CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION--THE STARTING-POINT OF THE INQUIRY

The twentieth century the age of hurrying progress--The change in the position of women--Reasons for the revolution--First efforts towards emancipation--Outlook of the Woman Movement--Its fundamental error--Possibilities of future development--Motherhood and the Woman Movement--Schopenhauer's view of woman--He asserts an absurdity--The predominance of man over woman not to be regarded as a natural and inviolable law--An examination of the mastery of the male--Can we look forward to a remedy?--Our own time a turning-point in the history of women--Assumed inferiority of the female sex--Necessity for biological knowledge in forming an estimate of the present sex-relationship--Two kinds of influences to be considered--Nature and Nurture--The different play of the environmental forces, or Nurture, upon women and upon men--The importance of Nature--Galton's _Law of Inheritance_--Woman's responsibility as race-bearer--Sexual differences between the female and the male--Primitive woman and her position in early civilisations--Remarks and conclusion--The immense importance of motherhood.

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