Part VI. The Ethics of Social Life

(838) OHAPTER I. MARITAL BENEFICENOE. § 428. In the history of hUluanity as ·written, the saddest part concerns the treatment of women; and had ","-e before us its un,vritten history we should find this part still sadder. I say the saddest part because, though there have been nlany things lnore conspicuously dreadful - cannibalism, the torturings of prisoners, the sacrificings of victims to ghosts and gods--these have been but occasional; whereas the brutal treatrnent of WOlnen has been universal and con stant. If, looking first at their state of subjection among the selni-civilized, ,ve pass to the uncivilized, and observe the 'lives of hardship borne by nearly all of them-if we then think what must have gone on anlong those still ruder peo ples ,vho, for so many thousands of years, roamed over the unculti vated Earth; we shall infer that the alnonnt of suf fering which has been, and is, borne by WOlnen, is utterly beyond imagination.