harsh and intolerant, paradoxical and too abrupt in its novelty, it must be remembered that the author is not the first who has taken such a view; he is more in the position of one who has discovered the philosophical grounds for an opinion of long standing.
The Chinese from time immemorial have denied that women possess a personal soul. If a Chinaman is asked how many children he has, he counts only the boys, and will say none if he has only daughters. Mahomet excluded women from Paradise for the same reason, and on this view depends the degraded position of women in Oriental countries.
Amongst the philosophers, the opinions of Aristotle must first be considered. He held that in procreation the male principle was the formative active agent, the "logos," whilst the female was the passive material. When we remember that Aristotle uses the word "soul" for the active, formative, causative principle, it is plain that his idea was akin to mine, although, as he actually expressed it, it related only to the reproductive process; it is clear, moreover, that he, like all the Greek philosophers except Euripides, paid no heed to woman, and did not consider her qualities from any other point of view than that of her share in reproduction.
Amongst the fathers of the Church, Tertullian and Origen certainly had a very low opinion of woman, and St. Augustine, except for his relations with his mother, seems to have shared their view. At the Renaissance the Aristotelian conceptions gained many new adherents, amongst whom Jean Wier (1518-1588) may be cited specially. At that period there was a general, more sensible and intuitive understanding on the subject, which is now treated as merely curious, contemporary science having bowed the knee to other than Aristotelian gods.
In recent years Henrik Ibsen (in the characters of Anitra, Rita, and Irene) and August Strindberg have given utter- ance to this view. But the popularity of the idea of the soullessness of woman has been most attained by the
