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Women and the Alphabet - A Series of Essays by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
page 82 of 269 (30%)
let him stay there; but, as it is not his recognized sphere of duty, he is
not actually violating any duty by absenting himself. This theory even
pervades our manuals of morals, of metaphysics, and of popular science; and
it is not every public teacher who has the manliness, having once stated
it, to modify his statement, as did the venerable President Hopkins of
Williams College, when lecturing the other day to the young ladies of
Vassar.

"I would," he said, "at this point correct my teaching in 'The Law of Love'
to the effect that home is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and civil
government that of man. _I now regard the home as the joint sphere of man
and woman, and the sphere of civil government more of an open question as
between the two._ It is, however, to be lamented that the present agitation
concerning the rights of woman is so much a matter of 'rights' rather than
of 'duties,' as the reform of the latter would involve the former."

If our instructors in moral philosophy will only base their theory of
ethics as broadly as this, we shall no longer need to advertise "Homes
Wanted;" for the joint efforts of men and women will soon provide them.




THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION


Nothing throws more light on the whole history of woman than the first
illustration in Sir John Lubbock's "Origin of Civilization." A young girl,
almost naked, is being dragged furiously along the ground by a party of
naked savages, armed literally to the teeth, while those of another band
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