"This delicacy or propriety," it has been well said, "implied not only modesty, but ignorance; and not only decency of conduct, but false decency of mind. Nothing was to be thoroughly known, nothing to be frankly expressed. The vicious concealment was not confined to physical facts, but pervaded all forms of knowledge. Not only must the girl be kept ignorant of the principles of physiology, but she must also abstain from penetrating thoroughly into the mysteries of history, of politics, of science, and of philosophy. Even her special province of religion must be lightly surveyed. She was not required to think for herself, therefore she was deprived of all training which would enable her to think at all. The girl must appear to be dependent upon the mental strength of a man, as well as upon his physical strength."

It is necessary to remember this attitude if we are to understand the direction that woman's emancipation has largely and, as some of us think, mistakenly-taken in this country. It explains the demand for equality of opportunity with men, which has become the watch-cry of so many women, thinking that here was the way to solve the problem. A cry good and right in itself, but one which is a starting-point only for woman's freedom, and can never be its end.

2

Little more than fifty years have passed since Miss Jex Blake undertook her memorable fight to obtain medical training for herself and her colleagues at the University of Edinburgh. At about the same time arose. women's demand for the right of higher education, and colleges for women were opened at Oxford and Cambridge. These were the practical results which followed the revolt of Mary Wollstonecraft, and later, the great

1 The Emancipation of English Women.

2 For an account of this struggle see Sketch of the Foundation and Development of_the_London School of Medicine for Women, by Isabel Thomes; also The Emancipation of English Women.

revival due to the publication of John Stuart Mills' epoch-marking book, the Subjection of Women.

During the first period of the woman's movement the centre of restlessness was amongst unmarried women, who rebelled at the old restrictions, eager for selfdevelopment and a more intellectually active life. These women undertook their own cause, insisting that their humanity came before their sex. They were picked women, much above the average woman, and to a certain extent abnormal in so far as they denied the important factor of sex. To them the average male was not a subject of overwhelming interest, and marriage and motherhood was not of prominent importance in their thought. For them "equality of opportunity for women with men" seemed to solve the problem of woman's emancipation. The constructive result of their campaign was the winning of the higher education of woman, the right to work, and the rush of women into the professions. Much, indeed, was gained, though it may be said with equal truth that much was lost. With this solution-the increased power of self-realisation in a narrow class of picked women, chiefly unmarried women of the middleclass the woman's movement might well begin, but in this alone it can never end. The movement was incomplete as far as woman's emancipation went, because it was won by ignoring sex. In spite of the great advance in freedom and in scope of activity of life, the stigma attached to woman was not removed. To-day we have arrived at a point where instead of ignoring sex we must affirm it, and claim emancipation on the ground of our sex alone. Our mothers taught acceptance, and asked

for privileges; the pioneers of revolt raised the cry acceptance is a sin and all privilege evil"; we, the blood in our veins beating more strongly and understanding at last the true inwardness of our power, found our claim for complete emancipation upon that special work in the world and for the State which our differentiation from men imposes upon us. This differentiation is our potentiality for motherhood, and is the endowment of every woman, whether realised or not. We claim as our glory what our mothers accepted as shame.

their burden of

No sudden causeless changes ever happen, or ever have happened. And the question, Why? arises. What is this dynamic force which has been, and is still sweeping in a great wave of emancipation across the civilised world, joining women in one common purpose? On the outside the revolutionary character of women's modern thought and modern practice means nothing more than that they claim the rights of adult human beings-political enfranchisement, the right of education and freedom to work. But the facts are far too complex to enable us thus to rush hastily to an answer. There is a pitiful monotony in much that is written and spoken about women's emancipation. The real causes are deep to seek, and not infrequently they have been missed even by those who have been most instrumental in bringing a new hope to women. The most advanced women champions, the martyrs of revolt, show no greater sense of the meanings and issues of the struggle in which they are engaged than the complaisant supporters of the wornout customs they combat. They exhibit only the energies

of an admirable impulse, without the control of a guiding law. Speculation, which should be carried to a comprehension of general facts, is concentrated upon the immediate gain of the hour. The tendency is to trifle with truth, and to disguise its reach and consequences. We have read, and spoken, and thought so much about the special character of woman that we have become almost wearied of the subject. Like Narcissus, we stand in some danger of falling in love with our own image. Perhaps the truth is we speculate too much instead of trying to find out the facts. The woman question is as old as sex itself and as young as mankind.

The future position of woman in society is a question that carries with it biological and psychological, as well as social and practical, issues of the widest significance, and further, it is bound up intimately with the profoundest riddles of existence. The problems remain to a great extent unsolved. But the conviction forces itself that the emancipation of woman will ultimately involve a revolution in many of our social institutions. It is this that brings fear to many. Yet we must remember that woman's emancipation is no new movement, but has always been with us, although with varying prominence at different times in history. In the past civilisations have fallen, in part at least, because they failed to develop in equal freedom their women with their men. It is also certain that no civilisation in the future can remain the highest if another civilisation adds to the intelligence of its male population the intelligence of its women. This in itself is enough to condemn all ideas of sex inequality.

The struggle for the Suffrage has intensified many problems which it will take all the intellectual and emotional energy of both men and women to solve. Up till now there has been little more than a fight for mere rights against male monopolies. In the near future this struggle must lead to a realisation of the duties of woman, founded on a level-headed facing of the physiological realities of her nature. It is a complete disregard of sexualogical difficulties which renders so superficial and unconvincing much of the talk which proceeds from the "Woman's Rights" platform. All efforts made to understand the sex problem, which is the woman question, must be based on the full knowledge of the physical capacity of woman and the effect that her emancipation will have on her function of race production. All effort ought to be directed towards the future welfare and happiness of the children who are to follow us. This is the goal of woman's struggle for progress, it is the sole end worthy of it.

To assume as Schopenhauer and so many others have done, down to Sir Almroth Wright's recent hysterical wail in The Times, that woman, on account of her womanhood is incapable of intellectual or social development, paying her sole debt of Nature in bearing and caring for children, is really to state a belief in decay for humankind. Any stigma attached to women is really a stigma attached to their potentiality as mothers, and we can only remove it by beginning with the emancipation of the actual mother. No sharp cleavage can be made between qualities that are good and masculine on the one side, and all that is feminine on the other. The