Читать книгу The Physical Life of Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother - George H. Napheys - Страница 4

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'Knowledge is power,' said the philosopher. The maxim is true; but here is a greater truth: 'Knowledge is safety,'—safety amid the physical ills that beset us—safety amid the moral pitfalls that environ us.

Filled with this thought, we write this book. It is the Revelation of Science to Woman. It tells her, in language which aims at nothing but simplicity, the results which the study of her nature, as distinct from that of man, has attained. We may call it her physical biography.

It is high time that such a book were written. The most absorbing question of the day is the 'Woman Question.' The social problems of chiefest interest concern her. And nowhere are those problems more zealously studied than in America, which has thrown aside the trammels of tradition, and is training its free muscles with intent to grapple the untried possibilities of social life. Who can guide us in these experiments? What master, speaking as one having authority, can advise us? There is such a guide, such a master. The laws of woman's physical life shape her destiny and reveal her future. Within these laws all things are possible; beyond them, nothing is of avail.

Especially should woman herself understand her own nature. How many women are there, with health, beauty, merriment, ay, morality too, all gone, lost for ever, through ignorance of themselves! What spurious delicacy is this which would hide from woman that which beyond all else it behooves her to know? We repudiate it; and in plain, but decorous language—truth is always decorous—we purpose to divulge those secrets hidden hitherto under the technical jargon of science.