Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/40

Counter-Currents. They set the social tone, led society, and thereby guided public opinion. When they appeared in the vanguard of political progress, we may be sure that the men were following."

We might be sure of the same thing to-day, were it not for the tendency of the modern woman to sever her rights and wrongs from the rights and wrongs of men; thereby resembling the disputant who, being content to receive half the severed baby, was adjudged by the wise Solomon to be unworthy of any baby at all. Half a baby is every whit as valuable as the half-measure of reform which fails to take into impartial consideration the inseparable claims of men and women. Even in that most vital of all reforms, the crusade against social evils, the welfare of both sexes unifies the subject. Here again we are swayed by our anger at the indifference of an earlier generation, at the hard and healthy attitude of men like Huxley, who had not 24