The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1889-10-09
A BACKWARD GLANCE.
Tho Advance Of Civilization and the Reign
Of Christianity Bringing. Woman For
ward 20 Her Piace Beside Man.

aCVciS SCPSsN ~ w otu YOU SNcT vi" dtu,
have women occupied the favorable
position which they do at present-fa-
vorable for their own special develop
ment, and favorable for the race.
In the earlier, the purely savage
state they were perhaps as much the
equal of their mates as the lioness and
tigress are now; indeed, science init
mates that they were something more.
Be all that as it may, civilization had
to take an apparent step backward and
downward in order to bring them any
where near another and a better sort OF
equality. As the more beautiful among
them were sought, pampering and in
diligence made them tenderer and
weaker doubtless, till they lost equality
and became dependents. With that
they were easily made the spoil OF war,
the capture from the hostile tents,
slaves, whether kindly or tyrannically
entreated. and with hardly, more
chance OF deepening their natures or
charging their souls than they might
have had were the Mohammedan faith
the true one-the faith which teaches
that they have no souls. There was
but one way then to any happiness or
comfort for them, but one way to win
any hearts desire for themselves
or their children, and that
was through the good will of
the chief, the master. the lord. or
that Of his favorite, and that good will
had to be obtained at any cost. Help
less and weak, timid as helpless weak
ness makes one. their only arts were
love and cunning, and where one of
these would not answer, it had to be
supplemented by the other. II the
master nature had in it elements of
justice, the cunning was not needed;
but that was probably not too fire.
quently the case. Through all the
subsequent regimes. ever charging
and ennobling. women have not en-
tirely succeeded in Kidding themselves
of the whole of the effect OF this stage
OF their existence in the race, and sly
ness and subtlety are traits against
which many of them-but. thank Heav-
en-! not all--have yet to struggle. Civ
ilization had gone very far indeed be-
fore women left this condition OF SUBJ
lection. Only inseparate and not alto
gether admirable instances were they
free from it even so late as the time of
the best Greek conditions. 1t was a
nominal freedom that they had in Rome,
where one wife was the rule, but where
the freedom of divorce was a nullify-
ing and destroying Offset. 1t was in
the Hebrew life that women first re-
ceiyed any due share OF recognition at
a time when the harem, or the zenana,
or its equivalent, was nearly every
where else the rule The poetical and
sacred character of womarM6od had
been recognized in Miriam, in
Deborah, in Anna; and in the
custom of the one wife the initial
point Of the. real family had
started. But civilization seems to work,
like leaven through the whole lump
and not in separate parcels; for just as
we have at the time OF the European
renaissance, without any known com
munication, renaissance of the same
sort in the islands of the farthest East
SO the custom Of having but one wife
presently prevailed in Rome and il
many other places, as if by common
consent. Women then with the Ger
mans were sort of priestesses; the.
ruled in way as strongly as if b.
force. Expeditions were undertaken a
ter will, were abandoned if they for
babe, and their blessing was strivel
for But great as advance had by thi
time become, greater yet was the ad
vance that chivalry and the spirit o
the crusades effected. There had doubt
less been individual love and worship
before; but now it was general, so t.
speak; no one beautiful woman was s.
much to be reverenced as womanhoo
itself. This half poetical, half relig
ious reverence, extended to the Who'll
sex, was not so enrolling to women a
to men themselves; it did men vastl
more good than it did the feeble wome
mewed in cages and receiving an aim
of worship. The act of worship wa
ennobling to the worshiper, and one
lifted TO the plane where he could Sc
the real worth OF woman, man has nc
receded, aud every advantage that sh
has since gained has been given to he
by the man who might have withheld
it.
1t was then, among the people of
pure and grand religion. where NOR,
law existed of the straitest sort, tn;
woman first rose from the mere dus
, respecting lerself as she received r.
spect, feeling her first thrills OF aspir
ton. And it was under the develop
| ment Of this same religion in its lovel
: est and loftiest life that she became tt
object OF tender regards that she cease
Il to be a slave, that the world W,
opened to her to use according to h,
; powers, and in the lines marked out
her own nature, its limitation here, i
boundlessness there. 1t is under Il
! reign of Christianity that woman h
come to her full opportunity and h
taken her place beside man; it is und
the benignant law of the leader who
first recorded word after the stone h;
been rolled from the sepulcher W