SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
Snap Shots By GEORGE MIDDLETON WE ALL KNOW about the man who left after the first act of Hamlet because "the play was too full of quotations." Perhaps one will not feel dissimilar in reading this...
...the authority we exercise over them owes its existence to tyranny...
...It was natural that to so penetrating a writer as the famous Frenchman this contrast would afford opportunity to expose many of the absurdities of the day...
...war is its crime.— Victor Hugo...
...But the other day, in glancing through some extracts from Montesquieu's Persian Letters, I was interested in seeing again the truth of the old platitude that "there's nothing new—etc...
...Another topic of discussion is whether the law of nature subjects women to men: 'No,' said a very gallant philosopher to me the other day, 'Nature never dictated such a law...
...I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that...
...Such a reason would be absolutely unjust...
...Because we are the stronger...
...God hez sed so plump an' fairly, It's ez long ez it is broad, An' you've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God...
...It is a weighty subject of discussion among men whether to leave women their freedom or to deprive them of it is the more advantageous...
...PEACE is the virtue of civilization...
...but that of beauty is universal...
...they allow us to use it, because their disposition is milder than ours, and they, consequently, have more humanity and reason...
...We use every possible means to depress their courage...
...Why should we be specially privileged...
...Indeed, here are some fictitious letters supposed to have been written by a Persian traveler in Paris in 1713 which, in some ways, contain frequent and alarming commentaries on our own social scheme...
...6 Ez fer war, I call it murder,— There you hev it plain an' flat...
...In this particular instance which I quote at length, it may be of value to us to be reminded occasionally that the so-called woman question is not born entirely of the present economic unrest but is, in part, deep seated in the two temperaments hindered or helped as they have been by environment...
...Yet, throughout this volume one meets violent contrasts in the social points of view of Paris and the Far East, which at the time these letters were written was a subject of absorbing interest if of little definite information...
...Perhaps one will not feel dissimilar in reading this paragraph...
...test them by the gifts they have been allowed to cultivate, and then tell me which sex is the stronger...
...Montesquieu, as Lanson points out in speaking about these letters, was only a clever and superficial painter of manners though a keen observer of the philosophy of government...
...if they were educated as we are, their intellectual capacity would be found fully equal to ours...
...It seems to me that much may be said on both sides...
...These advantages, which ought to have given them the superiority, if we have been reasonable, have deprived them of it because we are not so.' "Now, if it is true that our power over women is purely tyrannical, it is not less true that theirs over us is natural, having its source in beauty, which nothing can resist...
...Lowell...
...While Europeans affirm that to render those we love miserable is anything but the indication of a generous spirit, we Asiatics reply that to renounce the supremacy which nature has given us over women is a sympton of degradation in men...
...Our power is not the same in every country...
Vol. 4 • July 1912 • No. 30
