s source and strength are to be found in the eternal feminine spirit,
which in its true aspects always makes for righteousness.

The world's statues have, with few exceptions, been raised to men, the
world's elegies have been sung of men, the world's acclamations have
been given to men. This is world justice, blind as well as with bandaged
eyes. Were true justice done--were the best results, the results which
live, commemorated in stone, the world itself, to adapt the hyperbole of
the Evangelist, could hardly contain the statues which would be reared
to women. But it is precisely in the cause for this neglect that there
lies the value of the work which has been done by woman for the welfare
of mankind. It is one of the truths of history that the greatest and
most enduring effects have always been accomplished in the least
conspicuous manner.

The man who searches effect for cause must find his goal most often in
the influence of a woman. Not always for good; that could not be. But it
would seem that all that has endured has been for good, and that the
evil which has been wrought by woman--and it has not been slight--has
been ephemeral in all respects. I know of no enduring evil that can be
traced to a woman as its source; but I know of no constant good which
did not find either its beginning or its fostering in a woman's thought
or work. Poppaea leaves but a name; Agrippina leaves an example. It may
be true of men that the evil that they do lives after them, while the
good is oft interred with their bones; but it is not true of women. Of
course, there is a sense in which it is true--in the descent from mother
to son of the spirit of the unrighteous mother; but even this would not
seem to hold as a rule, and the effects are often modified by the
influence of a love for a higher nature. The sum of woman's influence
upon the destinies of the world is good, the balance inclines steadily
toward the best. Woman is the hope of the world.

It is to find the persistence of this influence that we search her
history. Sometimes we shall find strange factors in the equation that
gives the sum, strange methods of attaining the result; but the result
itself is always plain. Nor is there ever entire lack of contemporary
influence of good, even when the evil seems predominant. If we read of
an Argive Helen bringing war and desolation upon a nation, we shall find
in those same pages record of a Penelope teaching the world the beauty
of