flower of our century--the recognition of the rights of all
created things, with all that it involves--belongs to universal
history. It is the product of the Reformation and the Renaissance,
with roots only the records of Rome and Greece and Egypt may discover.

The quickening of moral and spiritual life in our day, its accelerated
movement, is not to be claimed by or traced to any one set of
influences or propaganda. The awakening has been all along the line;
and it has resulted in a new mental attitude toward the human life of
the world, both as a whole and in its various parts. Its great outcome
is the learning to live with, rather than for, others.

This new view, this great advance of the moral and spiritual forces,
addressed itself with singular significance to women. To those who
were prepared, it came not only as an awakening, but as
emancipation--emancipation of the soul, freedom from the tyranny of
tradition and prejudice, and the acquisition of an intellectual
outlook; a spiritual liberty achieved so quietly as to be unnoticed
except by those who watched the progress of this bloodless revolution,
and the falling away of the shackles that bind the spirit in its early
and often painful effort to reach the light.

The broadening of human sympathy, the freedom of will, gave rise to a
thousand new forms of activity; some of these an expansion of those
which had previously existed; others opening new channels of
communication; all looking towards wider fields of effort, a larger
unity, a more complete realization of the eternal ideal, the
fatherhood of God, the motherhood of woman, the brotherhood of man.

Realization of this ideal brought a new conception of duty to the mind
of woman, unlocked the strong gates of theological and social
tradition, and opened the windows of her soul to a new and more
glorious world. The sense of duty is always strong in the woman. If
she disregards it she never ceases to suffer. Her convictions of it
have made her the most willing and joyful of martyrs, the most
persistent and relentless of bigots, the most blind and devoted of
partisans, the most faithful and believing of friends, and the only
type out of which Nature could form the mother. This quality has made
women the constructive force they are in the world, and gives all the
more importance to the new departure, to the influences of the new
sources of enlargement that have come into their lives.

Thus it became a necessi