all the nations can deny her recognition and equality.


III


For the battle of to-morrow then there is a preliminary fight to-day.
The woman must come to this point, too. In life there is frequently so
much meanness, a man is often called to acknowledge some degrading
standard or fight for the very recognition of manhood, and the woman
must stand in with him or help to pull him down. Let her understand this
and her duty is present and urgent. The man so often wavers on the verge
of the right path, the woman often decides him. If she is nobler than
he, as is frequently the case, she can lift him to her level; if she is
meaner, as she often is, she as surely drags him down. When they are
both equal in spirit and nobility of nature, how the world is filled
with a glory that should assure us, if nothing else could, of the truth
of the Almighty God and a beautiful Eternity to explain the origin and
destiny of their wonderful existence. They are indispensable to each
other: if they stand apart, neither can realise in its fulness the
beauty and glory of life. Let the man and woman see this, and let them
know in the day that is at hand, how the challenge may come from some
petty authority of the time that rules not by its integrity but by its
favourites. We are cursed with such authority, and many a one drives
about in luxury because he is obsequious to it: he prefers to be a
parasite and to live in splendour than be a man and live in straits. He
has what Bernard Shaw so aptly calls "the soul of a servant." If we are
to prepare for a braver future, let us fight this evil thing; if we are
to put by national servitude, let us begin by driving out individual
obsequiousness. This is our training ground for to-morrow. Let the woman