outside enlightenment has penetrated her retired circle, and under its revelation she is already in some quarters demanding her rights. She is beginning to understand that procreation is not the chief purpose in life, but only one of its incidentals; that its processes from first to last are guided exclusively by animal instincts, among which men have compelled her to sacrifice the best parts of her life; that although nature has imposed upon her the larger share in these processes, and all their pains, it has also bestowed upon her capabilities which are clearly designed for more exalted stations than mere breeders of men and gratifiers of their animal pleasures, so unduly stimulated on the earth as the unintellectual and chief attraction of the sexes. You have perhaps but little conception of how much that reckless sexual impulse to matrimony, unrestrained by your laws, and encouraged by your religion, has swollen your ranks of poverty, crime and imbecility. Your women in their dependence and subjection have but one source of power at their service, and they have used it for all it was worth. As a consequence, even to the present period of your civilization, qualities of mind cuts no figure against the voluptuous animalism of person in securing husbands than it did in barbaric times. It is the rarest thing among you to find an intellectually mated husband and wife qualified by equal education and opportunities to be in perfect accord and sympathy in the pursuit of high purposes. Among your higher circles are to be found occasionally one of these congenial matings, the happiest conditions of matrimonial existence, where by good breeding and cultivation a man tacitly ignores his superiority under your unjust usages; but although the wife may be in sympathy with the ambition and purposes of her husband in his intellectual labors she is seldom able to assist him owing to educational differences. With us the wife has more than encouragement to offer. Her mind becomes a part of her husband’s and increases his capabilities. Many of our highest achievements in brain work are the result of such collaboration of two minds working as one. The rare cases instanced among you are only to be found in your cultivated circles, below these, in all degrees to the bottom mental equality in women is oftener the source of contention than happiness, and you must expect to have this unhappy condition increased until you have granted them their rightful position in society. So long as their subjection to men was hopeless and they were taught by their theological superiors to obey their husbands, and by the same advisors, their separation denied or discouraged, they meekly submitted to abuse and suffering because without a hope of relief; but as it is becoming more and more apparent to you that the subjection of your women is one of the many ancient fallacies, the gradual reasoning of them out of existence is paving the way for woman’s liberty.