WOMAN THE PSYCHIC CENTRE 199 



in the present of those Power systems, which arise 

 from the activities of the male mind, which rest on 

 force, which by the categorical necessity of the fight 

 must always be directed to sectional and short- 

 range objectives, and which from an outlook thus 

 inherently limited to the need of the present and 

 under the control of reason seek always to impose 

 their own conceptions under the name of the Absolute 

 upon every form of human activity. These systems 

 of Power, characteristic of the individual integra- 

 tion, have ever sought to exploit woman in all her 

 capacities as no other being has been exploited in life. 

 Out of this struggle the mind of woman has emerged. 

 It is like the emerging mind of civilization itself 

 in the upward stress of progress. Woman is indeed 

 the actual prototype of all the great systems of 

 religion, of morality, of law, upon which integrating 

 civilization rests. For in all these the controlling 

 meaning in which their development has centred 

 has been this same struggle for the interests of the 

 future against the systems of force seeking to 

 exploit and overwhelm in the present the interests 

 of the future which were represented in them. 



In the individual integration, of which Darwin 

 gave us the laws, the clue to Power in all the qualities 

 and all the institutions of the winning types lies 

 in one fact. The heredity through which Power is 



