And it would be against the nature
of things to suppose that the body, thus shorn and mutilated, can
possess in itself the virtue and power of progress, reform, and
elevation. The link connecting the family with social and public life is
detached, and so neither is _en rapport_, as it should be, with the
other. Reforms fail to find entrance into the family or to penetrate the
domestic soil where alone they could take root, grow into the national
mind, live, and be perpetuated. Under such conditions the seeds of
civilization refuse to germinate. No real growth is possible in free and
useful institutions, nor any permanent and healthy force in those great
movements which elsewhere tend to uplift the masses and elevate mankind.
There may, it is true, be some advance, from time to time, in science
and in material prosperity; but the social groundwork for the same is
wanting, and the people surely relapse into the semi-barbarism forced
upon them by an ordinance which is opposed to the best instincts of
humanity. Sustained progress becomes impossible. Such is the outcome of
an attempt to improve upon nature and banish woman, the help-meet of
man, from the position assigned by God to her in the world.
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