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 
honour and veneration, or to hold her 
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 
Woman in Eu- 
ropean society. 
The lady. 
