ale over the
female, of the man over the woman and of the father over the mother,
has been accepted, almost without question, in a civilisation built up
on the recognition of male values and male standards of opinion. Thus
the institutions, habits, prejudices, and superstitions of the
patriarchal authority rest like an incubus upon us. The women of
to-day carry the dead load upon their backs, and literally stagger
beneath the accumulating burden of the ages.

The "Woman's Movement" is pressing us forward towards a recasting of
the patriarchal view of the relative position and duties of the two
sexes. It must be regarded as an extremely great and comprehensive
movement affecting the whole of life. From this wider standpoint, the
fight for the parliamentary suffrage is but as the vestibule to
progress; the possession of the vote being no more than a necessary
condition for attaining far larger and more fundamental ends.

It is, however, very necessary to remark that the recognition of this
imposes a great responsibility upon women. For one thing the practical
difficulties of the present must be faced. It is far from easy to
readjust existing conditions to meet the new demands. Present social
and economic conditions are to a great extent chaotic. We cannot
safely cast aside, in any haste for reform, those laws, customs and
opinions which it has been the slow task of our civilisation to
establish, not for men only, but for women. We women have to work out
many questions far more thoroughly than hitherto we have done. We owe
this to our movement and to the world of men. It will serve nothing to
pull down, unless we are ready also to build up. Freedom can be
granted only to the self-disciplined.

"Thou that does know the Self and the not-Self, expert in
every work: endowed with self-restraint and perfect
same-sightedness towards every creature free from the sense
of I and my--thy power and energy are equal to my own, and
thou hast practised the most severe discipline."[1]

* * * * *

[1] The _Mahabharata_. The Great God thus addresses Shakti,
when he asks her to describe the duties of women. I quote
from a pamphlet by Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy: _Sati: A
Vindication of the Hindu Woman_.

This little book is an attempt to establish the position of the mother
in the family. It sets out to investigate those early states of
society, when, through the wid