Page:Women and the State.djvu/6

4 We get the word "Politics" from the Greeks, who devoted much time to their state, and considered how best they could make their republic into an ideal community. They clearly understood that each individual had his twofold duty—first his duty as an individual and in relation to his home, or his ethical duty; secondly his duty to the state, or his political duty. Obviously, since the welfare of the State not only comprised the weal of the citizen as an individual, but questions of offence and defence relating to the citizens collectively, government was a complex matter. In such a community the warriors would have to take a foremost place, even as men must still do in times of war. They would hold councils of war, from which women would be excluded. These councils of war gradually evolved into councils of state, and so it came to pass that the supreme governing body consisted of men and not of women.

As men were thus occupied with questions of war and the state, they relegated their domestic duties almost entirely to the women. Only a few women had influence in public affairs, and they usually obtained that influence through their ascendancy over the affections of individual statesmen. Yet it was, and always has been, impossible to define where the duties of the State and of the home begin and end. The two cannot be separated. Property has always been a matter affecting both the State and the individual. Marriage and divorce, questions of inheritance, of the precedence of children's rights, as in the matter of the succession of the eldest son and the exclusion of daughters,