IN the appearance and lot of Turkish women we see, perhaps, more distinctly than in any other feature of life in Constantinople the perpetuation of the ideas and usages which give to Turkish society its peculiar character and physiognomy. The assertion is often made that, according to the Moslem creed, woman has no soul. This is a mistake. While man, indeed, is considered to be woman’s superior on the ground of his higher natural endowments and of his services as bread-winner, the Koran, at the same time, recognises her spiritual nature and religious capacity. “Verily,” says that authority, “the resigned men and the resigned women, the believing men and the believing women, the devout men and the devout women, the truthful men and the truthful women, the patient men and the patient women, the humble men and the humble women, the charitable men and the charitable women, the fasting men and the fasting women, the chaste men and the chaste women, and the men and women who oft remember God, for them hath God prepared forgiveness and a mighty recompense.” Although the female companionship which forms one of the delights of the Mohammedan Paradise will be furnished by the houris, still earth-born women are also present in the abodes of bliss. Hence a Turkish mother, mourning the loss of her little girl, can find comfort in putting over the child’s grave this epitaph:--“The bird of my heart has flown from its cage to find a place in the gardens of Paradise.” If Moslem women do not attend public worship in the mosques, the reason is not any spiritual disqualification, but the idea that the sexes should associate as little as possible. Yet elderly women may be seen at their devotions in a mosque out of the hours of public worship, while during the religious season of Ramazan special services for women are held in some of the great mosques of the city, as well as in the imperial harem and in the harems of wealthy personages, such services being conducted by popular preachers. But after all is said that can be said to prove that honourable views concerning woman are cherished in a society constituted by Moslem thought, it remains true that the fundamental conception underlying the organisation of that society and forming its dominant spirit is of an opposite character. That conception, we should in justice remember, is not peculiar to Islam. On the contrary, it has prevailed outside the Mohammedan world; it has contaminated even the life of Christendom. Nevertheless, the view that man and woman are not equals, that the latter is chiefly made to minister to the pleasure of the former, and that they are morally dangerous to each other, has nowhere been applied so consistently, on so large a scale, and for so long a period in the very presence of a higher civilisation, as in Moslem society. Such a view demands naturally and necessarily that men and women should be kept apart as much as the conditions of human existence permit.