And the essence of all such folly is an insupportable egoism. The whole argument against the home is based on the claim of woman to lead an independent life. Independent of what? It is not easy to answer. It is asserted that the ideal of the home as the special care of woman has tied her to material things; it is urged that her emancipation from the fetish of the home is essential for her soul’s freedom. The feminists ask us to make the wage-earning woman our ideal, instead of regarding her, as I do, as the unfortunate victim of industrial life and industrial ideals—and this is a very dangerous attitude and one which cannot fail to affect very seriously the fate of the home in the future. It is this that causes me such grave fear. The ideals that we set before us do exercise an influence greater than we know. Now, I am not much moved by this modern cry for liberty. What is this freedom for which women have been clamouring? In what tyranny are they held other than that in which their womanhood holds them? Is the new liberty to be found as sweated workers? Will it come even now when women’s industrial work is being sought for and well paid? Can it ever come from the fevered effort to live the same lives as men live and do the same work that men do? But this kind of view is of a most superficial sort, and one that, comparatively speaking, is new. Before the coming of industrialism the ideals of women were far different and were centred in the home. The family was then firmly established on the patriarchal system. I have just read a Russian book[70] which gives a perfect picture of the patriarchal home. The scene is described by a child: the head of the house has died and the new male-head comes from the death-bed. He is thus received by the women of the house— “Suddenly the door opened, and my father came in. He looked thin and pale and sad. Instantly all rose and went to meet him; even grandmother, who was very stout and could not walk without some one supporting her, dragged herself towards him, and all his four sisters fell down at his feet and began to ‘keen.’ It was impossible to catch all they said and part I now forget, but I remember the words, ‘You are our father now: be kind to us poor orphans.’ My father with tears lifted them all up and embraced them; when his mother advanced towards him, he bowed to the ground before her, kissed her hands, and vowed that he would always submit to her authority, and that no changes would be made by him.… They then sat down to eat so heartily—my mother did not—that I watched them with astonishment. My Aunt Tatyana helped fish-soup out of a large tureen, and, as she put bits of roe and liver on the plates, she begged all to do justice to them: ‘How poor father loved the roe and the liver!’”