In process of time, however, women began slowly to awaken from the hideous nightmare which threatened to destroy the last remaining vestige of the instincts and ideas peculiar to the female constitution. In the beginning of the nineteenth century some of the educational advantages enjoyed by men began to be appropriated by women. Thus began the unrest which now extends over the entire earth. About seventy years ago a movement was started by women to secure for themselves the right to self-government. Immediately all the prejudice which characterizes a sex-aristocracy was aroused. Ridicule, calumny, and even personal abuse were directed against all those who were intelligent enough or fearless enough to stem the tide of popular indignation. For forty years, little or no progress was made toward securing the right of self-government for women. As late as 1870 a woman who openly avowed herself a suffragist was regarded not only as “bold and unwomanly” but as a dangerous person. The most strenuous opposition to the movement came from the clergy and the flocks over which they presided. Whenever church women were asked to consider the question of the equality of the sexes their unvarying reply was: “My bible forbids it.” Now that the history of Pauline Christianity is better understood its attitude toward the freedom of women needs no further explanation. When the then existing mental conditions are recalled and especially when the religious prejudices of the time are considered the attitude manifested toward the proposed enfranchisement of women is not perhaps remarkable. Although forty years ago biological science was in its infancy enough facts had at that time been discovered clearly to indicate the position which Nature intended woman to occupy. By the scientists of that time, however, the logical and unavoidable inferences to be drawn from these facts were wholly ignored. During the ages of man’s undisputed supremacy so deeply rooted had the idea of woman’s inferiority become that these newly discovered facts concerning her development could not be accepted—the old prejudices could not at once be uprooted. We have already observed that whenever and wherever Mr. Darwin and other scientists of his time felt called upon to compare the relative importance of men and women such comparison has invariably been to the disadvantage of the latter and this too notwithstanding the fact that the evidence which they themselves have elaborated warrants no such conclusions. Forty years ago the doctrine that woman has no independent existence, but that she is simply an appendage to man, was everywhere accepted and taught not only by ecclesiastics but by scientists as well. Woman was only a “rib” taken from the side of man.