eel,
and the same law of progress makes the woman of to-day a different
woman from her grandmother.

With these brief replies to the oft-repeated objections made by the
opposition, we hope to rouse new thoughts in minds prepared to receive
them. That equal rights for woman have not long ago been secured, is
due to causes beyond the control of the actors in this reform. "The
success of a movement," says Lecky, "depends much less upon the force
of its arguments, or upon the ability of its advocates, than the
predisposition of society to receive it."

CHAPTER I.

PRECEDING CAUSES.

As civilization advances there is a continual change in the standard
of human rights. In barbarous ages the right of the strongest was the
only one recognized; but as mankind progressed in the arts and
sciences intellect began to triumph over brute force. Change is a law
of life, and the development of society a natural growth. Although to
this law we owe the discoveries of unknown worlds, the inventions of
machinery, swifter modes of travel, and clearer ideas as to the value
of human life and thought, yet each successive change has met with the
most determined opposition. Fortunately, progress is not the result of
pre-arranged plans of individuals, but is born of a fortuitous
combination of circumstances that compel certain results, overcoming
the natural inertia of mankind. There is a certain enjoyment in
habitual sluggishness; in rising each morning with the same ideas as
the night before; in retiring each night with the thoughts of the
morning. This inertia of mind and body has ever held the multitude in
chains. Thousands have thus surrendered their most sacred rights of
conscience. In all periods of human development, thinking has been
punished as a crime, which is reason sufficient to account for the
general passive resignation of the masses to their conditions and
environments.

Again, "subjection to the powers that be" has been the lesson of both
Church and State, throttling science, checking invention, crushing
free thought, persecuting and torturing those who have dared to speak
or act outside of established authority. Anathemas and the stake have
upheld the Church, banishment and the scaffold the throne, and the
freedom of mankind has ever been sacrificed to the idea of protection.
So entirely has the human will been enslaved in all classes of society
in the past, that monarchs have humbled themselves to popes, nations