THE old tradition of the family is intimately connected with the old ideal of womanhood, and this in turn is summoned to the bar of modern criticism. A substantial change in the position of woman seems so revolutionary a disturbance, since it directly affects half the race and must very seriously affect the home and the State, that our Conservatives employ against the proposal the whole arsenal of controversial rhetoric. We hear of the wisdom of the race--as if the race did not grow wiser as it grows older--and the thin end of the wedge. We are reminded that the ancient civilisations always came to an end when their women rebelled against their natural position. We have private appeals to our sensuous feelings and our instincts of proprietorship, and open appeals to the ascetic doctrine of the Pauline Epistles. We have history put before us, as usual, in chosen fragments, and on the strength of these detached bits of learning we hear impressive sermons on the "laws" of history and of nature. The appeal to history, which men like Dr. Emil Reich have so gravely abused, is in this case singularly unfortunate. In most cases the candid student of history finds some ancient abuse or irrational tradition making its way from one civilisation to another, and finds it natural that our more critical and independent generation should at length seek to dethrone it. But in the case of woman the Conservative has not even "the wisdom of the race" to appeal to. Her position in the past has varied greatly, but it is very far from true that she had always occupied that state of subjection in which our Victorian reformers found her. I have elsewhere (_Woman in Political Evolution_) surveyed the full story of woman's development, and will here be content with a summary view which makes the Feminist movement of our time intelligible.