Germany be encouraged as much as possible, in order that even the most
learned immigrants may discover something new.




CHILDLESS WOMEN


It has not always been regarded as a thing creditable to woman that she was
the mother of the human race. On the contrary, the fact was often
mentioned, in the Middle Ages, as a distinct proof of inferiority. The
question was discussed in the mediæval Council of Maçon, and the position
taken that woman was no more entitled to rank as human, because she brought
forth men, than the garden-earth could take rank with the fruit and flowers
it bore. The same view was revived by a Latin writer of 1595, on the thesis
"_Mulieres non homines esse_," a French translation of which essay was
printed under the title of "_Paradoxe sur les femmes_," in 1766. Napoleon
Bonaparte used the same image, carrying it almost as far:--

"Woman is given to man that she may bear children. Woman is our property;
we are not hers: because she produces children for us; we do not yield any
to her: she is therefore our possession, as the fruit-tree is that of the
gardener."

Even the fact of parentage, therefore, has been adroitly converted into a
ground of inferiority for women; and this is ostensibly the reason why
lineage has been reckoned, almost everywhere, through the male line only,
ignoring the female; just as, in tracing the seed of some rare fruit, the
gardener takes no genealogical account of the garden where it grew. This