The fact that there is still so much masculine brutality and despotism, and that there are so many legal means at man’s disposal whereby he may put into practice with impunity this brutality and despotism, is the reason why the new woman is still always a “feminist,” why she still maintains the fundamental tenets of the woman movement. But she is not a feminist in the sense that she turns _against_ man. Her solution is always that of Mary Wollstonecraft: “We do not desire to rule over men but to rule over ourselves.” She often exhibits now in deliberation and in determination the characteristics which were formerly called “masculine”: practical knowledge, love of truth, courage of conviction; she desists more and more from unjust imputations and empty words; she proposes a greater number of well-considered suggestions for improvements. The woman movement has now in a word a more universally human, a less one-sidedly feminine character. It emphasises more and more the fact that the right of woman is a necessity in order that she may fulfil her duties in the small, individual family, and exercise her powers in the great, universal human family for the general good. The new woman does not wish to displace man nor to abolish society. She wishes to be able to exercise _everywhere_ her most beautiful prerogative to help, to support, to comfort. But this she cannot do so long as she is not free as a citizen and has not fully developed as a human personality. She knows that this is the condition not only of her own happiness, but also, in quite as high a degree, of the happiness of man. For every man who works, struggles, and suffers there is a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, who suffers with him. For every woman who in her way works and struggles, there is a father, a husband, a brother, or a son for whom her contribution directly or indirectly has significance. Above all, the modern woman understands that in every marriage wherein a wife still suffers under man’s misuse of his legal authority, it is in the last analysis _the man who sustains the greatest injury_, for under present conditions he needs exercise neither kindness nor justice nor intelligence to be ruler in the family. These humane characteristics he must, therefore, begin to develop when the wife is legally his equal. The sacred conviction of the new woman is that man and woman _rise together_, just as they _sink together_.