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310 MODEEN INCONSISTENCY.
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.
If In The World Of Matter, Singular, And...
aspect of the country , or of tlie manners and customs of its people , we ive more credence to his narrative tlian we should to one who
liad g never been there and who had only picked up his information from hearsay . If an exile or a prisoner gives us his experience of
either or of both conditions , we believe that he can more truly depict his sorrows or his sufferings than a man who has never slept
within a prison cell or been a wanderer on an unknown shore . But all this argument is reversed in the case of woman and her
affairs , her feelings , or her wishes . " It is unwise , " says our inconsistent law-giver , to listen to women ; " they feel too much when
they talk of themselves . " " They are not so badly off as they suppose . " _" The more they getthe more they crave , and it is useless
, to pay attention to their demands . " But surely , when in other matters so much virtue , so much
wisdom , so much patience and forethought are asked for in women , their voice ought to have a certain weight in all laws or discussions
relating to themselves . An education ought to be given to them , not to aid weakness or vanitybut to strengthen mind and body alike . So
many are the _Linmeaning , stereotyped phrases current about women , which have a sound of beauty in the words yet contain scarcely an
atom of truth , that it is a pity men do not dissect them , and , finding them untrueuse others in their steadin order to prevent such
, , misconceptions or delusions . _"Were this done , less inconsistency would be met with in either sex .
" A wise conviction" ( says a wise writer of the present day ) "is like light ; it gradually dawns upon a few minds ; but a mist
rises also with this dawn of light . The day , however , goes on , the light rises higher and spreads furtherand is more intense ; growth of
all kinds takes place silently , and without , any great demonstration . This light permeatescolorsand enlarges all it shines upon . " He
goes on with such , remark , s , and to what follows we especially direct attentionas a truth which cannot be too often or too
strongly enunciated , . " Modes of action are not so much wanted as habits of thought ; and this is what is most wanted on the
subject of either the education or the position of women . " Nothing can be truer than these words , for it is " a wise conviction" which
is required , like the dawn , not only to chase away the shades of night , "but to disperse by its brightness the heavy mists which still hang as
a thick veil over the vexing theme . So time-honored is the subjectthat we find a learned Spaniard who flourished in the last
century , writing an essay " in defence or vindication of the women ;" an author who obtained the name of the Spanish Addison , his
works being devoted to the refutation of error and the removal of prejudice . A selection comprising four volumes was published in
1780 , translated by an English gentleman . We quote the first few lines of the introductionto show that the mist was there , much as
, it is now : —
" I enter upon a serious and difficult undertaking , in the prose cu-
310 Modeen Inconsistency.
310 MODEEN INCONSISTENCY .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Jan. 1, 1862, page 310, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01011862/page/22/
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