[Illustration 12 _ASPASIA After the painting by Henry Holiday. Aspasia was born in Miletus. At an early age, accompanied by another young girl, Thargelia, she went to Athens. Their beauty and talents soon won them distinction--Thargelia married a king of Thessaly, and Aspasia married Pericles, "more than a king," says Plutarch. The home of Aspasia in Athens was frequent by the_ elite _of the city and state, attracted by her beauty, her art of speaking, and her influence. Socrates valued her great mind, and even called himself one of her disciples. Plato speaks of her great reputation. She was born in the fifth century before Christ. The date of her death is not known._] The whole value of history is in teaching us to understand our own time and to prognosticate the future with some degree of correctness. More especially is this true of all class history, and the story of sex development may be so rated. It is to find the reason of what is and the nature of what is to come that we turn to the records of the past and ask them concerning their message to us of these things. In our retrospective view of woman, we shall, if we are alive to suggestion, find steadfast tendencies of development. It is true that these tendencies do not always remain in the light; like rivers, they sometimes plunge underground and for a time find their paths in subterranean channels where they are lost to sight; but they always reemerge, and at last they find their way to the central sea of the present. Future ages will doubtless mark the course of those tendencies not only up to but through our own age; for though I have spoken of a central sea, the simile is hardly correct, inasmuch as the true ocean which is the goal of these rivers is not yet in the sight of humanity. But we at least find promise of that ocean in the steadfast and determined course of the streams which flow toward it; progress has always a goal, though it may be one long undiscerned by the abettors of that progress. So it is with the story of woman. We know what she has been; we see what she is; and it is possible dimly to forecast what she will be. Yet I dare to assert that there will be no radical change; there may be new direction for effort, new lines of development, but the essential nature will remain unaltered. It is not, however, with this informing spirit that we have to do in such a work as this. There have been many misconceptions regarding woman; I would not venture to claim that none now exist. Yet there is a general consensus of agreement concerning her dominating and effective characteristics, and the probability is that in these general laws so laid down the common opinion is of truth.