s of herself, and this at present is perhaps
preoccupying her attention. But the freed woman of to-morrow will have
no need to centre her thoughts in herself, for by that time she will
understand. There will come a day when women will no longer live in a
prison walled up with fear of love and life. And when she has done
with discovering herself and playing at conquests, she will come to
the most glorious day of all, when she will know herself for what she
is. And to those of us who see already the goal the way is surely
clear--let us work to find how best it can be made easy for all women
to love gladly and to bring forth their children in joy.

Hitherto, dating from the times of the subjection of mother-right to
father-right, the woman's insecure position, with her need of
protection during the period of motherhood, has forced her into a
state of dependence and subordination to men, which has accentuated
and made permanent that physical disadvantage which, apart from
motherhood, would scarcely exist, and even with motherhood would not
become a source of weakness, under a wiser social organisation, which,
understanding the primary importance of the mother, so arranged its
domestic and social relationships as to place its women in a position
of security. We have seen how this was done in Egypt, and how happy
were the results; we have seen, too, that among all primitive peoples
women are practically as strong as the men, and as capable in the
social duty of work. It is only under the fully established
patriarchal system, with its unequal development of the sexes, that
motherhood is a source of weakness to women. From the time that
society comes again to recognise the position of mothers and their
right as the bearers of strength to the race, not only to protection
while they are fulfilling that essential function for the community,
but to their freedom after they have fulfilled it--the same freedom
that men claim for the work they do for the community--from that time
will arise a new freedom of women which will once again unite
mother-right with father-right. This change will touch and vitally
affect many of the deepest problems of the sexual relationship and the
race.

We hear much to-day of women, and also men, being over-sexed; to me it
seems much nearer the truth to say we are wrongly sexed. It is
unquestionable that the progress of civilisation has resulted in a
markedly accentuated differentiation between the sexe