These three great movements are clearly allied, and certainly the practical applications of this scientific spirit, of which there is more to say immediately, will rest very largely in the hands of women. The great wave of emancipation which is now sweeping across the civilized world means nominally nothing more than that women should have the right to education, freedom to work, and political enfranchisement--nothing in short but the bare ordinary rights of an adult human creature in a civilized democratic state. But many other changes will follow in the train of these very simple and matter-of-fact changes, and it is no wonder that many worthy people look with dread upon the slow invasion by women of all the concerns of life--which are, after all, as much their own concerns as anyone’s--as nothing less than a new irruption of barbarians. These good people are unquestionably right. The development of women means a reinvigoration as complete as any brought by barbarians to an effete and degenerating civilization. When we turn to those early societies, which are as lamps to us in our social progress, we find that the arts of life are in the possession of women. Therefore when the torch of science is placed in the hands of women we must expect them to use it as a guide with audacious simplicity and directness, because of those instincts for practical life which they have inherited. The rise of women--who form the majority of the race in most civilized countries--to their fair share of power, is certain. Whether one looks at it with hope or with despair one has to recognize it. For my own part I find it an unfailing source of hope. One cannot help feeling that along the purely masculine line no striking social advance is likely to be made. Men are idealists, in search of wealth usually, sometimes of artistic visions; they have little capacity for social organization. It is sometimes said that the fundamental inferiority of women is shown by the very few surpassing women of genius in the world’s history. In their anxiety to combat this argument women have even enlisted Semiramis and Dido into their ranks. But it is a fact. For all great solitary and artistic achievements--the writing of Divine Comedies, the painting of Transfigurations, the construction of systems of metaphysic, the inauguration of new religions--men are without rivals; the more abstract and unsocial an art is, the easier it is for men to attain eminence in it; in music and in the art of erecting philosophies men have had, least of all, any occasion to fear the rivalry of women. Such things are precious, although it may be that what we call “genius” is something abnormal and distorted, like those centres of irritation which result in the pearls we likewise count so precious. Women are comparatively free from “genius.” Yet it might probably be maintained that the average level of women’s intelligence is fully equal to that of men’s. Compare the men and