THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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illustrate the revolutions against enemies and usurpers. Plutarch’s lives of the great Greeks were powerful in inspiration to the eighteenth century. They were a renaissance in themselves. This century needs the history of womanhood in civilization.
The study of the womanhood of women in high position, in governments, the queens and princesses of Europe, will exert a beneficial influence on all women, for they will learn that the state is but the larger household; and if the study of society, of industries, commerce, religious and educational methods, or the study of government, is elevating and ennobling for queens; if the study of how to adjust difficulties, develop and rule people is suited for royal families, then it is suited for all families in a republic where people are sovereigns. It will be a study equally elevating for American women and her family in a republic. The women who, against the prejudice of patriarchal ideals, have tried to bring into this republic recognition of womanhood and matriarchal methods, have been working on the Divine plan of Providence and in the true history of mankind.
When the Spaniards came to Peru, South America, they found a learned woman— Capillano. She was born 1500-1541. Her manuscripts and paintings are in the Dominicans’ Library there now. They represent ancient Peruvian monuments, with historical explanations. There are representations of their plants and the curious dissertations on their properties. The lives of such women are a part of the history of America; but more, they are part of the history of womanhood, as well as of the world. Humanity is not bound by geographical lines. We are interested in what woman has wanted to do and how she has done it. We need to study not only women like ourselves, but those placed in all the various phases of life. The means they may have employed may have been different from our ancestors, but what was their womanhood? That we need to know. There have been elect women in all days who have felt impelled to do and dare, and to bring a higher state of affairs on earth—to work out their ideals of what ought to be into a reality. Have they not always aimed for what they thought was good for mankind?
Woman has made her love “ the ladder for her faith, and climbs above on the rounds of her best instincts.”
We know that there were great and good women here in America in prehistoric times. Their works prove it. The fanatical discoverers were too barbaric to appreciate them. They judged a people by their ability to kill and fight and to resist an enemy.
Their temples they tried to utterly destroy, and stripped from them gold and silver adornments and sacred offerings and buried the stones, defacing them. We lose the true record of the life lived here; but the work of their hands comes forth from their hidden tombs. There is much to bear witness that there were great women who labored for beauty, for peace, comfort, and an orderly life. We want now a sacred, safe place to gather and preserve, as fast as found the record, the work of these early great women on this oldest continent. We must prove we value knowledge, that we want opportunity to compare what has been evil with what has been good. Then women in the future can write a true history.
What will the Exposition do for us? It will carry us forward to new convictions for duty and elevate the rule or life.
Here we have met companions who were truly such, who enjoy what we enjoy, and are inspiration as well as fellowship to us.
Our horizon has broadened, and the little we know is put into comparison with the infinite we do not know. This collection from all lands, from all races, with exhibition of their endeavors to civilize and attain enlightened humanity, would be a childish, summer play of the nations if it were not a profound examination of civilization, its causes, and its growth.
“ The soul of man is widening toward the past,
More largely conscious of the life that was.”
“ Here is the pulse of all mankind Feeding an embryo future.”