Whenever we have sufficient remains to illustrate the life of any period of history with reasonable completeness, we find women occupying a much more important place than is usually conceded to them. The trouble is that we assume that we know something about the past, because we have somewhere obtained a vague notion of it and then we fill in details in accordance with that preconceived notion. The general rule, unfortunately, is to make as little of the past as possible and to consider that, of course, they must have been very different from us, and surely far behind us in everything. The more one really knows of history, however, the less does one think this. We must not let our complacent self-satisfaction with our own generation disturb our proper appreciation of past generations, however. An English writer said not very long ago, and now that we have reviewed various periods in the history of feminine influence and of education, I think that you will recognize the justice of what he said, "It is too much the easy custom of the present self-admiring day--not a bit more self-satisfied, after all, than each day has been in its {254} turn--to hold the women of the past as something little better than dolls for their attainments, a little dearer than slaves for their position and despicably content therein." Nothing could well be less true than this. What is apt to strike us, however, after a review of the phases of feminine education and influence such as I have sketched, is that there are undoubtedly times during which very little is heard of feminine influence and almost nothing at all of feminine education. There are periods on the other hand when these subjects are the very centre of human interest. This interest waxes to a certain climax and then apparently wanes. What is the reason for these waxings and wanings? Is there anything that we know about them that will help us to account for them? If women have once achieved a certain position and have once secured certain privileges in the matter of education, it might reasonably be expected that, barring some great cataclysm or political upheaval, that completely disrupted society, they would not abandon these hard-won rights and precious privileges, and so we should not have to be going through the storm and stress of another period of discussion, controversy, opposition with regard to woman's rights. How is it that rights once attained--and never unless after a struggle, for no matter how civilized a period or how cultured a people, they do not grant rights to any class unless forced to do so-- that these rights have afterwards been lost, or at least greatly diminished and partly forgotten? {255}