empirical knowledge will not be injured, but rather will the meaning of such knowledge be deepened, if man recognises in phenomena, and it is from phenomena that he sets out, any elements assuring him that there is something behind phenomena, if he espies the signs that prove the existence of something higher than phenomena, something that supports phenomena. We may be assured of such a first principle, although no living man can reach it. Towards such a principle this book presses and will not flag.
Within the narrow limits to which as yet the problem of woman and of woman's rights has been confined, there has been no place for the venture to reach so high a goal. None the less the problem is bound intimately with the deepest riddles of existence. It can be solved, practically or theoretically, morally or metaphysically, only in relation to an interpretation of the cosmos.
Comprehension of the universe, or what passes for such, stands in no opposition to knowledge of details; on the other hand all special knowledge acquires a deeper meaning because of it. Comprehension of the universe is self-creative; it cannot arise, although the empirical knowledge of every age expects it, as a synthesis of however great a sum of empirical knowledge.
In this book there lie only the germs of a world-scheme, and these are allied most closely with the conceptions of Plato, Kant and Christianity. I have been compelled for the most part to fashion for myself the scientific, psychological, philosophical, logical, ethical groundwork. I think that at the least I have laid the foundations of many things into which I could not go fully. I call special attention to the defects of this part of my work because I attach more importance to appreciation of what I have tried to say about the deepest and most general problems than to the interest which will certainly be aroused by my special investigation of the problem of woman.
The philosophical reader may take it amiss to find a treatment of the loftiest and ultimate problems coinciding with the investigation of a special problem of no great
