BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 103 



politics in its wider sense. But in all discussions, though she 

 always took a foremost part, she was a courteous and gentle 

 opponent if ever she felt called upon to combat any theory 

 or challenge any fact. She demanded freedom of thought and 

 utterance for herself; she was ready to grant every one else 

 the same privilege. A fragment dated July 16, 1900, and con- 

 sisting of only three or four paragraphs, gives, in brief, ex- 

 pression to much of her philosophy of life. She here says : 



"To live is only worth while in order to build character. 



"In the East, character is called Karma. It is built from 

 blocks of truth. It is only that which lasts through eons. This 

 is the tower for each to build. 



"Only the strong are tried and they alone can reach ever- 

 lasting life; for in strength rests peace, solidarity, unity, in- 

 finity." 



Still another phase is found in the form of a bit of rhythmi- 

 cal prose : 



"The epilogue of Love is death. 



" For he who has truly loved only finds fulfillment in death. 



"The quest of life is love, its finding the signal for death. 



"Love knows neither consciousness nor volition. It is, 

 in its fullest expression, oblivion; in its fullest activity, qui- 

 escence." 



But what perhaps strikes one most powerfully in studying 

 her life is her passionate desire for independence, for com- 

 plete liberty of thought and action. She was an individualist 

 of the most pronounced type. She so insistently felt the 

 need of unhampered fields of activity for women that she may 

 sometimes have shocked the ultra-conservative in her pleas. 

 She could never see the reason why men should have all the 

 prerogatives and women all the restrictions. Instructive in this 

 connection is her prose hymn to Liberty, which was printed 

 in emphatic italics in the " Conservator" for April, 1897: 



"Freedom is the end which revolution and revolt through truth have in 

 view. It is a liberation from all the chains which are holding back the hu- 

 man being from greater expansions of mind and soul. By Freedom is meant a 

 state wherein all the shackles from preconceived ideas of the rights and wrongs 

 of a question are cast aside; where the being stands unhampered to view 



