitus in his ‘Germany’ which reads, ‘In all grave matters they consult their women.’ Years hence when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot squeamish scholarship and fastidious fashion, some second Tacitus, from the valley of the Mississippi, will answer to him of the Seven Hills, ‘In all grave questions we consult our women.”—Elizabeth Cady Stanton Readers of the Tribune should order a supply of the NATIONAL BULLETIN to enclose in letters or hand to friends. 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The three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, price $15.00, offered for twenty yearly subscribers to the WOMAN'S TRIBUNE. SPECIAL NEW PREMIUM. "The Woman Who Dares," by Ursula N Gestefield. "Here we have a well-written story with a noble purpose. It is a woman's novel, and by that I do not mean that it is intended only for women; on the contrary, it ought to be read by every man in America who has the brain, conscience, and refinement of nature to appreciate its masterly presentation of what is the simple right, nay, more, is the sacred duty of every married woman, to demand the absolute right to her own person in wedlock no less than out of wedlock. *** In the presentation of the vital thought found in these pages, Mrs. Gestefield has given us a superb piece of work. It is a story of great vitality. The author is a thoughtful and deeply spiritual woman. With the keen intuitive insight so often met with in profoundly spiritual natures, she has discerned one of the great moral crimes of the present." -- The Arena. Offered post-paid for four new subscribers to the WOMAN'S TRIBUNE or for $1 25. THE ANTAGONISM OF SEX. BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. [*Words 3160*] Much as the antagonism of different tribes, families, nations and religions has done all along the line of progress to check human development, the antagonism of sex has been more bitter and insidious, more dangerous and demoralizing, than all other influences together. Historians tell us there was a period in the evolution of the race when woman reigned supreme, deciding not only the limitations of her own rights and duties, but of man's also, treating him with more or less tyranny, as the customs of the time permitted. Woman's dynasty lasted for centuries, when through many and protracted struggles man gained supremacy, and used his power with tenfold more tyranny over woman than he had suffered at her hands. These two experiments have proved equally unsatisfactorily to the subject sex, and now fair-minded men and women are advocating a united government in State and Church, in which the sexes will be equally represented. In reply to this demand, we are told that woman always has been and always must be in subordination to man. Neither of these assertions is true. All the signs of the times point to the decadence of the Patriatchate, or father-age, and to woman's speedy emancipation. The long period of freedom that women enjoyed at the dawn of civilization, called the Matriarchate, or mother-age, is no mere dream of the past, but a fact well-established through many centuries, undisputed, accepted as natural and proper wherever it existed. It was plainly traced among the Aryans, the Germans, the Persians, and indications of it are still seen among uncivilized tribes and nations. Careful historians now show that the greatest civilizing power all along the pathway of natural development, has been found in the wisdom and tender sentiments growing out of motherhood. The women cultivated the arts of peace, the sentiment of kinship and all there was of human love and home life. The necessities of motherhood were the real source of all the earliest attempts at civilization. What man achieved at that period was due to the contest for food with his fellows and the wild beasts. He simply invented and improved weapons of warfare; but the woman, handicapped as she seemed to be by child bearing, became on this very account the main factor in human progress. Her varied responsibilities as mother, bread-winner, protector and defender of a group of helpless children, raised her to intellectual and industrial supremacy and made her the teacher and ruler of man. [*5*] With such personal independence and superiority, such authority in the national councils, in religious faith and at the fireside, with the absolute control of her own home, property and children, how did it come to pass that the mother was at last dethroned and womanhood degraded in every nation on the globe? In process of time the home, with its increased comforts and attractions, fire-cooked food, and woman's tender care in sickness, old age and death, appealed to the better feelings of the wily hunter, and men began to think, when weary of the battle and the chase, that they would like a permanent foothold in some family group except the one in which they were born. As soon as monogamic marriage appeared, with property and descent in the male line, and men found themselves comfortably ensconced in a home of their own, they began little by little to make aggressions, and in time completely dominated woman, leaving her no remnant of authority anywhere, neither in the home, at the altar, nor in the councils of the nation. But the victory of man over woman was not easily accomplished. It took long centuries to fully confirm it, and traces of the mother-age remained throughout mediaeval times. The permanency of sex relations among the agriculturists, and the necessity for organization in matters of defence, which must be entrusted mainly to men, were the beginning of the father-age. For though women had been compelled to fight for their own protection, and were fully able to maintain the contest, yet wars for territory and conquests over other tribes and nations were opposed by all the tenderest sentiments of their nature. Hence they naturally of their own accord, withdrew from the councils of war and the battlefield, and still acted as angels of mercy to minister to the wounded and the dying. [*5a*] Thus man became ruler, tribal organizer, tribal father, before his position as sexual father was recognized. While the mother still ruled the house, the father ruled the fight, though ofttimes guided by the women. The spirit of the Church in its contempt for woman as shown in the Scriptures, St. Paul's Epistles, and the Pentateuch, the hatred of the fathers as manifested in their ecclestiastical canons, and in the doctrines of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft, destroyed man's respect for woman, and legalized the burning, drowning and torturing of women by the thousands, Christianity putting the religious weapon into man's hand, made his conquest complete. But woman did not yield without prolonged resistance and a courageous final struggle. Ostracized by the State, condemned by the courts, crucified by the Church, the supreme power of the mother of the race was conquered only by the angel of death; and the Dark Ages tolled her funeral knell. Thus in fraud, violence and superstition, the Patriarchate or father-age was established is a more cruel antagonism of sex than ever before; with the sceptre of power in their hands, men enforced one lesson in [*5b*] government and religion, in the civil and canon law, the subordination of woman; while they chanted the glory of motherhood in all their cathedrals around the globe, the contempt they taught for womankind was only equalled by the fear of her as a spirit of evil. Church and State united to make her subjection sure; Catholic and Protestant alike joined in the persecution. Luther and Calvin vied with St Chrysostom and St. Augustine in their denunciation of the sex, while bishops and judges presided over witch-trials far into the eighteenth century, The antagonism of sex under the Patriarchate has been so pronounced and persistent that the hateful fact cannot be doubted or denied. In the general advancement of civilization in the last century, woman has of necessity had some share. Laws and customs have been modified, opinions as to her nature and capacity essentially liberalized, but, owing to the artificial conditions of her life, her civil and social evolution has been as unnatural as would be that of a flower from its bud, or a bird from its egg under an exhausted receiver. Hence her idiosyncrasies have been the puzzle of philosophers and the jest of wits in all ages. Every step in the progress she has taken has been met with ridicule and opposition. Men have been unwilling to have her play a part in any role in which they were successful. Even such men as Carlyle and Wordsworth, of our own times, had no patience with the literary ambition of women. The antagonism of sex amounted to such personal dislike that they could hardly tolerate the presence of an authoress. It is said that, after Miss Martineau took up her residence in Wordsworth's neighbourhood, this abhorrence to authoresses sometimes took such active expression that the deaf lady was frequently obliged to see what she could not hear, and perforce to recognize that her presence was unwelcome at Rydal Mount. On one occasion, after unsparingly condemning the work of Miss Sedgewick, he concluded his criticism this: "Such productions add to my dislike of literary ladies, indeed, make me almost detest the name," and further on we find the rather sweeping announcement that "bluestockingism is at enmity with true refinement of mind." This last was said in reference to Sara Coleridge. On several occasions of late years, French students in various institutions of learning have openly manifested their hostility to the presence of women at their lectures. Some years ago, when the late Professor Caro, author of "L'Idee de Diem," drew from his philosophic lectures such fashionable and feminine crowds to the College de France, the students, who were neither fashionable nor feminine, invented a nickname for the ladies whose worship of M. Caro was the joke of the period. They were not called "Carolines." But the ladies were not to be ridiculed out of their taste for philosophy which they had so suddenly acquired; the lecture-room became more than ever crowded by them. At length, the students' displeasure at this invasion [*5c*] broke out in a demonstration against the lecturer, whose attempts to speak were met with cries of "A bas Caro!" What took place then has since been repeated at the Sarbonne. The students, becoming more and more irritated by the presence of ladies at M. Laroument's lectures on French literature, interrupted the proceedings by singing songs which, it is said, were not selected on account of their fitness for feminine ears. They also imitated the clucking of hens with a verisimilitude that would have caused complete deception in the poultry yard. When the lecturer asked for an explanation of this demonstration, the students shouted in reply, "No women, no women!" Over two hundred young men united in these vulgar demonstrations. [*5d*] Similar insults have been offered women in London, Edinburgh, Philadelphia and New York. While some men with untiring patience train elephants, horses and dogs to perform all manner of wonderful feats, others do all in their power to repress the ambition of women for higher educational advantages; and such is the conceit of these literary gentlemen that they imagine that women are struggling not so much for a complete developing of their own powers and faculties, as to rival men in their attainments. Heine, the German poet, says, "All authoresses write with one eye on their paper and one on some man, except the Countess Hahn Hahn, and she has but one eye." Of women as orators, men with no gift in that line themselves have been equally free in their criticisms. Old Sam Johnson once said, "Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog standing on its hind legs. It is not done well, in either case, but you are surprised that it is done at all." De Bouflers said, "There will always remain something to be said of woman as long as there is one on earth." Heine said, "I will not affirm that women have no character, rather they have a new one every day." Michelet said, "Woman's happiness is in obeying. She objects to men who abdicate too much." Johnson says, "A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner than when his wife talks Greek." La Bruyere: "A man can keep another person's secret better than his own; a woman, on the contrary, keeps her secret, though she tells all others." De Feriod: "There are twenty-four hours in the day and not a moment of the twenty- four when a woman may not change her mind." Emerson: "'I like women,' said a clear- headed man of the world, 'they are so finished.' They finish society, manners, language. Form and ceremony are their realm." Emerson: "Women give entirely to their affections, set their whole fortunes on the die, lose themselves eagerly in the glory of their husbands and children." [*5e*] A complete collection of the sayings of great men about women would make a very amusing document. Occupying the vantage ground we do to-day, we can afford to laugh at these spiteful criticisms. Voltaire's satires on the antagonism of sex are worthy of note even in our day. "For more than a thousand years," he says, "women have had the right to burn themselves; who of you would dare to change a law consecrated by time. Is there anything more respectable than ancient abuse'? "Reason is more respectable than ancient abuse," replied Zadig, one of Voltaire's heroes. But, alas, how few will use their reason in combating the prejudices of custom and education. [*5f*] The antagonism of sex is so subtle and contradictory in its influences, that philosophers prefer to deny the hateful fact instead of explaining the cause of its existence. But a little observation of national and family life shows us, that the more intimate the personal interests, the more bitter the antagonism, when roused by the love of domination. In church and family quarters, where all the most spiritual and tender influences are supposed to govern, we find the most irreconcilable hostility; and still more between the sexes by just so much as the relations of man and woman are identical and productive of the highest happiness of the race. Discord in the family produces disorder in all human affairs. If the masculine and feminine elements are not evenly balanced, we have just that disturbance in the world of thought that we should have in the material world if it were possible to disturb the equilibrium of the centripetal and centrifugal forces. It is this antagonism of sex that is the chief cause of the present chaotic conditions of society. I think all reasonable men and women must be ready for the third experiment in government, in which the sexes shall have equal power. As their chief interests are identical, their highest happiness is in their perfect union with each other, no longer rivals striving for supremacy, but mutual helpers to a higher development, co-workers for a purer civilization. Having rehearsed the wrongs of women for the last half century, they are too well-known to need repetition; let us forget the sorrows and struggles of the past and turn with pleasure to this next form of civilization, whose rising sun already gilds the mountain tops of Wyoming [*5g*] and the venerable dome of St. Paul's. England and America have vied with each other during the last half century in extending the civil and political rights of [*wo*] men. It is now four centuries since Columbus discovered America, and it has taken the descendants of the little colonies that followed in his wake all these years to discover that the chief factor in civilization is the mother of the race. [*5h*] Such has been woman's progress in the last century that it is too late now for her enemies to discuss her disabilities, the size of her brain, her emotional tendencies, her lack of reason, or to call "halt" to her onward march. Her recognition as a citizen in four Western States has changed her status from a subject to a sovereign; her status in the Church has changed from a penitent at the confessional and the veiled soprano in the choir, to a priest at the altar, administering the sacraments and expounding the scriptures; in the colleges she takes the highest prizes in literature and in mathematics; in the courts she has shown her knowledge of jurisprudence and constitutional law; and as physician she has an assured place in every nation on the globe. Thus she has proved her capacity wherever she has had the opportunity. With gymnastics, and the many schools we now have for physical culture, another generation will give to us the grand women of the Matriarchate once more. And now woman claims her title-deed to one-half this Western continent which, but for the faith and the jewels of Queen Isaabella, the brave discoverer might never have reached. The honor accorded to woman in the great Exposition in the Queen City of the West, is one of the most encouraging signs of the times, and marks the coming of that era prophesied by one of America's greatest orators. "The first glimpse of Saxon blood we get in history," said Wendell Phillips, "is that line in Tacitus in his 'Germany', which reads, 'In all grave matters they consult their women.'" Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot squeamish scholarship and fastidious fashion, some second Tacitus from the valley of the Mississippi will answer to him of the Seven Hills: "In all grave [questions] [*matters*] we consult our women." [*5i*] Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.