Evening star., 1925-05-19
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
/. G.. Nj.
THE STORY OF WOMAN. w.
George. Harper & Brothers.

George. Harper & Brothers.
Since woman has played vital and
certainly an exclusive role in the
continuance of the earth as a going
concern, it is both important and de-
sirable to be able to scan the long,
long trail by way Of which she has
come upon today and stands facing
upon tomorrow.
In the large manner of the modern
time calculator w. l.. George tosses
aside 10000 years, more or less. and
sets us down in that dim neolithic
day when man was like some sort
of animal" the male and female OF
the species, say like the tiger and
tigress, with many a thousand years
yet to come before them Is born be-
tween them any ineligible idea of
the man and the woman.
An enormous progression, the one
we are to make. Therefore, the strides
set to accomplish 1t are those of some
gigantic Gargantua, pacing off cons
and eras in place of mere centuries.
X X
A long backward leap and we are
within sight of neolithic men, only
about 10000 years away from now.
Here the tribes takes on definition.
| And the old man of the tribe STANDS
clear, owning all the women and ap-
propriating them to his various needs
of food and covering and comfort.
Death to a younger male VINO so
| much as touches one of these chattels
the dawn of the taboo, here. These
younger males for their own food and
cover and comfort must go out and
| rape women from other groups, be-
coming each in turn the old man or
! his own newly constituted tribe, set
| ting up his own monopoly in the
women whom he has seized. Plunder,
property, slaves-such are the women
of this time and long succeeding times.
1t takes another enormous reach or
years before the idea of the one wife
arises. This, we discover did not,
after all, spring from divine injunc-
ton, as we have SO piously been led
to believe. Monogan1y rose out Of the
question of food rather. The old man
of the tribe his powers falling, found
his multitudinous drove of females a
| drug upon him, creating food prob
lem, scanting his own supply, giving
| much more cover than he desired. Of
fering comfort that he could not take.
| It is out of such dilemma that the
great institution Of monogamy first
| looked feebly out upon the world,
waymark in the progress of woman.
x X x
Another long unrolling of the cen
turies and we come upon the He
brews who originated the wife idea
in a recognizable approximation to the
concept now lying within this term. A
great factor, this, in the story here
coming to light. The Hebrews were
| the first to seize upon the moral
| basis of national life and, aided by
their racial exclusions, the first to
make use of that order and justice
upon which the modern state is
| reared. In this particular connection,
the most important fact of the He
brew moral law is the invention of
! the wife idea out of the rags and tat
| ters of the old neolithic notion of the
wife as property and slave.
X X
! Among the Greeks, still nearer to
| us. rose the cult of the courtesan, the
| intelligent and educated woman set
! off against the dull and ignorant wife
/ as the rule then was. Out of this cult
the point of special interest here
came the first hint of feminism in the
| Intellectual revolt Of Sappho and As
pasta and their kind against the sit
uation of woman in the scheme of
Grecian life. With the Romans this
revolt still went on to a degree, though
| these prime organizers of the world
organized marriage among other
| lIllSS liElleHllS II up III Ger Idll
forms and legalities generally favora-
BILE to the advance of women.
X X X
Christianity, the most important
event not only in all history, but in
! the history of advancing woman as
we'll This has proved to be the only
growing and adaptable religion. What
ever excellencies other religions may
have they have remained static. Chris
| tianity has, on the contrary, shaped
itself to the changing needs of man.
| has fitted itself into diverse situations.
1t is this flexibility that has in great
measure included woman as well as
| man in its divine ameliorations and
assuagements. Broadly speaking
Christianity tended from the begin
ming to set woman distinctly further
on her way of individual and collec-
| tive advance.
Then the dark ages with no light for
any manner of human. Then, the
Renaissance, when troubadours began
| to sing of love and chivalry, of knights
and ladies'. When there grew up that
age of talk-men and women talking
| together, analyZing the emotions and
the heights to which they soar when
brave men devote themselves to the
service Of fair women. This means
that in the midst of so great a flow
| Of words there must have been some
thinking on the part of women as we'll
as on that of men. This stir of the
mind set many woman of that day
definately and enduringly into the
great story of the worlds general ad-
vance, into the story of womans
progress. And all through the seven
! teenth and eighteenth centuries the
women kept on talking, drawing for
| substance from the general movement
| around them, movement calculated
| to make women think intellectually,
| rather than morally, as they had been
thinking in the period just behind
| them. Rousseau, Montesquieu, Vol
! taire are their masters. These three,
| the founders of the eighteenth cen-
the restless skeptical eighteenth CEN
| tury, the restless, skeptical eighteenth
century, a curious forerunner of the
dull, heavy, respectable nineteenth
century"
| X X X X
There are certain surprising dis
closures along the way of these pro-
crossing ages. So much that we have
been taught to assign to mans in
| stinctive goodness or to Gods i'm
| maculate intent turns out to be sheer
eXpediency, shabby eXpediency, too, at
| times. The one-wife eidea-monogamy
Ia food expedient. Love, a growth
| out of the mire, not "a miracle out of
! heaven. The kiss-a recent inven.
| tion-at first no more than the ram
| pant nuzzling Of the male, not the
ethereal symbol of the most delicate
| of illusions. Modesty, device-of the
| devil Anatole France says-sourced
| certainly in no very exalted state of
mind, in no very high conception of
| morality. And, most recent of all, re-