clan to the nation. In this century we see the barriers
between races and nations and sects and societies, as also between the
sexes, slowly dissolving.

Only a few years ago we could not imagine an Oriental, occupying a
political, or educational or religions platform with an Occidental.
Now it is a common thing. We know the hostility which has existed
between the Jew and the Gentile--now they exchange pulpits, and all
sects and all nations unite in matters of world interest. Women are
elected to political and educational offices. No matter that these
evidences of unity are as yet incomplete. They are _promises_ of the
birth of a larger concept of love than that which prevailed when a
man's highest idea of honor and of love was to protect his immediate
family only; to care for his own legal wife and children even at the
expense of and certainly with heartless indifference to the fate of
any other women and children.

To be sure, this protection has often been vouchsafed because of the
self interest which is inseparable from the idea of possession and is
not, per se, a grander or nobler impulse than that which actuated our
hair-clothed antecedents, who found that their own lives were best
conserved by respecting those nearest to them. But thus it is that
Love has been implanted in human hearts through no higher or more
altruistic method than that of self-interest; but the nature of love
is to expand; to grow; to _give_ of itself until unselfishness must
come with the final aim of love, which is _unity_ and not possession.

We of this era are unquestionably manifesting a larger and more
inclusive ideal of love, and since the Female Principle conserves the
higher aspects of love, we are bound to concede that a higher ideal of
love is possible to the woman of today than ever before. We must take
into consideration the average of the sex, at the same time not
forgetting that in the highest type of individual, the qualities of
both sexes are balanced, uniting the spiritual, self-sacrificing and
unselfish love-element of the female principle, with the wider scope,
the inclusive element of the male. Let us remember that we are dealing
with principles and not merely with individuals.

Admitting that it is not because of lack of love, either maternal or
conjugal, that women are shirking marriage and maternity, we may then
ask: "What is the cause?" The answer may be found in the conclusion
that women are done with mere instin