valuable; it might get lost. If it were to try to fly it might fall down
and break its neck." And the bird, with its foot chained to the log, sat
looking upward into the clear blue sky; the sky, in which it had never
been--for the bird--the bird, knew what it would do--because it was an
eaglet!

There is one woman known to many of us, as each human creature knows but
one on earth; and it is upon our knowledge of that woman that we base our
certitude.

For those who do not know her, and have not this ground, it is probably
profitable and necessary that they painfully collect isolated facts and
then speculate upon them, and base whatever views they should form upon
these collections. It might even be profitable that they should form no
definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience
have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge
which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to act
fearlessly than to argue.

Finally, it may be objected to the entrance of woman to the new fields of
labour, and in effect it is often said--"What, and if, all you have sought
be granted you--if it be fully agreed that woman's ancient fields of toil
are slipping from her, and that, if she do not find new, she must fall into
a state of sexual parasitism, dependent on her reproductive functions
alone; and granted, that, doing this, she must degenerate, and that from
her degeneration must arise the degeneration and arrest of development of
the males as well as of the females of her race; and granting also, fully,
that in the past woman has borne one full half, and often more than one
half, of the weight of the productive labours of her societies, in addition
to child-bearing; and allowing more fully that she may be as well able to