Prostitution.

XI THE END OF THE INQUIRY 375

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION--THE STARTING-POINT OF THE INQUIRY

The twentieth century the age of hurrying progress--The change in
the position of women--Reasons for the revolution--First
efforts towards emancipation--Outlook of the Woman
Movement--Its fundamental error--Possibilities of future
development--Motherhood and the Woman Movement--Schopenhauer's
view of woman--He asserts an absurdity--The predominance of man
over woman not to be regarded as a natural and inviolable
law--An examination of the mastery of the male--Can we look
forward to a remedy?--Our own time a turning-point in the
history of women--Assumed inferiority of the female
sex--Necessity for biological knowledge in forming an estimate
of the present sex-relationship--Two kinds of influences to be
considered--Nature and Nurture--The different play of the
environmental forces, or Nurture, upon women and upon men--The
importance of Nature--Galton's _Law of Inheritance_--Woman's
responsibility as race-bearer--Sexual differences between the
female and the male--Primitive woman and her position in early
civilisations--Remarks and conclusion--The immense importance
of motherhood.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION--THE STARTING-POINT OF THE INQUIRY

"The method of investigating truth commonly pursued at this
time, therefore, is to be held erroneous and almost foolish, in
which so many inquire what others have said, and omit to ask
whether the things themselves be actually so or
not."--WILLIAM HARVEY.

The twentieth century will, we may well believe, be stamped in the
records of the future as "the age of hurrying change." In certain
directions this change has resulted in a profounder transformation of
thought than has been effected by all the preceding centuries. Never,
probably, in the history of the world were the meanings and ambitions
of progress so prevalent as they are to-day. An energy of inquiry and
an endless curiosity is sweeping away the complacent Victorian
attitude, which in its secure faith and tranquil self-confidence
accepted the conditions of living without question and without
emotion. Stripped of its masks, this phase of individual egoism was
perhaps the most villainous page of recorded human history; yet, wit