Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



271 



GREEK PATRON SAINTS OF FEMINISM. 

 Sappho and Aspasia. 



Mr. W. L. Courtney prints in the Fortnightly 

 I:', vino his lecture before the Royal Society on Sappho 

 and Aspasia. 



It is a brilliant attempt to vindicate the pioneers of 

 Feminism in Ancient Greece. Mr. Courtney says that 

 as they both set an early example of feminine enlighten- 

 ment from prejudice, " A kind of crusade was entered 

 upon to destroy their character, to deride their pre- 

 tensions, to thrown scorn upon their names." 



SAPPHO. 



Mr. Courtney thinks the time has come to do justice 

 to these two women, who are deserving of being 

 hailed as pioneers if not patron saints of the woman's 

 movement in the Western world : — 



In considering Sappho, we have to imagine a state of society 

 in which it was not considered improper or indelicate to write 

 frankly and openly about emotions, and feelings, and even 

 passionate slates. Sappho's poems contain some instances of 

 this frank speaking, and they have been misinterpreted, because 

 wc read into the words some of the associations which belong 

 only to a much later stage of civilisation and life. Sappho 

 spoice sometimes with unconventional directness, but to argue 

 from unconventional language to disorderliness of behaviour is 

 to go a great deal beyond what the record warrants. 



Naturally, it suited the Christian writer, in his tirades against 

 heathenism, to follow Greek perversions, and paint a Sappho 

 full of corruption, as a terrible example of the depths to which 

 heathenism could descend. We must put aside all these 

 aspersions and innuendos, and take the poems themselves, if we 

 «anl to understand .Sappho. 



.\ grave, clear beauty seems to reign over them, and that is 

 why the only real way of judging Sappho is by reading her 

 poetry, and then judging whether she could possibly have 

 been the dissolute libertine that the Attic comic dramatists 

 represented. 



ASPASIA, 



In whitewashing Aspasia Mr. Courtney is on firmer 

 ground : — 



The scandal of .Xspasia's existence in .Vlhens was based 

 es|Kcially on the fact that, instead of believing in the seclusion 

 of women, she held reunions, at which both she and her friends 

 moved with absolute freedom, discussing, with all the most 

 learned men of the day, problems of policy, of philosophy, and 

 metaphysics. 



She was also attacked by political partisans who 

 hated Pericles. .Mr. Courtney points out that Pericles 

 had made a most unhappy marriage, and was living 

 apart from his wife. He could not marry Aspa.sia, 

 who was an alien. Hut he lived with her openly as 

 his wife, kissing her w henever he left home on business, 

 and the excellence of the union was attested by the 

 fact that the Athenians legitimatised her son : — 



Aspasia was a great woman, full of quick natural intelligence, 

 adorned an<l fnriifud by a steady, organised system of culture. 

 Socrates, in his l.nughing fashion, declares that she taught him 

 how to speak. She made the house of Pericles the meeting-place 

 for men and women, as wc should say, of the higher culture, 

 who discussed, on terms of perfect equality, various topics — 

 domestic economy, politics, art, the principles of morals, pliysics 

 in the largest sense, and probably religion. Aspasias home 

 was a salon, in the lust sense of the word. The great artists 

 were there, the great dramatists, the great philosophers. And, 

 so far as wc can tell, some of the more emancipated of the 



matrons of Athens did not hesitate to join this cultured circle, 

 whatever might be the existing prejudice. The constant object 

 (if her solicitude was a study of the rights and duties wliich 

 marriage creates for man and woman. 



Everywhere she upheld the cause of woman as a 

 social integer, a definite portion of the State economy. 

 '■ Aspasia, the well-beloved of Pericles, stands in the 

 very front rank of the great woinen who have adorned 

 the pages of ancient and modern history." 



A DREAM OF THE "GREAT STATE" TO COME. 



By the Countess of Warwick. 



In the Fortnightly Review Lady Warwick gives us 

 a sketch of her vision of things to come when Socialism 

 has triumphed and the Great State has come into being. 



The Great State will abolish great cities. The 

 Birminghams will give place to the Warwicks. In 

 the Great State there will be no room for towns of 

 factories belching forth yellow fog or for congested 

 areas of slums. Free and speedy transit will scatter 

 the population over the country : — 



The railways and trams and cars will then be communal and 

 free services, just as the roads are communal and free to day. 

 The waste of innumerable ticket-collectors and booking-clerks 

 will be saved ; the citizens of the (ireat State will regard 

 transit as a commonplace, which they will provide without 

 stint, and encourage everyone to use without a moment's 

 hesitation. 



All dwellers in the country will be within easy range 

 of the advantages of town life : — 



For example, a w-ellequipped opera house, a theatre, a 

 concert hall, art galleries and museums, libraries, swimming 

 baths, specialised medical advice and special instruction, 

 facilities for higher education, large shops with a full variety of 

 choice for their customers, the invigorating interchange of the 

 social intercourse of large gatherings ; all these things demand 

 a town of fairly extensive size for their accomplishment. 



Farming will be revolutionised on a scientific and 

 co-operative basis : — 



Under the rule of the Great .State, the landlord and the small 

 and large private farmers will no longer exist. The State will 

 own the land. The land will be divided up into convenient tracts, 

 of a size determined by the nature of the soil and the kind of pro- 

 duce to be grown ; .and these will be worked as State farms, under 

 the control of a director and .assistants who are highly trained 

 ill the latest science and art of their department of knowledge. 

 The Great Slate agriculture will be to the agriculture of to-day 

 what the Oil Trust is to the oil shop in the back streets of a 

 slum. Klectricily, in the days of the Great Slate, will not be 

 the monopoly of the towns. There will be no need to have a 

 smoking stack of f.iclory chimneys in every village which 

 possesses a factory. 



There is another probable development to consider. The 

 industrial artisan and the agricultural worker will not necessarily 

 lie two distinct persons. The bulk of the work on the fields is 

 seasonal ; and the winter, on the whole, is a slack time for 

 farmers. A well organised agricultural system » ill get much of 

 its work done at limited pcrioils, leaving its workers free to 

 remain in the towns or villages during the darker months of 

 the year. The man who makes hay and liigs potatoes will 

 probably have a town craft — for example, bootmaking, or 

 woo<lwork, or house decorating — for a winter occupation ; just 

 as the town artisans will s.ipply the extra hands to allow the 

 countrymen to keep their reasonable hours during the stress of 

 harvesting. 



