If she turns against him--she, with all her unknown powers, she who
is the sharer of his deepest secrets, who prepares his very food day
by day--what harm can she not, may she not, do? And that she has
good reason to turn against him, he knows too well. What
deliverance is there from this mysterious house-fiend, save brute
force? Terror, torture, murder, must be the order of the day.
Woman must be crushed, at all price, by the blind fear of the man.
I shall say no more. I shall draw a veil, for very pity and shame,
over the most important and most significant facts of this, the most
hideous of all human follies. I have, I think, given you hints
enough to show that it, like all other superstitions, is the child--
the last born and the ugliest child--of blind dread of the unknown.
SCIENCE {229}
I said, that Superstition was the child of Fear, and Fear the child
of Ignorance; and you might expect me to say antithetically, that
Science was the child of Courage, and Courage the child of
Knowledge.
But these genealogies--like most metaphors--do not fit exactly, as
you may see for yourselves.
If fear be the child of ignorance, ignorance is also the child of
fear; the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread
Nature, the less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her
awful secrets? It is dangerous; perhaps impious.
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