t; that it breaks out, now here and
now there, in forms divergent and at times superficially almost
irreconcilable; that the majority of those taking part in it are driven
into action as the result of the immediate pressure of the conditions
of life, and are not always able logically to state the nature of all
causes which propel them, or to paint clearly all results of their
action; so far from removing it from the category of the vast
reorganising movements of humanity, places it in a line with them,
showing how vital, spontaneous, and wholly organic and unartificial is
its nature.

The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and
at times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and
social duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined
endeavour after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly
in a resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour
for women; while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to
recoordinate the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual
it manifests itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for
liberty of personal action; while in another it is being fought out
silently in the depth of the individual consciousness--that primal
battle-ground, in which all questions of reform and human advance must
ultimately be fought and decided;--all this diversity, and the fact
that the average woman is entirely concerned in labour in her own little
field, shows, not the weakness, but the strength of the movement; which,
taken as a whole, is a movement steady and persistent in one direction,
the direction of increased activity and culture, and towards the
negation of all possibility of parasitism in the human female. Slowly,
and unconsciously, as the child is shaped in the womb, this movement
shapes itself in the bosom of our time, taking its place beside those
vast human developments, of which men, noting their spontaneity and the
co-ordination of their parts, have said, in the phraseology of old days,
"This thing is not of man, but of God."

He who today looks at some great Gothic cathedral in its final form,
seems to be looking at that which might have been the incarnation of the
dream of some single soul of genius. But in truth, its origin was far
otherwise. Ages elapsed from the time the first rough stone was laid as
a foundation till the last spire and pinnacle were shaped, and the ha