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 1912a 
 
 MAIN 
 
 wliiwib tot lt»e iUiilCb 
 
 WOMANHOOD AND 
 RACE-REGENERATION 
 
JkCW CkUicib lUl LUC Ulillvb 
 
 WOMANHOOD AND 
 RACE-REGENERATION 
 
NEW TRACTS FOR THE TIMES 
 
 Promoted by the National Council of Public Morals, Holborn 
 Hall, London, W.C. 
 
 TRACTS PUBLISHED 
 "The Problem of Race- Regeneration." By Dr. 
 Havelock Ellis (Editor, Contemporary Science 
 Series, etc. ) . 
 
 "The Methods of Race-Regeneration." By C. W. 
 
 Saleeby, M.D., F.R.S.E., F.Z.S. (Author of 
 '•Parenthood and Race Culture," etc.). 
 
 " The Declining Birth-Rate — Its National and Inter- 
 national Significance/ ' By A. Newsholrue, M.D. 
 
 " Problems of Sex." By Prof. J. Arthur Thomson and 
 
 Prof. P. Geddes. 
 "National Ideals and Race-Regeneration." By Rev. 
 
 R. F. Horton, ALA., D.D. 
 " Womanhood and Race-Regeneration." By Mary 
 
 Scharlieb, M.D., M.S. 
 
 TRACTS IN PREPARATION 
 
 " Literature — The Word of Life or of Death." By 
 Rev. William Canon Barry, D.D. 
 
 "Modern Industrialism and Race-Regeneration." By 
 C. F. G. Masterman, M.A., M.P. 
 
 "Religion and Race-Regeneration." By Rev. F. B. 
 
 Meyer, D.D. 
 " Social Environment and Moral Progress." By A. 
 
 Russell Wallace, O.M., LL.D., F.R.S. 
 " The Spiritual Life and Race-Regeneration." By 
 
 the Bishop of Durham. 
 " Education and Race- Regeneration." By Sir John 
 
 Gorst, LL.D., K.C., F.R.S. 
 
il-is'w GiMCl'S for (he Siiiigvi 
 
 WOMANHOOD 
 
 AND 
 
 RACE-REGENERATION 
 
 BY 
 MARY SCHARLIEB, M.D., M.S. 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 1912 
 

 vv 
 
 - \ 
 
 
 I \ 
 
 
 * « • • , 
 
 ■ • - • * > 
 

 In compliance with current copyright 
 
 law, U. C. Library Bindery produced 
 
 this replacement volume on paper 
 
 that meets ANSI Standard Z39.48- 
 
 1984 to replace the irreparably 
 
 deteriorated original 
 
 1997 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 By the 
 
 Rev. James Marchant 
 
 These Tracts might have been called "New Tracts 
 for New Times," since they interpret the signs and 
 prophecies of a new world in the making, demanding 
 jhe application of loftier ideals, more widely embracing 
 principles, and surer methods of advance than have 
 hitherto prevailed. They do not merely deplore and 
 combat the manifest evils of the past and the present 
 changing conditions, but reveal the foundations of a 
 richer civilisation. The era of destructive criticism, 
 of improving material environment alone, of lavish 
 care for a short season of the unfit merely to turn them 
 adrift at the critical age, of reliance upon forms and 
 drugs, hospitals and penitentiaries, police and prisons 
 and upon unfettered liberty to correct its own abuses, 
 is mercifully passing away. We are living in a transi- 
 tion period, but nearer the future than the past. The 
 wonderful nineteenth century seems already to have be- 
 come history, and the first decade of the twentieth cen- 
 tury has closed. The new spirit of the age, which ap- 
 peared in wondrous guise on the horizon at the watch of 
 the centuries, is becoming articulate. It is evident to 
 all who possess the historic vision that we are living in 
 the twilight before the dawn. The rapid, ruthless 
 
 259911 
 
New Tracts for the Times 
 
 progress and verily bewildering discoveries and devel- 
 opments of the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
 the opening up of virgin fields of reform and of untrod- 
 den and unsuspected paths of advance, were heralds of 
 a new day, of the nearness of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 These Tracts, small in bulk, but written by eminent 
 authors, deal with these profound and commanding 
 themes from this inspiring outlook. If they revert to 
 outstanding present-day evils, it is because these men- 
 ace the future and are a crime against posterity. Ac- 
 count is taken of the persistent and ominous demand 
 for the divorce of religion from morals and education ; 
 of the lowering of the ideal of marriage and the sub- 
 stitution of a temporary contract for that permanent 
 union which is necessary, to take no higher ground, for 
 the nurture and education of the next generation; of 
 the commercial employment of married women, re- 
 sulting, to a serious extent, in the neglect and dis- 
 ruption of family life and the displacement and unem- 
 ployment of men ; and of the economic, social, and sel- 
 fish influences which involve late marriages and an ever- 
 falling birth-rate. The writers consider the grave and 
 urgent questions of the wastage of child-life ; the weak- 
 ening and pollution of the link between the generations ; 
 and the uncontrolled multiplication of the degenerate, 
 who threaten to swamp in a few generations the purer 
 elements of our race. They examine the disquieting 
 signs of physical deterioration; the prevalence of vice, 
 the increase of insanity and feeble-mindedness, and 
 their exhaustless drain upon free-flowing charity and 
 
General Introduction 
 
 the national purse; the wide circulation of debasing 
 books and papers which imply the existence, to a de- 
 plorable extent, of low ideals amongst a multitude of 
 readers; and some of the manifold evils of our indus- 
 trial system which cause the hideous congestion of slum- 
 dom with its irreparable loss of the finer sensibilities, 
 of beauty, sweetness and light. These and like griev- 
 ous ills of the social body are treated in the " New 
 Tracts for the Times," from the moral and spiritual 
 standpoint, by constructive methods of redemption, with 
 the knowledge of our corporate responsibility and in re- 
 lation to their bearing on the future of the race. 
 
 The supreme and dominant conception running 
 through these Tracts is the Regeneration of the Race. 
 They strike not the leaden note of despair, but the 
 ringing tones of a new and certain hope. The regen- 
 erated race is coming to birth; the larger and nobler 
 civilisation is upon us. It is already seen that it is 
 criminal to live at the expense of the future, that chil- 
 dren must be wisely and diligently educated for parent- 
 hood, that vice must be sapped at its foundations, that 
 it is much more radically necessary to improve the con- 
 dition of the race through parentage than through 
 change of environment, that the emphasis must shift 
 from rescue to prevention. These Tracts turn the 
 searchlight of the twentieth century upon such problems 
 and seek to hasten the time when true religion will oc- 
 cupy its rightful place in our human lives, and woman 
 her true place in the home and society, and industry 
 will not deaden and demoralise, and life will be happier, 
 
New Tracts for the Times 
 
 sweeter and holier for every man, woman and 
 child. 
 
 These Tracts must awaken a sensitive, enlightened 
 social conscience throughout Great and Greater Britain, 
 which is being welded into a more compact Empire, and 
 give voice and new life to the long-silent and thwarted 
 aspirations for a regenerated humanity. 
 
 In their several ways, the authors of these "New 
 Tracts for the Times," each being alone responsible 
 for his or her own contribution, adopt this bracing 
 and hopeful attitude towards the transcendent prob- 
 lems which it is the object of the promoters to eluci- 
 date. 
 
 J. M. 
 
 National Council of Public Morals, 
 
 Holborn Hall, London, W. C. 
 
 September, 1911. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Training op Women 5 
 
 II Woman's Influence on the Kace ... 17 
 III Women as Citizens 46 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE TRAINING OF WOMEN 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say that on woman depends the 
 welfare of the race, for not only is she the parent most 
 intimately in contact with the growing child, but her 
 influence is generally paramount both with her husband 
 and with her grown-up family. It is merely a truism 
 that the race will be whatever the women of the race 
 make it. 
 
 In order that women shall be fit for their most im- 
 portant position and that they shall be ready for the 
 great work to which they are called, it is necessary ( 1 ) 
 that they should recognise their privileges and their 
 duties, and (2) that they should receive the training 
 which is to fit them for their adequate discharge. If 
 we inquire when the training is to begin, we get on to 
 what may be described as a circle. Every individual's 
 training really begins generations before he is born, and 
 the effects of each individual's training extend for gen- 
 erations into the future; therefore, in discussing the 
 training of woman, it matters little whether we start in 
 her prenatal days or at the time when she herself is the 
 expectant mother. Life fulfils its cycle, and our con- 
 sideration of it may begin at any point. Let us, there- 
 
 5 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 fore, for convenience start with the consideration of the 
 adolescent girl, for it is here that differentiation between 
 male and female becomes marked. 
 
 During the years of childhood, usually until ap- 
 proximately the fourteenth year, the boy and girl closely 
 resemble each other in physical, mental, and moral en- 
 dowments ; their needs are much the same, and they can 
 often be educated together without detriment — indeed, 
 sometimes with marked advantage. During the age of 
 puberty, which extends from about 14 to 18 years, the 
 girl's development proceeds on different lines from that 
 of her brother. One characteristic of this development 
 is its astonishing rapidity and its thoroughness. Every 
 part of the organism responds to a touch as apparently 
 magic as that which clothes the earth with verdure and 
 flowers in the spring, and gladdens its sunny hours with 
 the songs of the birds. On the physical plane the girl's 
 development is great and rapid ; her growth for the time 
 being outstrips that of her brother : there are special 
 changes in the shape and inclination of the pelvic bones ; 
 the whole skeleton rapidly attains the slenderness and 
 grace characteristic of the human female. The in- 
 ternal organs undergo a similar transformation, more 
 especially those that are concerned in the function of 
 reproduction, and it is on the perfection with which 
 they are evolved that the adult shape of the pelvis de- 
 pends. What are known as secondary sexual characters 
 become well marked : the hair grows longer and becomes 
 more glossy, the complexion clears, the eyes brighten 
 
 6 
 
The Training of Women 
 
 and are more evidently than before the windows of the 
 soul; the hands and the feet appear to be more in pro- 
 portion and more delicately shaped as the limbs above 
 them grow not only in length but in muscular power 
 and girth. 
 
 At the same epoch the girl's intellectual capacities 
 both increase and alter: the marvellous verbal memory 
 of childhood relatively decreases, but this is more than 
 compensated by the rise of power of comparison, of 
 judgment, and of reasoning. Mere mechanical ability 
 to work sums frequently develops into mathematical 
 ability to understand why certain factors in -problems 
 exist, and how they should be solved. At this period 
 we may also mark the rise of love of nature, appreciation 
 of literature, and more especially of the poetic faculty 
 — a faculty which sometimes shows itself in a power 
 to express itself poetically, and still more often in the 
 power to appreciate the writings of the greater poets. 
 
 At this age the intellectual and aesthetic horizon 
 appears to be boundless, while the sense of vitality and 
 the daily increasing power of enjoyment give the 
 adolescent girl a forestate of immortality, a belief, 
 illusory though it may be, that nothing can damp her 
 enjoyment, and that it would be impossible for death to 
 cut short the glorious and dazzling career she sees as in 
 a vision. 
 
 The religious and moral nature of the girl undergoes 
 a quite peculiar modification. She generally loses the 
 extreme frankness and the communicativeness of the 
 
 7 , 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 child and becomes reserved. There is, indeed, no one 
 who would, she thinks, be likely to understand her. 
 Her schoolfellows and sisters would probably laugh at 
 all the wonders she has discovered, while her mother's 
 girlhood must have been too long ago for her even to 
 retain any memory of its joys. 
 
 Such is the highly complex and unstable creature who 
 in a few brief years must be trained to take her place 
 as " a perfect woman nobly planned." Instability and 
 incoherence must give place to calm and to trustworthi- 
 ness ; the problems of life cannot indeed have been 
 solved, but the young woman must hold in her hands 
 the key to their solution. The task of utilising all the 
 rich and abundant but effervescent qualities of the 
 young girl is a momentous one, such as few of us are 
 fit to undertake, and yet. in former days, it was com- 
 mitted in the most light-hearted way to any unmarried 
 woman who wanted employment, and has latterly been 
 entrusted to almost any holder of a University degree 
 who seeks entrance to the educational world. All the 
 same, it is a duty that would severely task the wisest, 
 kindest, and best of the human race. 
 
 It seems as if mistakes had been made in two almost 
 opposite directions. In a certain number of cases the 
 girls in private schools have been taught little beyond 
 languages, music, and other accomplishments, while in 
 other cases they have been made to share in the classical 
 and mathematical studies of their brothers without any 
 consideration for their own mental and physical pecul- 
 iarities. The knowledge has long been growing among 
 
 8 
 
The Training of Women 
 
 the experts of the educational world that the whole ideal 
 of the education of girls was wrong, and that the meth- 
 ods were faulty. The mischief caused by constantly 
 recurring examinations and the trying amount of emula- 
 tion they involve has slowly forced upon us the conclu- 
 sion that in order to get the best results in the education 
 and training of adolescent girls a certain power to vary 
 the curriculum is necessary. It is impossible to treat 
 them as though they were machines warranted to turn 
 out work of a certain quality and for a certain length 
 of time. The changes — physical, mental and moral — 
 that occur in young girls are so great, the development 
 of their nature is so rapid, that the ordinary hard and 
 fast rules of school and college are likely to fail in 
 securing the maximum result. This point may be il- 
 lustrated by the experience of Exercise and Games 
 Mistresses in Sweden, who have long been aware of the 
 fact that although girls up to puberty enjoy their ex- 
 ercises and profit by them in the same manner as do the 
 boys, yet the time comes when exercises are badly done, 
 and when an ordinary amount of exertion induces an 
 extraordinary amount of fatigue. The consideration 
 that the Swedish teachers have been forced to show to 
 pupils from 11 to 18 years of age is the type of the con- 
 sideration that will have to be shown on the intellectual 
 side of training. It is not only the delicate, weedy 
 girls, nor is it the dull and backward girls only, who 
 need to have their curriculum specially adapted to them ; 
 the feeling of slackness and disability appears to be very 
 general, and it is the rule rather than the exception that 
 
 9 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 the work must be varied with the varying capacity of 
 the pupil. 
 
 Practically this means that although girls are quite as 
 able to pass examinations as their brothers, yet it is most 
 undesirable that they should be forced to do so within 
 any definite limit of time. It is also probable that much 
 better results would be obtained by the removal of all 
 formal examinations except those that are necessary at 
 the entrance of school life in order to place the child, 
 and the leaving examination at the end of school life 
 which is essential in order that the girl's future may be 
 planned. Thus it could be determined that certain girls 
 were suitable for University degrees, while certain other 
 girls were better fitted for other employment, and would, 
 indeed, suffer, rather than profit, by a University career. 
 We must, however, definitely put aside the idea that the 
 so-called " learned professions " stand on a really and 
 intrinsically higher level than do many other honour- 
 able and useful callings. Why should the lawyer, the 
 doctor, and the educationist be necessarily more intel- 
 lectual or better educated than the engineer, the account- 
 ant, and the domestic economist? "Work is as it is 
 done," and the real value of it depends far more on 
 the perfection with which it is accomplished than upon 
 its nature. To look at the matter from a slightly differ- 
 ent point of view, is it a higher aim and a more useful 
 end in life to become a first-rate mathematician, or to 
 hold a doctorate of science, than to be a really adequate 
 and perfectly adapted mother of a family? Great 
 
 mathematicians, great musicians, and learned doctors of 
 
 10 
 
The Training of Women 
 
 science, are no doubt distinguished and valuable in the 
 special line for which they have qualified themselves, 
 but with the exception of some few men and women of 
 absolute genius, does the human race owe as much to 
 them as it does to the men and the women who have 
 successfully endeavoured to fit themselves for the duties 
 of fatberhood and motherhood, of breadwinner and of 
 housewife? Far be it from me to disparage learning 
 or to deny that women are as capable as are men of 
 University distinction ; I believe that they are equally 
 capable; I believe that their brains are as good and 
 clear ; I believe that their application is as assiduous and 
 that their endurance is as strong ; but I think that the 
 time is comins: in which all these valuable distinctions 
 and degrees will be prized, not as ends in themselves, but 
 as the means whereby untold benefit is to be conferred 
 on the race, and that, especially in the case of woman, 
 this intellectual power is held in trust to pass on the 
 great gift to the next generation, to her own children 
 should she be so fortunate as to be a mother, to the chil- 
 dren of others should that crown of womanhood pass 
 her by. 
 
 It seems to me that this is something more like the 
 ideal that we ought to have before us in planning a girl's 
 education, and that we must have a more sensitive re- 
 gard to her peculiar needs, and be prepared to adapt the 
 general idea of the curriculum to the special circum- 
 stances of each student; not, however, that anarchy 
 should rule in our schools. The divine gift of order 
 must be safeguarded, but the wear and tear would be 
 
 11 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 appreciably lessened if the constantly recurring exam- 
 inations were minimised and if more elasticity existed 
 in the curriculum. 
 
 This want of elasticity in our curricula has been a 
 serious hindrance. It is true that of late years a mod- 
 ern side has been added to boys' schools, but the arrange- 
 ment has seldom commanded the cordial approval even 
 of those who, as a matter of duty and convenience, 
 arranged it. In girls' schools it was, until quite re- 
 cently, the custom to expect all girls to learn the same 
 subjects: all had to learn music, drawing, French and 
 German, no matter whether they had any gifts for music 
 on the one hand, or languages on the other. The at- 
 tempt to fit all these young people to an intellectual 
 bed of Procrustes resulted in the loss of much valuable 
 time and in the stunting of the talents which children 
 really possessed by a vain endeavour to cultivate some- 
 thing which did not exist. 
 
 Up to the present time the aim of education in too 
 many cases seems to have been the aim of the drill 
 sergeant — to turn out a batch of recruits in the same 
 mental garb, obedient to the same discipline, but in 
 whom, unfortunately, every scintilla of originality has 
 been effectually quenched. There is reason to hope for 
 the abatement of this trouble, and in some of the best 
 of our girls' schools careful observation is directed to 
 the special gifts and peculiarities of each individual, 
 with adequate attention to the probable future of each. 
 
 Another point needing our serious and earnest atten- 
 tion in the training of the adolescent girls is that we 
 
 12 
 
The Training of Women 
 
 must remember she possesses a triune nature, and there- 
 fore, when we have adequately provided for her food, 
 her sleep, her exercise and her rest, when we have 
 adapted her school and her subsequent curriculum to her 
 mental needs, we have yet left out of our consideration 
 the most important, because the immortal, part of her 
 nature. 
 
 The religious and moral training of our girls is one 
 of the most anxious problems before the nation at the 
 present day. It appears for the moment as if the re- 
 grettable quarrel between the old Established Church 
 and the young sects were likely to end in the secularisa- 
 tion of education. Various congresses of teachers and 
 of trades unionists have placed on record their desire 
 to make religion an extra-scholastic subject. In some 
 cases, no doubt sincerely, it is pleaded that with the 
 great variety of subjects to be learned religion is 
 crowded out, and, again, the specious plea is advanced 
 that the parent is the best teacher of religion. The ex- 
 periment of secularisation has been tried in some of our 
 South Australian colonies, and with absolutely disas- 
 trous results; the amount of crime has so greatly in- 
 creased during the last thirty or forty years, and has 
 been so evidently traced to the want of religious and 
 moral principles, that a referendum recently taken re- 
 sulted in a very large majority of the citizens approving 
 of the restoration of religious teaching to the curriculum 
 in the public elementary schools. It is quite evident 
 that if no time can be found for instruction in religion, 
 whereas there is time for instruction in history, geogra- 
 
 13 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 phy, arithmetic, etc., the inference will be made that 
 religion and morals are of less importance than these 
 other subjects. 
 
 Secondly, the plea that the parent is the best religious 
 teacher that the child can have falls to the ground when 
 we remember that the average parent is too busy, too 
 ignorant, and too careless to fulfil this sacred trust. It 
 is true that many — let us hope that most — women 
 teach their young children some simple form of prayer, 
 but this with the occasional reading of a few verses of 
 the Bible constitutes, in the majority of instances, high- 
 water mark. A little questioning shows that young peo- 
 ple are unable to give any reason for the faith that is 
 in them, and are absolutely uninstructed in the Bible 
 and in the very rudiments of theology. It is not an 
 uncommon thing to find men and women who continue 
 in their adult years the childish prayers that they 
 learned at their mother's knee, with the addition of such 
 occasional petitions as the practical exigencies of life 
 may wring from them. 
 
 Many schoolmasters tell us that boys, even of the 
 upper and middle classes, come to their schools at the 
 age of 13 or 14, and although they recognise Christmas, 
 Easter, and Good Friday as social occasions they do not 
 know why these days are kept sacred. It is, therefore, 
 quite certain that the bulk of the parents of the nation 
 have neither the time nor the qualifications that are 
 necessary for teaching their children religion. Should 
 our hopes of a regeneration of womanhood become real- 
 ities, we may confidently look for a better state of things, 
 
 14 
 
The Training of Women 
 
 and we may find in the future that the duly instructed 
 father and mother will consider it their first privilege, 
 as well as their first duty, to hand on their faith as well 
 as their life to the souls that God has given them. 
 
 The third objection urged by sectarian prejudice to 
 the teaching of religion in schools is surely an unworthy 
 one. This is not the place in which it is fitting that this 
 battle should be fought, but it ought not to pass the 
 wit of man to give effect to the desires of the better 
 instructed members of the nation, that each child should 
 be taught the faith which its parents profess. 
 
 An instance of the result of a divorce between religion 
 and education may be instructively studied in the case of 
 India, where our Government, in its great desire to do 
 justly and not to force its religion upon its alien sub- 
 jects, has for many years given an education excellent 
 in every respect except in the inculcation of moral, 
 ethical, and religious ideas. The result has been an- 
 archy, sedition, and crime. In Eussia, where there are 
 more than 30,000 women students in Universities and 
 Collegiate Schools, the results are equally deplorable; 
 the young women grow up without religion and with- 
 out those powers of self-control of which religion is the 
 necessary sanction, and a condition of society has been 
 induced that is simply appalling to our more sober 
 minds. Such depths of moral horror do not exist in 
 England, but we have not yet for several generations 
 cultivated the intellect and neglected the spiritual and 
 moral faculties as has been done both in India and in 
 
 Russia. 
 
 15 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 Surely woman's work in aiding the regeneration of 
 the race is urgently needed in respect to the education 
 of the young. 
 
 Every girl should he looked upon as a potential wife 
 and mother, even although it is clear that every girl 
 will not hecome a wife and mother; therefore, all should 
 have some training in house-craft. The difficulty is 
 that when girls leave school it is in many cases necessary 
 for them to decide at once upon some mode of life that 
 will enable them to earn their living. The age of mar- 
 riage rises continually, and in many instances it is 
 impossible for a girl to remain at home indefinitely, 
 dependent on her father. It is, therefore, advisable 
 that she should commence as early as possible the special 
 training that will fit her for the career she proposes to 
 adopt. This will sometimes mean preparing for Uni- 
 versity degrees, for some of the higher examinations in 
 training for the Civil Service, or for gardening, art, 
 music, or for some of the many appointments available 
 in the educational world. Such special preparation will 
 consume at the least three years, and in some cases six 
 or seven (e.g. in the preparation for the medical pro- 
 fession). Therefore, the girl will not be ready to earn 
 her living until some time between the ages of 20 and 
 25. It is, however, very greatly to be regretted that 
 any young woman should be unable to secure so much 
 training in Domestic Science as would make her a really 
 efficient mistress of a house. This training is useful 
 for all alike, and is absolutely necessary for those women 
 who mean to be really proficient in the management of 
 
 a household and a family. 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 woman's influence on the race 
 
 As a Wife. — It is a strange fact that even among 
 peoples where the woman's position appears to be en- 
 tirely that of a subordinate and inferior, her influence 
 on her husband is enormous. It is the restraining influ- 
 ence of the Hindu wife that compels her husband, en- 
 lightened probably by Western education and even by 
 residence in England, to keep the laws of caste, and to 
 submit to the onerous and sometimes irksome duties 
 imposed on him by the Hindu religion. The influence 
 of the woman of the zenana and the harem, who has no 
 political identity, who lives unseen and unknown beyond 
 the narrow circle of her home, is yet sufficiently potent 
 to keep a great and intelligent race bound by the tram- 
 mels of caste, and it is her influence that makes the 
 acceptance of Christianity slow and difficult. 
 
 To a still greater degree the influence of the wife is 
 enormous where she is comparatively emancipated, as in 
 the case of the nations of Western Europe. The spirit 
 of the times has greatly changed during the last 200 
 years, and whereas in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries European women were regarded by their hus- 
 bands as their toys, their consolers, as delightful beings 
 with tender hearts, soft arms, and weak intellects, we 
 
 17 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 now find thai the women are often held to be the men's 
 wisest counsellors, their equals in all but name and in 
 political power. It is true that in some instances the 
 twentieth-century wife holds much the same position of 
 inferiority as did her sister 200 years ago, but in the 
 great majority of these cases the fault lies with the 
 woman herself. Xot only the woman who does not fit 
 herself for her position, in intellectual or in business 
 capacities, but also she who neglects her moral and 
 spiritual training, will find that she is deprived of in- 
 fluence and has a difficulty in maintaining her proper 
 position just in proportion to her deficiency. Even now 
 there arc, unfortunately, half-trained and silly women 
 who look at everything simply from the personal stand- 
 point, and are incapable of breadth of view and of 
 earnest work; such women may, indeed, be the butterfly 
 companions of man's sunshiny hours, but they have 
 failed to cultivate those qualities that would make them, 
 what they were intended to be, helpmeets for man. 
 
 In spite of all the serious training of the present day, 
 in spite of woman's ambition to excel in the educational 
 world, in medicine, in literature and in art, there is 
 unfortunately a residue whose ambitions would seem to 
 be limited to the appearance they will make, to the posi- 
 tion they can take in society, and to the reputation they 
 may achieve as conversationalists. These women are 
 (loins; more harm io the race than do those who are more 
 ignorant so far as actual knowledge goes, but who have 
 been trained in the hard school of poverty, absolute or 
 relative, to realise the gravity of the issues at stake. 
 
 18 ' 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 the importance of feminine duties, and the fact that the 
 nation will never rise higher than the women who bear 
 and the women who educate its children. 
 
 The duties, characteristics, and perfections of the 
 model wife can hardly be more worthily and beautifully 
 expressed than in the quaint old chapter in. the Book 
 of Proverbs, where we find described the virtuous woman 
 whose price is far above rubies, and in whom the heart 
 of her husband doth so safely trust that he has no need 
 of spoil. We find that this woman worketh willingly 
 with her hands, that she rises early while is it yet night 
 to provide meat for her household. She is industrious, 
 spinning and weaving, making fine linen, and has the 
 clear head and business capacity to sell it to advantage. 
 She does not forget the poor, for she stretcheth out her 
 hands to the poor, yea, she reacheth forth her hands 
 to the needy. This woman, we learn, is competent to 
 manage her servants, for she looketh well to the ways of 
 her household, and considers their sanitary require- 
 ments, defending them from the cold and snow, and 
 seeing that they are clothed with warm garments. No 
 wonder it is said that strength and honour are her cloth- 
 ing, and that she shall rejoice in time to come. Yes, 
 such a woman would not only be happy, prosperous, and 
 respected while alive, but we learn that after death her 
 children rise up and call her blessed, and her husband 
 praiseth her. The final touch is given when we are 
 told that " favour is deceitful and beauty is vain, but 
 a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." 
 
 Here, indeed, is a model that the most gifted, the 
 
 19 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 most successful, and the most well-trained woman must 
 long to copy; here, too, is indicated the sole condition 
 upon which such ambition can be realised. Surely the 
 time has gone by for our European women to content 
 themselves with the " rose's brief bright life of joy," 
 with empty conversation and with the perils and unsat- 
 isfying pleasures of a society life. The canker of this 
 superficiality eats deep into all ranks of society, it is 
 not confined to those who are sometimes called the 
 "leisured classes," for all the way through, in profes- 
 sional circles, among the industrials, right to the very 
 lowest, this curse of an aimless, gossipy, and superficial 
 life descends. As a rule the blame and the responsibil- 
 ity for this utter failure of women to realise their 
 august destiny and to fulfil their glorious duties must 
 rest on parents, governesses, and other educationists. 
 There is in the present day a sad want of the apprecia- 
 tion of duty and of the necessity for self-discipline. If 
 we contrast the nursery of the present day with that 
 of fifty years ago we shall find slackness and the want 
 of rule. The consequence of this is that girls grow up 
 knowing no law but that of pleasure ; the plant of their 
 life may receive the sun and rain, but it knows nothing 
 of the pruning knife, and hence the vigour that ought 
 to lead to flower and to fruit runs to waste; there is a 
 superabundance of foliage, but there is lamentably little 
 fruit. 
 
 In the preparation for wifehood there is much to be 
 remembered. The man wants in his wife someone who 
 
 will be his devoted and intelligent assistant in his work 
 
 20 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 so far as is possible ; someone who will guide his house- 
 hold aright and will stand between him and the number- 
 less troubles and worries incident to the daily life of each 
 of us. He wants someone rich in sympathy, in patience, 
 and in tact ; he does not want a slave or a toy. One of 
 the great charms of the well-trained wife is her strong 
 individuality, her power of standing alone, and the 
 originality of thought and resource which make her his 
 true " helpmeet/' his alter ego, or may we not say his 
 other and his better self? It is in the wife that the 
 husband should find the expression of his highest ideal 
 of purity, of justice, and of love. It is to her that he 
 should be able to turn for that idealising help which he 
 so sadly needs in his daily struggle with a difficult and, 
 in many instances, a Christless world. A woman's 
 work is no easier than that of her husband ; on the con- 
 trary, it is in some respects more difficult — it is a 
 work that has no beginning and no ending, it continues 
 clay in and dav out, year after year — but in the ease 
 of the woman who has formed herself upon the model 
 of King Lemuel's ideal there is an undercurrent of 
 peace and calm which is of the highest value for the 
 strengthening and sweetening not only of her own work, 
 but also that of her husband. 
 
 As a Mother. — If it is difficult to sketch the ideal 
 wife, how much more is it difficult to attempt the 
 portraiture of the ideal mother! The mother's duty 
 towards the child is many-sided. The first and most, 
 obvious duty of the mother to the infant is to feed it, 
 to clothe it, to warm it. to nurse the tiny spark of life, 
 
 21 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 to shelter the feeble flame, to enable it to survive the 
 rough blasts of untoward circumstances until it may 
 become a powerful and brilliant torch to shed light on 
 the upward path to duty and to honour. 
 
 In a regenerated state of society it will be recognised 
 that one of the indefeasible rights of the infant is to 
 have the nourishment provided for it by Nature. The 
 refusal of many women to suckle their infants is 
 greatly to be regretted both from the irreparable injury 
 done to the child and from the loss which accrues to the 
 neglectful mother, as loss must always accrue from neg- 
 lected duties. Bringing up the child on any other form 
 of nourishment is difficult and dangerous enough even 
 in the case of those mothers who can command the very 
 best forms of artificial feeding; but in the case of the 
 poor, who are dependent on a defective milk supply and 
 who have neither the knowledge nor the time necessary 
 for the care and preparation of artificial food, the diffi- 
 culty becomes so great that the child's chances of life are 
 most seriously handicapped. In Stockport, in 1904, 95 
 per cent, of the infants who died of diarrhoea were 
 bottle-fed. 
 
 In this connection we must remember that for every 
 infant who dies before the completion of the first year 
 there are many others who become rickety and stunted, 
 who acquire such diseases as tuberculosis and chronic 
 dyspepsia, who, in fact, are so injured that they can 
 never enjoy life, nor be anything but a burden to them- 
 selves, to their families, and to the nation. 
 
 One of the chief causes of infantile mortality is 
 
 22 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 summer diarrhoea, and during the unusually hot sum- 
 mer of 1911 the infantile mortality for the County of 
 London rose to the appalling level of close on 320 per 
 mille. This mortality was not the direct effect of the 
 heat — children live and thrive at far higher tempera- 
 tures, as in India, where the thermometer not uncom- 
 monly marks 110° to 120° F. in the house — but it was 
 directly due to the breeding in milk of those organisms 
 which cause diarrhoea and other diseases of the alimen- 
 tary tract. 
 
 The fact that many women do not suckle their babies 
 is due to several causes. Some women have no milk, 
 either from absolute delicacv of constitution, semi- 
 starvation, or owing to their own fathers' alcoholic 
 habits. Others again are prevented from nursing by 
 the necessity of going from the house to work — the 
 fault in this case does not lie on the individual woman, 
 but it lies on the nation that persists in permitting the 
 unfortunate economic conditions under which she lives. 
 There are still large numbers to be accounted for who 
 do not nurse their children because they are too busy 
 with social engagements; they are so overpowered by 
 them as to have neither time, energy nor strength for 
 the discharge of one of the most obvious duties of 
 womanhood. It is also to be remembered that doctors 
 and nurses are not free from blame in this matter; that 
 frequently their counsel has been to feed the children 
 artificially; indeed, for many years it was quite the 
 fashion to give this advice. It is to be hoped that a 
 better era has dawned, and that Avith a young Queen on 
 
 23 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 the throne who has always paid the most exemplary at- 
 tention to her nursery, mothers in all ranks of society 
 may recognise the pleasure and honour, as well as the 
 duty, of themselves feeding the future citizens of the 
 State. 
 
 The mother's duty towards her child is by no means 
 exhausted in the bestowal on it of those maternal cares 
 which she shares with the mothers of other ranks of 
 being. The bird feeds her young, she plucks the 
 feathers from her own breast to line the nest, but she 
 also carefully educates her fledglings in those arts which 
 shall make their lives secure and happy. So, too, the 
 human mother must from the early days of infancy im- 
 part to her little ones the knowledge that is necessary 
 to their welfare in life. It is impossible to say how 
 much the children's future standard of cleanliness, order, 
 and cheerfulness is formed during early nursery days 
 by the influence of the care, exactitude, and good temper 
 with which the mother surrounds them in her daily 
 ministrations. Quite small children have been known 
 actively to disapprove of any infringement of the daily 
 routine of bath, toilet, and clean clothes. There is no 
 doubt that this routine and the almost unconscious in- 
 fluence exerted by the wise mother in her nursery has a 
 great share in laying the foundation of an orderly and 
 well-disciplined character. It is impossible to exagger- 
 ate the importance to the race of mothers themselves 
 performing the really important, although apparently 
 trivial, duties of the nursery, nor can one overstate the 
 loss to all concerned when the mother refuses or neglects 
 
 24 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 to discharge these primary duties. It is true that all 
 women are not able to do this — that some, as stated 
 above, are hindered by the deplorable necessity of being 
 breadwinner as well as mother. This necessity is a 
 great blot on our economic arrangements. But there 
 are many who fail in their maternal duties not from 
 real necessity, but from fancied social duties, or from 
 having taken to themselves burdens that they have no 
 right to bear. It is greatly to be regretted when young 
 mothers neglect their own little children in order to 
 take up social, philanthropic, or other outside pursuits. 
 There is a great deal of work other than domestic which 
 needs doing, which no one can do so well as a woman; 
 but there are, unfortunately, only too many childless 
 wives and unmarried women to whom such work should 
 naturally and rightly fall, and who would find in it some 
 compensation for the family joys which have been 
 denied to them. 
 
 No woman can bring to the task of nursery educa- 
 tion too much devotion, skill, and enthusiasm. There 
 is so much to be done for the children and so little time 
 in which to do it, for nowadays the little ones, even of the 
 leisured classes, are sent to school at a very tender age, 
 and all their future is likely to be sadly marred if they 
 have been deprived of the nurture and education to 
 which they have a right during their earliest years. 
 
 The duty of a mother towards her children becomes 
 
 in some ways more difficult and more onerous as time 
 
 goes on, for all through childhood, youth, and even in 
 
 maturer years it is the mother's influence that is para- 
 
 25 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 mount with her boys and girls, and it is she who ought 
 to be at once their standard of human perfection and 
 the loving counsellor who is best able to teach them 
 how to follow in her footsteps. The wise mother must 
 not only provide for the material welfare of her chil- 
 dren, but she must be able to sympathise with their 
 rapidly developing intellectual pursuits, and to aid 
 them in their moral and spiritual difficulties. To do 
 this satisfactorily the woman ought to continue her own 
 education ; she should read carefully selected books, not 
 only of general literature, but those dealing with the 
 subjects that most interest the young people; and fi- 
 nally, if she would have an answer ready to give them 
 for the faith and hope that are in her, she ought to be 
 a careful though humble student of theology. Many a 
 young soul might be spared agonies of doubt, with 
 much subsequent remorse and loss, if the mother were 
 able to give a reasonable answer to their questionings, 
 " How can these things be ? " 
 
 And, lastly, it is surely the mother's duty and privi- 
 lege to teach her children in good time enough of the 
 mystery of life to guide their feet aright. She ought 
 to be able in reverent and careful language to explain 
 to them, as they are able to bear it, the great mystery 
 of the transmission of life. It is not until this subject 
 has been rescued from its present degraded position, and 
 has been recognised as the very acme of human wisdom, 
 that we shall have the " sweeter manners, purer laws," 
 so ardently desired by all great and good men. We 
 have to learn that ignorance is not innocence, and that 
 
 26 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 until the children realise that their bodies are the tem- 
 ples of the Holy Ghost, deserving of all reverent and 
 careful treatment, and to be kept with the utmost jeal- 
 ousy from every contact with evil, we shall not attain 
 to the level of purity and moral dignity that would be 
 the salvation of the race. Delicately minded men and 
 women have shrunk, perhaps naturally, but certainly 
 disastrously, from this duty, and the end of it has been 
 that sexual matters have been considered to be neces- 
 sarily unfit to enter into the education of the young. 
 We must learn to recognise that "unto the pure all 
 things are pure," and that the more these God-ordained 
 and God-given functions are raised to their proper dig- 
 nity the more will the whole nation advance in moral 
 worth and grandeur. Love and marriage have unfor- 
 tunately been frequently looked on merely as subjects 
 of that foolish jesting which is not convenient, or they 
 have been so wrapped around, not by a veil of dignity 
 but by a shroud of nastiness, that infinite harm has 
 accrued to the moral sense of the nation. We must 
 now make an effort to restore to sexual facts the solemn 
 dignity to which they are entitled. 
 
 Speculations about these subjects would appear to be 
 more in the air now than at any previous time of the 
 world's history ; but, alas ! even earnest, and it is to be 
 presumed well-intentioned, writers on these subjects too 
 often fail entirely to present the matter in its natural 
 and proper light because they regard it from the ma- 
 terialistic point of view. Even those who desire the 
 advance of the race, and some of those who are most 
 
 27 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 earnest in the propagation of eugenic ideas, appear to 
 forget, or to overlook, the basal fact that man, in addi- 
 tion to his physical, has a moral and a spiritual being. 
 It has been for so long thought unbecoming and un- 
 womanly even to think of these subjects that it is the 
 more necessary to convince the mothers of the present 
 day that it is their bounden duty to teach their boys 
 and girls the right view — "This do, and thou shalt 
 live/' a commandment of more avail than all the " Thou 
 shalt nots " of the Decalogue. 
 
 It is the mother who ought to be able to impress on 
 the children and young people of the family the right 
 idea of the nobility of home and the dignity of family 
 life; she herself should recognise, and should teach 
 them, that the home is necessary as the unit of civilised 
 society; she should impress on them its dignity, and 
 point them to the fact that the father and mother are 
 the earthly representatives of the Great Creator, they 
 are the vicegerents of Him who created all the world 
 out of nothing, and who rules it by the word of His 
 power. To the father and mother He has confided the 
 sacred task of handing on the torch of life, and He has 
 left in their hands the formation of the family, the 
 prototype of the kingdom of God. In the family the 
 children will find all the advantages of fostering care 
 and of the application of experience : they will also find 
 in family life opportunities for the practice of the noble 
 virtues of obedience, dutifulness, and self-denial. In 
 the family the children find the training school in 
 which they can best acquire the knowledge and the 
 
 28 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 characteristics which will enable them to play their part 
 well in this world, and fit them for the life everlasting. 
 Upon the women of the race devolves this sacred duty; 
 it is they who must purvey to the young all things 
 that are needful not only for their bodies but for their 
 souls and their spirits. It is the mother who should 
 teach them where to look for sources of recreation and 
 of interest; she should provide them with such occupa- 
 tions and recreations as will tend to develop their grow- 
 ing powers, will attach them to their homes, and will 
 save them from the perilous and meretricious pleasures 
 of the outer world, which too frequently sap the virtue 
 and sully the purity of our children. 
 
 For this lofty duty all our women should be trained ; 
 because, although, alas ! some women are never to be 
 mothers, yet all women may be the spiritual mothers 
 of the children of the nation. It must be exceedingly 
 rare for any woman to go through life without being 
 called on to assist in the training of the young, and 
 whether as mother, as governess, as schoolmistress, or as 
 nurse, many take an official share, and all have the 
 unofficial duty of ministering to the children. . There- 
 fore, all women should be carefully trained to, at any 
 rate, an understanding of domestic science and house- 
 hold economics, while those who may be described as 
 holding an official position must bring to this study as 
 much intelligence and concentrated attention as they 
 cheerfully devote to the study of medicine, of art, of 
 science, and of literature. No duty is more urgent, no 
 
 duty is more dignified than that of training the young ; 
 
 29 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 and in order that the mother should not merely be the 
 bearer, the stickler, and the nurse of her children, that 
 she should not sink, worn out with the drudgery and 
 fatigue of household duties, it is her duty to inform 
 herself of all labour-saving appliances and of the best 
 and most scientific methods of management of house- 
 hold concerns. Thus she will save herself from prema- 
 ture senility and death. No woman worn out and ex- 
 hausted by ill-arranged and badly organised labour can 
 be to her husband and her children all that she ought 
 to be. Many women who suffer from " nerves," from 
 "brain fag," from being too "highly strung," would 
 have escaped these curses had they been trained to do 
 their household work in the way that involves least 
 friction and least fatigue. 
 
 Here is an almost untrodden field of research which 
 calls aloud for the best work and the highest intelli- 
 gence of which women are capable, a work that will be 
 amply rewarded in the happiness of their homes, and 
 the welfare of their husbands and children. 
 
 Nor does the woman's responsibility end here. Upon 
 her, in the majority of instances, depends the choice 
 of the books to be found on the shelves of the home, 
 the choice of the newspapers and magazines that shall 
 lie upon the tables. She has it in her power to sur- 
 round her children with the treasures of classical liter- 
 ature and with the best books of the day, but unless 
 she herself has cultivated her intellect and her critical 
 faculty how can she hope to make a wise and a good 
 selection ? 
 
 30 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 In fact, the mother is to be the earthly providence, 
 taking her share in procreation, she alone bearing the 
 burden of lactation, and wisely administering the funds 
 provided by the industry of the father. She is also to 
 superintend education, to cultivate taste in art, in lit- 
 erature, in dress, and in all the amenities of life; and 
 finally it is the mother who must have the courage for 
 the distasteful but necessary work of conveying to her 
 children at the psychological moment the knowledge 
 that is to keep them pure and undefiled members of 
 the body of Christ. 
 
 As a Friend. — " Iron sharpeneth iron ; so a man 
 sharpeneth the countenance of his friend ; " and there 
 are few of us who have reached middle life who have 
 not owed an incalculable debt of gratitude to various 
 friends ; the friends whose candid criticisms have shown 
 us our faults, the friends whose kindly encouragement 
 has helped our weakness, and the friends whose moral 
 and spiritual superiority to ourselves has kindled our 
 ambition to resemble them. The " perfect woman, 
 nobly planned," should be just such an ideal friend 
 to the men and women of her acquaintance. She 
 should go through life comforting the sorrowful, help- 
 ing the weak, inspiring courage, faith and hope. There 
 is no reason why a woman should be a friend to her 
 sisters only; she ought also to be able to give a help- 
 ing hand to any " forlorn and shipwrecked brother " 
 whose barque of life she may meet on the troubled 
 waters. But in order for such friendship to be possible 
 and useful, women need a very special training and 
 
 31 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 ' T i ii i i i — iii imi .■■i m w'li .^— J— ii .. ■ ii — ■ .— ■— — ■ . i — ^» i. i ^ pi - II II II L ■ ■!■ 
 
 preparation, not only intellectual, but moral. Women 
 must be ready to take the troubles, anxieties, and even 
 the daily worries of their own lives in such a way as to 
 turn the bitter medicine of disappointment and anxiety 
 into the very elixir of life. We ought to realise that 
 no life is necessarily stagnant or wasted, that every 
 woman has an essential part to play, that she has her 
 number and her place in the great army, and that it is 
 her own fault, in the majority of instances, if she fails 
 to have a well-defined mission and a nobly realisable 
 ambition. The world is full of opportunities for serv- 
 ice, and many are the pathetic eyes that look for help, 
 many the helpless hands stretched out to those who 
 know how to answer their pleading. 
 
 As an Employer. — It is no new thing for women to 
 hold the position of employer, for in many lands and 
 in many generations we find women acting as great land- 
 owners, as capable managers of farms, as heads of shops 
 and other industries, while in the scholastic world ladies 
 who own and manage large schools and other such in- 
 stitutions have long been amongst the employers of 
 labour. It is also well known that when a woman takes 
 up this position she generally does her work as satis- 
 factorily as does a man. The danger would rather seem 
 to be that women employers have tended to be somewhat 
 hard and exacting in the demands that they make upon 
 their workers. They are very frequently themselves 
 women of considerable strength, both of body and mind, 
 and recognising that they, like most of their employees, 
 
 are women, they are apt to judge them by their own 
 
 32 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 standard, and to think that all around them are their 
 equals in strength and endurance. A decent man em- 
 ploying women would be more likely to have mercy and 
 consideration for what he half contemptuously calls 
 " the weaker sex," but the femme maitresse does not 
 acknowledge this appeal to her mercy — if she can 
 work and suffer no hurt, so, she thinks, can other 
 women. 
 
 There is no doubt that most women bring to the work 
 of life a conscientiousness, faithfulness, and attention 
 to detail that men may rival but cannot excel. One has 
 heard the doubt expressed whether women can also 
 bring absolute accuracy of detail to their important 
 work ; it has been suggested that here, at least, the gen- 
 erations of trained men have been able to impart a her- 
 itage of accuracy and honesty in detail to their sons but 
 not to their daughters. Surely here the theory of 
 heredity is going wrong: the daughters clearly inherit 
 family traits — for instance, stature, complexion, and 
 even little peculiarities and tricks of speech and gesture ; 
 it is well known that the girls of a family frequently 
 take after the father, while the boys more nearly re- 
 semble the mother and her family; therefore, it seems 
 improbable that an accurate, painstaking man should 
 not bequeath these qualities, together with others, to 
 sons and daughters indifferently. The old question of 
 relative superiority and relative inferiority between the 
 sexes must be put aside, and we must recognise that 
 some men are wiser and more intellectual than some 
 women, but, on the other hand, that there are not want- 
 
 33 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 i nn ■ -. — ■■« w mii i .i i ii i ii m i ■■ j . H— ii ii -111 ..ii 1. 1 ■■■ii- — — ^^— — — ■ i umim 
 
 ing women who are the intellectual and moral superiors 
 of some of their brethren. 
 
 The woman employer of labour ought to be a diligent 
 student of social economics; she ought to know some- 
 thing about the laws of supply and demand, and of the 
 laws that regulate the relation between employer and 
 worker ; but she ought also to be imbued with the spirit 
 of the higher law, and carry in her heart the intention 
 of doing unto others as she would like them to do unto 
 her. The pretty parable in the " Water Babies " of 
 Mrs. Be-Done-by-as-you-did and Mrs. Be-Done-by-as- 
 you-would might well be studied by the woman employer 
 of labour. If the spirit of that parable, and still more 
 the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, fully enters into 
 her life there can be no place for grinding exactions, nor 
 for the neglect to provide the conditions that are neces- 
 sary for the best development of the talents and work 
 of other women. 
 
 After all, the chief sphere in which woman is an em- 
 ployer of labour is the domestic sphere, and which of 
 us women can say that we have a conscience void of 
 offence in this matter ? Do we not exact too long hours 
 of work ? Are we not careless as to the ventilation, the 
 admission of air and light to servants' apartments, and 
 do we not too often crowd several of them into one bed- 
 room so that the truly feminine virtues of modesty and 
 propriety can scarcely flourish? In some households 
 the case of the domestic servant is even worse than this, 
 for she is sent out to fetch the beer, and is allowed to 
 
 be out late at night, some mistresses openly saying that 
 
 34 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 they care nothing for what their servants do, nor how 
 they spend their leisure, provided that their work is well 
 done. A more Christian and juster view of the matter 
 would be taken if each mistress remembered that she 
 stands to a certain extent in the position of mother to 
 those whom she employs ; that she is bound to give them 
 not only board, lodging, and wages, but that equally she 
 is bound to give them moral support, to see that they 
 have time for reasonable recreation, for religious and 
 for family duties. The horror expressed by some mis- 
 tresses when a servant girl misbehaves herself is very 
 genuine, but it is neither just nor reasonable, for in the 
 great majority of cases the girl's virtue has been too 
 severely tried, she having on the one hand no home, no 
 counsellor, and possibly no religion, and on the other the 
 strong temptations natural to her age and condition of 
 life. 
 
 As Workers. — Like women employers, the women 
 workers have their strong points. They, too, are gen- 
 erally conscientious and painstaking, but much of their 
 efficiency depends on whether they are trained or un- 
 trained. 
 
 Training not only connotes the acquirement of special 
 knowledge and the development of special aptitudes, but 
 it also generally implies the possession of those moral 
 characteristics which are essential to efficiency and to 
 success. The process of training strengthens the good 
 and represses the bad elements of character ; it develops 
 patience, accuracy, and habits of obedience and dutiful - 
 ness. The work of many trained women workers may 
 
 35 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 be compared with that of men, with no fear of dispar- 
 agement. The case of the untrained worker, whether 
 as domestic servant or as one of the army of casual 
 workers, is widely different. The untrained woman 
 worker knows nothing well, and does nothing well ; her 
 work is never reliable, and, if well done to-day, will 
 surely be defective to-morrow. These untrained women 
 are the despair of their employers. They are by no 
 means deliberately bad or untrue, but, having never 
 learnt their work and never having passed through the 
 mill of discipline, the}' are unreliable and unsatisfac- 
 tory. Until the last forty or fifty years the majority 
 of women workers were untrained. They were brought 
 up to do nothing and without any definite prospects of 
 life. Most of them expected to live at home until they 
 married, and the death of the father, or brother, on 
 whom they were dependent, was the occasion for them 
 to turn out into the world, quite unfit for its battle and 
 unable to earn a sufficient livelihood. If the would-be 
 worker was gently born the one available career was 
 that of governess, a position for which she was fitted 
 by her good breeding and manners, but for which her 
 scrappy and ill-directed education gave her no other 
 qualification. Things have greatly improved, and at 
 the present time a large proportion of the daughters of 
 professional and service men can and do receive some 
 training. 
 
 There is still room for improvement, and a need that 
 women who have no gifts or vocation for professions, for 
 
 clerkships, or gardening, should be properly trained for 
 
 36 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 such employments as housekeepers, matrons of schools 
 and institutions, and as confidential servants. 
 
 It is time that we should recognise that all women 
 ought to be trained — partly that they should cease to 
 be parasites, and partly for the joy and happiness that 
 flow from a sense of the power to earn one's living. In 
 many instances the special training would never be 
 needed owing to early marriage, but in no case would 
 the discipline and the development of character be 
 thrown away. Xot only will a trained woman always 
 possess the means of independence, but she will also 
 carry into any position in life the moral and intellec- 
 tual advantages gained by training. 
 
 Some parents object to their daughters receiving a 
 special training, thinking it unnecessary, as they intend 
 to provide for their future, but such parents do not 
 realise the uncertainty of riches, nor do they consider 
 the enormous gain to their daughters' characters offered 
 by the discipline involved in training. 
 
 Another argument sometimes advanced is that girls 
 whose fathers can provide for them ought not to work 
 and deprive less fortunate women of the pay they really 
 need. The answer is that there are plenty of trainings 
 which need not necessarily lead to paid work, but which 
 would fit the girls for missionary work at home or 
 abroad, for scientific research, and for numberless social 
 enterprises which are languishing because there is no 
 money to attract paid workers. 
 
 As Philnrilliropists. — Here is a wide and fruitful 
 field for woman's energies, and an abundant harvest 
 
 37 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 awaits her toil. The day may come, nay, the day will 
 come, when all the race shall consciously obey the Divine 
 Will, all shall carry out the intentions of Providence, 
 and in so doing shall be blessed with health, and witli 
 all that is necessary for abundant and for happy life. 
 That day is still far away, and the demand for philan- 
 thropic work is great and urgent. There are the sick to 
 be doctored and nursed, the young to be nurtured and 
 educated, the ignorant and debashed to be instructed 
 and raised : 
 
 " See the ripening harvest languish, 
 Waiting still the labourer's toil." 
 
 The prisoner waits to be reformed and comforted, the 
 lost and the fallen to be purified and reclaimed, while 
 in addition to all that needs doing at home there is the 
 limitless field of foreign missions crying aloud for the 
 doctor, the educationalist, and the evangelist. The 
 need of the world is so great, its miseries are so pathetic, 
 and the number of those who are able and willing to 
 minister to its needs is so small, that there is a real 
 danger of the overpressed workers giving way to de- 
 spair and to a sense that their efforts are so feeble and 
 make so small an impression on the mass of misery that 
 they might as well give them up. 
 
 Women are peculiarly well fitted for these endeavours 
 — endued with clear brains, skilful hands, and loving 
 hearts, they only need training to fit them for successful 
 endeavours to help the human race to better and to hap- 
 pier conditions of life. The work that needs doing is 
 
 38 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 infinitely varied, and suitable employment awaits each 
 honest and earnest worker. 
 
 It is impossible in the narrow limits of the present 
 pamphlet to enumerate all the ways in which women 
 can and do devote themselves to the paid or unpaid 
 service of their less fortunate fellow-creatures. Among 
 the most obvious are the labours of the parochial worker, 
 labours that are all the more to be respected because they 
 come so little into the sunshine, and confer so little 
 extra dignity and consideration on the devoted women 
 who give the best part of their lives to these duties. 
 The work is not only frequently unthanked, but it is 
 done against the wish and in spite of the opposition 
 of the very people whom it is sought to benefit. All the 
 same, it is of the greatest importance, and there are few 
 large parishes with a small staff of greatly overworked 
 clergy that could be kept together were it not for the 
 women who give up the best part of their lives to this 
 service. In close connection with this must be reckoned 
 the work that is done by women in Sunday Schools, on 
 School Committees, on Children's Care Committees, and 
 as unpaid workers in such enterprises as the Children's 
 Country Holiday Fund, Infant Consultations, and 
 Schools for Mothers. Some of these undertakings date 
 from far back, while others are quite of the present day, 
 and there are few more calculated to help in the regen- 
 eration of society than those last named, viz., the Infant 
 Consultations and the Schools for Mothers. Here all 
 the training and education that a woman possesses may 
 be turned to good account ; all that fits her to be a 
 
 39 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 mother herself, and that has made her expert in the 
 management of her own household and her own chil- 
 dren, will he of the greatest service to her when she en- 
 deavours to help the expectant mothers and the mothers 
 with their infants who attend these schools. The 
 enormous reduction of infantile mortality within the 
 last six or seven years is due in great part to these and 
 other kindred institutions; in them we often find doc- 
 tors (men and women), nurses, and ladies of leisure 
 as assistants. 
 
 Another branch of philanthropic work which needs a 
 very special training as well as an unusual order of 
 mind, together with much spiritual insight, is the Res- 
 cue and Preventive work which ought to exist in every 
 diocese and throughout every area of our large towns. It 
 is by no means easy to find women who are fitted by 
 age, by temperament, and by experience to be really 
 good and acceptable workers in this field. It needs a 
 very peculiar combination of the deepest love and ready 
 sympathy, with not only a clear head but also great 
 moral strength, for in man} r instances the poor girls 
 whose redemption is the object of these societies are so 
 morally and spiritually stunted and deformed that they 
 respond with extreme slowness, and indeed are often 
 wilful and tiresome beyond the powers of endurance of 
 ordinary people. Really good rescue and preventive 
 workers need to be a Compound of angel and of states- 
 man, sufficiently rare. In addition to this they need an 
 unusually vigorous physique and great powers of bodily 
 endurance. 
 
 40 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 The workhouse affords another field for the efforts of 
 women towards the regeneration of the race. Here 
 they come in contact with evil in one of its most pro- 
 nounced forms. A large proportion of the younger 
 women in workhouses are those who have fallen into 
 sin and misery. These unfortunate young women have 
 found their only possible refuge in the workhouse in- 
 firmary, and the short time that they pass there is just 
 the one brief interval in which it may be possible to 
 influence them for their good. Too frequently this 
 short available time was allowed to pass by unimproved, 
 but latterly in many workhouses there has been an hon- 
 est endeavour to make some provision for the unfortu- 
 nate young ^mothers and their infants. It has been 
 proved that the reclamation of the girl-mothers depends 
 in a great measure on the kindling within them of the 
 unselfish motive for reform afforded by motherly love. 
 The worst treatment, and that most likely to end in the 
 return of the girls to their life of sin, has been the 
 quenching in them of this natural but saving grace. 
 The loving desire to benefit these girls, which is felt by 
 many more happily circumstanced women, could find 
 no more blessed goal than that of providing them with 
 a home and maintenance for some months so as to per- 
 mit of their fulfilling the sacred duty of suckling their 
 infants. Thus infant lives may be saved and the 
 mothers reclaimed. 
 
 Another branch of workhouse management which falls 
 very naturally to the province of women workers is that 
 of the care of the children. Opinions differ greatly as 
 
 41 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 to the best method of dealing with them, but there can- 
 not be two opinions as to the great desirability of the 
 enlistment of women in this work, which so pre-emi- 
 nently needs their fostering care. 
 
 Women are to be found amongst the visitors of pris- 
 ons, and they are greatly interested in the comparatively 
 new movement for penal reform. The care of the crim- 
 inal and the endeavour to make the period of imprison- 
 ment the opportunity for reform is very specially 
 women's work. The old idea of a term of imprisonment 
 was that it was a just punishment meted out to the 
 offender by an injured and outraged society. Slowly 
 but surely the idea is gaining ground that the term of 
 imprisonment ought to be far more than this; that al- 
 though there must be punishment, that element is se- 
 cured by the loss of liberty, and every endeavour should 
 be made to assist the prisoners to understand the nature 
 of the offence committed, to excite an honest sorrow 
 for having committed the offence, to lead to the de- 
 sire for a better life, and finally to help them to be ready 
 for this better life. Unless prisoners on discharge are 
 placed in such a position that honesty and right dealing 
 are possible, and unless the lessons learned in the prison 
 have borne good fruit in improved moral and spiritual 
 health, the time spent within its walls has been little 
 better than wasted. Here the influence of good and 
 wise women is of great value, and this is one of the 
 many ways in which they can hope to take their fair 
 share in the regeneration of society. 
 
 The formation of Women's Settlements is quite a 
 
 42 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 modern idea; they are, perhaps, more akin to the con- 
 ventual life than to anything else, for, although the 
 workers take no vows, they live in co mm unity, and for 
 the time being, at least, give themselves up entirely to 
 the task of improving the physical, social, moral and 
 spiritual life of those around them. Settlement life is 
 indeed twice blessed. It blesses those devoted women 
 who give up their home life and social pleasures for 
 arduous toil, and whose payment too frequently consists 
 in disappointment ; and also the existence of the Settle- 
 ment in any neighbourhood is a very distinct advantage 
 and help to all around. The work done by the Settle- 
 ment workers is multifarious : they have a share in the 
 philanthropic enterprises of the neighbourhood, and the 
 fact of their own womanhood often procures them an 
 entrance into houses which are inaccessible even to the 
 clergy. To be a good Settlement officer needs as dis- 
 tinguished endowments as to be a rescue and preventive 
 worker. Unselfishness, loving-kindness, and an ardent 
 zeal to help other people would not in any way suffice 
 to make a successful Settlement worker ; there must be 
 the other side to the character — the clear head, the 
 savoir faire, and the moral strength must be there. If 
 these be wanting, the officer will be constantly exploited, 
 and her very kindness will tend to injure the people 
 among whom she works. 
 
 Nursing and doctoring must also be mentioned among 
 the works gladly undertaken by those who are qualified 
 for them. Some of the best and ablest of women doc- 
 tors are to be found working amongst the poor ; not only 
 
 43 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 those women who work as officers of hospitals — who, 
 indeed, may find some earthly recompense for their 
 labours in the experience that they gain and the respect 
 that they command — but there are many others, work- 
 ing, unknown and unappreciated, in the slums and al- 
 leys of great towns, sometimes entirely without remu- 
 neration, and sometimes earning with difficulty the 
 utterly inadequate payment which is all their patients 
 can afford. 
 
 All honour to these brave workers, whether they be 
 nurses or doctors, and whether they be working in the 
 countryside or in the poor districts of large towns. 
 They have ready to their hand untold opportunities of 
 raising and bettering the race. It is to them more than 
 to anyone else that the poorer and more ignorant women 
 will listen ; the women doctors have it in their power to 
 teach them, and they do teach them, the evils of drink, 
 the blessings of cleanliness, of fresh air, and of pure wa- 
 ter. It is from these women doctors and nurses that 
 many young wives learn the necessary care of their own 
 health in prospect of maternity, the duty of suckling 
 their infants, and the best methods of securing the health 
 of their children. Advice is never so well received, and 
 the truths of science are never so likely to be accepted, 
 as when they are pressed upon the attention in times 
 of difficulty, of sickness, and of anxiety. It is when 
 the woman is ill herself, or when her child is in danger 
 from improper feeding, or from ignorant exposure to in- 
 fection, that she is most likely to understand and to 
 
 profit by loving but truthful remonstrance and advice. 
 
 44 
 
Woman's Influence on the Race 
 
 The responsibility resting on all women workers is pe- 
 culiarly great in the case of doctors and nurses because 
 of their unusual privileges and advantages in being able 
 to command a sympathetic reception to their message. 
 
 45 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WOMEN AS CITIZENS 
 
 Under this head one would like to sum up the influence 
 of women in the various relations of life — those of 
 wife, mother, friend, employer, worker, and philanthro- 
 pist — and to consider all these in the light of the duty 
 that every citizen owes to his fellow-citizens, and to that 
 personification of them which we call the nation. 
 
 Women's position as citizens received extremely little 
 attention fifty years ago, and even now it is far from 
 satisfactory. Things have advanced marvellously, and 
 the women of to-day are better educated, better trained, 
 and more respected than were those of the mid- Victorian 
 days. Still, there are certain difficulties, many inequali- 
 ties of the law, and a general insecurity of position. 
 Even in those cases where theoretically equality has 
 been attained, as, for instance, in the position of medi- 
 cal women, old prejudices die hard, and although women 
 are admitted on equal terms with men to all the degrees 
 and honours of many Universities, and although the 
 two Royal Colleges have at last opened their doors, yet 
 in practice there is a tendency among some of their 
 brethren to treat them as outsiders, and to forget their 
 claims to a fair share of representation in learned so- 
 cieties, and in what may be called the politics of medi- 
 
 46 
 
Women as Citizens 
 
 cine. It is quite true that individual members have 
 little to complain of, that they are met in consultation 
 and on committees not only with courtesy but with re- 
 spect; but yet, as a class, women have not achieved the 
 position accorded to them as individuals. 
 
 Now, exactly what happens to women in medicine is 
 what happens to them in most of the other spheres of 
 citizen life. Yet until those women who are fit to take 
 a share in public life, and who are anxious to do what 
 in them lies for the regeneration and advancement of the 
 race, are put into a position of equality with their breth- 
 ren, the nation is really losing a large portion of its 
 working power. There are many women to whom cir- 
 cumstances have denied the natural joys and duties of 
 wifehood and motherhood ; many of them have no well- 
 defined and dominant duties in their homes, and, 
 truth to tell, many of their homes would be far happier 
 if their abundant energies found an outlet elsewhere. 
 These women are extremely useful in all the varied em- 
 ployments I have considered and in many others also, 
 but their usefulness is, to a great extent, marred by their 
 inability to take a share in ameliorating many condi- 
 tions that they recognise and deplore. The tide of 
 women's usefulness, of their independence, and of their 
 adequate training for the work of life has risen enor- 
 mously and is still rising. No doubt " everything 
 comes to those who know how to wait," and there is a 
 reasonable hope that with patience and a little more 
 quiet perseverance everything that is necessary to enable 
 a woman to do her full share of work as a good citizen 
 
 47 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 will be an accomplished fact. Meantime, the women 
 who love their country and who desire that the next 
 generation shall be better, healthier, and wiser than the 
 \i resent, have much to do, and a very fair share of the 
 ability to do it. The position is, in many respects, dif- 
 ficult and needs patience as well as courage, but this we 
 have always understood women were born to have — in- 
 finite patience and great powers of endurance are sup- 
 posed to be a portion of their immemorial outfit — 
 therefore, while waiting for the flood tide they must 
 neither be impatient of, nor scorn to, that portion 
 of power which they have already secured. 
 
 The endowments of men and women, moral and in- 
 tellectual, as well as physical, are to a very large extent 
 similar, and with the exception of their absolute sexual 
 characteristics there is more similarity between the male 
 and female of the same race than there is between the 
 males or females of alien races. That is to say, there 
 is more similarity of physical characteristics and of 
 mental and moral endowments between an Englishman 
 and an Englishwoman of the same stage of development 
 than there is between an educated Englishman and a 
 Bantu or Hottentot man. There is, however, a certain 
 narrow but well-defined margin, physical, moral and in- 
 tellectual, in which the sexes are absolutely and entirely 
 distinct. 
 
 Prof. Gulick said at the School Hygiene Congress of 
 1907, that although he and his wife had promised each 
 other and had fully intended not only that they would 
 
 work side by side but also that they would share each 
 
 48 
 
Women as Citizens 
 
 other's emotions in joy and in sorrow in their married 
 life and in their parenthood, yet they found this was 
 impossible. Prof. Gulick amused the Congress by tell- 
 ing them how, when his first-born was put into his arms, 
 he sat down with it and did his best to imitate his wife's 
 gestures and to realise the full flood of maternal tender- 
 ness towards the helpless babe. He felt, indeed, a cer- 
 tain parental joy and pride, but his honesty compelled 
 him to admit that his wife's feelings and behaviour to- 
 ward the infant were totally different from his own. 
 Not only was she capable of feeding it, but she evidently 
 had what he called " a solid joy and satisfaction " from 
 the contemplation of the little morsel, which he tried 
 in vain to experience. And so it is with all of us. The 
 mother's feeling towards her child — bone of her bone 
 and flesh of her flesh, the creature that she has borne 
 in anguish and nursed with devotion — is that it is 
 necessarily a more integral part of herself, a more potent 
 factor in her life, than it can be in the father's. A 
 father's relation to the child is altogether different and 
 less intimate. The father's relation to the home is also 
 on a totally different footing; he values it, he respects 
 it, he toils for it. In most ranks of life the husband 
 and father is still the breadwinner, and it is from his 
 exertions, physical or mental, that the means are ob- 
 tained for feeding and for clothing wife and children, 
 but, after all, his interests are largely outside the home, 
 and the very work that he does to maintain it proves a 
 potent distraction from domestic cares and interests. 
 It is well that it is so, for the man's business capacity 
 
 49 
 
Womanhood and Pace-Regeneration 
 
 and his power to fulfil his daily duty would be very seri- 
 ously handicapped if he took the same kind of interest 
 in domestic concerns as is natural to his wife. The 
 home and the family may he indeed his inspiration, but 
 they are not his very life ; therefore, the interests of the 
 home and children which concern the wife so much 
 more nearly are, if she be a normal and well-instructed 
 woman, more easily understood by her. 
 
 The woman who bears the never-ceasing anxiety and 
 cares of the household, the woman who not only brings 
 the children into the world, who not only feeds them 
 from her breast, and clothes and watches over them in 
 sickness and in health, but to whom all the troubles and 
 sorrows incident to infancy and childhood make the 
 strongest appeal, ought to be the one who best under- 
 stands the needs of a family and the social and economic 
 arrangements that are necessary to its welfare. A 
 woman ought to do her best by wise and suitable educa- 
 tion and training not only to qualify herself for the dis- 
 charge of the daily and ordinary duties of housewife and 
 of mother, but also carefully to inform herself of the 
 laws which regulate her life, of the legal position in 
 which she stands; and unfortunately, when she begins 
 to inquire into these subjects, she cannot but perceive 
 that the laws are unequal and that she is much less free 
 than she imagines herself to be. The woman will find 
 that not only society, but the law itself, takes a different 
 view of what is right for her and what is right for her 
 husband. She will find that one act of misconduct on 
 
 her part suffices to deprive her of her privileges and po- 
 
 50 
 
Women as Citizens 
 
 sition as wife, and that the law in separating her from 
 her husband at his request will give into his keeping the 
 children of the marriage, all but the infant at the breast. 
 At the same time she learns that unfaithfulness on the 
 part of her husband is no cause for divorce unless cruelty 
 be added to it. 
 
 Another instance of inequality between the sexes, not 
 enforced by law but sanctioned by long usage, is the in- 
 equality of wages. This is seen in the Education De- 
 partment, in the Civil Service, and amongst clerks, right 
 down through all the ranks of industrials — we find that 
 where men and women do identically the same work the 
 women are expected to do it for less pay. No doubt so 
 long as women are willing to work for less remuneration 
 they will be exploited, but this is only another instance 
 to prove how necessary it is that women should inform 
 themselves of the conditions under which they work, 
 and that like the men they should so organise their la- 
 bour that they may obtain the same remuneration for the 
 same labour. 
 
 In bygone days man's superior size and muscular en- 
 dowments made him in many respects a more valuable 
 animal than woman. In hunting, in fighting, and in 
 all the hard and rough work that had to be done in un- 
 civilised and semi-civilised ages, the man's strength was 
 at a premium. This in a great majority of occupations 
 is no longer the case, for the labour-saving appliances 
 and delicate machinery which now largely replace 
 manual labour can be as well controlled by women as 
 by men, nay, in some instances the superior delicacy and 
 
 51 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 fineness of touch characteristic of the female places her 
 work in a position of advantage. The value of woman 
 as a citizen largely depends upon her knowing these 
 things, and upon her making a right use of her knowl- 
 edge. It was never intended that men and women 
 should act in opposition to each other ; they are two 
 halves of one whole, " they twain shall be one flesh," 
 and it is only as the woman realises her equality with 
 man that she can become her best self and develop to 
 the utmost her powers of regenerating and raising the 
 race. There would surely be far less frivolity if women 
 realised their true position and their privileges ; if they 
 were able to understand and to claim their exalted des- 
 tiny in being the mothers and guardians of the race, 
 surely they would rise to a higher sense of responsibility 
 and of duty. 
 
 Among the women of to-day there is a larger per- 
 centage of the thoughtful and duty-loving than there 
 was fifty years ago, but as lovers of our country and as 
 earnestly longing for the improvement of the human 
 race, we cannot be contented while any women fall short 
 of their destiny. Frivolity, light-mindedness, and ab- 
 sense of a sense of duty and of discipline are not con- 
 fined to the women of any one class ; they may be found 
 among society ladies, among the wives and daughters of 
 professional and business men, down to the factory girls 
 and the very poorest of the poor ; but in all these ranks 
 of life there is the capacity for regeneration, and, what 
 is more, a large number of the women in each of these 
 ranks does possess the sense of duty and is capable of 
 
 52 
 
Women as Citizens 
 
 excellent work. Even now we see much of it, and 
 amongst ladies of leisure, who do not need to work for 
 their own or for their children's living, we see noble 
 women who work hard and with real self-sacrifice to 
 benefit and to bless those who are less fortunate. Sim- 
 ilar endeavours to promote the welfare of the race are 
 found in women of all ranks of life down to the wives 
 of working men. These women frequently strive, and 
 not without success, to make the few shillings they can 
 command keep together the home and secure the welfare 
 of their children. 
 
 So good is the foundation upon which we have to 
 work that we need not despair of seeing a still larger 
 proportion of our women not only potential but actual 
 regenerators of the race. The one great danger which 
 threatens at present is that there is a wave of irreligion 
 passing over the land. It is not so much that there is 
 active scepticism or honest doubt as there was some 
 years ago, but that in some extraordinary way people 
 nowadays do not actually disbelieve, and the want of re- 
 ligion seems to be due more to a want of interest in the 
 inatter. That this is the case is proved by the tone not 
 only of novels and light literature, but also by quite 
 serious works written by men and women who earnestly 
 desire the welfare of the race. In these books the au- 
 thors invoke every lofty motive and incentive to better- 
 ment of the human mind except that fundamental one 
 of "the fear of the Lord" which "is the beginning of 
 wisdom." The same thing is to be seen in the pictures 
 
 of the present day, which only in the rarest instances are 
 
 53 
 
Womanhood and Race-Regeneration 
 
 religious in tone. The chief inspiration of the artists of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was religion, 
 and beyond portrait and landscape painting there was 
 little art except that which illustrated religious subjects ; 
 but now the walls of the Academy and of the New Gal- 
 lery afford ample confirmation of the melancholy fact 
 that religion has passed to a great extent out of the lives 
 and thoughts of the people. It is said by some observ- 
 ers that we are standing on the threshold of a new era, 
 and that a wave of true repentance and of a deepened 
 religious consciousness is about to sweep over the sur- 
 face of affairs ; it may be so, but meanwhile the omens 
 are bad, nor do we see any signs of this regeneration in 
 education, in literature, or in art. The regeneration of 
 the race will never be accomplished until the women of 
 the country, themselves deeply convinced of the impor- 
 tance of right belief and right practice, devote them- 
 selves to teaching their faith to their children, and to 
 requiring it in a practical form from the members of 
 their household. 
 
 54 
 
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