when to work one's own way to one's own ends is so much easier for women than ever before, it is in the life and work of such a woman as Anandabai Joshee that we perceive the full significance of the Drama of the Woman of Genius.

IV

THE DAY OF THE SPINSTER

THE day of the spinster did not dawn until women, married and single, and of all ages, had generally ceased to use the distaff and the spinning-wheel. The name came, indeed, from the useful service rendered by maidens, young and old, in the days of domestic handicraft, when the economic pressure was so heavy upon the house-mother that she could not fulfil her task without the labor of the unmarried in the home. But "spinster" came early to have a legal significance as descriptive of the unmarried state of an adult woman, just as still earlier the word "distaff" stood for collective womanhood; Dryden saying of woman's rule, "The crown usurped, a distaff on the throne." So closely related were woman's work and woman's existence in ancient law and custom, that the name of her labor became the title for herself. To-day we use the word spinster in colloquial speech as the designation of all sorts of maidens, of "certain" or "uncertain" age. The spinster may be the lady who must never be called anything which suggests hard work; she may be the "bachelor girl" whose professional success as

sures her an independent habitation and high social standing; she may be the working-woman whose manual or commercial labor ensures her her own latch-key and her own bank-book; she may be, and often is, the staid teacher upon whom is placed the heaviest burden of public service borne by any class in the United States. In any case, the modern spinster has at last her innings in the great game of life.

Celibacy, although said to be a practice of the ants and bees for economic reasons in the division of labor, is, comparatively speaking, a recent experience of the human race. In primitive life no one, man or woman, could shirk the duty of marriage and of participation in the race life through parenthood. The whole system of ancient social order was based upon this universal sharing of the marriage state. The early religion of ancestor-worship, the customs of family ritual which ruled all details of existence, the basis of property rights and of political privileges in specific forms of descent and relationship, these all demanded the active membership of all adults in the family. The ancient Hindu law declared, "The extinction of a family causes the ruin of the religion of that family; the ancestors, deprived of the offerings of sons, fall into the abode of the unhappy." At Athens the law made it the duty of the first magistrate to "see that no family became extinct"; and Cicero said, "There is no one so careless about himself as to wish to leave his family without descendants; for then there would be no one to render him that worship which is due the dead." Because

1 Laws of Manu.

of this religious basis of the family the sterile wife must be divorced, the sterile husband must raise him up sons from a brother or other relative, or by adoption an heir must be secured; as the Hindu law put it, "He to whom Nature has denied a son may adopt one so that the funeral ceremonies shall not cease.' This demand of ancient society that each man should have a son to carry on the worship of the dead has no longer place in our thought; when we deplore celibacy or "race suicide," it is in the interest of the future, not the past; the unborn, not the dead. We need, therefore, to think ourselves back in order to realize in any degree the religious significance of marriage. The hearth-fire that in Greece and Rome was so sacred that it must never be neglected, dates back to earliest Aryan life. "Agni," says the Rig Veda, "must be invoked before all other gods." The sacredness of this fire was attested by the fact that no criminal or wrong-doer could approach it until he had purified himself; and not even in legal marriage could the union of the sexes be brought too near it. When the gods became persons, the Hearth-fire became Vesta, whom Ovid declared to be "naught but a living flame"; Vesta, the virgin goddess, "neither fecundity nor power, but order, moral order"; the "universal soul." Marriage, however, was a religious necessity; and for that reason, in Rome a man who had enough children felt it a duty to lend his wife, either temporarily or for life, to some childless man: while in Sparta, although a man should lend his wife for kindred purposes, he was required to keep

2 Laws of Manu.

her in his own house, and, if old and decrepit, should invite under his roof some young and strong man to bear him children. Lycurgus had women marry when "of full age and inclination," while Romans gave their daughters in marriage at twelve years and under; but all women in the ancient world had to marry, and primitive customs of all ages and lands multiply varieties of dealing with this inexorable command. Not only must the ancient woman be married once, but she must be married all her life, or suffer, as in India, terrible penalties. If a widow, she must be replaced under a new husband's control as speedily as possible, lest she get into mischief; if deserted, she must find her sole protection and support in marital rearrangement. In any case, not until our own civilization is reached do we anywhere find celibate women numerous enough to form a class.

Men were first allowed some freedom not to marry, but this was grudgingly given and with many penalties for the idiosyncrasy. In Sparta, we are told, bachelors were under ban, disfranchised by law, excluded from witnessing the great public processions which were the pride of the State; and in winter time compelled to march naked around the market-place, singing as they went a song testifying to their own disgrace by which they "justly suffered punishment." And in this land, so insistent in all other respects upon reverence for the aged, there was one exception: a youth might refuse, and without reproof, to rise and give a seat to a venerable bachelor, even to one who had done honorable service for the State, saying, "No son of yours will