accepts it not only without risk of having to pay for it too dearly, but with positive gain and impetus to his career. Where the husband derives support and spur to his labour, wholesome relaxation, and the inspiration of affection and happiness—a woman is crushed and annihilated; marriage demands from her, with almost savage jealousy and greed, that every thought, every talent, every power and project should be subordinated to its overwhelming claims."
We rejoice to find these views ably illustrated by G. Noel Hatton, and also in Frances H. Lord's beautiful highly finished translation of "Nora." The latter ought to be read and pondered over by every young wife.
To-day blows fall fast and thick upon the old assumptions that condemned every woman to be a wife and a mother, and stamped the unmarried with reproach. The first effect of the emancipation of women is that they are gradually liberated from the thraldom of such dogmas.
A process is going on in civilized communities which is called by some timorous spirits the decomposition of Society. It is true that even these fearful ones grant that "so far the decomposition has done only good; the women who will be, for several generations to come, most influenced by the movement, will be the very best of which our race is capable … in them may be embodied the historic climax of the English race. So far the inherent 'organic' characteristics of physical and moral womanhood will not have been touched by the decomposing elements of the new movement. The women brought under its influence will have a wider horizon, the range of their sympathies will be enlarged, they will have more dignity and more happiness in their lives than the average woman of the old régime, their intercourse with women will be free from littleness, their manner towards men from ungraceful extremes of reserve or freedom—in a word, we shall see the utmost expansion of which the female nature is capable."[1]
The process may be more truly described as the differentiation of a portion of its members from the whole mass; this process indicates a state not of decay, but of growth or progress in a certain special direction.
"The best definition of Progress ever given is Von Baer's, which rests on the amount of differentiation and specialization of the several parts of the same being." His definition refers to organic advancement, but it applies with equal force to social progress. It follows from this definition that in proportion as a young Society increases in size and number, its special charac-
- ↑ Mrs. S. Orr, Nineteenth Century, August, 1878.
