The morning is breaking.
CHAPTER VIII.
Famous Women of Antiquity.
It has been so often asserted that women are incompetent to form any
thing like correct opinions on civil or political questions, or to
govern with discretion, even when by chance the reins are committed to
their control for a brief season; and that they have always been found
so; and, also, that they are naturally incapable of a sufficiently great
degree of mental effort to entitle them to celebrity,--that the
statement has come to be regarded as a fact by the masses, who have
lacked either the ability or the desire to investigate the matter. With
the majority of men, as such assertions fostered their love of power,
and the idea of their own self-consequence, it was natural for them to
accept them without question, as undoubted truth. With women, until
within the present century, the facilities for acquiring an education
have been so meagre that, except where they were possessed of both a
large fortune and an unlimited amount of perseverance, they had slight
opportunities for acquiring accurate information on that or any other
subject. What their fathers, husbands, or brothers told them, they might
believe if they chose; for the rest, to the very large majority of
women, history was a sealed book; so that, for want of correct
information, they were not in a position to contradict any assertion,
however extravagant, untruthful, or absurd it might be.
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