time of danger the woman must be saved first.  In time of pleasure, the woman must be given the best place.  In time of hardship the woman’s share of the common pain must be taken voluntarily by the man as much as possible.  This is not with any view to recognition of the kindness shown.  The man who assists a woman in danger is not supposed to have any claim upon her for that reason.  He has done his duty only, not to her, the individual, but to womankind at large.  So we have arrived at this general fact, that the first place in all things, except rule, is given to woman in Western countries, and that it is given almost religiously.

Is woman a religion?  Well, perhaps you will have the chance of judging for yourselves if you go to America.  There you will find men treating women with just the same respect formerly accorded only to religious dignitaries or to great nobles.  Everywhere they are saluted and helped to the best places; everywhere they are treated as superior beings.  Now if we find reverence, loyalty and all kinds of sacrifices devoted either to a human being or to an image, we are inclined to think of worship.  And worship it is.  If a Western man should hear me tell you this, he would want the statement qualified, unless he happened to be a philosopher.  But I am trying to put the facts before you in the way in which you can best understand them.  Let me say, then, that the all-important thing for the student of English literature to try to understand, is that in Western countries woman is a cult, a religion, or if you like still plainer language, I shall say that in Western countries woman is a god.

So much for the abstract idea of woman.  Probably you will not find that particularly strange; the idea is not altogether foreign to Eastern thought, and there are very extensive systems of feminine pantheism in India.  Of course the Western idea is only in the romantic sense a feminine pantheism; but the Oriental idea may serve to render it more comprehensive.  The ideas of divine Mother and divine Creator may be studied in a thousand forms; I am now referring rather to the sentiment, to the feeling, than to the philosophical conception.

You may ask, if the idea or sentiment of divinity attaches to woman in the abstract, what about woman in the concrete—­individual woman?  Are women individually considered as gods?  Well, that depends on how you define the word god.  The following definition would cover the ground, I think:—­“Gods are beings superior to man, capable of assisting or injuring him, and to be placated by sacrifice and prayer.”  Now according to this definition, I think that the attitude of man towards woman in Western countries might be very well characterized as a sort of worship.  In the upper classes of society, and in the middle classes also, great reverence towards women is exacted.  Men bow down before them, make all kinds of sacrifices to please them, beg for their good will and their