Page:Woman and her possibilities.djvu/10

 apology on a wife's part for doing what she believed to be her duty as a woman? Because then, as now, the sentiment set forth was so opposed to conventional ideas that few people would listen for a moment to the claimant, or, if they did, would allow the claim.

Some people are apathetic on the woman question. They have no feeling that the time is in any way out of joint. If, when they open their eyes for a moment as they turn in their noonday sleep, they should see that things now are different from even our own grandmothers' days, they accept this as evidence of a degeneracy that is deplorable. Other people feel the unsatisfactoriness, the irksomeness, the unfairness of it all, and protest vehemently against conditions that are beginning to be insufferable. But they make no attempt to find what is wrong at the heart of things; much less do they care to set about helping to mend matters. With some people, the dear delight of putting wrong things right is not to be compared with the sweet satisfaction of having them as a perennial subject of complaint, to be used as a safety-valve to let off temper and discontent from any and every cause arising. Other people, again, agitate for reform, which means for them legislative change in some particular, the passing of some parliamentary measure which may occasion more mischief than the condition it is meant to cure, Some, however, are beginning to deal with the whole question radically, by studying human nature, human institutions, systems of legislation, religions, civilizations, and social movements. And the most hopeful feature of the time is that this class of people includes both men and women.

To begin near home, racially, what do we know of the social conditions, intellectual