But complicating her problem is not the only injury she does her cause by this ignoring or belittling of woman’s part in civilization.  She strips herself of suggestion and inspiration—­a loss that cannot be reckoned.  The past is a wise teacher.  There is none that can stir the heart more deeply or give to human affairs such dignity and significance.  The meaning of woman’s natural business in the world—­the part it has played in civilizing humanity—­in forcing good morals and good manners, in giving a reason and so a desire for peaceful arts and industries, the place it has had in persuading men and women that only self-restraint, courage, good cheer, and reverence produce the highest types of manhood and womanhood,—­this is written on every page of history.

Women need the ennobling influence of the past.  They need to understand their integral part in human progress.  To slur this over, ignore, or deny it, cripples their powers.  It sets them at the foolish effort of enlarging their lives by doing the things man does—­not because they are certain that as human beings with a definite task they need—­or society needs—­these particular services or operations from them, but because they conceive that this alone will prove them equal.  The efforts of woman to prove herself equal to man is a work of supererogation.  There is nothing he has ever done that she has not proved herself able to do equally well.  But rarely is society well served by her undertaking his activities.  Moreover, if man is to remain a civilized being, he must be held to his business of producer and protector.  She cannot overlook her obligation to keep him up to his part in the partnership, and she cannot wisely interfere too much with that part.  The fate of the meddler is common knowledge!

A few women in every country have always and probably always will find work and usefulness and happiness in exceptional tasks.  They are sometimes women who are born with what we call “bachelor’s souls”—­an interesting and sometimes even charming, though always an incomplete, possession!  More often they are women who by the bungling machinery of society have been cast aside.  There is no reason why these women should be idle, miserable, selfish, or antisocial.  There are rich lives for them to work out and endless needs for them to meet.  But they are not the women upon whom society depends; they are not the ones who build the nation.  The women who count are those who outnumber them a hundred to one—­the women who are at the great business of founding and filling those natural social centers which we call homes.  Humanity will rise or fall as that center is strong or weak.  It is the human core.