o the community at large, are very important.
In the East the harem is, as Vambery well says, the "bulwark of
obscurantism."[254] Ignorant and fanatical herself, the harem woman
implants her ignorance and fanaticism in her sons as well as in her
daughters. What could be a worse handicap for the Eastern "intellectual"
than his boyhood years spent "behind the veil"? No wonder that
enlightened Oriental fathers have been in the habit of sending their
boys to school at the earliest possible age in order to get them as soon
as possible out of the stultifying atmosphere of harem life. Yet even
this has proved merely a palliative. Childhood impressions are ever the
most lasting, and so long as one-half of the Orient remained untouched
by progressive influences Oriental progress had to be begun again _de
novo_ with every succeeding generation.

The increasing number of enlightened Oriental women is remedying this
fatal defect. As a Western writer well says: "Give the mothers education
and the whole situation is transformed. Girls who are learning other
things than the unintelligible phrases of the Koran are certain to
impart such knowledge, as daughters, sisters, and mothers, to their
respective households. Women who learn housewifery, methods of modern
cooking, sewing, and sanitation in the domestic-economy schools, are
bound to cast about the home upon their return the atmosphere of a
civilized community. The old-time picture of the Oriental woman spending
her hours upon divans, eating sweetmeats, and indulging in petty and
degrading gossip with the servants, or with women as ignorant as
herself, will be changed. The new woman will be a companion rather than
a slave or a toy of her husband. Marriage will advance from the stage of
a paltry trade in bodies to something like a real union, involving
respect towards the woman by both sons and fathers, while in a new pride
of relationship the woman herself will be discovered."[255]

These men and women of the newer Orient reflect their changing ideas in
their changing standards of living. Although this is most evident among
the wealthier elements of the towns, it is perceptible in all classes of
the population. Rich and poor, urban and rural, the Orientals are
altering their living standards towards those of the West. And this
involves social changes of the most far-reaching character, because few
antitheses could be sharper than the living conditions prevailing
respectively in the