n or to death. But in the ordinary sphere of everyday morality
that large penalty is not required of him; if he goes against the wishes
of his family or his friends or his parish, they may turn their backs on
him but they cannot usually demand against him the last penalties of the
law. He can exert his own personal responsibility, he can freely choose to
go his own way and to maintain himself in it before his fellowmen on one
condition, that he is able to pay for it. His personal responsibility has
little or no meaning except in so far as it is also economic independence.

In civilized societies as they attain maturity, the women tend to acquire
a greater and greater degree alike of moral responsibility and economic
independence. Any freedom and seeming equality of women, even when it
actually assumes the air of superiority, which is not so based, is unreal.
It is only on sufferance; it is the freedom accorded to the child, because
it asks for it so prettily or may scream if it is refused. This is merely
parasitism.[295] The basis of economic independence ensures a more real
freedom. Even in societies which by law and custom hold women in strict
subordination, the woman who happens to be placed in possession of
property enjoys a high degree alike of independence and of
responsibility.[296] The growth of a high civilization seems indeed to be
so closely identified with the economic freedom and independence of women
that it is difficult to say which is cause and which effect. Herodotus, in
his fascinating account of Egypt, a land which he regarded as admirable
beyond all other lands, noted with surprise that, totally unlike the
fashion of Greece, women left the men at home to the management of the
loom and went to market to transact the business of commerce.[297] It is
the economic factor in social life which secures the moral responsibility
of women and which chiefly determines the position of the wife in relation
to her husband.[298] In this respect in its late stages civilization
returns to the same point it had occupied at the beginning, when, as has
already been noted, we find greater equality with men and at the same time
greater economic independence.[299]

In all the leading modern civilized countries, for a century past, custom
and law have combined to give an ever greater economic independence to
women. In some respects England took the lead by inaugurating the great
industrial movement which slowly swept women i