Part 13 (1/2)

* Maine's ”Ancient Law,” 158.

It has always been uphill work fighting the Church. So long as it had sword and f.a.got at its command, and the will to use them; so long as it pretended to have, and people believed that it had, power to mete out d.a.m.nation to its opposers; just so long were science, justice, and thought fatally crippled.

But when Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet and the great encyclopedist circle of France got their hands on the throat of the Church, and dipped their pens in the fire of eloquence, wit, ridicule, reason, and justice, then, and not till then, began to dawn a day of honor toward women, of humanity and justice and truth. They drew back the curtain, the world saw, the cloud lifted, and life began on a new plane. Under Pagan rule woman had begun, as we have seen, to receive recognition apart from s.e.x. She was a human being. A general law of ”persons” applied to and s.h.i.+elded her. But from the first the Christian Church refused to consider her apart from her capacity for reproduction; and this one ground of consideration it p.r.o.nounced a curse, a crime, and a shame to her. Her only claim to recognition at all was a curse. She was not a person, she was only a function.*

* See Lea's ”Sacerdotal Celibacy.”

Man it p.r.o.nounced a person first, with rights, privileges, and protection as such. Incidentally he might also be a husband, a father, or a son. His welfare, duties, and rights as a person, as a human being, were apart from and superior to those that were special and incidental.

He received consideration always as a person. He _might_ be dealt with as husband or father.

But ignoring all her mental life and denying that she had any, and ignoring all her physical possibilities, ambitions, desires, and capabilities as a person, the Church narrowed woman's life and restricted her energies into a compa.s.s where its power over her became absolute and her subjection certain. Nor has the loss been wholly to woman, for any influence which cripples the mother's capacity of endowment takes cruel revenge on the race.*

* ”It is not impossible but that a more correct understanding of the laws of life and heredity may establish the fact that because of the subjection of woman, the entire race has been mentally dwarfed and physically weakened.”

--Gamble.

From this outlook the debt of civilization to the Church is heavy indeed. Is it a debt of grat.i.tude?

Under this head there is s.p.a.ce for but one point farther, out of the great store at hand.

The clergy were licensed to commit crime. They got up a neat little scheme called ”benefit of clergy” by which they were secure from the punishment meted out to other criminals. The relief offered did sometimes reach other men, but as learning was largely confined to the clergy they were the chief beneficiaries, as the name implies and as was the intent of the law. Any man who could read was allowed ”benefit of clergy;” in other words, his punishment was lightened or entirely omitted. But a woman, though she were a perfect mine of wisdom and could read in any number of languages, could receive no such benefit, _because she could not take holy orders_. They first enacted that she should not take orders, and then they denied to her the relief which only that ability could give. So great a favorite was woman with the Church!

The ordinary male criminal received the ordinary punishment, the clergy received none; and in order that the requisite gross amount of suffering for crime should be inflicted on somebody, the clergy enacted that woman should receive _their_ share vicariously in addition to her own, and then to this they added such interest as would make the twenty-per-cent-a-month men of Wall street ashamed of their stupid financiering.

Thus the Church arrogated to itself the exclusive right to commit crime with impunity, and also claimed and exercised the right to prevent women from learning to read. If she still persisted it could then punish her doubly, _because she had no right to learn_.

For offenses for which ordinary men were hanged, women were burned alive, and priests were glorified. For larceny a man was branded in the hand or imprisoned for a few months; while _for a first offence_ of the kind a woman was kindly permitted to be hanged or beheaded _without benefit of clergy_; and the clergy went scot free.* The Church did then as it does now, it claimed all the benefits of citizens.h.i.+p and paid none of the penalties and bore none of the burdens.**

* Blackstone. Christian.

** It still claims exemption from taxation, thus throwing its burden on others; and it also claims immunity from the very gambling laws which it so rigidly enforces against other inst.i.tutions.

The Church did then just as it does now, in principle, in setting up certain great benefits which _only priests might hope to obtain, and then enacting that certain persons were forever ineligible to the priesthood_; and the same or quite as good reasons were given for denying women such relief from the penalties of the law as was freely extended to men, as are given to-day for refusing her the liberty, emoluments, and benefits that are freely accorded to the most imbecile little theological student who is educated by the needle of a sister and supported by money wrung from the fears of shop or factory girls, to whom he paints the terrors of h.e.l.l, and freely threatens the same to those who disobey him. Salvation comes high, but no preacher ever gets so poor that he cannot distribute h.e.l.l free of charge to the mult.i.tude without the least diminution of his stock-in-trade.

I should think that an orthodox pulpit would be about the last place a self-respecting woman would wish to fill; but I am glad, since there are some who do so wish, that the issue has again been forced upon the Church, and that in 1884, true to her history, she was again compelled to acknowledge herself a respecter of persons, a degrader of women, and a clog to progress and individual liberty, equality, and conscience.

I am glad that women have recently forced the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches to declare their principles of cla.s.s preference and partial legislation. I am glad that in 1884 these Churches were compelled to say in effect to women, so that the world could hear: ”You are not and you never can be our equals. We are holy. You are unclean. We will hold you back and down to the ancient level we made for you just as long as the life is in us; and if you ever receive recognition as a human being, it must be at the hands of those who defy the Church and hate creeds that are not big enough to go all round. Our creeds are only large enough to give each s.e.x half. But we won't be stingy, we only want our share. You are entirely welcome to all the degradation here and all the d.a.m.nation hereafter; and any man who attempts to deprive you of these blessings is a heretic and a sinner. Let us pray.”

EDUCATION.

In dealing with this point the humor of the situation is too plain to require comment, and I need only cite a few facts in order to place the beautiful little fiction where it belongs.*

* See Appendix T.

As to general education it is well known that the Church has fought investigation and persecuted science. From the third century to Bruno, and from Bruno to Darwin and Tyndall there is an unbroken chain of evidence as to her position in these matters and her opposition to the diffusion of knowledge. When, however, it became impossible for her to resist the demand of the people for education; when she could no longer r.e.t.a.r.d liberty and prevent the recognition of individual rights; then she modestly demanded the right to do the teaching herself and to control its extent and scope.*

With a brain stultified by faith** she proposed to regulate investigations in which the habit of faith would necessarily prove fatal to the discovery of truth.*** She proposed to teach nothing but the dead languages and theology, and to confine knowledge to these fields, and she succeeded for many generations in so doing. Every time she found a man who had discovered something, or who had a theory he was trying to test by some little scientific investigations, she cried ”heretic” and suppressed that man. She stuck to the dead languages, and the only thing she is not afraid of to-day is something dead. Any other kind of knowledge is a dangerous acquaintance for her to make. ****

If you meet a clergyman to-day who has devoted his time to the dead languages you need not be afraid that he is a heretic; but if he is studying the sciences, arts, literature, and history of the living world in earnest you can get your f.a.got ready. His orthodoxy is a dead doxy.