The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864, page 99 by Various Authors
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the highest rule of all. Slowly, slowly, though surely, is the world ascending, through the wondrous secret chain of influences binding her to the moral order of the universe, to the height of this supernal law of love; and there, in that new and holy kingdom, woman's crown and sceptre await her.
But who shall say that a glimmer of this future royal beauty and glory has yet dawned upon her?
If man has misunderstood woman, she has none the less misunderstood herself. Indeed, her feet have for ages been treading debatable ground, that has shaken beneath her through the clashings of man's ignorance and her own vague, restless clamors and aimlessness. She has felt the stirrings within of that real being she was created, but has never dared to assert herself, or, to speak more truly, has only known to assert herself in the wrong direction. False voices there have been without number, but not even yet has true womanhood been able, in spite of its irrepressible longings, to utter that clear, free, elevated speech that shall yet stir the keenest pulses of the world.
As it is, the world has nearly outgrown the petty jealousy, the cool assumption of inferiority, the flippant criticism of her weaknesses, the insulting catering to her foibles, with which woman has been accustomed to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all oppression and injustice practised upon her has been sure in the end to rebound upon himself. If there is one thing more than another which, at any given period and in any particular nation, has pointed to the true state of society along the scale of advancement, it has been the degree of woman's elevation; the undercur