Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/11

 PREFACE.

HE most important result of the better civilization of our time is the increased power of women. We know that in limited spheres their influence was always incalculably great; but now, without losing their ascendancy at home, they find a career in many of the trades, most of the professions, and all the arts. In those of the arts which give the most lively pleasure and reach the greatest number of persons, namely, fiction and the drama, women, in our day, have attained the first rank, and have made the first rank higher. As reformers and world-improvers, what men have surpassed the single-eyed and courageous devotion of such women as Miss Martineau?

We can set no limit to their future achievements except those which nature herself has established. So long as the chief business of every state was to defend itself against armed encroachment, all gifts and all character were of necessity subordinate to masculine force. Women were "the subject sex." The peace and safety resulting from the union of many states, and to become universal through federation and arbitration, will still further reduce the importance of muscle and brawn. The time is not very distant when the ballot will have rendered the bullet, not monstrous merely, but ridiculous, and when there will be no "campaigns" except those of the blest American pattern, fought out in the pleasant autumn days with speeches, processions, fireworks, and bands of music. (3)