he Neolithic or Polished Stone Age, for to
such remote times may be traced the stream of life and institutions
in England; but, as we shall aim not solely at consecutiveness,
but at completeness as well in our record of woman's life in the
British Isles, it will be necessary to go back even further into the
geologic ages, when Britain was still a part of the mainland and
its inhabitants the same roving savage tribes that wandered over all
central Europe.

From those barren ages of the Pleistocene era, which were cut off
from the Neolithic by great stretches of time that cannot be certainly
calculated, and during which there was a lapse in the human occupancy
of the country, little of value can be derived. Their chief worth for
our purpose is the picture which they present of the initial stage of
human organization, the study they afford of woman in her relations
to a thoroughly savage stage of society, an era of hunting--that of
the Paleolithic or Rough Stone Age, when there was fixity neither of
residence nor of relations, and when man's contest with savage nature
about him was dependent in its issues upon the slight advantage
furnished him by the rude weapons that he fashioned from flint flakes.
During the Polished Stone era, when inhabitants are next met with in
Britain, the social organization presented is that of the pastoral
stage, which marks a great advance over the hunting.

In all the progressions of uncivilized life, woman is but a part of
the phenomena of her times, but in the history of English civilization
she appears as one of its most active forces. These, then, are the two
correlated views of woman in the history of English life that will
be constantly held in mind during our whole study,--woman as a social
fact, and woman as a social factor; showing her as a product, as
affected by the customs, laws, or manners of a given time, and again
as an influencing factor in the institutions or the manners of those
times. Had her life been as circumscribed as that of the women of
a cultured people, English civilization would not owe to woman the
recognition which is her due as a creative force in the arts, in
science, in literature, in religion, and in all the ever-widening
circle of human interests. An understanding and estimate of her
influence in these more conspicuous relations will depend upon a
proper appreciation of the English home as the principal source of
the English woman's dignity and power. Much