n the larger household of city and state the educational part of the
law is grievously neglected. It makes no allowance for ignorance. If a
man breaks a law of which he never heard he is not excused therefore;
the penalty rolls on just the same. Fancy a mother making solemn rules
and regulations for her family, telling the children nothing about them,
and then punishing them when they disobeyed the unknown laws!

The use of force is natural to the male; while as a human being he must
needs legislate somewhat in the interests of the community, as a male
being he sees no necessity for other enforcement than by penalty. To
violently oppose, to fight, to trample to the earth, to triumph in loud
bellowings of savage joy,--these are the primitive male instincts;
and the perfectly natural social instinct which leads to peaceful
persuasion, to education, to an easy harmony of action, are
contemptuously ranked as "feminine," or as "philanthropic,"--which is
almost as bad. "Men need stronger measures" they say proudly. Yes, but
four-fifths of the world are women and children!

As a matter of fact the woman, the mother, is the first co-ordinator,
legislator, administrator and executive. From the guarding and guidance
of her cubs and kittens up to the longer, larger management of human
youth, she is the first to consider group interests and co-relate them.

As a father the male grows to share in these original feminine
functions, and with us, fatherhood having become socialized while
motherhood has not, he does the best he can, alone, to do the world's
mother-work in his father way.

In study of any long established human custom it is very difficult to
see it clearly and dispassionately. Our minds are heavily loaded with
precedent, with race-custom, with the iron weight called authority.
These heavy forces reach their most perfect expression in the absolutely
masculine field of warfare. The absolute authority; the brainless,
voiceless obedience; the relentless penalty. Here we have male coercion
at its height; law and government wholly arbitrary. The result is as
might be expected, a fine machine of destruction. But destruction is not
a human process--merely a male process of eliminating the unfit.

The female process is to select the fit; her elimination is negative and
painless.

Greater than either is the human process, to _develop fitness._

Men are at present far more human than women. Alone upon their
self-seized thron