ad" woman;
Increase in the number of women who do not fit into the ancient
classifications.

With the gradual accumulation of scientific knowledge and increasing
tendency of mankind toward a rationalistic view of most things, it might
be expected that the ancient attitude toward sex and womanhood would
have been replaced by a saner feeling. To some extent this has indeed
been the case. It is surprising, however, to note the traces which the
old taboos and superstitions have left upon our twentieth century social
life. Men and women are becoming conscious that they live in a world
formed out of the worlds that have passed away. The underlying principle
of this social phenomenon has been called the principle of "the
persistence of institutions."[1] Institutionalized habits, mosaics of
reactions to forgotten situations, fall like shadows on the life of
to-day. Memories of the woman shunned, of the remote woman goddess, and
of the witch, transmit the ancient forms by which woman has been
expected to shape her life.

It may seem a far cry from the savage taboo to the institutional life of
the present; but the patterns of our social life, like the infantile
patterns on which adult life shapes itself, go back to an immemorial
past. Back in the early life of the peoples from which we spring is the
taboo, and in our own life there are customs so analogous to many of
these ancient prohibitions that they must be accounted survivals of old
social habits just as the vestigial structures within our bodies are the
remnants of our biological past.

The modern preaching concerning woman's sphere, for example, is an
obvious descendant of the old taboos which enforced the division of
labour between the sexes. Just as it formerly was death for a woman to
approach her husband's weapons, so it has for a long time been
considered a disgrace for her to attempt to compete with man in his line
of work. Only under the pressure of modern industrialism and economic
necessity has this ancient taboo been broken down, and even now there is
some reluctance to recognize its passing. The exigencies of the world
war have probably done more than any other one thing to accelerate the
disappearance of this taboo on woman from the society of to-day.

A modern institution reminiscent of the men's house of the savage races,
where no woman might intrude, is the men's club. This institution, as Mr
Webster has pointed out,[2] is a potent force for sexual sol