Folk-migrations, crusades, slave rebellions, revolutions have led a race, a class, a group, beyond certain geographical or social boundaries. The emancipation of women has shifted and extended the limits of the freedom of movement of _half mankind_. No wonder that the extent of the movement _in and for itself_ was advanced as proof of the infallibility of its direction. All points of departure, the natural right of man, individual freedom, social necessity—all led out into the sun, which, in society as in nature, should radiate over woman as well as over man; they led up onto the summit where man and woman both should breathe the air of the heights. All obstacles which were raised with the help of arguments such as, “the nature of woman,” “the welfare of the family,” “the idea of society,” “the purpose of God”—all proved temporary. And of necessity—for the innermost law of life, the law of development, of life enhancement, carried the movement forward. When it began, the Biblical expression about the wind was quoted, “Man knows not whence it comes nor whither it goes.” Now all know it. Now the spirit of the time speaks with “feminist” voice. The ideas of emancipation “are in the air,” like bacilli, by which only savages are thus far wholly untouched. There are now no great movements of the time whose path does not run parallel with or cut across the woman movement. Every new generation is involuntarily and unconsciously drawn along with it. The ends already attained seem to the present age obvious; the ends, for which man is still struggling to-day, will appear equally obvious to the future. The woman movement is now a power with which even its most bitter adversaries must reckon. And this force has so quickly attained prominence exactly as a result of fanaticism. Just as the White and the Blue Nile mingle their waters in the main stream, so in every great current of time enthusiasm is mingled with fanaticism. And it is the latter which bears the most fruit, for it gives power of growth to the passions of the majority, good as well as bad. Every great idea begins with great promulgators. The promulgator who has the spirit does not hold to the letter. And the woman movement which was spirit began also with women and men who did not follow the call of the spirit of the time; no, who from lonely heights sent out their awakening call _to_ the time. Men who give their age new ideals have always religious natures. This means, according to a good definition, that they are “individualists in their being, social in their action.”