The fallacy of those, like Dr. Reich, who read the story otherwise is the familiar historical mistake of regarding things as connected because they chanced to occur at the same time. We may allow that men were stronger at the time when women were subject; but it is a poor fallacy to forget that the men then had a fresh heritage of strength from barbaric days, as yet untouched by luxury, and to assign their triumph in any measure to the silence of their women. We may grant that the rebellion of the women generally came when the nation was nearing decay; but, again, it is a poor fallacy to erect this coincidence into a principle. The truth is that the revolt of the women in earlier civilisations coincided with two things--with a high state of culture and with a beginning of decay; and an unprejudiced study of the agitation in any era will show plainly that it was due to the former, and merely coincided with the latter. It sprang from the culture, the social conscience, the strength--not the weakness--of a nation. It was an ironic feature of the older world that high and general culture and the triumph of justice over ancient conventions were only reached when death was approaching. The new order promises a totally different development, because all nations of power are at the same stage of culture. And in our own day the movement is due quite unmistakably to the renascence of culture and the advance of moral principle. Civilisation has now to face the problem candidly, and settle it. The agitation is no bubble rising out of the effervescence of the time, to burst, like a score of others that shone in the sun for a moment, and give place to new. It is an essential element in the evolution of culture. No nation ever reached the point of culture that we have reached but its women rose with a moral challenge of the justice of their position. Every nation had inherited from its barbaric ancestry the practice of excluding women from the corporate life, and there was good ground to demand a reconsideration of the practice when the sense of social justice developed. To regard the demand of our women as due to a temporary fit of nerves is to ignore one of the most salient features of the course of human history. Wherever civilisation grew out of barbarism the demand arose; it died away only because a fresh barbarism broke the thread of civilisation. As that thread will never more be broken, the demand will increase with our culture, and it can afford to smile at these fallacious lessons or warnings from a widely different past. When, in addition, we consider the development of political life itself, when we see that it concerns itself increasingly with the affairs of women in a way that it never did before, we are forced to admit that the demand for a reconsideration of woman's position has a solid base in the actual evolution of life.