Emancipation of women in the United States.

— “Word comes from New York that among the petitions recently addressed to the president of the United States, there is one that has once again raised the question of the admissibility of women to public offices. Miss Françoise Lord, of New York, asked to be sent abroad as a consul.

The president took her request into consideration, and she hopes the Senate will be favorable to her. Public sentiment does not show itself as hostile to this innovation as one might suppose, and several newspapers defend Miss Lord’s claim.” (Siècle, April 5, 1867.)

“In the district commanded by General Sheridan, formed by the states of Louisiana and Texas, the electoral rolls have been opened, and the white and colored population began to register, without raising any objection regarding the interference of the military authority in this whole matter. Despite the efforts of the legislators of Washington, the population of the North retains a great part of its prejudices against the blacks. By a majority of 35 votes against, the Chamber of Deputies of New Jersey refused them the enjoyment of political rights, and the State Senate joined in that vote, which is the object of the most vigorous attacks throughout the republican press. On the other hand, one of the Western states, Wisconsin, gave the right of suffrage to women over twenty-one years of age. This new principle is making its way in the United States, and there is no lack of journalists to approve the political gallantry of the senators of Wisconsin. Alluding to a celebrated novel, a speaker at a popular meeting asked: How could we refuse political capacity to Mrs. Beecher-Stowe, when we recognize it in Uncle Tom?” (Grand Moniteur, May 9, 1867) The House of Commons of England also occupied itself with this question in its session of last May 20, on the proposal of one of its members. One reads in the report of the Morning-Post:

“On clause 4, Mr. Mill asks that the word man be suppressed and that the word person be inserted.

“He says: My aim is to admit electoral liberty to a very large part of the population, currently excluded from the bosom of the constitution, that is, women. I do not see why unmarried ladies of age, and widows, should not have a voice in the election of the members of Parliament.

“Perhaps it will be said that women already have power enough, but I maintain that if they obtained the civil rights that I propose be granted to them, we would elevate their condition and rid them of an obstacle which today impedes the expansion of their faculties.

“I confess that women already possess a great social power, but not too much, and they are not spoiled children, as is generally supposed. Moreover, whatever their power may be, I want it to be responsible, and I will give them the means to make their needs and their sentiments known.

“Mr. Lang — The proposal is, according to him, untenable, and he is convinced that the great majority of women themselves would reject it.

“Sir John Bowyer thinks otherwise. Women can now be vigilant directresses of the peoples, and he does not see why they should not vote for the members of Parliament. The illustrious baronet cites the case of Miss Burdett Coutts, to show that the property of women, although taxed like that of men, is in no way represented.

“The vote was taken: the amendment was rejected by 196 votes against 73, and it was ordered that the word man shall form part of the clause.”

The newspaper Liberté, of May 24, accompanies the report with the following and judicious reflections:

“Are women not admitted to take their seat and vote in the assemblies of shareholders, in the same manner as men?

“If it were true, as the honorable Mr. Lang claimed, that women would refuse the right that Mr. Stuart Mill proposes be recognized for them, that would be no reason for it not to be attributed to them, since it legitimately belongs to them. Those who felt repugnance to exercise it would be free not to vote, except, later, to reconsider, when usage had made them change their opinion.

“The Langs, who insist on keeping their eyes closed, find it monstrous that women should vote, but quite natural and perfectly simple that they should reign!

“O human inconsistency! O social contradiction!”

A. Fagnan

— We treated the question of the emancipation of women in the article entitled: Do women have a soul? published in the Review of January 1866, to which we refer the reader, so as not to repeat ourselves here. The following considerations will serve to complete it.

At a time when privileges, remnants of another age and of other customs, fall before the principle of equality of rights of every human creature, there is no doubt that those of woman will not be slow to be recognized, and that, in the near future, the law will no longer treat her as a minor. Up to the present, the recognition of these rights is regarded as a concession of strength to weakness, which is why it is haggled over with such parsimony. Now, as everything granted optionally can be withdrawn, this recognition will only be definitive and imprescriptible when it is no longer subordinated to the caprice of the stronger, but founded on a principle that no one can contest.

The privileges of races have their origin in the abstraction that men generally make of the spiritual principle, in order to consider only the exterior material being. From the constitutional strength or weakness of some, from a difference of color in others, from birth in opulence or in misery, from noble or plebeian consanguineous descent, they concluded a natural superiority or inferiority. It was upon this datum that they established their social laws and the privileges of races. From this circumscribed point of view, they are consistent with themselves, since, considering only material life, certain classes seem to belong, and really do belong, to different races.

But if one takes their point of view of the spiritual being, of the essential and progressive being, in a word, of the Spirit, pre-existing and surviving all things, whose body is but a temporary envelope, varying, like clothing, in form and color; if, moreover, from the study of spiritual beings there emerges the proof that these beings are of identical nature and origin, that their destiny is the same, that all set out from the same point and tend toward the same goal; that corporeal life is but an incident, one of the phases of the life of the Spirit, necessary to its intellectual and moral advancement; that in view of this advancement the Spirit may successively assume diverse envelopes, be born in different positions, one arrives at the capital consequence of the equality of nature and, from there, at the equality of the social rights of all human creatures and at the abolition of the privileges of races. This is what Spiritism teaches. You who deny the existence of the Spirit in order to consider only corporeal man, the perpetuity of the intelligent being in order to envisage only the present life, you repudiate the only principle upon which is founded, with reason, the equality of rights that you claim for yourselves and for your fellow beings.

Applying this principle to the social position of woman, we will say that of all philosophical and religious doctrines, Spiritism is the only one that establishes her rights upon Nature itself, by proving the identity of the spiritual being in the two sexes. Since woman does not belong to a distinct creation; since the Spirit can be born at will man or woman, according to the kind of trials to which it wishes to submit itself for its advancement; since the difference lies only in the exterior envelope, which modifies her aptitudes, from the identity in the nature of the being one must necessarily conclude the equality of rights. This follows, not from a mere theory, but from the observation of facts and the knowledge of the laws that govern the spiritual world. The rights of woman finding a consecration in the Spiritist Doctrine, founded on the laws of Nature, it results from this that the propagation of that doctrine will hasten her emancipation and will give her, in a stable manner, the social position that belongs to her. If all women understood the consequences of Spiritism, all would be Spiritists, because they would find there the most powerful argument they could invoke. The thought of the emancipation of woman at this moment germinates in a great number of brains, because we are in an age in which ideas of social renewal ferment and in which women, as much as men, undergo the influence of the progressive breath that stirs the world. After having occupied themselves much with themselves, men begin to understand that it would be just to do something for them, to loosen a little the bonds of the tutelage under which they keep them. We must congratulate the United States all the more for the initiative they take in this regard, because they have gone further by granting a legal position and of common right to an entire race of Humanity.

But from the equality of rights it would be abusive to conclude the equality of attributions. God endowed each being with an organism appropriate to the role it is to play in Nature. That of woman is traced by her organization, and is not the least important. There are, then, well-characterized attributions, conferred on each sex by Nature itself, and these attributions imply special duties that the sexes could not fulfill effectively by stepping out of their role. There are some in each sex, as from one sex to the other; the physical constitution determines special aptitudes; whatever their constitution, all men certainly have the same rights, but it is evident, for example, that one who is not organized for singing could not become a singer. No one can take from him the right to sing, but that right is incapable of giving him the qualities he lacks. If, then, Nature gave woman weaker muscles than man, it is that she was not called to the same exercises; if her voice has another timbre, it is that she is not destined to produce the same impressions. Now, it is to be feared, and it is what will happen, that in the fever of emancipation that torments her, woman will judge herself fit to fill all the attributions of man and that, falling into a contrary excess, after having had too little, she will want to have too much. Such a result is inevitable, but it is absolutely not to be feared. If women have incontestable rights, Nature has its own, which it never loses. Soon they will tire of the roles that are not theirs. Let them, then, recognize through experience their insufficiency in the things to which Providence did not summon them; fruitless attempts will necessarily lead them back to the path that is traced for them, a path that can and must be widened, but which cannot be diverted without harm to themselves, shaking the wholly special influence that they are to exercise. They will recognize that they will have only to lose in the exchange, because the woman of overly virile attitudes will never have the grace and charm that constitute the strength of her who knows how to remain a woman. A woman who makes herself a man abdicates her true royalty; she is looked upon as a phenomenon.

— After the two articles above had been read at the Society of Paris, the following question was proposed to the Spirits, as a subject of study:

What influence should Spiritism have upon the condition of woman?

As all the communications obtained concluded in the same sense, we will refer to the following, as being the most developed:

(Society of Paris, May 10, 1867. — Medium: Mr. Morin, in spontaneous somnambulism. — Verbal dissertation.)

“In all times men have been proud; it is a constitutional vice, inherent to their nature. Man — I speak of the sex — man, strong through the development of his muscles, through the somewhat bold conceptions of his thoughts, did not take into account the weakness alluded to in the holy Scriptures, weakness that made the misfortune of all his posterity. He judged himself strong and made use of woman, not as of a companion, of a family, but making use of her from a purely bestial point of view, transforming her into a rather agreeable animal and accustoming her to keep a respectful distance from the master. But as God did not wish that one half of Humanity should be dependent on the other, He did not make two distinct creations: one to be constantly at the service of the other. He willed that all His creatures might partake of the banquet of life and of the infinite in the same proportion. “In these brains, so long kept away from all science as unfit to receive the benefits of instruction, God caused to be born, as a counterweight, cunning that puts in check the strength of man. Woman is weak, man is strong, this is conceivable; but woman is cunning, and science against cunning does not always triumph. If it were true science, it would conquer her; but it is a false and incomplete science, and woman easily finds its Achilles’ heel. Provoked by the position given to her, woman developed the germ that she felt within herself; the need to emerge from her debasement gave her the desire to break her chains. Follow her march; take her from the Christian era and observe her: you will see her ever more dominant, but she has not consumed all her strength; she has conserved it for more opportune times, and the time is approaching when her turn will come to display it. Moreover, the generation that is rising bears in its flanks the change that has been announced to us for a long time, and woman today wishes to have, in society, a place equal to that of man. “Observe well; look at the interiors and see how much woman tends to free herself from the yoke; she reigns as mistress, sometimes as despot. You held her bent for a long time; she straightens up like a compressed spring that distends itself, for she begins to understand that her hour has come.

“Poor men! If you reflected that the Spirits have no sex; that he who today is a man may be a woman tomorrow; that they choose indifferently, and sometimes by preference, the feminine sex, you should rather rejoice than afflict yourselves at the emancipation of woman, and admit her to the banquet of intelligence, opening wide for her all the doors of Science, because she has finer, gentler conceptions, more delicate touches than those of man. Why could woman not be a physician? Is she not naturally called to lavish care upon the sick, and would she not give it with more intelligence if she had the necessary knowledge? Are there not cases in which, when it is a question of persons of her sex, a woman physician would be preferable? Have not many women given proof of their aptitude for certain sciences? of the finesse of their tact in business? Why, then, would men reserve the monopoly for themselves, if not from fear of seeing them gain in superiority? Without speaking of special professions, is not the first profession of woman that of mother of a family? Now, the instructed mother is more fit to direct the instruction and education of her children; at the same time that she nourishes the body, she can develop the heart and the spirit. Early childhood being necessarily entrusted to the care of woman, when she is instructed social regeneration will have taken an immense step, and this is what will be done. “The equality of man and woman would have yet another result. To be master, to be strong, is very good; but it is also to assume great responsibility. By sharing the burden of the family’s affairs with a capable, enlightened companion, naturally devoted to the common interests, man lightens his load and diminishes his responsibility, whereas woman, being under tutelage and, for this very reason, in a state of forced submission, has no vote in the matter except when man sees fit to condescend to give it to her.

“It is said that women are very talkative and very frivolous; but whose is the fault, if not of the men who do not permit them reflection? Give them the nourishment of the spirit, and they will speak less; they will meditate and reflect. Do you accuse them of frivolity? But what is there for them to do? — I speak above all of the woman of the world — Nothing, absolutely nothing. In what can she occupy herself? If she reflects and transcribes her thoughts, she is ironically called a pedantic woman. If she cultivates the sciences or the arts, her works are not taken into consideration, save very rare exceptions, and yet, like man, she needs emulation. To flatter an artist is to give him tone and courage; but, for woman, this really is not worth the trouble! Then there remains to them the domain of frivolity, in which they can stimulate one another. “Let man destroy the barriers that his self-love opposes to the emancipation of woman and he will soon see her take her flight, with great advantage to society. Know that woman, like all of you, has the divine spark, because woman is you, as you are woman.”

[1] Publisher’s Note: See “Explanatory Note,” p. 527.