Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/151

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THE TRANSITIONAL WOMAN.
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now possess, is a vast amount of superficial physiological knowledge based on feelings rather than on facts. Women often harm themselves thereby in body, soul, and mind. No one who is not a specialist can generalize on "feelings" or facts.

As the result of this capacity of woman to exist for herself alone, and to be happy and worthy in such existence, comes a reluctance to look upon marriage as producing the highest development of woman. There is a pantheism of the affections as well as of the intellect, and women are feeling that "causes" and knowledge are better fitted to ennoble them than the ill adjustments of a union which is anything less than perfect love, entire trust, and mutual honor, — motherhood and discipline no longer being considered equivalents for the crosses that may arise.

Woman's past condition has not been satisfactory to herself, nor is it wholly a matter of pleasant history for men. Because a few