Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/41

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Woman's Sphere
25

and by reason of economic changes over which neither man nor woman has any control.

Plato, who was more advanced than many of his contemporaries, and whose ideal is still to be fully realised, spoke the thoughts of the modern woman when he taught: “None of the occupations which comprehend the ordering of a State belong to woman as woman, nor yet to man as man, but natural gifts are to be found here and there in both sexes alike; and so far as her nature is concerned, the woman is admissible to all pursuits as well as the man.”

It would make interesting and instructive reading to discover how, out of the time-long servitude of woman, arose the conception of the purely domestic animal. Since Eve furnished Adam with excuse for his cowardly whine the curse of man has been upon her descendants. And the civilised man has always been the worse offender; for, knowing well what he was doing, he has used not only custom and tradition, but culture and religion to enslave his mate, whilst the savage enslaved but knew no wrong.