(_a_) Has the woman movement brought to mankind a higher degree of vital force, a greater faculty for self-preservation, a more complete organisation, by which the more simple forms have become more finely complex, the more uniform have become richer, more diverse; the incoherent have attained a more perfect unity? Or has the woman movement called forth an activity which represses life? degrades, scatters, and reduces the powers to uniformity, in society and in mankind? (_b_) Is woman’s spiritual life now in general above the level at which it was in the beginning of the woman movement? Have modern women finer perceptions, deeper feelings, clearer ideas, a firmer will, richer association of ideas? Do their spiritual faculties so work together that they mutually enhance instead of hinder one another? In a word is the modern woman more soulful than the woman of any other time? (_c_) Is the body of the modern woman, at all stages of life, stronger, more healthy, and more beautiful than that of the woman of the previous century, when the woman movement began in real earnest in Europe? (_d_) Does the modern woman perform in more perfect manner than the woman of that time, the physical and psychic functions of motherhood? If the question be put thus then the _objective_ investigator must answer to all—“_Yes and No_.” But if this investigator is an evolutionist, then he knows that the progress of every social evolution is like that which womankind is now experiencing. We see first, how, in any given sphere of society, where those engaged therein have attained a pure, instinctive certainty in their actions through laws and customs, the individuals oppressed by these laws and customs must rebel against the limits, drawn from without, for the development and exercise of their powers. This revolt occasions at first a stage of anarchy in which everything seems to collapse—while in the previous conserving epoch “crystallisation” furnished the vital danger! But after such an anarchistic stage there comes infallibly the constructive stage, where _a part of the old is organised, incorporated, into the new_. But this acts no longer as instinctive impulse. No, mankind has become conscious anew of these values of law and custom; they have been recognised by the thought, encompassed by feeling, sanctioned by the will as still always indispensable, in another and higher form it is true than that against which the individuals rebelled. But just as the leaves which once grew green above in the summer light, gradually become one with the earth, so the motives of the new customs sink gradually down into the unknown; man acts again with instinctive certainty and uniformity—until the new period of stagnation evokes a new rebellion and achievement of individualism.