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ALFRED T. SCHOFIELD, ESQ., M.D., ON 



of the future enshrined in his latest book, TTie Science of 

 Power, first published in 1918, and which has run through 

 many editions. I here read that " the future power in civiliza- 

 tion is not in the fighting male of the race, it is in woman " (p. 195). 



It is woman who by the necessities of her being has carried 

 within her nature from the beginning, in its highest potentiali- 

 ties, the ruling principle of the new era of power. The driving 

 principle of woman's nature has ever been, by force of physio- 

 logical necessity, the subjugation of the present to the future. 

 The mind of woman has in reality outstripped that of man by 

 an entire epoch of evolution in the development of those char- 

 acteristic qualities upon which power now rests in the social 

 integration" (p. 204). 



Mr. Kidd's foundation stones are, first, that the future of 

 civilization is the collective emotion of the ideal, and second, 

 that the principal instrument for this is the mind of woman, 

 which is destined " to take the lead in the future of civilization 

 as the principal instrument of power " (p. 235). 



Truly this is a wondrous outlook ; but even if every premiss 

 were true the conclusion that such a goal will be reached is 

 wholly fallacious, owing to the perverse and incalculable factor 

 called human nature. Ruskin, in incomparable English, 

 traced out faultless lines of human progress, and broke his 

 great heart because he could find no one to advance along them. 

 The vision held out to us in The Science of Power is equally 

 enthralling and entrancing, and entirely captures the imagina- 

 tion, and one hopes and wishes that it might prove true. 



It is only as we read the future in the light of the past that we 

 are reluctantly forced to doubt the possibility of its fulfilment, 

 apart from a radical change in the nature of man. 



And finally may I reverently touch on a fact that has long 

 impressed me, and that is that our Lord's life on earth does not 

 so much exhibit masculine perfection, as that of humanity. And 

 as we have already noticed the rapprochement of the two types 

 in the sexes, which will proceed much further, and as we read 

 that in the consummation of Christianity there will be neither 

 male nor female, but all one in Christ Jesus, may we not believe 

 that since we are to be conformed to the image of His Son, we are 

 not called upon now to emphasize our psychological difference, 

 but rather to accentuate the unity of redeemed humanity ? 



