Page:The Future of Single Women.pdf/5

 will become more marked. As it grows larger the individuals that compose it will tend to become grouped into different classes, each class having its own work to do. Or to reverse the statement, the whole work that has to be done in the community tends to become subdivided, and each kind of work is the special function of a group of persons, and ceases to be the general duty of all. In a young community each individual is able to do a little of everything—fishing, hunting, cooking, making implements, &c.; later on the cooking is all done by one person, the fishing by another, the making of implements by a third.

It stands to reason that this subdivision is necessary, because, as a society grows in size and its elements become more heterogeneous, a more perfect organization becomes an administrative necessity. It is under the influence of this principle that a certain body of women appear to be led away from marriage and domestic life towards social and public work.

All women are modified by progress generally, as are all men, but this special process of differentiation, to which we now refer is modifying the lives—not as some people fear of all women—but only of a certain number, in the direction of public usefulness. Speaking broadly, women have up to the present time been excluded from the operation of this law of differentiation. It has been legitimate for them to fulfil one function alone, that of race preservation. Wifehood and motherhood—or whatever function that might be which was involved in their relations with men—have hitherto been considered the function of all women.

Now the great fact of life is womanhood, with all its possibilities and varieties—wifehood and motherhood are incidental parts, which may or may not enter into the life of each woman. Womanhood and wifehood are not co-extensive, but up to this time we have acted as though they were. It is true that there always existed a small class who have led isolated lives in convents, and whose function was religious; but there has never until to-day been found an appreciable number of celibate women who have filled worthily a wide sphere of social and public usefulness. Hitherto celibacy has meant conventual life for women; to-day it means something entirely different, and it is this difference that we ought to consider. This is all the more necessary, because many among us still fail to grasp the true significance of the new movement for the emancipation of women; many are still under the yoke of old opinion, and they fail to recognize the more healthy nature of the new type of celibate women as compared with that of former days.

Mr. Lecky says:— "'The complete suppression of the conventual system was very far"