Part 5

Of all the changes which I can chronicle as of my own time, the change in the position of women is perhaps the most marked and the least anticipated by the world at large. Whatever opinions heroic men and women may have held concerning this from Plato's time to our own, the most enlightened periods of history have hardly given room to hope that the sex in general would ever reach the enfranchisement which it enjoys to-day. I date the assurance of its freedom from the hour in which the first university received women graduates upon the terms accorded to pupils of the opposite sex. For education keeps the key of life, and a liberal education insures the first conditions of freedom, viz., adequate knowledge and accustomed thought. This first and greatest step gained, the gate of professional knowledge and experience quickly opened, and that of political enfranchisement stands already ajar. The battle can have but one result, and it has been fought, with chivalrous temper and determination, not by one sex against the other, but by the very gospel of fairness and justice against the intrenched might of selfish passion, inertia, and prejudice. Equal conditions of life will lift the whole level of society, which is so entirely one body that the lifting or lowering of one half lifts or lowers the other half. This change, which in the end appeared to come suddenly, has been prepared by such gradual tentatives, by such long and sound labor, that we need not fear to lose sight of it in any sudden collapse. There are women of my age, and women of earlier generations, who have borne it in their hearts all their lives through, who have prayed and worked for it, without rest and without discouragement. Horace Mann was its apostle, Theodore Parker was its prophet, Margaret Fuller, Lucy Stone, and a host of wise and true-hearted women, whom the time would fail me to name, have been its female saints. It was in nature; they have brought it into life; even as Christ said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The slender thread which crossed the dark abyss of difficulty was not the silken spinning of vanity, nor the cobweb fibre of madness. From the faith of pure hearts the steadfast links were wrought, and the great chasm is spanned, and is ready to become the strong and sure highway of hope, for this nation and for the nations of the earth.

The customs of society prescribe the mental garb and gait proper to those who desire the favorable notice of their peers in their own time. As these are partly matters of tradition and inheritance, we can learn something of the merits and demerits of a generation by studying the habits of familiar judgment which it hands down to its successor. A narrow, ill-educated generation leaves behind it corresponding garments of rule and prescription, to which the next generation must for a time accommodate itself, because a custom or a fashion is not made in a day. The rulers of society seem often more occupied in dwarfing the mind to suit the custom than in enlarging the custom so as to fit it to the growth of mind. The most dangerous rebellions, individual and social, are natural revolts against the small tyranny which perpetuates the insufficiency of the past.

The copper shoes which so cramp the foot of a female infant in China as to destroy its power of growth, are not more cruel or deleterious than are the habits of unreflecting prejudice which compress the growth of human minds until they, too, lose their native power of expansion, and the idol Prejudice is enthroned and worshipped by those on whom it has imposed its own deformity as the standard of truth and beauty.

The heavy tasks which nature imposes upon women leave them less at leisure than men to reform and readjust these inherited garments. The necessity for prompt and early action obliges them to follow the intuitive faculties, as all must do who have not time to work out the problems of the reasoning ones. The instinct of possession is a ruling one in human nature, and a woman inheriting a superstition or a prejudice holds fast to it because it is something, and she has got it. It seems to her a possession. It may be a mischievous and unfortunate one, but it will take a good deal of time and thought to find that out. Those who have the training of women's minds often train them away from such a use of time and from such a labor of thought. Hence the fatal persistence of large classes of women in superstitions which the thinking world has outgrown, and the equally fatal zeal with which they impose the same insufficient modes of judgment upon their children.

I pray this generation of women, which has seen such enlargements of the old narrow order regarding the sex, I pray it to deserve its high post as guardian of the future. Let it bequeath to its posterity a noble standard of womanhood, free, pure, and, above all, laborious.

The standard of manhood really derives from that of womanhood, and not _vice versa_, as many imagine. However we may receive from tradition the order of their material creation, in that of training and education, the woman's influence comes before that of the man, and outlasts it.

The figure of the infant Christ dwells always in our mind, accompanied by that of the gracious mother who gave Him to the world. Let the fact of this great gift prefigure to us the august office of Woman. Hers be it also to preserve and transmit from age to age the Christian doctrine and the Christlike faith. And, in order that she may fully realize the glory and blessedness of giving, let her remember that what is worthily given to one time is given to all time.

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UNIFORM WITH ARNOLD'S POEMS.

THE LIGHT OF ASIA; OR, The Great Renunciation.

Being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince of India and Founder of Buddhism (as told in verse by an Indian Buddhist).

BY EDWIN ARNOLD, M.A.

"It is a work of great beauty. It tells a story of intense interest, which never flags for a moment; its descriptions are drawn by the hand of a master with the eye of a poet and the familiarity of an expert with the objects described; its tone is so lofty that there is nothing with which to compare it but the New Testament; it is full of variety, now picturesque, now pathetic, now rising into the noblest realms of thought and aspiration; it finds language penetrating, fluent, elevated, impassioned, musical always, to clothe its varied thoughts and sentiments."--OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, _International Review_, October, 1879.

"In Mr. Edwin Arnold, Indian poetry and Indian thought have at length found a worthy English exponent. He brings to his work the facility of a ready pen, a thorough knowledge of his subject, a great sympathy for the people of this country, and a command of public attention at home."--_Calcutta Englishman._

"'The Light of Asia' is a remarkable poem, and worthy of a place amongst the great poems of our time. Mr. Arnold is far more than 'a coiner of sweet words'--he is the exponent of noble impressions. He is a scholar and a philosopher; but he is also a true singer."--_London Daily Telegraph._

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(_Dedication._) TO THE SCHOLARS OF THE HIGH AND NORMAL SCHOOL.

For you this sketch was written: permit me to dedicate it to you, in fact, to intrust it to your care. Pupils to-day, to-morrow you will be teachers; to-morrow, generation after generation of youth will pass through your guardian hands. An idea received by you must of necessity reach thousands of minds. Help me, then, to spread abroad the work in which you have some share, and allow me to add to the great pleasure of having numbered you among my hearers the still greater happiness of calling you my assistants. E. LEGOUVE.

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The plan thus happily foreshadowed will be immediately inaugurated by the publication of "MERCY PHILBRICK'S CHOICE," from the pen of a well-known and successful writer of fiction.

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Punctuation has been normalized.

On page 52 "immediatly" changed to "immediately". "... the generation immediately preceding my own."

On page 54 "self-dicipline" changed to "self-discipline". "Without self-discipline and self-sacrifice...."

On page 61 "superflous" changed to "superfluous." "... with superfluous irrelevancies...."

On page 72 "religous" changed to "religious." "... will be the religious trainers...."

On page 72 capitalization in "Who" retained as printed.

On page 86 "aginst" changed to "against." "... revolts against the small tyranny...."