Complete equality between man and woman is impossible. But are all sides of woman’s nature as yet adequately worked upon, fully developed? Is not the civilized woman of the future still to be created? The true nucleus of the woman’s movement is, I conceive, to be found in the emancipation of woman from the dominion of pure sensuality, and from the not less disastrous dominion of masculine spiritual arrogance. Have we men really any right to pride ourselves to such a degree upon our knowledge and intelligence? Should we =without= woman have advanced anything like so far? A glance at the beginnings of human civilization should teach us a little modesty, for there we see that woman was equal, if not superior, to man in productive, poietic activity. Gradually only, in the progress of civilization, man supplanted woman, and monopolized all spheres of productive activity, whilst woman was limited more and more to domestic occupations. According to Karl Bücher, to women were originally allotted all the labours connected with the obtaining and subsequent utilization of vegetable materials, also the provision of the apparatus and vessels necessary for this purpose; to man, on the other hand, were allotted the chase, fishing, herding, and the provision of weapons and tools. Thus woman was engaged in threshing and grinding the grain, in baking bread, in the preparation of food and drink, in the making of pots, and in spinning. Since these occupations are largely conducted in a rhythmical manner, and the women worked together in the fields or in their huts, while the men hunted singly in the forests, it resulted that women were the first creators of poetry and music. “Not,” writes Bücher, “upon the steep summits of society did poetry originate; it sprung rather from the depths of the pure strong soul of the people. =Women have striven to produce it; and as civilized man owes to woman’s work much the best of his possessions, so also are her thought and her poetry interwoven in the spiritual treasure handed down from generation to generation.= To follow the traces of woman’s poetry farther, in the intellectual life of the people, would be a valuable exercise. Although these traces have to a large extent disappeared, during the subsequent period of man’s poetic activity, which appears to have gained predominance in proportion as men monopolized the labours of material production, still, in a number of races the influence of woman’s poetry can be followed for a long way into the literary period.”