“I would,” he said, “at this point correct my teaching in ‘The Law of Love’ to the effect that home is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and civil government that of man. I now regard the home as the joint sphere of man and woman, and the sphere of civil government more of an open question as between the two. It is, however, to be lamented that the present agitation concerning the rights of woman is so much a matter of ‘rights’ rather than of ‘duties,’ as the reform of the latter would involve the former.”

If our instructors in moral philosophy will only base their theory of ethics as broadly as this, we shall no longer need to advertise “Homes Wanted;” for the joint efforts of men and women will soon provide them.

THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION

Nothing throws more light on the whole history of woman than the first illustration in Sir John Lubbock’s “Origin of Civilization.”  A young girl, almost naked, is being dragged furiously along the ground by a party of naked savages, armed literally to the teeth, while those of another band grasp her by the arm, and almost tear her asunder in the effort to hold her back.  These last are her brothers and her friends; the others are—­her enemies?  As you please to call them.  They are her future husband and his kinsmen, who have come to aid him in his wooing.

This was the primitive rite of marriage.  Vestiges of it still remain among savage nations.  And all the romance and grace of the most refined modern marriage—­the orange-blossoms, the bridal veil, the church service, the wedding feast—­these are only the “bright consummate flower” reared by civilization from that rough seed.  All the brutal encounter is softened into this.  Nothing remains of the barbarism except the one word “obey,” and even that is going.

Now, to say that a thing is going, is to say that it will presently be gone.  To say that anything is changed, is to say that it is to change further.  If it never has been altered, perhaps it will not be; but a proved alteration of an inch in a year opens the way to an indefinite modification.  The study of the glaciers, for instance, began with the discovery that they had moved; and from that moment no one doubted that they were moving all the time.

It is the same with the position of woman.  Once open your eyes to the fact that it has changed, and who is to predict where the matter shall end?  It is sheer folly to say, “Her relative position will always be what it has been,” when one glance at Sir John Lubbock’s picture shows that there is no fixed “has been,” but that her original position was long since altered and revised.  Those who still use this argument are like those who laughed at the lines of stakes which Agassiz planted across the Aar glacier in 1840.  But the stakes settled the question, and proved the motion. Pero sim muove:  “But it moves.”