That certain feminists still believe that the woman movement has advanced just as the exodus of the Children of Israel out of the land of bondage, that is to say, under God’s special protection against wandering astray; that they stigmatise as “treason” and “defection” the assertion that this movement was determined by the same psychological and sociological laws as every other movement for freedom—this shows to how high a degree many leaders of the woman movement lack elementary psychological and sociological conceptions. This deficiency is, however, being continually remedied. And in the generation which now advances, dogmatic fanaticism has well nigh vanished, but pure enthusiasm is preserved. We can thus expect from this generation a clearer understanding of the necessary _social_ repressions which the woman movement has now sufficient strength to impose upon itself without forfeiting thereby its character of a _movement for freedom_. As such it cannot and dare not cease until it has attained _all_ its ends. As long as the law treats women as one race, men as another, _there is a woman question_. Not until man and woman, equal and united, work together for mankind will the woman movement belong to the past. CHAPTER III THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN QUESTION UPON SINGLE WOMEN The following comparisons between the life of women, especially their spiritual life of about fifty years ago and their life as it has shaped itself under the influence of the woman movement, have been arranged in _descending_ scale. They begin with that phase of women’s life in which this influence was most favourable from the point of view of life enhancement, namely with the life of _unmarried_ women.