Yes, woman is, fundamentally, man’s equal. Belittled as she has been till recently by conditions which made her a nonentity, she is now, thanks to the spread of education, the mingling of classes, and social changes, becoming a respected worker and a valued being. Born into a new life, she will no longer be the jealous rival of man, but his useful fellow-worker, as she has always been his generous comrade, sharing his joys and sorrows. THE EQUALISING OF CLASSES BY EDUCATION The education which is the progressive adaptation of humanity to the conditions of social life has been, in a general way, so greatly developed by our modern civilisation, that it has, if not created the complete equalisation of the classes, at least brought the aristocracy, the middle classes, and the people together in a common effort towards individual action. It cannot be denied that a very curious phenomenon exists in the equalisation so far effected, the causes of which are manifold, and amongst which the most noticeable and obvious are the partition of large fortunes, the importance assumed by Labour Syndicalism, and the competition established in all trades and professions. Scarcely anything remains now of the ancient conditions of nations; the abolition of slavery has transformed the idea of servitude; compulsory education has raised the level of the lower classes, and by this means the first stone of the Socialistic edifice has been laid. But humanity, in attaining to a higher degree of self-consciousness, to a new ideal, has developed a spirit on new lines, and created for itself needs with which the old instincts have nothing to do. Capitalists, manufacturers, merchants, labour leaders, workpeople of all kinds, find themselves arrayed against one another in a new perception of their rights (if not always of their duties), and all, in the light of newly discovered needs, are jostling one another in life in this all-pervading struggle. The mass of the people, whose one instinct in former times was the bare preservation of life, is on the way to emancipation; the pressure from beneath is mounting like a wave, leaping upward to the social strata where hitherto the monopoly of lucre and jobbery has been jealously held; the workmen’s associations, in their war against capital, want themselves to capitalise; members of the working class, with growing improvement in education, are entering the professional field; the middle classes are struggling for the attainment of public offices, and, by an inevitable reaction, the aristocracy, mulcted of some of its ancestral rights and privileges, is turning its eyes towards manufacture and commerce.