n an article contributed by Dr. Havelock Ellis to the
_Fortnightly Review_ some few years ago. Especial importance attaches to
such teaching as hers when it proceeds from a woman whose fidelity to
the highest interests, even to the unchallenged autonomy, of her sex
cannot be questioned, attested as it is by a lifetime of splendid work.
The present controversy in Great Britain would be profoundly modified in
its course and in its character if either party were aware of Ellen
Key's work. The most questionable doctrines of the English feminists
would be already abandoned by themselves if either the wisest among
them, or their opponents, were able to cite the evidence of this great
Swedish feminist, who is certainly at this moment the most powerful and
the wisest living protagonist of her sex. From a single chapter of the
book, to which it may be hoped that the reader will refer, there may be
quoted a few sentences which will suffice to indicate the reasons why
Ellen Key dissociated herself some ten years ago from the general
feminist movement, and will also serve as an introduction from the
practical and instinctive point of view to the scientific argument
regarding the nature and purpose of womanhood, which must next concern
us. Hear Ellen Key:--

"Doing away with an unjust paragraph in a law which concerns woman,
turning a hundred women into a field of work where only ten were
occupied before, giving one woman work where formerly not one was
employed--these are the mile-stones in the line of progress of the
woman's rights movement. It is a line pursued without consideration
of feminine capacities, nature and environment.

"The exclamation of a woman's rights champion when another woman
had become a butcher, 'Go thou and do likewise,' and an American
young lady working as an executioner, are, in this connection,
characteristic phenomena.

"In our programme of civilization, we must start out with the
conviction that motherhood is something essential to the nature of
woman, and the way in which she carries out this profession is of
value for society. On this basis we must alter the conditions which
more and more are robbing woman of the happiness of motherhood and
are robbing children of the care of a mother.

"I am in favour of real freedom for woman; that is, I wish her to
follow her own nature, whether she be an exceptional or an