God's grace this day light such a candle in England, as shall never be put
out!" undoubtedly believed that the candle lighted was the mere tallow
rushlight of a small sectarian freedom for England alone; nor perceived
that what he lighted was but one ray of the vast, universal aurora of
intellectual and spiritual liberty, whose light was ultimately to stream,
not only across England, but across the earth. Nevertheless, undoubtedly,
behind all these limited efforts, for what appeared, superficially, limited
causes, lay, in the hearts of the men and women concerned, through the
ages, a profound if vague consciousness of ends larger than they clearly
knew, to be subserved by their action; of a universal social duty and a
great necessity.

That the Woman's Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any mere
process of theoretic argument; that it breaks out, now here and now there,
in forms divergent and at times superficially almost irreconcilable; that
the majority of those taking part in it are driven into action as the
result of the immediate pressure of the conditions of life, and are not
always able logically to state the nature of all causes which propel them,
or to paint clearly all results of their action; so far from removing it
from the category of the vast reorganising movements of humanity, places it
in a line with them, showing how vital, spontaneous, and wholly organic and
unartificial is its nature.

The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and at
times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and social
duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined endeavour
after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly in a
resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour for women;
while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to reco-ordinate
the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual it manifests