180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ever, I observe in actual life that " advanced " women are chary 

 of either putting forward or accepting modifications in this mat- 

 ter. They dread the frown of their Grundian deity. They usually 

 content themselves with vague declamation and with erecting 

 female celibacy into a panacea for the ills that woman is heir to, 

 while they refuse to meddle at all in definite terms with the ques- 

 tion of marriage or its substitute in the future. "While denouncing 

 loudly the supremacy of man, they seem ready to shake off that 

 supremacy only for the celibate minority of their sex, without at- 

 tempting to do anything for the married majority. 



To sum up the point whither this long, and I confess discursive, 

 argument is tending. There is, and ought to be, a genuine Wom- 

 an Question and a genuine Woman Movement. But that move- 

 ment, if it is ever to do any good, must not ignore nay, on the 

 contrary, must frankly and unreservedly accept and embrace the 

 fact that the vast majority of adult women are and will always be 

 wives and mothers (and when I say " wives," I say so only in the 

 broadest sense, subject to all possible expansions or modifications 

 of the nature of wifehood). It must also recognize the other fact 

 that in an ideal community the greatest possible number of women 

 should be devoted to the duties of maternity, in order that the 

 average family may be kept small, that is to say, healthy and ed- 

 ucable. It must assume as its goal, not general celibacy and the 

 independence of women, but general marriage and the ample sup- 

 port of women by the men of the community. While allowing 

 that exceptional circumstances call for exceptional tenderness 

 toward those women who are now compelled by untoward con- 

 ditions to earn their own livelihood, it will avoid creating that 

 accident into a positive goal, and it will endeavor to lessen the 

 necessity for the existence of such exceptions in the future. In 

 short, it will recognize maternity as the central function of the 

 mass of women, and will do everything in its power to make that 

 maternity as healthy, as noble, and as little burdensome as 

 possible. 



If the " advanced " women will meet us on this platform, I be- 

 lieve the majority of " advanced " men will gladly hold out to 

 them the right hand of fellowship. As a body we are, I think, 

 prepared to reconsider, and to reconsider fundamentally, without 

 prejudice or preconception, the entire question of the relations be- 

 tween the sexes which is a great deal more than the women are 

 prepared to do. We are ready to make any modifications in those 

 relations which will satisfy the woman's just aspiration for per- 

 sonal independence, for intellectual and moral development, for 

 physical culture, for political activity, and for a voice in the ar- 

 rangement of her own affairs, both domestic and national. As a 

 matter of fact, few women will go as far in their desire to eman- 



