Page:Science and Health.djvu/325

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MARRIAGE.
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forms the body, if you understand the science of being. Man is the offspring of Spirit; the beautiful, good and pure are his ancestors; his origin is not brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions up to man. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate being, and God his Father.

The rights of woman are discussed on grounds that seem to us not the most important. Law establishes a very unnatural difference between the rights of the two sexes; but science furnishes no precedent for such injustice, and civilization brings, in some measure, its mitigation, therefore it is a marvel that society should accord her less than either. Our laws are not impartial, to say the least, relative to the person, property, and parental claims of the two sexes; and if the elective enfranchisement of woman would remedy this evil without incurring difficulties of greater magnitude, we hope it will be effected. A very tenable means at present, is to improve society in general, and achieve a nobler manhood to frame our laws. If a dissolute husband deserts his wife, it should not follow that the wronged and perchance impoverished woman cannot collect her own wages, or enter into agreements, hold real estate, deposit funds, or surely claim her own offspring free from his right of interference. A want of reciprocity in society is a great want that the selfishness of the world has occasioned. Our forefathers exercised their faith in the direction St. James taught, “To visit the fatherless and widows, and keep yourself unspotted from the world”; but ostentation, the master of ceremonies, and stereotyped belief have ruled out primitive Christianity, so that when a man would lend a helping

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