260 The Position of Woman. 



an acquisition or, better, an outcome, a late flower 

 of the ineradicable root of morality. 



If, as Plato supposes, reverence and justice were 

 the primal gifts of God to man, then it was not 

 until there had been some tillage in earthly life 

 that they blossomed into fidelity, chastity, and all 

 the charities of the family. How this quickening 

 of moral discernment is brought about we cannot 

 always explain ; but the process of development 

 may in some cases be actually traced, notably in 

 the history of Rome. At the foundation of the 

 city, wife-stealing was the practice ; this was fol 

 lowed by purchase and legalized dominion under 

 patria potestas but in the course of several cen 

 turies the equal personality of woman came to be 

 recognized, and Roman jurisprudence secured her 

 a position as exalted as ever she has occupied 

 in the history of the world. Her glory was of 

 short duration, perishing with the fall of the 

 empire ; but it has been regained under the in 

 spiration and teaching of a religion which pro 

 claims the infinite worth and, consequently, the 

 fundamental equality of every human being, and 

 which exacts in the relations between the sexes 

 such perfect purity that all distinction vanishes 

 between the look of lust and the act of adultery. 



As conjugal relations among mankind are not 



