singularly unfortunate. In most cases the candid student of history finds some ancient abuse or irrational tradition making its way from one civilisation to another, and finds it natural that our more critical and independent generation should at length seek to dethrone it. But in the case of woman the Conservative has not even “the wisdom of the race” to appeal to. Her position in the past has varied greatly, but it is very far from true that she had always occupied that state of subjection in which our Victorian reformers found her. I have elsewhere (Woman in Political Evolution) surveyed the full story of woman’s development, and will here be content with a summary view which makes the Feminist movement of our time intelligible.
During the greater part of the history of civilisation, in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian empires, woman had a considerable measure of freedom and respect. When the Greeks and Romans entered the stage, they brought with them a different tradition in regard to woman, but as soon as they reached the height of their cultural development, their women (and many of their men) rebelled against this tradition. The civilisation of Greece was extinguished so speedily that the women of Athens, aided by so eminent a thinker as Plato, had not time to win their emancipation; but the Roman women did succeed in lifting themselves from their position of subjection. In the meantime, however, the political and religious development of Europe led
