Well within the possibilities of a generation or two is the gain that will make the worker comfortable and care free. Like the village blacksmith, he may "look the whole world in the face" with independence, but with no latent enmity. Manly selfassertion there may be, with no sense of injury. The well-paid laborer may stand before the rich without envy, as the rich will stand before him without pity or condescension. It may be that the condition described by Edward Atkinson, in which it "will not pay to be rich" because of the cares which wealth must bring, may never arrive. It will always be better to have something than to have nothing; but it may, at some time, be better to have relatively little than to have inordinately much; and the worker may be able to come nearer and nearer to the state in which, for him, comforts are plentiful and anxieties are scarce. Amid a vast inequality of mere possessions, there may be less and less of inequality of genuine welfare. Many a man with a modest store may have no wish to change lots with the multimillionaire. For comfortable living, for high thinking, and for the finer traits of humanity, the odds may be in his favor.

In such a state there might easily be realized a stronger democracy than any which a leveling of fortunes would bring. Pulling others down that we may pull ourselves up is not a good initial step in a régime of brotherhood; but raising ourselves and others together is the very best step from the first and throughout. And the fraternity which comes in this way is by far the finer, because of inequality of possessions. If we can love no man truly unless we have as much money as he has, our brotherly spirit is of a very peculiar kind, and the fraternity that would depend on such a leveling would have no virility. It would have the pulpy fiber of a rank weed, while the manlier brotherhood that grows in the midst of inequality has the oaken fiber that endures. The relatively poor we shall have with us, and the inordinately rich as well; but it is in the power of humanity to project its fraternal bonds across the chasms which such conditions create. Though there be thrones and principalities in our earthly paradise, they will not mar its perfection, but will develop the finer traits of its inhabitants.

This state is the better because it is not cheaply attained. There are difficulties to be surmounted, which we have barely time to mention and no time to discuss. One of the greatest of these is the vanishing of much competition. The eager rivalry in perfecting methods and multiplying products, which is at the basis of our confidence in the future, seems to have here and there given place to monopoly, which always means apathy and stagnation. We have before us a struggle a successful one, if we rise to the occasion to keep alive the essential force of competition; and this fact reveals the very practical relation which intelligence sustains to the different proposals for social improvement. It must put us in the way of keeping effective the mainspring of progress of surmounting those evils which mar the present prospect. Trained intelligence here has its task marked out for it: it must show that monopoly can be effectively attacked, and must point out the way to do it a far different way from any yet adopted. Our people have the fortunes of themselves, their children, and their children's children, in their own hands. Surely, and even somewhat rapidly, may the gains we have outlined be made to come by united effort guided by intelligent thought.

It requires discernment to estimate progress itself at its true value. John Stuart Mill made the remark that no system could be worse than the present one, if that system did not admit of improvement. This remark could be made of any system. However fair a social state might at the outset appear, it would be essentially bad if it could never change for the better. The society in which efficient methods supplant inefficient ones, and in which able directors come naturally into control of production, insures a perpetual survival of excellence, and however low might be the state from which such a course of progress took its start, the society would ultimately excel any stationary one that could be imagined. A Purgatory actuated by the principle which guarantees improvement will surpass, in the end, a Paradise which has not this dynamic quality. For a limited class in our own landchiefly in the slums of cities — life has too much of the purga

torial quality; for the great body of its inhabitants the condition it affords, though by no means a paradise, is one that would have seemed so to many a civilization of the past and to many a foreign society of to-day. On its future course it is starting from a high level, and is moved by a powerful force toward an ideal which will some day be a reality, and which is therefore inspiring to look upon, even in the distance.

Like Webster, we may hail the advancing generations and bid them welcome to a land that is fairer than our own, and promises to grow fairer and fairer forever. That this prospect be not imperiled that the forces that make it a reality be enabled to do their work of to-day.

is what the men of the future ask of the intelligence

XVII

THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN

JOHN STUART MILL

[John Stuart Mill's essay, The Subjection of Women (1867), his last published work, is one of the pioneer documents in a cause that has received constantly increasing attention. Throughout his life Mill had favored the emancipation of women; but the influence most directly responsible for the volume that embodies his opinions on the subject was his wife, to whom he also assigns a great share of the credit for the work On Liberty. She herself had written an essay on the Enfranchisement of Women which, with her discussions with her husband, laid the foundation for his book.

The first chapter of this work has been selected to present the basic arguments of the modern suffrage movement, as the book can still claim to be a classic of its kind, despite the fact that it is out of date and that many of the unfair discriminations of that day no longer exist. The distinctive feature of Mill's argument on the emancipation question consists in his assertion that the difference of sex is accidental, like the difference of color, and that there are no grounds for forming any conclusions about the limitations of woman, as we really know absolutely nothing about the possibilities of her nature. Needless to say, Mill's views, in an age still innocent of militant propaganda, brought down upon him a storm of criticism, even from the liberals. A brief for the conservatives on this still very live question is given by Mr. Frederic Harrison in the next essay.]

THE object of this essay is to explain, as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes the legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and

that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

The very words necessary to express the task I have undertaken, show how arduous it is. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of the grounds of reason on which my conviction rests. The difficulty is that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to be contended against. So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded its adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old. And there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected with this subject the most intense and most deeply rooted of all those which gather round and protect old institutions and customs, that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the progress of the great modern spiritual and social transition; nor suppose that the barbarisms to which men cling longest must be less barbarisms than those which they earlier shake off.

In every respect the burden is hard on those who attack an almost universal opinion. They must be very fortunate, as well as unusually capable, if they obtain a hearing at all. They have more difficulty in obtaining a trial than any other litigants have in getting a verdict. If they do extort a hearing, they are subjected to a set of logical requirements totally different from those exacted from other people. In all other cases, the burden of proof is supposed to lie with the affirmative. If a person is charged with a murder, it rests with those who accuse