Our age is working for scarcely yet formulated changes in the ownership of property and in the status of women. The patriarchal view of woman’s subjection to man is being questioned in every direction. What do these movements indicate? If, as seems probable, the individual evolution, already for so long continued, is perishing, what is to take its place? What form will the family take in the future? These are questions to which it is not possible for me here even to attempt to find the answer.[248] [248] I hope to do so in a future book on _Motherhood_. Let us look for a moment in this new direction, the direction of the future, because it is there that the past becomes so important. In our contemporary society there is a deep-lying dissatisfaction with existing conditions, a yearning and restless need for change. We stand in the first rush of a great movement. It is the day of experiments, when again the old customs are in struggle with the new. We are questioning where before we have accepted, and are seeking out new ways in which mankind will go--will go because it must. Social institutions alter very slowly as a rule; for long a change may pass unnoticed, until one day it is discovered that a step forward has been taken. Those changes that appear so new and are bringing fear to many to-day, are but the last consequences of causes that for long have been operating slowly. The extraordinary enthusiasm now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate feverish expression a great power of emotional and spiritual initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the changes in women’s outlook. So much stronger is the promise of a vital force when they have refound their emancipation. To this end women must gain economic security, and the freedom for the full expression of their womanhood. The ultimate goal I conceive--at least I hope--is the right to be women, not the right to become like men. There can be no gain for women except this. To be mothers were women created and to be fathers men. This rightly considered is the deepest of all truths. What is needed at present is that women should be allowed to rediscover for themselves what is their woman’s work, rather than that they should continue to accept perforce the rôle which men (rightly or wrongly) have at various times allowed to them throughout the patriarchal ages. This necessity is as much a necessity for men as it is for women.