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I. Introductory.
In beginning a series of modest papers under this rather ambitious title, I am reminded that, comprehensive as it seems, the phrase is in one respect very recent.
It is only within a century or so that the two sexes have been habitually addressed together.
The phrase “women and men,” or its more common form, “ladies and gentlemen,” or that other form, “gentlemen and ladies,” which the late
Mr. Emerson habitually used, is a comparatively modern thing.
Before the advent of Christianity we should not expect to find it used, and accordingly the great orations of ancient times were addressed to men only.
Even after Christianity had brought a theoretic equality between the sexes the Jewish tradition still held strongly, and most of the fathers of the
Church are, it must be owned, rather oppressively masculine.
But among them there is one great
