-at
least I hope--is the right to be women, not the right to become like
men. There can be no gain for women except this. To be mothers were
women created and to be fathers men. This rightly considered is the
deepest of all truths.

What is needed at present is that women should be allowed to
rediscover for themselves what is their woman's work, rather than that
they should continue to accept perforce the role which men (rightly or
wrongly) have at various times allowed to them throughout the
patriarchal ages. This necessity is as much a necessity for men as it
is for women.

I do not think that women will fail (even if for a time they stumble a
little) in finding the way. The vital germinal spot of each forward
step in women's position must be sought with the women who are the
conscious mothers of the race. The great women reformers are not those
who would have women act just like men in all externals, but those who
are conscious that all men are born of women. In this lies women's
strength in the past and in this must be their strength in that glad
future that is to be. But only if motherhood is regarded as an
intrinsic glory, and children are born in freedom. Think what this
means. The birth of a child, in so far as its mother has not received
the sanction of a man, is subject to the fire and brimstone of public
scorn. And this scorn is the most pitiful result in all the
patriarchal record. A woman's natural right is her right to be a
mother, and it is the most inglorious page in the history of woman
that too often she has allowed herself to be deprived of that right.
Women have this lesson first to learn. We, and not men, must fix the
standard in sex, for we have to play the chief part in the racial
life. Let us, then, reacquire our proud instinctive consciousness,
which we are fully justified in having, of being the mothers of
humanity; and having that consciousness, once more we shall be
invincible.

INDEX

A

Absorption by the male of female ideas, 75

Advance of the family to the clan and tribe, 36, 67-91, 170, 256 _et seq._

Africa, 174-176, 204-205

Agriculture and women, 60 _et seq._, 116, 158, 194-208

Ahitas of Philippines, 152

Alladians of Gold Coast, 185

Allison, Mrs., 198

Amazons, 34, 36, 38, 228, 245-246

Amazons, revolt of, 31, 32, 36, 38

_Ambel-anak_ marriage, 147, 182

American aborigines, 27, 95-131, 148, 198, 206

Andamanese, women's work among, 197

Andombies,