supreme function of maternity, and the possession of those experiences which only maternity can give. That unquestionably is the claim of natural and reasonable living in the social state towards which we are moving.
To deal with the social organization of the future would be to pass beyond the limits that I have here set myself, and to touch on matters of which it is impossible to speak with certainty. The new culture of women, in the light and the open air, will doubtless solve many matters which now are dark to us. Morgan supposed that it was in some measure the failure of the Greeks and Romans to develop their womanhood which brought the speedy downfall of classic civilization.
The women of the future will help to renew art and science as well as life. They will do more even than this, for the destiny of the race rests with women.
"I have sometimes thought," Whitman wrote in his Democratic Vistas, "that the sole avenue and means to a reconstructed society depended primarily on a new birth, elevation, expansion, invigoration of women."
That intuition is not without a sound basis, and if a great historical movement called for justification here would be enough.