Every powerful movement of society—and the demand for women’s suffrage is already such a one—is brought about by the will of many individuals to modify society in some respect, in order better to satisfy their own needs and therewith those of the whole community. Such a movement is always opposed in the beginning from the point of view of the agreement, equilibrium, and health of the community. And since a transformation in a society never occurs uniformly in time or degree; since the need of new forms is thus for a long time not widely spread, the conservatives, as a rule, are right at the beginning of their opposition; they are right even until the transformation has been taking place so long that the health of the whole organism demands that the class of society, religious body, or group of opinion in question should be given the freedom of activity without which it is ill at ease; for the uneasiness of many injures all. Conservatism is thus finally in the wrong by reason of the ever-repeated experience, that when the vital force is increased in any important organ, it is also increased in the whole organism. Woman’s suffrage ought above all to be demanded from the point of view of the social value, and consequent right to freedom of movement, of woman’s powers. Its opponents answer: “We never thought of disputing either one or the other. Woman has already the same power as man in degree, though not in kind, just as truly as the heart is an organ equally essential to life as the brain. But the whole organism would go under, if the heart insisted on usurping the functions of the brain. Woman has become the organ of the emotions in human life—but the emotions cannot have a leading mission in public affairs. In that field woman must either be untrue to herself or lose her significance. It would be an immense loss to civilisation if she were forced into the paths of masculine egoism, instead of putting her whole strength into the rearing of future men. Thus new generations of great-minded and far-seeing men would reform society in accordance with woman’s ideals, and woman would not lose her ideals in party strife, where the chief thing is victory by any means and the end is lost sight of.” “If,” it was thus said by a thoughtful young working woman,—“if the child saw both its father and mother striving for power, with all the hardness and relentlessness this implies, then idealism would soon become extinct, whereas, on the other hand, women, by unequivocally making the highest ideal demands upon fathers and brothers, husbands and sons, could bring about by degrees an ideal condition of things.”