LET US THEREWITH BE CONTENT. 343 



leaders) contend that every woman is more unselfish than every 

 man. On the contrary, it is only too easy to point out cases where 

 feminine selfishness is shown again and again in petty ways to 

 which men, as a rule, do not stoop. Yet it remains in general 

 true that the practical life of women the world over calls for a 

 more constant exercise of self-sacrifice than that of men, and 

 that everywhere women have learned in the main to make their 

 sacrifices cheerfully because lovingly, and even to court a life 

 which brings them. That this acquiescence should be often 

 considered an indication of tameness, if not inferiority, is but 

 natural in a civilization which has even now only half realized 

 the dignity of the altruistic ideal. In the affairs of life intellect 

 has enjoyed a long prestige. Character, which, according to 

 the highest conceptions of the race, depends at its best upon 

 altruism, is but slowly growing into an equal recognition. In 

 a rough, general way, men have been the apostles of the one 

 and women of the other. It is true that the ideal of humanity 

 is one. Women have gained in intellect and men in character, 

 and this must go on ; but it has not come about, and it will 

 not come about, by a direct exchange of their activities. 



These considerations lead to the good old dictum that "home 

 is woman's sphere." It seems well-nigh superfluous to enumer- 

 ate the obvious qualifications of this general statement. Surely 

 no fin-de-siecle person would understand it to mean that woman 

 should look upon marriage in itself as the sole desideratum of 

 her existence, or that, failing to marry, she should devote her- 

 self to pets and fancy work, and live upon the charity of her 

 male relatives. Surely at this stage of proceedings no one would 

 attempt or desire to limit woman to purely domestic pursuits. 

 It has been reiterated and most abundantly proved that she need 

 not be circumscribed in freedom or opportunity for the sake of 

 binding her to the home : it is not necessary, for Nature will take 

 care of itself ; and it is not expedient, for the more she is allowed 

 to be in herself the greater the gift she can and will bring to the 

 race. Moreover, no one will contend that every woman ought to 

 be a mother, or that an indefinite number of offspring is a wife's 

 chief duty. In a word, marriage, and the bearing and not bearing 

 of children, are individual accidents dependent upon a thousand 

 private considerations. To fulfill the law of womanhood one 

 need not be a mother, but only to be motherly ; one need not be 

 a wife, but only to be loyal to the unselfish principle of wifehood ; 

 one need not eschew the paths of business or professional life, so 

 only that slae recognize hers as the exceptional feminine career, 

 the more normal and significant one lying within the walls of the 

 home. 



Consciously sometimes, but perhaps more often with uncon- 



