to be qualified to earn a competent livelihood, thus bringing to pass the realisation of the Lady Psyche's prophecy

"Everywhere

Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life,

Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind." 1

On the score of superficiality, we can detect a gleam of light in woman's hitherto darkened condition. "The rotten pales of prejudice," have at last been overleaped by a large minority of women, whose most strenuous and earnest efforts are devoted to the work of moulding their sister-woman "to the fuller day."

Women in Great Britain and America, and in most of the British Colonies, are being educated up to the highest extent of their individual abilities; and women of many continental nations are not far behind the Anglo-Saxon standard. Every door of knowledge, of intellectual study, of mental development, is open to them; they have but to express a wish to enter the various fields of learning, science, and research, and they are freely admitted, with but few restrictions, to reap the intellectual harvest of all the ages. The many brilliant examples of women's proficiency, and by no means barren triumphs in all branches of study, and in various professions, conclusively prove that, given opportunity and favourable environment, women are not slow to avail themselves of every stepping-stone to intellectual advancement. Though, as I before remarked, it is improbable, upon purely anatomical ground, regarding the essentially different construction of the male and female brains, that many women will as a whole equal, much less eclipse, men in mental endowments. The formation of their brains does not admit of such intellectual equality, except at the detriment of qualities distinctively feminine, and for whose loss women would suffer immeasurably. For "the blood supply which in the male is divided towards the portions which are concerned in volition, cognition, and ideo-motor processes, is in the female more directed towards portions which are mainly concerned in the discharge of sensory functions." 2 Thus women develop the emotional attributes,

1 "The Princess: a Medley," Tennyson.

2 "We trust to the different natures to provide for themselves by their assimilations, each will assimilate according to its kind. On the same

men, the intellectual; and though, to a certain degree, both developments are necessary to a complement, at present, women's functions will be chiefly of a moral nature, supplemented with such knowledge as is necessary for the fulfilment of her purpose.

No one can doubt that, as the full emancipation of women, intellectually, socially, and politically, proceeds, potent results will be achieved both for themselves and for the race; when the latent forces of energy, perseverance, endurance, and vitality women undoubtedly possess, are expended on the attainment of a high ideal, and their minds cultivated to take broader views of life in all its various aspects.

It is here, in truth, that at present so many women are deplorably deficient. Comfortably serene in a stereotyped groove of aimless conventionality, they appear to dread the time when the force of circumstances and the course of events will necessitate an independent and vigorous line of action. These are the women who hug their chains, who have fallen so low mentally and spiritually, that, slaves to convention, they do not realise their bondage, nor how their apathy retards the progress of the common sisterhood. We want, to gain our legitimate ends, a widening of sympathies, an enlarging of the borders of individual love and charity, and above all, an increased knowledge of others' needs.

If, in the near future, the Parliamentary Franchise is granted to women, it will behove them to rise to the greatness of the occasion, and the full realisation of their mutual responsibilities. So valuable and potent a boon would soon turn to Dead Sea fruit, and become a snare of the Evil One rather than a gift of the gods, if knowledge of the various needs of the community and of the duties of political emancipation did not go hand in hand with the newly-acquired liberty.1 Indisputably I reiterate, the moral future of the race rests largely in the further ethical evolution of women. Men of supreme intellect educate each other and the world; women, with pure, noble, and unselfish ideals, must so diffuse their influence, that, in both men and women, the sense of moral obligation food girls will become plump and rounded, boys lean and sinewy, because such is the nature of each. The same principle applies to the curriculum for the mind as to the table of foods for the body. The mental nature may be depended upon to select and to assimilate from common food the elements demanded by its needs, including the needs of its sex, with as much accuracy as does the physical nature."-May Wright Sewall.

1 See Note 2.

may be quickened and intensified. To this great end women
must labour, as their participation in public, social, and civil
functions gives them greater power and a wider scope for
their energies. They must, by their own high endeavour, not
fall short of the trust reposed in them; and, by the force of
sheer example, modify men's supercilious opinion of their capa-
cities. Civic virtues in woman, it must be remembered, are
not of spontaneous growth, as are those of a domestic character.
The former will have in great measure to be acquired by
diligent assimilation and adaptability-by receptivity and
alertness of perception.

If women are to share with men the cares and benefits of
public duties, they must not rest content until they are on a
par with the best men in the mastery of the difficulties that
accompany political and civic rights. It would be a disastrous
day for the British empire, if the destinies of the nation rested
in the hands of indifferent, ill-educated voters of both sexes.
Therefore, I would impress upon all women the importance of
following the advice of a great political leader to his party,
"Educate, organise! Organise, educate!"/

To sum up-let no woman be deterred from enlarging her sphere of action by a consideration of the assumed physical and psychological limitations of her sex. As John Stuart Mill succinctly remarks-"What a woman by nature cannot be, it is quite superfluous to prevent her from being." No bounds can be placed to that nebulous undefined entity, "woman's sphere," often now arbitrarily circumscribed by individual idiosyncrasies-other than the limit of incapacity. In whatever station, office, or vocation woman does her part well, and for the benefit of others, she is within her sphere. Let her work be judged henceforth by results, and I, for one, do not fear the verdict:

"A self-poised royal soul, brave, wise, and tender,

No longer blind and dumb;

A human being of an unknown splendour,

Is she who is to come."

na

science

1 "Woman represents in hunian paychology the being in whom reside all the most energetic and Howerful senti. - ments - pity, affections, altruisen" devotion; the ought to be the embodiment of tenderness, the sister of merc I mantrend.. Now the philanthropy of the day Closely bound up with the essential parts of political Economy. It is the science which is the basis of all be-revolent institutions; it is the clience teaching is the Grection in which we must proceed to assuage the writs of Jumanity.. By the hath way of philanthropy woman mush

PART III

WOMAN AS THE WIFE

IN considering woman's position as wife before studying her vocation as mother, I have purposely reversed the natural order of evolution as regards the purely physical world.

In the various stages through which animal life has developed into family life, the mother precedes the wife in evolution; but in considering the ethical development of the human race, we must begin with the relations of the wife before we study those of the mother, for reasons that will presently be made fully apparent.

Reproduction of kind begins in the lowest organisms with no differentiation of sex; as the scale of evolution ascends the paternal sentiment first shadowed forth in the fishes, and certain batrachia, is soon eclipsed by the greater development of the maternal instincts in birds and mammals. When, however, the higher organism of man is reached, the sexual relations undoubtedly take precedence over both paternal and maternal obligations, and, in fact, constitute the foundation of the future social, ethical, and spiritual development of the

race.

Here, in truth, we are on the threshold of the great mysteries of woman's evolution, woman's fall, and woman's ascent. The true and wondrous significance of woman's mission can only be grasped in its entirety by a close study of the Divine records, those in the Book of Nature and those in the inspired Word. In the former we find that, from the lowest to the highest organism, the whole work of reproduction is thrown upon the female. To the female therefore Nature devotes the greater solicitude. As Mr. Lester F. Ward remarks, "The whole upper part of the animal series may be regarded as anomalous, and the anomaly is a radical one, since it represents a change from normal female superiority to abnormal male superiority, a change brought about by the

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females themselves through sexual selection, whereby they have surrendered their sceptre, and bartered their empire for an æsthetic gratification."

We find among the higher mammals the lioness is as formidable, if not more so, than the lion; the tigress more feared than the tiger; the mare in many countries more valued than the stallion; and the female ape is, as a rule, found to be more imitative and intelligent than the male, showing that in a more or less degree the female in the brute creation still holds an equal position with the male. Rising in the scale, we will glance at the earliest traditions and religious beliefs of prehistoric records handed down through the misty ages of man's rudimentary psychological and mental development; where we are at once confronted by two remarkable facts, if due account is taken of primitive man's strong animal passions and unrestrained sexual desires, viz., that, first, in the chief ancient mythologies, the principal gods were either sexless or represented as hermaphrodite; the virtues, attributes, functions and relations of the two sexes finding their complements in one individuality; and, secondly, that extreme sanctity was invariably conferred on female chastity; more especially was this the case with the principal goddesses, as Semiramis and Mylitta.

"It is," says Hewitt, "in the Finn reverence for domestic chastity, that we also find the origin of the sexless gods of the Pole-star and of the mother-cloud and mother-tree, and this belief in the sexless creator led to the sanctity ascribed to virginity. This appeared in the custom of unsexing the priests of the fire-god Bel, the god of the Pole-star; in the vestal virgins of Roman ritual, the virgin priestesses of Tarius at Carthage, and in the rule common to Ephesus and Persia, which only allowed virgins to enter the temple of Artemis, and those of Anahita, the virgin mother of streams."

Minerva, the goddess of Wisdom, was virgin and selfreproductive; Diana of the Ephesians was also virgin, the goddess of chastity, of the hearth, and of the home.

As man multiplied his deities, the elementary factors of life were ever represented as proceeding from, or being presided over by, female divinities. The threads of life were woven by the hands of the awful Three, the sustenance of life was under the surveillance of Ceres, the goddess of corn and oil and the fruits of the earth; the prolongation of life was effected through the medium of the goddess Hygeia; the springs of living water