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 THE CONDITION OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1200. 207 phorus, jnst as they were in the cities even of the Miilionictan caliphates on the Tigris and the Euphrates. And as the Kew Rome claimed something like universal dominion, it seemed natural to her citizens that her splendor should eclipse theirs. Her conquests enabled her to succeed in doing so. Without attempting to trace how this result was brought about, and especially without attempting to trace the long series of events by which the ideas of absolutism and cen- tralization gradually undermined the systems of local govern- ment which had been preserved in the villages and towns, it is necessary, in order to understand the position of the imperial government at the end of the twelfth century, to see what were the results of the influence of Asia on the social life of the New Rome. The first and most noxious of tliese results was the bringing Position of irito Europe of the Asiatic conception of the position woman. ^£ woman. I have ventured to express my opinion already that the fatal curse of Mahometanism is that the posi- tion it assigns to woman renders progress beyond a certain pbint impossible. Family life in the European sense cannot exist. Woman holds, and has everywhere held, under Moslem rule an inferior position, and the inevitable result ensues after a few generations that the whole race has become less moral, less manly, and less intelligent. An observer ready to examine all systems of religion with academical impartiality would find a difficulty in pointing out any doctrine or practice taught or permitted by the religion of Islam which should prevent its followers from growing in civilization, except it were in the position universally assigned in practice among Mahometans to women. To regard her as existing only for the purposes of pleasure or of propagation, and as necessarily degraded in thought, and therefore requiring to be watched lest she should be unfaithful, is to degrade her, and implies keeping her in ignorance, and shutting her off from the edu- cation obtained by contact with the world. But to degrade generations of mothers means also to degrade the race itself. The New Rome, by her proximity to Asia, had acquired far too much of this Asiatic conception of the position due to