Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/95

 engaging. Pedants, who think themselves philosophers, ask why a woman should blush when she is conscious of no crime. It is sufficient to answer, that nature has made you to blush when you are guilty of no fault, and has forced us to love you because you do so.'

This same Dr Gregory probably represented very much the spirit of his times when he asserted in his dogmatic way that 'nothing is more fatal to a woman than to attempt to influence a man by reason or by anything but caresses.' One need not wonder, then, that educational facilities for women, and the opportunity such facilities offer for the development of the reasoning powers were of the scantiest description.

Broadly put, the argument of the anti-feminist of the Georgian and early Victorian periods was that the main purpose of woman (some declared the sole purpose) being the bearing of children, nothing was necessary that did not contribute to that end, and everything was harmful which might conceivably detract, either from the quantity or the quality of this work. It was assumed that education of the higher sort would be harmful, for it would put upon the future mothers of the race a strain greater than they could possibly bear. Moreover, it was feared that the charms of knowledge would prove a serious rival to those of a lover, that learning