ters like Mrs. Gilman or Olive
Schreiner try to create a world for women alone, on the political
analogy. Men might be tolerated as fathers; but, to secure political
freedom, these leaders would turn to that nebulous creation of social
reformers, the state; and it should subsidize the mothers in their
periods of need. But there are only two ingredients out of which a
nation can be formed: one is women; the other is men. Shall woman in
her time of need turn to a state made up of other women, or to a state
made up of men? Obviously it must be to both; and if woman is to depend
on men, she might as well depend on man. No, in the political
revolutions we broke up artificial, outworn and unjust combinations; but
in this domestic revolution we are breaking up and must readjust the
fundamental unit of life.

Men and women must live and work together in the domestic unit, and they
cannot do the same things. Nature has specialized their functions and
each must supplement the other. Even in Germany, the _Hausfrau_ is not
going back to an exclusive service of children, cooking and church; nor
in America will man continue to be merely the breadwinner and the father
of children. With the enlightenment that is on the way, we shall see
that husband and wife can have no antagonistic differences. Each profits
in all that really benefits the other; and slowly we shall shape a new
institution based on absolute equality, and at the same time on
complementary service.

In this adjustment, legal forms can help or hinder; but they cannot
prevent nor compel the final action of human beings. Sex instinct is
stronger than any human law. The law can, however, help us in regulating
conditions of marriage, in settling disputes about common property and
children, and in determining how the contract may be set aside when that
becomes necessary.

The right of the church to sanction or regulate the family, rests in a
belief that marriage involves spiritual changes and obligations that
make it a sacrament, in its nature inviolable, and to be administered
only by the church, like the sacrament of baptism. This is a belief
resting not in eugenic considerations, nor in the human needs of the
persons involved, but in theological dogmas with which this chapter
cannot deal. Hence we shall maintain that the church has no more right
to control matters of marriage than it has to interfere in business or
political relations.

The state, on the other hand, me