Henrietta Dugdale

“ It should always be the aim of woman to rise from the degrading position assigned her in the age of bestial ignorance and brute power. To rise, by noble thought and act, until man, in very shame, yield her her fair share of world's advantages, which he continues to usurp, partly from ignorance and partly from little-mindedness, but always blindly as to the wrong he is working to the whole of the human species. ”

“ Act energetically to aid our poor sisters, or how will you bear the company of their sad spirits when all meet in another life, each alike divested of everything earthly, having only thought and memory remaining? Let us work while we have the power! Build a refuge—to be both school and home—but into which let no "myth-men" or other myth-teachers enter, to preach and weary the poor refugees into monotony and bewilderment with vain endeavors to think over, and believe in, the unreasonable or impossible. Show them good, and awaken reverence for good by your own acts. ”

“ I tell you, women, it is woman's duty to try to save, help and raise woman—it matters not how fallen. You know too well such wrongs exist. To feign ignorance and practise indolence of thought is not virtue. If any of you are really ignorant of the deplorable sink into which so many thousands of our sex have been plunged, and from which they now find it impossible to rise, seek the truth for yourselves. ”

“ They move towards another alcove at the extreme end of the gallery. Most womanly women are these! I know not which most to admire—the wisdom, tenderness and benevolence of the instructress, the earnest love and respect of Consuelo, or the resolute, fearless, truth-seeking, affectionate deference of Syra. A noble mind, grandly expressed in her dazzling countenance, has this girl. Though so immature now, she will rule herself and mount in knowledge until she become one of the foremost philosophers of her century. ”

“ SOME will expect me to describe the clothing worn by these enchanting human beings. I am so very ignorant of dress language that I fear being unable to make my impressions understood by such seekers for information. They may be certain that wisdom is not wrapped in swaddling clothes. Here is far more uniformity of make than in my era; yet—and many will think this strangely inexplicable—the individuality of each person is far more apparent than is to be found in my era, where absurdities are so closely followed that it is difficult to tell one ninny from another. ”

“ While reflecting upon the indisputable fact that hundreds of thousands so suffered rather than profess to believe what they could not—or belie their reason—my heart leaps at thought of their courageous truth! and a feeling of happy pride rushes into my mind, knowing that in Australasia human beings have never suffered such cruel tests by civilized laws, in the name of the Infinite!—Also at knowing that we are entering a region of thought that will bring benevolence into our minds. ”

“ Yes, fierce and terrible to reflect upon has been the domination of ignorance! The further we examine into the evolution of our species, the more terrible will it show itself to have been. The more fully will it prove beyond all other proofs, our low origin. The lower we proceed in our researches shall we find the suffering it caused of such magnitude and hideousness that it cannot fail to create in our minds firm and lasting resolves not to be drawn, though in never so little a degree, within its deadening circle. ”

“ When we know the creed of a nation we can judge correctly as to its ethics. If the creed be of an impossible or debasing nature the ethics will be found to correspond. We may deplore the ignorance which caused so much wrong-doing and suffering, but must not abase our own higher minds by condemning those poor men because they had not the knowledge that, except in extraordinary instances, can only be born of time and experience—a knowledge that grew as slowly as their change of bodily structure. ”

“ WHAT a happy age is this far-off one! No skeletons of mythology are here deadening or vitiating one-seventh of these people's lives. How different are their faces to those of my century!—where nine-tenths are stamped the hideous seal of hypocrisy. ”

“ One feels it is everything! and one wishes for nothing else. When the last notes have faded away, the mind has calmed, and the rushing world seems more orderly in its progress. After more than an hour of this travelling we slacken speed. Beneath us pass along enormous boulders, rocks, precipices and high cliffs. A broad white beach, miles in length, rises to us and gently receives our carriage.
A few other carriages are here also. My darlings alight, and joyfully meet some young friends, among whom are their cousins, Carl and Justina, who, I hear, are coming to practise glees this evening. ”

“ Not with vicious dogmas, or wearying, witless traditions of our ape-like ancestors, but with woman's pitying, helping love for the helpless and defenceless. Remember they are women, with woman's feelings—having woman's nature to suffer and endure heroically. Alas, so crushed!—But only crushed. They could rise from all their sad mistakes and wretchedness if you would but hold a hand to them. And you, especially, who possess wealth and influence with, happily for yourselves, time to effect such good work. You are the women who could most accomplish. ”

“ Understand, my darlings, I refer not to lack of rote learning alone—where that is the sole knowledge, the possessor is often but a tiresome bookcase. To the study of others' written ideas we should always add our own. We must try more for the learning which honest thought gives—thought, that wordless, powerful prayer to the Infinite Mind, which is never without result. A person without daily habit of thought is but a child in all high knowledge, while also losing curb over what of brute may be in her or his nature. ”

“ No stream of poisonous filth, running with ferocious delight on its deathly errand. No besotted-looking creatures offending passers-by with debasing language. No jails. No knots of babbling men standing around entrances to public-houses, vieing with each other for destruction of intelligence. Indeed, such things so pitiable could not be for here are no such houses. No ill-fed, barefooted, unclean children, learning the probationary steps to scoundrelism. No suffering animals, urged by cruelty to overtax their strength. ”

“ In those words, my son, I grieve to read yet something remaining of your origin. They betray just a trace of the vanity which so perniciously opposed justice and progress in that transition age. It forms the one great lesson learnt from our valuable records. The nearer we approach the primordial savage the greater the amount of vanity we find. None can say either the immense length of time required to bring humankind even to the stage of improvement, with which you feel so dissatisfied or the probably still longer period to come during which progress will continue. ”

“ By the time we reach our own brightly happy era, both my dear student will acknowledge that there is no degradation, but an indisputable wisdom, in evolution; giving loving confidence in the Infinite, and an elevating assurance of still greater advancement in future ages—towards which we work when we think honestly and act conscientiously. You are inclined to believe the poor creatures in that case not human models, because their forms are unlike our own. This will teach you how balefully lasting is the effect of ignorance. ”

“ For the early beings of our species, who, in crudeness of thought bore all that enervating suffering in daily performance of what they had been taught was their duty! Think, and you will see all these past errors arose from an intuition of a higher state of beauty, and they only acted in accordance with their small understandings. They had not learnt that mind—the mind increasing from era to era—alone can bring the really beautiful. They had little but ignorant vanity to guide them. ”

“ Why should we consider our body incapable of improvement? By the ancient records I find that those men we have been considering, whose form more resembles that of the ape than our own, thought as you do on this question. Their self-idolatry was even amusing. They were so overweening that in speaking of their shape, which was often distorted by excesses, they called it the 'human form divine.' That idea was peculiarly man's. The males of all species have ever been paramount in vanity; and before we can approach a nearer stage to perfection, yet more vanity must wear from our nature. ”

“ There can be no thoroughly, desirable ambition which does not include benefit for the unborn. I am pleased very pleased, you begin to feel the absolute necessity of matured thought in positions of such enormous trust as that of governing humankind. None but youth and ignorance think this power lies in youth. While looking at those dreadful rocks of the past we shudder at the nearness of the danger which threatened to again strand civilization. But you must not think all women of those times were magnanimous. Too often the oppressed became the very fiercest of oppressors. ”

“ At some future time our structure will have so changed to one nearer perfection that when we look back over the wonderful history of humankind during the course of evolution, as we do to-day, we shall no more recognize our present selves than you feel inclined to do in the ruder forms of the Christian era. But I am inclined to think that the youth of that time will feel only admiration and reverence, as the wise designs of the Infinite Mind become more distinct to growing reason. ”

“ If any blame attaches to early civilization it is solely to such heads of communities who, while possessing more than the ordinary understanding and some scientific learning, continued the promulgation of fallacies to the multitude, which they dared not utter to the Infinite in their solitude, simply to retain worldly position! Much honour is due to the integrity and courage of the few who would not bow to untruth, who thus risked and often bore with heroism the wrath of fanatics, whose vengeance was as great as their minds were small. ”

“ It only begets the short-lived admiration of semi-idiots, or the worship of deceived boys, whose inevitable enlightenment brings so fierce a contempt for the whole of our sex, that I have known it last until it became part of nature—not, alas! to be uprooted by even honourable and truthful women. Should you marry any so deceived is it possible you could expect your husbands to respect women who would sink to such pitiful means to win them? These are some of the great world troubles your thoughtless shams bring upon human kind. ”

“ Given facts, and honest thought and great truths never fail to reveal themselves before the reflection of an earnest mind. You are right, dear, in calling your loved father noble, for so he is in every thought and act, and likewise all humans of our age, compared with the half savages whose habits and natures we are examining. Understand I say compared, because humankind is still progressing. We must endeavour not to give the future cause to stamp us with conceit, as well as lesser knowledge than it will possess. This was one of the great errors of our ancestors. ”

“ To beat, kick and trample on a weaker body is no proof of superiority of intellect; but it is by such means that men have claimed it. It is not astonishing that the vanity of those semi-brutes in the past closed women's mouths, crippled her intellectual exertions, enacted that she had not enough brain to learn, and availed themselves of every means "divine"—so they "piously" called it—or any other, to degrade the muscularly weaker sex, and that they should have promulgated theories, unsound as conceited, laudatory of the greater brute ”

“ If voting or reflecting upon whom to vote for interfered with duties, then by their own ruling it would be far more likely to do so with men—because they assert that their occupations require more thought than those of women. Now most of woman's work, at present, only requires pretty strong muscles and patience. She has, therefore, more time for thinking about the world's economy than have men; and she does think often more deeply than men, who, with their grosser comprehension, failing to understand hers are perfectly satisfied in calling her "stupid." ”

“ The Southern Hemisphere slipped out of the world's strife, and, as if weary of perverse ignorance, lay mourning and resting under a long glacial period, similar to the present state of the Northern Hemisphere. In due time the earth returned to its more spherical route. Again the seasons changed; but ancient Australia had sunk and this country, our magnificent Alethia had risen. As the ages rolled on, it became colonized by people who had made huge advance in civilization. ”

“ In Mary Somerville's case it was considered so very unfeminine for a woman to cultivate her intellect that they deprived her of light in the winter evenings, to prevent her studying; but had she been of the other sex every facility would have been gladly given, and then the boasting of those abilities would have lasted as long—well, as long as male boasting always lasts when a clever mind of that sex appears. And we all know how few they have—considering the millions of millions of men who have been born, and had the advantage of their sex to attain what height they could! ”

“ Only within the past year did I begin to understand how necessary it is that senators should possess the knowledge of years, as well as that of books. Looking back over that sad past, it is so easy to see that none of those cruel wrongs would have taken place had law-making and law-administering not been entrusted to such very young and ignorant men, without aid from woman's mind, which appears to have shown more real courage, more benevolence, and sounder idea of justice than that of her male oppressors. ”

“ My darlings, this morning we will glance at some of the relics of what was once called the 'Christian Era,' subsequently designated by historians as 'The Age of Blood and Malevolence,' but which is, nevertheless, always of importance in the world's library from its having been the first link in the long unbroken chain of eras of civilization. If time will permit we will take from the twenty-first century to the fifteenth. ”

“ The nature of it is as impossible for us to understand as a growing change in physical structure was to those far more ignorant people of the past. Experience has taught us that no matter what our righteous needs may be, the requisites for supplying them are either awaiting our learning and research, or making correlative growth. Then away with all doubt or fear upon what we cannot yet take part in! We must hope and trust with a hope and trust as infinite as our spirits. ”

“ When youth can learn this marvellous plan of human progression, with minds and hearts of obedient resolve, it might be time to efface much that is so sickening in detail. But while students receive such instruction with rebellious feeling, and eyes ablaze with the nation of vanity at hearing they have sprung from these poor ancestors, they are living proofs that the time has, unfortunately, not yet arrived. ”

“ There are very few marriages where ability is equally balanced—in some the woman's is greater, in some the man's. This natural supremacy, if justice reigned, would adjust itself without heartburnings to any; but so long as law makes one sex dominant—by virtue of sex only—and to that one gives all honors, and opens every avenue to distinction, to the exclusion of the grandest intellect—if the owner be not of that sex—there can reign nothing but disaster everywhere. ”