ssible, looking forward to new conditions of society, now
approaching like a long-delayed spring, to foresee a remedy? Can the
woman of the future belong to herself? What are her natural
disabilities, and to what extent are they modifiable by new
arrangements of social and domestic life? Must she be content for the
future with that dependence on the individual man which has been her
fate in the past; or, on the other hand, can she take up her economic
and social position in society and work therein for her own
maintenance as free from considerations of her sex as a man can? These
are the questions which must be faced when united womanhood begins to
formulate their wants and to realise their power. It is almost idle in
the present transition to speculate as to what women should or should
not be, or the work they should or should not do. Women do not yet
know what they want. All that can be done is to note the changes that
are taking place, for we cannot, even do we wish, now change the
revolutionary forces. We must seek to understand their causes, so that
we may be able to direct them in the future in such ways as will tend
to the greater solidarity and happiness of women and men.

In the everlasting controversy as to woman's place in Nature the
majority of arguments have been based on an assumed inferiority of the
female sex. Appeal has been made to anatomy to establish the
difference between the natural endowment of men and women in the hope
of fixing by means of anatomical measurements and tests those
characters of males and females that are unalterable, because inborn,
and those that are acquired, and therefore modifiable. But the
obstacles in the way of anatomical investigations are very great, if
only on account of the complexity of the material. Often and often it
has happened that old conclusions have been overthrown by new
knowledge. Indeed, it may be said that such appeal has resulted in
uncertainty, and in many instances in confusion. The chief source of
error has been the careless acceptance of female inferiority, which
has maimed most investigations and seriously retarded the attainment
of useful results. And though it is very far from my purpose to wish
to deny the fundamentally different nature of the masculine and
feminine character, it is still true that a blank separation of human
qualities into male qualities and female qualities is no longer
possible. In no instance have the anatomists succeeded in de