mediate stages, covering the whole historic period thus far, man
has sought to justify himself in monopolizing authority.

The first argument of the master was the argument, prompted by the
unneutralized selfish instincts, that the mere possession of power to
rule, gives the right to rule. Muscular superiority is, by intrinsic
fitness and necessity, divinely installed to reign. Woman, as "the
weaker vessel," must obey. Such a mode of thought was unavoidable,
and had its legitimate ages of sway. But no moralist would dream of
adopting it, after the conscience has advanced to the stage of
general principles, has risen into the region of disinterested
sympathy or justice. No one would now consciously employ this
argument to maintain the subjection of women; yet in multitudes,
below the stratum of their conscious thoughts, it blindly upholds
that subjection. A single consideration is enough to show the logical
absurdity of the assumption. If men are entitled to the exclusive
enjoyment of political privileges, simply because they have more
physical might, then, by the same principle, among men themselves,
the weak should be subject to the strong. But the very purpose of
law, the moral essence of civilization, is to rectify the natural
domination of strength, and bring all before a common standard.

The argument from intellectual inferiority is as vacant as that from
muscular inferiority. In the first place, it is an open question
whether women, as a whole, are inferior in mind to men. Many
intelligent judges firmly believe, that, taken as a whole, they are
superior. Cornelius Agrippa wrote a book in 1509, entitled "The
Nobility of the Female Sex, and the Superiority of Woman over Man."
Lucretia Marinella published a book at Venice, in 1601, undertaking
to prove the superiority of her sex to the other. A book entitled "La
Femme Genereuse," an attempt to demonstrate "that the women are more
noble, more polite, more courageous, more knowing, more virtuous, and
better managers than the men," was published at Paris, in 1643.
Madame Guillaume also published at Paris, in 1665, a work called "Les
Dames Illustres," devoted to the proof of the proposition that the
female sex surpasses the masculine in all kinds of valuable
qualifications. Mrs. Farnham devotes her book "Woman and her Era,"
published in New York in 1864, to the support of the same thesis,
with new arguments and illustrations. That woman is intellectually
superior to m