oductive something which
fits the common good, without which the world would not be as orderly
and as happy. Say what we will, it matters very little what the task
is--if it contributes in some fashion to this superior orderliness and
happiness. But it means more. It means leisure, pleasure, excitements;
it means feeding of the taste, the curiosity, the emotions, the
reflective powers; and it means love, love of the mate, the child, the
friend, and neighbor. It means reverence for the scheme of things and
one's place in it; worship of the author of it, religion.

But the woman sternly set to do a man's business, believing it better
than the woman's, too often views life as made up of business. She
throws her whole nature to the task. Her work is her child. She gives
it the same exclusive passionate attention. She is as fiercely jealous
of interference in it as she would be if it were a child. She resents
suggestions and change. It is hers, a personal thing to which she
clings as if it were a living being. That attitude is the chief reason
why working with women in the development of great undertakings is as
difficult as cooeperating with them in the rearing of a family. It is
also a reason why they rarely rise to the first rank. They cannot get
away from their undertakings sufficiently to see the big truths and
movements which are always impersonal.

Brilliant and satisfying as her triumph may be to her personally, she
frequently finds that it is resented by nature and by society. She
finds that nature lays pitfalls for her, cracks the ice of her heart
and sets it aflame, often for absurd and unworthy causes. She finds
that the great mass of unconscious women commiserate or scorn her as
one who has missed the fullness of life. She finds that society
regards her as one who shirked the task of life, and who, therefore,
should not be honored as the woman who has stood up to the common
burden. When she senses this--which is not always--she treats it as
prejudice. As a matter of fact, the antagonism of Nature and Society
to the militant woman is less prejudice than self-defense. It is a
protest against the wastefulness and sacrifice of her career. It is a
right saving impulse to prevent perversion of the qualities and powers
of women which are most needed in the world, those qualities and
powers which differentiate her from man, which make for the variety,
the fullness, the charm, and interest of life.

Moreover, Nature a