However that may be, at the close of the eighteenth century the European states had, in their laws, adopted this pagan conception of marriage. It is true that this pagan conception had been ameliorated by human sentiment, and that some of the women had, despite it, developed noble characters, and were highly honored by the community and by their households. It is also true that this pagan system was never recognized as true by the Christian Church, and was never accepted as the whole truth by the people, who usually attempted to combine with this pagan conception the Christian ideal of which I shall speak in a succeeding chapter. But the twofold pagan conception of marriage, on the one hand as a civil contract, on the other as a servile subordination of the woman to the man, was woven into the fabric of European laws. In Latin countries marriage before a civil officer was required. It might be followed by an ecclesiastical marriage, but the ecclesiastical marriage was not necessary in law. In England marriage might be performed by the priest, but need not be. It could also as well be performed by a civil officer. By this marriage the wife passed into the possession and power of her husband, though not quite so absolutely as she had done in the old paganism. But by marriage her legal existence was suspended, or at

least incorporated and consolidated with that of her husband. All her property passed into his hands; all her earnings belonged to him. Her children were legally his children and under his control.1 The only ameliorating circumstance that I recall was that, while her property passed into his hands, he was also liable for her debts reasonably contracted by a person in her condition. I am not quite sure whether under English law the man had a legal right to chastise his wife, but that he exercised that right very often in the lower classes English literature abundantly testifies. That supposed right has not been wholly disregarded even in America to-day. An acquaintance of mine recently congratulated a colored man in the South on his golden wedding. "Uncle," he said, "I see you have lived fifty years with Aunt Dinah." "Yes, sah! I have, sah!" replied the husband; " and I have not had to hit her a lick once in all that fifty years!"

The conception that woman was made for man and was to be educated for man was wrought not only into the legal institutions of Europe but into its ideals. Rousseau was one of the radical

1 "By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband."- Blackstone, Commentaries. Quoted by Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England.

reformers of his time, a recognized idealist of the close of the eighteenth century. It is interesting to read what he said about the object of woman in creation:

Women are specially made to please men. All their education should be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to bring them up when young, to take care of them when grown up, to counsel, to console them, to make their lives agreeable and pleasant

these, in all ages, have been the duties of women, and it is for these duties they should be educated from infancy.

Even in their religious beliefs the subordination should be complete:

Even if this religion is false, the docility with which wife and daughter submit to the order of Nature effaces in the sight of God the sin of error. Being incapable of judging for themselves, they ought to accept the decision of their fathers and their husbands like that of the Church. 1

This conception that woman was made for man, that in marriage she lost her personal identity and became merged and consolidated with the man, entered into and determined the popular ideal of woman's education. She was to be educated to be

1 Émile, quoted by W. E. H. Lecky in Democracy and Liberty, vol. ii, p. 505.

a wife and a mother, and this practically meant to be an upper servant of her husband and the nurse and governess of his children. The only education that was counted as proper for a woman was that which fitted her either to be a good housekeeper, on whom the care of the younger children devolved, or a parlor ornament creditable to her lord and master. She was to know how to cook, to do chamberwork, and to nurse the children, and she was to learn to do needlework, to play the piano, perhaps to draw and paint a little, and to be a good conversationalist. Charlotte Brontë gives an account of the kind of education which woman received in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is thus illustrated in the prospectus of the school to which she was sent in her girlhood:

The terms for clothing, lodging, boarding, and educating are £14 a year, half to be paid in advance when the pupils are sent; and also £1 entrance money for the use of books, etc. The system of education comprehends history, geography, the use of globes, grammar, writing, and arithmetic, all kinds of needlework, and the nicer kinds of household work, such as getting up fine linen, etc. If accomplishments are required, an additional charge of £3 a year is made for music or drawing, each.1

I have thus stated the questions which America 1 E. C. Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Brontë, chap. 4.

is asking to-day respecting marriage and the family, and have stated, though very briefly, the answer which paganism gives to those questions. How far the answers which some of our modern reformers give are really derived from this ancient paganism I shall consider in the next chapter, which will be devoted to presenting, in contrast with the pagan ideal, that which we have derived from the Hebrew Scriptures.