because she has been systematically degraded: but why was she degraded?
This is a far deeper question,--one to be met only by a profounder
philosophy and a positive solution. We are coming on ground almost wholly
untrod, and must do the best we can.

I venture to assert, then, that woman's social inferiority has been, to a
great extent, in the past a legitimate thing. To all appearance, history
would have been impossible without it, just as it would have been
impossible without an epoch of war and slavery. It is simply a matter of
social progress,--a part of the succession of civilizations. The past has
been inevitably a period of ignorance, of engrossing physical necessities,
and of brute force,--not of freedom, of philanthropy, and of culture.
During that lower epoch, woman was necessarily an inferior, degraded by
abject labor, even in time of peace,--degraded uniformly by war, chivalry
to the contrary notwithstanding. Behind all the courtesies of Amadis and
the Cid lay the stern fact,--woman a child or a toy. The flattering
troubadours chanted her into a poet's paradise; but alas! that kingdom of
heaven suffered violence, and the violent took it by force. The truth
simply was, that her time had not come. Physical strength must rule for a
time, and she was the weaker. She was very properly refused a feudal grant,
by reason, say "Les Coustumes de Normandie," of her unfitness for war or
policy: _C'est l'homme ki se bast et ki conseille_. Other authorities put
it still more plainly: "A woman cannot serve the emperor or feudal lord in
war, on account of the decorum of her sex; nor assist him with advice,
because of her limited intellect; nor keep his counsel, owing to the
infirmity of her disposition." All which was, no doubt, in the majority of
cases, true; and the degradation of woman was simply a part of a system
which has, indeed, had its day, but has bequeathed its associations.

From this reign of force, woman never freed herself by force. She could not