444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In other ways a like relation of cause and eiFect is shown us during 

 the progress of European societies since Roman times. 



Respecting the status of women in mediaeval Europe, Sir Henry 

 Maine says : 



" There can be no serious question that, in its ultimate result, the disruption 

 of the Eoman Empire was very unfavorable to the personal and proprietary lib- 

 erty of women. I purposely say ' in its ultimate result,' in order to avoid a 

 learned controversy as to their position under purely Teutonic custom." 



Now, leaving open the question whether this conclusion applies beyond 

 those parts of Europe in which institutions of Roman origin were least 

 affected by those of Germanic origin, we may, I think, on contrasting 

 the condition of things before the fall of tlie empire and tlie condition 

 after, infer a connection between tliis decline in the status of women and 

 a return to greater militancy. For while Roman power held together 

 the populations of large areas, tliere existed throughout them a state of 

 comparative internal peace ; whereas its failure to maintain subordina- 

 tion was followed by universal warfare : producing from time to time 

 larger aggregates and again dissolutions of them, until the disintegra- 

 tion had reached the stage in which tJjere existed numerous feudal gov- 

 ernments mutually hostile. And then, after that decline in the position 

 of women which accompanied this retrograde increase of militancy, 

 the subsequent improvement in their position went along with aggre- 

 gation of smaller feudal governments into larger ones, which had the 

 result that within the consolidated territories the amoimt of diffused 

 fighting deci'eased. 



Comparisons between the chief civilized nations as now existing, 

 yield vei'ilications. Note, first, the fact, significant of the relation 

 between political despotism and domestic despotism, that, according 

 to Legouve, Napoleon I. said to the Council of State, "Un mari doit 

 avoir un empire absolu sur les actions de sa femme ;" and that sundry 

 provisions of the Code, as interpreted by Pothier, carry out this dic- 

 tum. Further, note that, according to De Segur, the position of women 

 in France declined under the empire ; and that " it was not only in 

 the higher ranks that this nullity of women existed. . . . The habit 

 of fighting filled men with a kind of contempt and asperity which 

 made them often forget even the regard which they owed to weak- 

 ness." Passing over less essential contrasts now presented by the 

 leading European peoples, and considei'ing chiefly the status as dis- 

 played in the daily lives of the poorer rather than the richer, it is 

 manifest that the mass of women have harder lots where militant or- 

 ganization and activity predominate, than they have where there is a 

 predominance of industrial organization and activity. The sequence 

 observed by travelers in Africa, that in proportion as the men are 

 occupied in war more labor falls on the women, is a sequence which 

 both France and Germany show us. Social sustentation has to be 



