Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/258

 lower and lower into a life of infamy. In considering the question of the fallen woman little is ever said or heard about the equally fallen man with whom she fell, though such men as these are a source of grave social danger. A woman need not be a feminist to want to make life cleaner for her sons and safer for her daughters; and she could not do better than begin by refusing to condone this kind of offence in a man as steadily as she has declined to pardon it in a woman.

Pessimists allege that the social problem, as it is called, will never be solved so long as time lasts; but to say this and believe it is to deny the whole gospel of Christianity. To assert that, from the foundations of the world, it was intended that men should tempt and destroy women, and that women, in return, should prey upon and destroy men, and that there is no remedy under the sun, is to convict oneself of atheism of the most practical and terrible sort. All things are possible, and of purity and goodness nothing is impossible which the minds of the best men and women in their most exalted moments have been able to conceive. The pessimists are wrong. The problem will be solved ultimately, but never by dwelling with mournful and wearisome reiteration upon the truly stupendous difficulties in the way.

An enormous step forward will have been