raft and the
secret of superstition. Women are everywhere the chief, and in
some places the only, supporters of religion. Even in Paris, where
Freethinkers abound, the women go to church and favor the priest.
Naturally, they impress their own views on the children, for while the
father's influence is fitful through his absence from home, the mother's
is constant and therefore permanent. Again and again the clergy have
restored their broken power by the hold upon that sex which men pretend
to think the weaker, although they are obviously the sovereigns of every
generation. Men may resolve to go where they please, but if they cannot
take the women with them they will never make the journey. Women do
not resist progress, they simply stand still, and by their real,
though disguised, rule over the family, they keep the world with them.
Freethinkers should look this fact in the face. Blinking it is futile.
Whoever does that imitates the hunted ostrich, who does not escape his
doom by hiding his head. The whole question lies in a nutshell. Where
one sex is, the other will be; and there is a terrible, yet withal a
beautiful, truth in the upshot of Mill's argument, that if men do not
lift women up, women will drag men down. In the education and elevation
of women, then, lies the great hope of the future. Leading Freethinkers
have always seen this. Shelley's great cry, "Can man be free if woman be
a slave?" is one witness, and Mill's great essay on _The Subjection of
Women_ is another.

Go where you will, you find the priests courting the women. They act
thus, not because they despise men, or fear them, but because they
(often unconsciously) feel that when they have captured the "weaker"
sex, the other becomes a speedy prey. Perhaps a dim perception of this
truth hovered in the minds of those who composed the story of the Fall.
The serpent does not bother about Adam. He just makes sure of Eve, and
she settles her "stronger" half. Milton makes Adam reluct and wrangle,
but it is easy to see he will succumb to his wife's persuasions. He
swears he won't eat, but Eve draws him all the time with a silken
string, mightier than the biggest cable.

When the Christian monks were proselytising at Rome, they were hated,
says Jortin, "as beggarly impostors and hungry Greeks who seduced ladies
of fortune and quality." Hated, yes; but what did the hatred avail?
The women were won, and the game was over. Men growled, but they had to
yield. The