The inferiority of man on
this, the most important of all social subjects, is manifest.
Adams had here no occasion to deprecate scientific opinion, since
no woman in the world would have paid the smallest respect to the
opinions of all professors since the serpent. His own object had
little to do with theirs. He was studying the laws of motion, and
had struck two large questions of vital importance to America --
inertia of race and inertia of sex. He had seen Mr. de Witte and
Prince Khilkoff turn artificial energy to the value of three
thousand million dollars, more or less, upon Russian inertia, in
the last twenty years, and he needed to get some idea of the
effects. He had seen artificial energy to the amount of twenty or
five-and-twenty million steam horse-power created in America
since 1840, and as much more economized, which had been socially
turned over to the American woman, she being the chief object of
social expenditure, and the household the only considerable
object of American extravagance. According to scientific notions
of inertia and force, what ought to be the result?
In Russia, because of race and bulk, no result had yet shown
itself, but in America the results were evident and undisputed.
The woman had been set free -- volatilized like Clerk Maxwell's
perfect gas; almost brought to the point of explosion, like
steam.
Pages:
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651