324 



FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



women more arrogant and overbearing; so that one is 

 occasionally reminded of the holy apes in Benares, 

 who, in the consciousness of their sanctity and inviol- 

 able position, think that they can do exactly as they 

 please. 



" But in the West the woman, and especially the 

 lady, finds herself in a false position ; for woman is by 



no means fit to be the object of our 

 Woman in Eu- honour and ven eration, or to hold her 

 ropean society. . 



head higher than man and be on equal 



terms with him. It would be a very desirable thing if 

 this 'number two ' of the human race were in Europe 

 also relegated to her natural place, and an end put to 

 that lady-nuisance, which not only moves all Asia to 

 laughter, but would have been ridiculed by Greece and 

 Rome as well. It is impossible to calculate the good 

 effect which such a change would bring about in our 

 social, civil, and political arrangements. There will be 

 no necessity for the Salic law ; it would be a superfluous 

 truism. In Europe, the lady, strictly so called, is a 

 being who should not exist at all ; she 

 should be either a housewife or a girl 

 who hoped to become one; and she should be brought 

 up not to be arrogant, but to be thrifty and submissive. 

 It is just because there are such people as ladies in 

 Europe that the women of the lower classes that is to 

 say, the great majority of the sex are much more un- 

 happy than they are in the East. And even Lord Byron 

 says : ' Thought of the state of women under the an- 

 cient Greeks convenient enough. Present state a rem- 

 nant of the barbarism of the chivalric and the feudal 

 ages artificial and unnatural. They ought to mind 

 home, and be well fed and clothed, but not mixed in 

 society. Well educated, too, in religion, but to read 

 neither poetry nor politics, nothing but books of piety 



