The Position of Woman : Actual and Ideal. With preface
by Sir Oliver Lodge. (James Nisbet and Co. 3s. Gd.)—Our notice of this book will be brief. It is the outcome of meetings organized by a local committee at E Iinburgh at which addresses cm the subject indicated by the title were delivered. Of these addresses eight are given ; a ninth, not spoken by the lecturer to whom it was originally assigned, is absent—" a full report would have been out of pbsce." Probably, however, it would have been interesting. The aspects of the question here presented may be seen in the titles of the lectures : "The Position of Woman Biologically Considered" ; " Tho Position of Woman in History " ; "The Place of Woman in the Family " ; "Professional Women " ; "Psychological Dangers to Women in Modern Social Developments" ;• "The Education of Woman" ; "Spiritual Motherhood and Philanthropic Service." All of these are well worth reading, but we should give the first place to Dr. Clouston's essay on "The Psychological Dangers." It seems to us an admirable exposition of that basic truth that woman's function in the order of nature is to be a mother. So long as social developments keep on that line they will be for good and not for evil. Professor Robert Lodge's "Closing Address," too, seems to us excellent ; but then he is against the granting of the vote. One criticism we must make on Miss Louisa limes Lnmsden's "Position of Women in History." In the earliest society she thinks "woman was the more stable and predominant factor." That may well be : matriarchy seems to indicate some- thing of the kind. But when we read further, "Men gradually sought to establish an order more entirely favourable to their own interests, and being the stronger set limits to the formerly frea activities of women," that, we take it, is not the way in which the world moves on. What happens is not the result of conscious effort; it is the consequence of self-moving causes.
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