[The impotent and contradictory schemes of ethics which philosophers or schoolmen, ancient and modern, have successively evolved, have been but resultants of “unisexual wit.” With brilliant exceptions in Plato, Kant, and Mill, vainly may the various codes be searched for any suggestion of the identity, individuality, and equality, of woman. For though the philosophy of latter-day ethicists rightly disdains to reiterate or to countenance the factitious scriptural dogmas and imprecations declaratory or explanatory of woman’s unequal and subjugated condition, yet a parallel subjection and inferiority in her nature is still tacitly assumed, and on occasion traded upon, by these same ethicists; no counsel or consent of her own intelligence being asked, or disavowal recked of, in such propositions as, _e.g._, the “utilitarian” theses concerning her enounced by Archdeacon Paley or Mr. Jeremy Bentham;—the nominally “goddess,” but virtually “slave,” status assigned to her by M. Auguste Comte;—or the “due” amount of child-bearing postulated as prior to all “normally feminine mental energy” in her, by Mr. Herbert Spencer. As the bane of all theologies has been the implicated degradation and subserviency of womanhood to the unjustly favoured male sex, so the vital defect in the plans of ethics is this irrational disregard for the personality and interests of “one half the human race,”—this ignoring or negation of woman’s equal claim with man to consideration, position, and action, in all that relates to humanity, ethics included. At present the general masculine sex-bias, or selfishness, refuses to women the wisest and noblest a faculty in legislation conceded to even the meanest men; and justice and injustice, pessimism and optimism, struggle together blindly and helplessly in the dark. The true Ethic still awaits for its formulation the assistance and the inspiration of the intellect of woman equal and free: no other way can it be arrived at.] Evolution, 39, 40, 41, 78, 87, 88, 107, 122, 173, 180, 208, 210, 211, 218, 220, 222; _see_ Development. Excess, 82, 100, 101, 105. Father, legal “rights” and duties of, 62. Feme; _see_ Baron. Feudality, 131; female wards, 98, 99. Fictility, 86 to 89, 109, 119, 120; _see_ Evolution. Franchise, woman’s, 150 to 155. French law, 197; women students of, 201, 202.