It is the possession of this power in the sexual sphere which lends real importance to even the feeblest attempts of women to prepare themselves to meet the duties in the new paths that are being opened to them. Women have now entered into labour. They are claiming freedom to develop themselves by active participation in that struggle with life and its conditions whereby men have gained their development. From thousands of women to-day the cry is rising, "Give us free opportunity, and the training that will fit us for freedom." Not, as so many have mistakenly thought, that women may compete with men in a senseless struggle for mastery, but in order first to learn, and afterwards to perform, that work in society which they can do better than men. What such work is it must be women's purpose to find out. But before this is possible to be decided all fields of activity must be open for them to enter. And this women must claim, not for themselves chiefly; but because they are the bearers of race-life, and also to save men from any further misuse of their power. Then working together as lovers and comrades, women and men may come to understand and direct those deep-rooted forces of sex, which have for so long driven them helpless to the wastage of life and love. I would ask all those who deny this modern claim of women to consider in all seriousness the two cases I have brought forward--that of the bee-hives, and even more the destruction by the female spider of her male lover. That they have their parallel in our society to-day is a fact that few will deny. I have tried to show the real danger that lurks in every form of sex-parasitism. It would lead us too far from our purpose to comment in further detail on the suggestions offered by these curious examples of sex-martyrs among our earliest ancestral lovers. Those whose eyes are not blinded will not fail to see. FOOTNOTES: [16] So deep-rooted has been this opinion of female inferiority that it has formed the basis of many theories of sex. Thus Richarz holds that "the male sex represents a higher grade of development in the embryo." Hough thinks males are born when the female system is at its best, females in periods of growth, reparation, or disease. Tiedman and others regard females as an arrested male, while Velpau, on the other hand, believes them to be degenerated from primitive males. See Geddes and Thomson, _Evolution of Sex_, p. 39. [17] The theory of Lester Ward, to which I have already referred, supports this view.