If the desire of a wife is a weakness, which the apostle would gladly have forbidden, only that he feared worse consequences, an enthusiastic youth cannot but infer that it is a higher state of perfection _not_ to desire a wife, and therefore aspires to "the crown of virginity." Here at once is full-grown monkery.

Hence that debasement of the imagination, which is directed perpetually to the lowest, instead of the highest side of the female nature.

Hence the disgusting admiration and invocation of Mary's perpetual virginity.

Hence the transcendental doctrine of her immaculate conception from Anne, the "grandmother of God." In the above my critics have represented me to say that Christianity has done _nothing_ for women.

I have not said so, but that what it has done has been exaggerated.