an equal footing; and that in
addition to infidelity, now the only cause for divorce allowed, complete
separation be also granted for desertion for three years, incurable
insanity, and incurable habitual drunkenness. The majority, nine
commissioners, found that the present stringent restrictions and
costliness of divorce are productive of immorality and illicit
relations, particularly among the poorer classes. The majority report
was opposed by the three minority members, the Archbishop of York, Sir
William Anson, and Sir Lewis Dibdin, representing the Established
Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. Thus far, Parliament
has not yet acted and the old law is still in force.

On the Continent, with the exception of a few places like Finland, the
movement for equal suffrage, while earnestly pressed by a few, is not
yet concentrated. Women have won their rights to higher education and
are admitted to the universities. They can usually enter business and
most of the professions. Inequities of civil rights are gradually being
swept away. For example, in Germany a married woman has complete control
of her property, but only if she specifically provided for it in the
marriage contract; many German women are ignorant that they possess such
a right. The Germans may be divided into two classes: the caste which
rules, largely Prussian, militaristic, and bureaucratic; and that which,
although desirous of more republican institutions and potentially
capable of liberal views, is constrained to obey the first or ruling
class. This upper class is not friendly to the modern women's-rights
movement. Perhaps it has read too much Schopenhauer. This amiable
philosopher, whose own mother could not endure living with him, has this
to say of women[431]:

"A woman who is perfectly truthful and does not dissemble, is perhaps an
impossibility. In a court of justice women are more often found guilty
of perjury than men.... Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses
and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they
themselves are childish, foolish, and shortsighted.... Women are and
remain, taken altogether, the most thorough and incurable Philistines;
and because of the extremely absurd arrangement which allows them to
share the position and title of their husbands they are a constant
stimulus to his ignoble ambitions.... Where are there any real
monogamists? We all live, at any rate for a time, and the majori