It is an opinion pretty well established, that in strength of mind, as
well as of body, men are greatly superior to women.
Men are endowed with boldness and courage, women are not. The reason is
plain, these are beauties in our character; in theirs they would be
blemishes. Our genius often leads to the great and the arduous; theirs
to the soft and the pleasing; we bend our thoughts to make life
convenient; they turn theirs to make it easy and agreeable. If the
endowments allotted to us by nature could not be easily acquired by
women, it would be as difficult for us to acquire those peculiarly
allotted to them. Are we superior to them in what belongs to the male
character? They are no less so to us, in what belongs to the female
character.
Would it not appear rather ludicrous to say, that a man was endowed only
with inferior abilities, because he was not expert in the nursing of
children, and practising the various effeminacies which we reckon lovely
in a woman? Would it be reasonable to condemn him on these accounts?
Just as reasonable, as it is to reckon women inferior to men, because
their talents are in general not adapted to tread the horrid path of
war, nor trace the mazes and intricacies of science.
The idea of the inferiority of female nature has drawn after it several
others the most absurd, unreasonable, and humiliating to the sex. Such
is the pride of man, that in some countries he has considered
immortality as a distinction too glorious for women. Thus degrading the
fair partners of his nature, he places them on a level with the beasts
that perish.
As the Asiatics have, time immemorial, considered women as little better
than slaves, this opinion probably originated among them. The
Mahometans, both in Asia and Europe, are said, by a great variety of
writers, to entertain this opinion.
Lady Montague, in her letters, has opposed this general assertion of the
writers concerning the Mahometans; and says that they do not absolutely
deny the existence of female souls, but only hold them to be of a
nature inferior to those of men; and that they enter not into the same,
but into an inferior paradise, prepared for them on purpose. Lady
Montague, and the writers whom she has contradicted, may perhaps be both
right. The former might be the opinion which the Turks brought with them
from Asia; and the latter, as a refinement upon it they may have adopted
by their intercourse with the Europeans.
This opinion, however, has had but few votaries in Europe: though some
have even here maintained it, and assigned various reasons for so doing.
Among these, the following laughable reason is not the least
particular--"In the Revelations of St. John the divine," said one, whose
wife was a descendant of the famous Xantippe,[1] "you will find this
passage: _And there was silence in heaven for about the space of half an
hour_. Now, I appeal to any one, whether that could possibly have
happened, had there been any women there? And, since there are none
there, charity forbids us to imagine that they are all in a worse place;
therefore it follows that they have no immortal part: and happy is it
for them, as they are thereby exempted from being accountable for all
the noise and disturbance they have raised in this world."
In a very ancient treatise, called the Wisdom of all Times, ascribed to
Hushang, one of the earliest kings of Persia, are the following
remarkable words: "The passions of men may, by long acquaintance, be
thoroughly known; but the passions of women are inscrutable; therefore
they ought to be separated from men, lest the mutability of their
tempers should infect others."
Ideas of a similar nature seem to have been at this time, generally
diffused over the East. For we find Solomon, almost every where in his
writings, exclaiming against women; and, in the Apocrypha, the author of
Ecclesiasticus is still more illiberal in his reflections.
Both these authors, it is true, join in the most enraptured manner to
praise a virtuous woman; but take care at the same time to let us know,
that she is so great a rarity as to be very seldom met with.
Nor have the Asiatics alone been addicted to this illiberality of
thinking concerning the sex. Satirists of all ages and countries, while
they flattered them to their faces, have from their closets scattered
their spleen and ill-nature against them. Of this the Greek and Roman
poets afford a variety of instances; but they must nevertheless yield
the palm to some of our moderns. In the following lines, Pope has
outdone every one of them:
"Men some to pleasure, some to business take;
But every woman is at heart--a rake."
Swift and Dr Young have hardly been behind this celebrated splenetic in
illiberality. They perhaps were not favorites of the fair, and in
revenge vented all their envy and spleen against them. But a more modern
and accomplished writer who by his rank in life, by his natural and
acquired _graces_, was undoubtedly a favorite, has repaid their kindness
by taking every opportunity of exhibiting them in the most contemptible
light. "Almost every man," says he, "may be gained some way, almost
every woman any way, can any thing exhibit a stronger caution to the
sex?" It is fraught with information; and it is to be hoped they will
use it accordingly.
[1] Xantippe, was the wife of Socrates, and the most famous scold
of antiquity.