ll groups, and often for
what appeared small and almost personal ends, having sometimes,
superficially, little in common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt
in Rome in defence of abstract theory with regard to the nature of the
First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his rocks because he refused
to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman,
walking serenely to the stake because she refused to bow her head before
two crossed rods; then a Servetus burnt by Protestant Calvin at Geneva;
or a Spinoza cut off from his tribe and people because he could
see nothing but God anywhere; and then it was an exiled Rousseau or
Voltaire, or a persecuted Bradlaugh; till, in our own day the last
sounds of the long fight are dying about us, as fading echoes, in the
guise of a few puerile attempts to enforce trivial disabilities on the
ground of abstract convictions. The vanguard of humanity has won its
battle for freedom of thought.

But, to the men and women taking part in that mighty movement during
the long centuries of the past, probably nothing was quite clear, in the
majority of cases, but their own immediate move. Not the leaders--most
certainly not good old Martin Luther, even when he gave utterance to
his immortal "I can no otherwise" (the eternal justification of all
reformers and social innovators!), understood the whole breadth of the
battlefield on which they were engaged, or grasped with precision the
issues which were involved. The valiant Englishman, who, as the flames
shot up about him, cried to his companion in death, "Play the man,
Master Ridley; we shall by God's grace this day light such a candle
in England, as shall never be put out!" undoubtedly believed that
the candle lighted was the mere tallow rushlight of a small sectarian
freedom for England alone; nor perceived that what he lighted was but
one ray of the vast, universal aurora of intellectual and spiritual
liberty, whose light was ultimately to stream, not only across England,
but across the earth. Nevertheless, undoubtedly, behind all these
limited efforts, for what appeared, superficially, limited causes,
lay, in the hearts of the men and women concerned, through the ages, a
profound if vague consciousness of ends larger than they clearly knew,
to be subserved by their action; of a universal social duty and a great
necessity.

That the Woman's Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any
mere process of theoretic argumen