High above all these trivial and inflated fancies one fact is clear. The admission of women to public life would give them a wider horizon and more balanced judgment. Men are growing more feminine in every century. A medieval man would gaze with astonishment at the growth of feminine qualities in the modern world--sympathy with suffering, refinement, even tenderness. Women are growing more masculine on the intellectual side. There is no such thing as a fixed and immutable type of organism. The sexes are approaching, after æons of separation, and the tendency is good. Politics is not a game--or should not be--but a concentration of the best intelligence and feeling of the nation upon the gravest issues of national life. Through every serious Parliament of the world some breath has passed of the new spirit, the determination to uplift the race, assuage suffering, mitigate poverty, and do battle with old evils. No finer thing can happen to woman than that she be enlisted, actively and responsibly, in that great crusade. [The End] FOOTNOTES [1] For reasons which I give later, I follow Westermarck, against most sociologists, in thinking that the family expanded into the clan, rather than that the family emerged out of the clan. The uncertainty does not affect my argument. [2] Frau Lily Braun's _Die Frauenfrage_ (1901) avoids the pitfall, but Eliza B. Gamble's _Evolution of Woman_ (1894) stumbles at it. Dr. Moscatelli (_La Conditione Della Donna Nelle Società Primitive_, 1886) seems to have been one of the last authorities to hold the theory. [3] Many writers believe that it was the outcome of polyandry among the earlier ancestors. So Maspéro and others. [4] I do not enlarge upon what is called "sacred prostitution" in the temples, as there is ample proof that this was not regarded as an onerous imposition on woman. It probably had its roots in some ancient superstition. The normal life of Babylon and Nineveh compares favourably enough even with modern times. [5] _Republic_, Book V. Nearly the whole book is taken up with the most advanced claims for woman. [6] Cato is so often the villain of the chapter in works of this kind that I am tempted to quote a saying of his: "The man who beats his wife and children lays impious hands on that which is most sacred," and he "would deem it higher praise to be a good husband than a good senator" (Plutarch, c. xx.). I know, of course, how Cato obliged Hortensius; but we are not aware that Mme. Cato objected to the eugenic arrangement. [7] Dr. Reich also speaks of the "Voltairean atheism" of advanced women. Voltaire was not only an ardent _theist_, but wrote world-known works on the point.