the economic support of the
home,--the work of the wife and even actual financial contributions
brought by her not being supposed to affect that convention,--this state
of things is held to be justified.

Thus when a man enters the home as a husband, to seat himself on the
antique domestic throne and to play the part assigned to him of old, he is
involuntarily, even unconsciously, following an ancient tradition and
taking his place in a procession of husbands which began long ages before
he was born. It thus comes about that a man, even after he is married, and
a husband are two different persons, so that his wife who mainly knows him
as a husband may be unable to form any just idea of what he is like as a
man. As a husband he has stepped out of the path that belongs to him in
the world, and taken on another part which has called out altogether
different reactions, so he is sometimes a much more admirable person in
one of these spheres--whichever it may be--than in the other.

We must not be surprised if the husband's position has sometimes developed
those qualities which from the modern point of view are the less
admirable. In this respect the sovereign husband resembles the Sovereign
State. The Sovereign State, as it has survived from Renaissance days in
our modern world, may be made up of admirable people, yet as a State they
are forced into an attitude of helpless egoism which nowadays fails to
commend itself to the outside world, and the tendency of scientific
jurists to-day is to deal very critically with the old conception of the
Sovereign State. It is so with the husband in the home. He was thrust by
ancient tradition into a position of sovereignty which impelled him to
play a part of helpless egoism. He was a celestial body in the home around
which all the other inmates were revolving satellites. The hours of rising
and retiring, the times of meals and their nature and substance, all the
activities of the household--in which he himself takes little or no
part--are still arranged primarily to suit his work, his play, and his
tastes. This is an accepted matter of course, and not the result of any
violent self-assertion on his part. It is equally an accepted matter of
course that the wife should be constantly occupied in keeping this little
solar system in easy harmonious movement, evolving from it, if she has the
skill, the music of the spheres. She has no recognised independent
personality of her own, nor even