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B44 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Homer D.C.L And .M. The P. For Homeric T...
what forms the business of some men ' s lives , conscious of our own weakness , we are not about to break a lance over Greek
terminations , or to call into question the general theories and speculations which give point and zest to this work . With one department only
shall we concern ourselves , a department which comes peculiarly . within our province .
" Woman in the Homeric Age is the title Mr . Gladstone gives to Section IX . of his voluminous work , and it is somewhat startling
to find him set out with what seems to his mind a confutation of the theory of progressionso justly dear to the hearts of all lovers
, of mankind , and to all believers in the great destinies of humanity . Being avowedly among this number ourselves , the opening sentence
of this section not a little startled and surprised us . Says Mr . Gladstone : —
" No view of a peculiar civilization can on its ethical side be satisfactory , And unless , besides it k include bl , the as a position even distinct on special of consideration the Greek grounds woman of to the require p of lace the held separate heroic in age it and b is y detaile in woman itself d .
what notice so remar it . became It is , likewise in the historic so elevated , of both Greece absolutel and y Home and in amidst comparison their elabo with - ages
of rate those civilization writers , who as to can form see in in itself the history a sufficient of mankind confutation only the of development the theories of a law of continual from intellectual darkness into lightand
progress , from moral degradation up to virtue . " We were , therefore , not a little relieved to find , almost
immediately affcer , the acknowledgment that : — bined called " Within _influence the Teutonic the of pale the manners of Christian that civilization as secondary religion which as we paramount has find grown the , and idea up of under of what woman the may com and be
-But her social it would position be hard raised to to discover a point even any p hi , erio gher d of than history in the or poems country of Homer of the . of world the , heroic not being age . Christian " , in which they stood so high as with the Greeks
Now it seems to us that the question of progression conceded , it matters little under what dispensation that progression has taken
place . The history of woman , * like the history of the world , shews us high points of attainment from which retrogression has
followed . Granting , that the women of the historic ages of Greece and Rome did retrograde in position and influence from the Greek
Women of the heroic age , to attain a higher development under the " combined influence of the Christian religion as paramount ,
and of what may be called the Teutonic manners as secondary , " that fact furnishes no sounder argument against the general law of
progression as applied to woman than does the decadence of Rome against the law of progression as applied to nations . As a recent
author has it : ——" learn It is to from predict the history the future of a of world a world , not from Progress the history belong of s a to nation humanity , that
not we Rome or Greece . A certain type of . social existence is _developed , then , a higher type is subsequently developed . It matters not in whether remote this arts is of done the
world within . the The same progress city , which or the hxunanity same neig has hbourhood made is , or equally clear p , "
B44 Notices Of Books.
B 44 _NOTICES OF BOOKS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Jan. 1, 1859, page 344, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01011859/page/56/
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