history lies in the development of this human-ness.

Our historic period is not very long. Real written history only goes
back a few thousand years, beginning with the stone records of ancient
Egypt. During this period we have had almost universally what is here
called an Androcentric Culture. The history, such as it was, was made
and written by men.

The mental, the mechanical, the social development, was almost wholly
theirs. We have, so far, lived and suffered and died in a man-made
world. So general, so unbroken, has been this condition, that to
mention it arouses no more remark than the statement of a natural law.
We have taken it for granted, since the dawn of civilization, that
"mankind" meant men-kind, and the world was theirs.

Women we have sharply delimited. Women were a sex, "the sex," according
to chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for special services peculiar
to femininity. As one English scientist put it, in 1888, "Women are not
only not the race--they are not even half the race, but a subspecies
told off for reproduction only."

This mental attitude toward women is even more clearly expressed by Mr.
H. B. Marriot-Watson in his article on "The American Woman" in the
"Nineteenth Century" for June, 1904, where he says: "Her constitutional
restlessness has caused her to abdicate those functions which alone
excuse or explain her existence." This is a peculiarly happy and
condensed expression of the relative position of women during our
androcentric culture. The man was accepted as the race type without one
dissentient voice; and the woman--a strange, diverse creature, quite
disharmonious in the accepted scheme of things--was excused and