70 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



exist in the old Aryan religions, which had their 

 gods and goddesses, priests and priestesses. 

 They do feel that the rule of the priest may be 

 something: higher than the rule of the house- 

 hold despot. Religious teachers have under- 

 stood that their success must depend on their 

 winning the mothers of the race. When will 

 political leaders come to recognise the same ? 



No woman is to speak in the congregation ! " This is an 

 admirable illustration of the ecclesiastical and sentimental 

 theory of womanhood a worship that professes to exalt 

 woman whether the Madonna or das Ewig- Weibliche 

 above man, combined with a refusal of rationality that sinks 

 her beneath him. The same thing appears in quarters 

 where we should less expect it. Thus we find the late Mr. 

 Laurence Oliphant, who with many protests against the cor- 

 ruption of the Churches, builds up on a strangely unscien- 

 tific foundation what professes to be a new " scientific " 

 religion, and who proclaims a higher code of morals, based 

 mainly on the elevation of women, yet denouncing, like a 

 Catholic or a Comtist priest, the agitation for " women's 

 rights " and " the higher education of women," and main- 

 taining the very retrograde and (in these days) immoral 

 doctrine that women have no responsibility with regard to 

 public affairs. {Scientific Religion, pp. 316, 324.) In fact, the 

 " Divine Feminine " or " Woman" with a very big capital 

 is one of the worse enemies that women have to contend 

 with in their struggle towards recognition as complete and 

 responsible human persons. 



