# A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII.
WE are in the torture department. I shall not describe its sickening details. It contains all the vile instruments devised by Christians for producing physical agony—considered by our ancestors so very essential in their conversion of persons to faith in the unreasonable. While reflecting upon the indisputable fact that hundreds of thousands so suffered rather than profess to believe what they could not—or belie their reason—my heart leaps at thought of their courageous truth! and a feeling of happy pride rushes into my mind, knowing that in Australasia human beings have never suffered such cruel tests by civilized laws, in the name of the Infinite!—Also at knowing that we are entering a region of thought that will bring benevolence into our minds. The real religion—a religion not needing dungeons and red-hot pincers, but born of reason and real reverence for the Great Mind—having sincerity for basis, with bright hope in the future for everyone.
Creeds built on unreason, savagery and hypocrisy can nowhere stand. They must away into the black past, with other outcomes of our tiger blood! Ponder well, oh myth-men all. The sooner you bow to truth, the sooner will you know a nobility of happiness at present so unknown to you.
We stop before a case labelled "Appliances for voluntary torture, used chiefly by women. Some families of notably small minds continued the practices even to the end of the twentieth century, when they were finally abolished—some ​in consequence of growing intelligence, and some by Parliamentary measures."
Among many articles, the use of which is unknown to my memory, are rings for ears, nose jewels, boots, and stays. By their side a fossil skeleton, with its ribs cruelly bent and displaced.
The elder lady turns to her niece, saying:—
"Here, Syra, are the barbaric implements used by our progenitresses in their ignorance of physiology and crude notions of beauty. Doubtless you will think your pretty apology for hasty expression of erroneous judgment was scarcely due when I tell you the first examination of these bones misled all the naturalists of the day; for, after many meetings and learned discussions, it was concluded that they must have belonged to an extinct variety of ape, until one doctress Verax, in her travels, met with more of those fossil bones, and at last, after several years' careful study and research, satisfactorily proved them human, and the new shape to have been caused by some barbaric distortionary process, all of which was subsequently verified by our valuable records. An authority, for what I endeavour to impart to my dear girls, so incontrovertible that I cannot help feeling a little surprise at their doubts."
To which Syra answers, in a gentle but determined voice:
"I was very wrong, dear aunt, to have uttered any word which might have sounded like doubt in your extensive knowledge, and the more so that I thereby led Consuelo into the same shallow judgment. It is all too clearly true (looking sadly at the models before her). Pierced their flesh to hang therein toys of ornamented metal or stones! Human kind must, indeed, have been low! Deformed the beautifully designed body in ignorant vanity that they could ​improve it! And these were human beings! Ah, yes, it is too true—and being so (her magnificent eyes flash blindingly), I think every one of these most degrading records of our origin should be utterly destroyed, and all means taken to lose memory of them. When I take my seat in the senate I will frame and introduce a measure for the accomplishment of so desirable a termination. And I . . ."
"Not yet, my sweet rebel," says a deep musical voice.
Two noble-looking gentlemen had entered behind the girls' seats, and listened amusedly to the impassioned words Syra had uttered very grandly. Her expression changes to one of bright glad welcome as she rises to greet her father who continues, with the kindest look I have yet seen in man's eyes:—
"Not yet, Syra. When youth can learn this marvellous plan of human progression, with minds and hearts of obedient resolve, it might be time to efface much that is so sickening in detail. But while students receive such instruction with rebellious feeling, and eyes ablaze with the nation of vanity at hearing they have sprung from these poor ancestors, they are living proofs that the time has, unfortunately, not yet arrived. Nay, say nothing now. Do you not hear mid-day song? Think upon all you have heard and said this morning during your reflection hour, and give me wiser results tomorrow for I shall then be able to take your aunt's place in gallery lectures."
While he had been speaking the other gentleman had entered into conversation with the instructress. As their eyes met, I read marriage in the utmost loveliness and purity. Their every glance shows the great fidelity and lasting affection which can spring only from the mutual respect of one equal for another in that life-long bond. No ​base concealments in either. No more-than-half-mock deference on one side, received hypocritically with ill-disguised disgust on the other—too often to be seen in the so-called unions of my era. How different is the real union of these very dear friends and companions! Of all enchanting experiences in this far-away age, I have met none more beautiful, more elevating, or so fully expressive of true happiness as the loving and most honorable bond everywhere existing between married persons. Such can never exist between master and slave; neither can it ever grow between self-styled superiors and those they have been taught to consider their inferiors. There never was, and never can be, so high a union while law places one above the other, whether that one be so in reality or not. There are very few marriages where ability is equally balanced—in some the woman's is greater, in some the man's. This natural supremacy, if justice reigned, would adjust itself without heartburnings to any; but so long as law makes one sex dominant—by virtue of sex only—and to that one gives all honors, and opens every avenue to distinction, to the exclusion of the grandest intellect—if the owner be not of that sex—there can reign nothing but disaster everywhere. For the offspring of marriage under such iniquitous laws can only be so much increase to the injustice, deceit, oppression, and all degrading wrongs which have polluted, and still pollute, communities, high and low, past and present, throughout the whole world. For noble happiness to exist between wife and husband, there must be perfect equality of world power. Their interests are the same—the advancement of their species—and one can no more accomplish that without the other than perpetuate it without the other. The time must come when women shall unite with men in ​the construction of laws which affect every human being. For educated women are producing talented and conscientious men. Every one such man is an assurance of future justice, and consequent progress in the world. Neither sex could quite define what enactments are necessary for the other. There is but one righteous method for arriving at what is wisest and just—namely, their combined judgement on their united interests. Every other can only result in failure, as is daily to be seen.
Some there are who say: "If we permit woman to go beyond her sphere (?), domestic duties will be neglected." In plainer language, "If we acknowledge woman is human, we shall not get so much work out of her."
I wonder the most foolish, even of male fools, are not sick and ashamed of uttering such silly, shallow objections. To hear those men discuss the question one would imagine if women had the franchise they would of necessity be voting from morning until night every day of their lives, to the complete neglect of everything conducive to man's comfort. Do merchants or professional men neglect business because they are allowed power to vote? Do mechanics or labourers neglect their work because they have the right to record their opinion upon the merits or demerits of candidates for legislation? If voting or reflecting upon whom to vote for interfered with duties, then by their own ruling it would be far more likely to do so with men—because they assert that their occupations require more thought than those of women. Now most of woman's work, at present, only requires pretty strong muscles and patience. She has, therefore, more time for thinking about the world's economy than have men; and she does think often more deeply than men, who, with their grosser comprehension, failing to ​understand hers are perfectly satisfied in calling her "stupid."
I can assure these objectors to progress that when woman no longer has occasion to fret under disabilities, which are hers in common with criminals and lunatics, her tasks will be far more cheerfully performed. Her long hours of toilsome drudgery will be brightened by the feeling that she is more than a broom or incubator; equally with men a power in the State—no longer to be treated as a born inferior by every male imp over twelve years of age. She will reflect upon the various qualifications of the candidates, with her great powers of observation and deduction. She will remember who may have proved themselves deficient in truth and ability, and she will record her vote against such candidates—for woman performs all her work conscientiously—and will not fail when raised to a dignified position. Faculties, which in many are now little more than latent in her, as in the larger number of men, will rapidly develop to the progression of all human kind.