General Defense of the Honorable Women's Craft

*Psalm VIII. **Job X.

*When all creatures call themselves works of the fingers of GOD. Just as Job also says of himself: **

That he was a potter's work of the hands of GOD. Who would then take this title of honor away from the female sex, and not admit that it is a craft of GOD the Almighty? Who indeed built her up from a rib, and after this work rested, as in the most perfect being of all his works. I will therefore not hope that this title of mine, which I have written above, should be taken amiss, as I only seek to see how I might avenge all the injustice done to this sex.

I am driven by a fair curiosity to know from what kind of family the otherwise praiseworthy Epictetus must have come. Since he sought to depict the good womenfolk in the following manner, when he asks: What is a woman?

Hominis confusio, insatiabilis Bestia, Solicitudo continua, indesinens pugna, quotidianum damnum, Tempestas Domus, Solitudinis impedimentum, Viri incontinentis naufragium,
Latin original: "A confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an unceasing fight, a daily loss, a tempest of the house, an impediment to solitude, a shipwreck of the incontinent man,"

humanum mancipium Latin: "a human slave.". A humiliation of man, an insatiable wild beast, a constant worry, an incessant struggle, a daily loss, a storm in the house, an obstacle to solitude, a shipwreck of the lustful man, a human slave. In which description, according to my thoughts, he either spilled the oil from his very famous lamp, or he must have been born of another mother, so that the shame which he seeks to smear upon the female seed with black fingers would not also fall upon him by inheritance.

This good philosopher, in my opinion, must have either never exposed his bald head to the otherwise general goal of all people, the small underage child, Cupid, or he must have had an otherwise hidden enemy against him. And whereas children cannot be brought to the deserved punishment by any law,