subjects with equal frankness and delicacy.

The most brilliant and successful exponent of the new revolutionary
ideas--making Corinne and her prototype seem dim and ineffectual--was
undoubtedly George Sand. The badly-dressed woman who earned her living
by scribbling novels, and said to M. du Camp, as she sat before him in
silence rolling her cigarette, "Je ne dis rien parceque je suis bete,"
has exercised a profound influence throughout Europe, an influence
which, in the Sclavonic countries especially, has helped to give impetus
to the resolution we are now considering. And this not so much from any
definite doctrines that underlie her work--for George Sand's views on
such matters varied as much as her political views--as from her whole
temper and attitude. Her large and rich nature, as sometimes happens in
genius of a high order, was twofold; on the one hand, she possessed a
solid serenity, a quiet sense of power, the qualities of a _bonne
bourgeoise_, which found expression in her imperturbable calm, her
gentle look and low voice. And with this was associated a massive,
almost Rabelaisian temperament (one may catch glimpses of it in her
correspondence), a sane exuberant earthliness which delighted in every
manifestation of the actual world. On the other hand, she bore within
her a volcanic element of revolt, an immense disgust of law and custom.
Throughout her life George Sand developed her strong and splendid
individuality, not perhaps as harmoniously, but as courageously and as
sincerely as even Goethe.

Robert Owen, who, like Saint-Simon in France, gave so extraordinary an
impulse to all efforts at social reorganization, and who planted the
seed of many modern movements, could not fail to extend his influence to
the region of sex. A disciple of his, William Thompson, who still holds
a distinguished position in the history of the economic doctrines of
Socialism, wrote, under the inspiration of a woman (a Mrs. Wheeler),
and published in 1825, an _Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women,
against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to retain them in
Political, and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery_. It is a thorough
and logical, almost eloquent, demand for the absolute social equality of
the sexes.[46]

Forty years later, Mill, also inspired by a woman, published his
_Subjection of Women_. However partial and inadequate it may seem to us,
this was at that day a notable book. Mill's clear vision and femini