Woman in Political Evolution

The distinct aim which emboldened the author to add one more essay to the large class of works that deal with woman’s position throughout the ages was twofold. It seemed, in the first place, that there was a lack of connecting principle in the series of detached sketches that usually make up a work of the kind; that a continuous, panoramic view of human history would reveal such a principle, and one of very great importance for the proper appreciation of the present woman-movement. It has been possible to trace the action of a consistent law through all the historic spasms of feminist agitation, and to show that that law has reached a stage of final and irresistible pressure in our time. The underlying principles of the present movement are too rarely noticed, and a clear enunciation of them may contribute a little to the proper understanding of the struggle.
The second aim was to meet a serious concern that is expressed by thoughtful observers, when they note that the woman-movement is one of a score of agitations that ruffle the whole surface, and even stir the depths, of modern life. We have passed through a century of revolutions, yet we seem as far as ever from the peace that each one had promised to bring. Nations that had slept undisturbed through the political storms that shook Europe during three generations are now waking to revolt; classes that had witnessed the upheavals of the nineteenth century with dull indifference or shrinking apprehension now take up the world-cry of change with the energy of pioneers. The routine of daily life is distracted with the flash of a dozen new ideals. Placidity has fallen from the rank of virtues. What is the meaning of it all? What is likely to be the issue?
Those who read history shake their heads in concern. They say that they are familiar with the symptoms, and can recognise the malady. Through such spluttering of energy and iridescence of dreams every great nation passed as it neared the end. Such scenes were witnessed, and just such cries were heard, in the marble porticoes of Greece when its glorious life began to sink. The same cries rang through the fora of Imperial Rome, and were heard again in the piasse of medieval Italy, when the long-drawn shadows fell on their exhausted citizens. Do not nations run the cycle of birth and lusty manhood and decay, like individuals? And is not this restlessness the familiar token that the heart is slowing down and the frame failing to control the worn and hypersensitive nerves? Do not the fevered dreams, the ceaseless irritation, the rebellion of parts that had served so well in silence, warn us that the dissolution, of which we have read so often, is setting in? Can we do other than knit the frame close in its old fabric, repress the impatient elements, and close our eyes resolutely to the disordered dreams?