ts day, would seem rather conservative
now; and in America, that pious and worthy dame, Mrs. H. Mather Crocker,
Cotton Mather's grandchild, who, in 1848, published the first book on the
"Rights of Woman" ever written on this side the Atlantic.

Meanwhile there have never been wanting men, and strong men, to echo these
appeals. From Cornelius Agrippa and his essay (1509) on the excellence of
woman and her preeminence over man, down to the first youthful thesis of
Agassiz, "Mens Feminae Viri Animo superior," there has been a succession of
voices crying in the wilderness. In England, Anthony Gibson wrote a book,
in 1599, called "A Woman's Woorth, defended against all the Men in the
World, proving them to be more Perfect, Excellent, and Absolute in all
Vertuous Actions than any Man of what Qualitie soever, _Interlarded with
Poetry_." _Per contra_, the learned Acidalius published a book in Latin,
and afterwards in French, to prove that women are not reasonable creatures.
Modern theologians are at worst merely sub-acid, and do not always say so,
if they think so. Meanwhile most persons have been content to leave the
world to go on its old course, in this matter as in others, and have thus
acquiesced in that stern judicial decree with which Timon of Athens sums up
all his curses upon womankind,--"If there sit twelve women at the table,
let a dozen of them be--as they are."

Ancient or modern, nothing in any of these discussions is so valuable as
the fact of the discussion itself. There is no discussion where there is no
wrong. Nothing so indicates wrong as this morbid self-inspection. The
complaints are a perpetual protest, the defences a perpetual confession. It
is too late to ignore the question; and, once opened, it can be settled
only on absolute and permanent principles. There is a wrong; but where?
Does woman already know too much, or too little? Was she created for man's
subject, or his equal? Shall she have the alphabet, or not?

Ancient mythology, which undertook to explain everything, easily accounted
for the social and political disabilities of woman. Goguet quotes the story
from Saint Augustine, who got it from Varro. Cecrops, building Athens, saw
starting from the earth an olive-plant and a fountain, side by side. The
Delphic oracle said that this indicated a strife between Minerva and
Neptune for the honor of giving a name to the city, and that the people
must decide between them. Cecrops thereupon assembled the