"
No one who has ever loved mother or wife, sister or daughter, can read
without astonishment and pity St. Chrysostom's description of woman as "a
necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic
peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill."
In few respects has mankind made a greater advance than in the relations
of men and women. It is terrible to think how women suffer in savage life;
and even among the intellectual Greeks, with rare exceptions, they seem to
have been treated rather as housekeepers or playthings than as the Angels
who make a Heaven of home.
The Hindoo proverb that you should "never strike a wife, even with a
flower," though a considerable advance, tells a melancholy tale of what
must previously have been.
In _The Origin of Civilization_ I have given many cases showing how small
a part family affection plays in savage life. Here I will only mention one
case in illustration. The Algonquin (North America) language contained no
word for "to love," so that when the missionaries translated the Bible
into it they were obliged to invent one.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133