Women -- Economic conditions; Women -- Employment; Women -- Social and moral questions
last, the descendants of those men who spat when they spoke his
name, and forcibly drew his teeth to extract his money from him, wait
patiently behind each other for admission to his offices and palaces;
while nobles solicit his daughters in marriage and kings are proud to be
summoned to his table in hope of golden crumbs, and great questions
of peace and war are often held balanced in the hand of one little
asthmatic Jew. After long ages of disgrace and pariahism, the time has
come, whether for good or for evil, when just those qualities which the
Jew possesses and which subtilely distinguish him from others, are in
demand; while those he has not are sinking into disuse; exactly that
domination of the reflective faculties over the combative, which once
made him slave, also saved him from becoming extinct in wars; and the
intellectual quickness, the far-sighted keenness, the persistent mental
activity and self-control, which could not in those ages save him from
degradation or compensate for his lack of bone and muscle and combative
instinct, are the very qualities the modern world demands and crowns.
The day of Goliath with his club and his oaths is fast passing, and the
day of David with his harp and skilfully constructed sling is coming
near and yet nearer.
The qualities which give an animal, a race, or an individual, a higher
utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in
the environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was
lowest comes continually uppermost, and that which was dominant becomes
subservient.
It is possible, that women, after countless ages, during which that
smaller relative development in weight and muscularity which is incident
to almost all females which suckle their young, and that lesser desire
for pugilism inherent in almost all females who bear their young alive,
rendered her lacking in the two qualities which made for individual
dominance in her societies, may yet, in the future, discover that those
changes in human conditions, which have done away with the primary
necessity for muscular force and pugilistic arts, have also inverted her
place in the scale of social values.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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