534 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1302 



If reiteration could save a doctrine or con- 

 fer the attribute of truth this doctrine would 

 not now be moving to join its companion 

 superstitions : Special Creation and the Fall 

 of Man. The savage with his savage job of 

 himting and iighting made the inferences 

 that might be expected from a primitive 

 mind regarding the creature who staid at 

 home to cook his food and care for his child: 

 one who could not — or at least did not — fight 

 was inferior. The reasoning of post-savage 

 and post-barbarous peoples is an extraordi- 

 nary mass of testimony to the slowness with 

 which the human mind has advanced to 

 scientific aptitude. Philosophers, theologians 

 and statesmen — no less than common persons 

 • — have failed to perceive that no conclusions 

 iased on oiservations of unfree human sub- 

 jects can safely he drawn regarding what is 

 normal in those suhjects. Failure to recog- 

 nize this principle accounts for the surprise, 

 the dismay and the disapproval upon witness- 

 ing among free woman what is apparently 

 most unnormal behavior;. that is, behavior in- 

 consistent with the normal or type-form as it 

 had been understood. 



In the United States, as late as 1850, 

 women — being without other means of secur- 

 ing food, clothing and shelter — married on 

 terms not of their own making. They bore 

 children according to the pleasure of those 

 whom they were to obey and in recognition 

 of a dogma of theology which they were 

 taught to hold as divinely endorsed. For, 

 lacking knowledge, women were no more free 

 in mind than they were in body lacking eco- 

 nomic independence. This type of woman 

 has practically disappeared below the histor- 

 ical horizon — succeeded by a multitude of 

 women of affairs, in gainful occupations, in 

 the activities of business, philanthropy, edu- 

 cation, professions and in concerns that re- 

 quire the highest order of organizing and ad- 

 ministrative ability — women who offer no 

 apology for their choices and no defense of 

 their activities. 



Now, the most noticeable consequence of 

 the new freedom is that each , woman is 

 deciding for herself whether she will marry 

 or not. And in case she does marry, the 



deciding vote as to the number of children to 

 follow is likely to rest with her. The woman 

 of to-day will herself determine what her duty 

 is in the case. We may reason with our 

 equals or appeal to them; but for one person 

 to tell another grown-up person his duty, or 

 for one class of persons to dictate the duties 

 of another class, seems now to be unsustained 

 by ethical courtesy. Justice has reached the 

 point of insisting that as regards bearing 

 many or any children a woman must be free 

 to decide — free from the coercion of govern- 

 ment, or religion, or public opinion, or a dis- 

 ordered conscience. 



That " revolution " is not too strong a word 

 to mark what has taken place in two incom- 

 plete decades of the twentieth century is well 

 indicated by comparing the war-time position 

 of women in the past with that of the present. 

 The lady of the nineteenth century and aU 

 preceding ones waited and wept at home and 

 prayed for her lord's safe return from the 

 wars. To-day history takes into her keeping 

 the story of the multiple Entente of women 

 who helped to win the Great War. The 

 sudden need that women should come out of 

 the home and lend a hand in a hundred ways 

 has led to an unexpected and perhaps un- 

 welcome proof of what they will usually do as 

 free persons. Wo doubt there are those who 

 find consolation in the thought that women's 

 war activities have been a spasmodic though 

 commendable expression of patriotism, a tem- 

 porary estrangement from their true work 

 and, the war over, they will return to their 

 " normal " place : the home. It may readily 

 be admitted tliat the new freedom is too new 

 to permit of immediate conclusions. Sociol- 

 ogy no less than geology or physiology or any 

 other science requires us to suspend judg- 

 ment. All that can be asked on the one 

 hand, all that need be granted on the other, 

 is that in the great laboratory which we call 

 human society the class investigated, the 

 women, shall be free. A provisional judg- 

 ment is that while many women will probably 

 prefer to devote themselves to domestic 

 activities, many others will be equally in- 

 clined — and resolved — to occupy themselves 

 with the varied pursuits which have hitherto 



