more liberally interpreted or being done away with altogether. The more and more expansive character imparted to modern life by the effects of material progress, the greater facilities of intercommunication, and the ever-increasing degree of social independence gained by man has, among other causes, affected woman's position in this much, that she is now almost entirely freed from the bonds which once held her captive, a slave to the conjugal hearth. The era of woman's emancipation has commenced.

Yet it cannot be denied that the march of woman toward a larger and more legitimate social development has been far slower and more embarrassed than man's during an equal lapse of time. Man to a great extent has triumphed over the long oppression of caste, and, in his turn, has ceased to oppress woman so heavily as before; but he has never taken any steps to associate her with himself in his demands for the recognition of his rights. And woman, in the timidity and uncertainty born of ages of subjection, does not dare to press her just claims for herself. The door of her cage is open, but she is still held in awe by the bars.

The health, happiness, and beneficent action of any and every organism are in direct ratio to its state of conformity with the natural laws of its being, and, consequently, with the general law of all. Now the modern woman approaches by no means so closely to this condition of natural conformity as does the modern man, whether it be that, as in certain countries, like the United States, she tends to become man's social and intellectual superior, or whether, as in France for example, she acts as a drag upon the wheel of progress. In France woman unconsciously revenges herself for not having been suffered to participate in the benefits of the Revolution by exerting a retrograde, ultraconservative influence, which at the present day works as a perturbing element in French society.

It is a fact now generally recognized that all things on earth follow a natural progression on the lines of utilization of force, co-ordination of faculties, and development of productiveness. The very history of our globe, whose final destination was to become the habitat of man, gives evidence of the prolonged phases of perturbation through which things must pass on the way to their appointed goal. But, on the other hand, the more a sphere, a society, a caste, a sex begins to approximate to its true reason of being, its normal motives of activity, the more of power, of virtue of stability will it acquire. If, then, the natural, moral,

and social conditions regulating the existence of individuals were more thoroughly understood, and more strictly observed, it would soon be perceived that all oppressors are themselves oppressed through the effects of that very despotism they exert, and that abuses always recoil upon their authors. In all cases, under all circumstances, the final interests of the minority will be found to correspond with those of the greatest number. The effort made by social groups and by separate individuals to possess themselves of what they feel to be their rights becomes excessive in exact proportion to the resistance of those who deny the rights in question. Injustice breeds injustice. Thus woman, whose mission in society and in the family circle is one of beneficence, becomes a maleficent influence in direct consequence of the abasement to which she has hitherto been subjected.

In ancient life we see Aspasia and the other Greek courtesans seizing upon the social influence which was denied to Grecian wives and mothers; and yet a Greek wife, by eloping with the seducer Paris, had already shown that the triple portals of the gynæceum could not confine a woman against her will. And, strangely enough, all Greece was drawn into a war which imperiled its very existence through the action of her who had rebelled, however wantonly, against the oppressive restrictions then imposed upon members of her sex.

Rome was contented, austere, temperate in her ambition, and ignorant of defeat just so long as the matron's rights were respected and her position secure. But from the day when the Republic, with all its virtues, disappears under the Cæsars, woman is only regarded as a plaything. Corruption stalks abroad, and the empire totters to its fall.

Under the feudal system woman is pent up in the manor house, chivalry is born, and the feudal knights scour the country in search of ideal love. The wife is regarded as a chattel, while that ideal entity, the ladye-love, is placed on a pedestal.

Warlike peoples are prosperous so long as their women are brave, fond of war, and lead the life of the camp. But the nations which immure their women in harems lose in those very harems the last vestiges of manly virtue; and the greatest Oriental empires have sunk into decrepitude through the effects of intrigues set on foot by female slaves. When woman is not permitted to exercise her organizing powers, she becomes a disorganizing influence.

If, however, woman attempt to transcend her legitimate sphere of action by breaking away from her natural limitations, the result can only be to subject her to new conditions of social inferiority. In any society or among any people where woman is despised by man, he himself becomes despicable through his sharing in the degradation and corruption to which he has condemned her. We have seen how the slave of the harem in her turn enslaves the enslaver. In more advanced societies, such as that of France during the eighteenth century, if man relegates woman to the sphere of gallantry and frivolity alone, the nation. itself becomes merely gallant and frivolous. But should man, on the other hand, concede to woman an unduly wide influence in society, should he place himself in such a position of inferiority as to be no longer anything but an instrument to her luxurious tastes, she will drift away from him in disdain, will form a privileged class, an aristocracy, and thus wealth comes to assume a factitious importance, imperiling the moral conditions of society and relaxing the former closeness of the family tie.

Danger in these respects must still exist, even now that woman is no longer entirely a minor, whenever man declines to recognize her independence, refuses to treat her as a partner and companion, and to grant her, at least in the home, rights not identical with his, which she could exercise to no good effect, but rights equivalent in all the fields of her activity, rights proportioned to her powers, and bringing with them their meed of legitimate responsibility and control.

At the present day more than ever before, it has become a matter of necessity that the activity, the faculties, the influence, the powers of woman should be brought to bear upon the proper adjustment of the social equilibrium. The laws regulating the world, with its human life and societies, plainly indicate that any force must be allowed its natural expansion, or else it will work the gravest disturbance. Woman nowadays is a force, and as a force must find her suitable employ. Her full and due share must be allowed her in social action and social rights, duties, and benefits. She can no more be indefinitely withheld from her public duties than she is exempted from taxation. The longer the delay in according woman her rights, the more disastrously will she make felt the influence of her defects.

- From an essay in the Fortnightly Review 1892.