But in spite of colleges, the knowledge and use of this power have gone round the world, and in the hands both of the ignorant and the educated it has saved many thousand lives. In some of my students it has made marvellous displays, such as revealing the medical history of years, discovering anomalous and unsuspected conditions, and even telling the whole story at the first sight of a patient not yet within twenty feet of the observer. Some years ago 1 knew a gentleman of very scanty medical education who possessed this psychometric faculty in a high degree and was then, I believe, receiving a larger income than any physician in our country. Had he been enslaved by the code, he would have been a common obscure doctor.

That Theosophy revolutionizes what is called medical science is a necessary result of the emancipation of the divine wisdom bestowed on man. It is not merely by giving a true diagnosis, a true knowledge of medicines, and ability indefinitely to enlarge the materia medica, which are simply rectifications of antiquated ignorance, but by adding to this rectified science three new therapeutic methods, not known in the old colleges, that the revolution is completed. With this meagre introduction of a great theme, the reader may be prepared for the demonstration in my next essay that Theosophy brings "a new civilization."

1

SHALL WOMEN VOTE?

BY HELEN H. GARDENER.

In a little volume just issued, called "The Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States,"* the topic is more fully, freely, plainly, and badly dealt with upon the strictly conservative and religious side than I remember to have seen before. I am truly glad to have read this book. It is so amusing. I have not laughed more heartily for some time, and I believe that the little volume will be one of the most useful ever put into the hands of the suffragists and will cause more uneasiness in the conservative camp than has been felt for years. Something of the thought of the book is in these paragraphs on pp. 75-6:

When the American pulpit realizes that this question involves the infallibility of God's word just as much and with much more logical and practical certainty than does the scientific question of evolution or the critical one of the inerrancy of the written word, it will appreciate the alarming and portentous condition of American society.

This question is fundamental; it is the foundation-stone of the social, moral, and religious structure which the English-speaking race has erected upon the divinity and authenticity of the Word of God. Remove the foundation, and the structure falls to the ground. And who will rebuild it? Will the cowards who allowed it to be destroyed before their very eyes? I trow not. The law of marriage was announced by God in the very beginning of time, long before the promulgation of the Decalogue, and for all time and for all the nations of man. It was to govern the one relation of life and social arrangement common to all the different races of mankind, and was fixed as the foundation of the family, of society, of order and government, regardless of its special form or nature. Whatever changes it has received from custom or legislation have always worked an injury to the unity and purity of the home and to the peace and happiness of society. Italics mine.

I should like to read the reply of the orthodox suffragists. Not being orthodox myself, I believe with him in much that he says of the influence and effect of the Bible teaching on the woman question. Believing as I do that the Bible in this matter as in previous causes of progress and civilization has stood and does stand directly across the path of justice, truth, progress, and science, I simply say, as Wendell Phillips said of it when men like "A Lawyer" asserted that

"The Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States," by A Lawyer. Pp. 153; price, cloth 75 cents, paper 25 cents. Arena Publishing Company.

the Bible upheld slavery, "Then so much the worse for the Bible." This I should say to "A Lawyer." Notwithstanding which fact, he (or I) could prove just as good a scriptural case against himself as a lawyer, a voter, an owner of property, or an eater of meat. "If eating meat offend thy brother, eat no meat." Meat-eating offends many millions of his brothers. "Look not upon the wine when it is red” is violated in letter every time a Christian takes the sacrament (unless perchance he uses white wine, which would not keep the command "in spirit"). But I am glad this book was written. It is a record to be met by those who hold that the Bible is a friend to the progress of women. It will be interesting to see how they will do this. There is a naive paragraph on pp. 85-6:

It might be well to inquire why it was that the Catholic Church so early declared marriage to be a sacrament. The facts of history during the Roman Republic and the days of the Cæsars and the earlier years of the empire must have been well known to Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, who have been always more or less politicians. They must have studied the causes of the decline and fall of the republic, and accepting fully the Biblical doctrine of marriage, they at once saw the vast power and influence which they and the church herself could acquire and wield through that principle of morals and law, if it were ever acknowledged to be correct, and were accepted and obeyed. It gave to woman absolute protection; she accepted it and obeyed the church. It restrained the passions of man in public and private life through the wife and mother, and consequently controlled the husband; and he feared the church.

Italics mine.

There is a volume of confession and fact in that one paragraph, but it is amusing to see it come from that side. Had J. S. Mill, Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, or Elizabeth Cady Stanton written it, one could imagine what a chorus of protest would have gone up from a church whose ulterior motives were thus laid bare, so that she is declared by her devotees to have subordinated one sex and brutalized the other in order to own both. It is one of the important truths of history, which has previously been strenuously denied by the church and her devotees. We are glad that "A Lawyer's" candor outran his discretion. It will be worth while knowing what happens to him when the Right Reverend of his diocese discovers his identity.

No state has the right to degrade one of its citizens unless that citizen has given cause for the degradation. Is not that a fair and plain proposition? I think "A Lawyer" would say that it is unless that citizen chanced to be a woman, and then he would baldly and frankly say that the Bible degrades woman. God Almighty did, and therefore

the state has no right to ameliorate her condition. Indeed he does say this in substance throughout his book. He argues for her degradation wholly upon Bible grounds and makes no claim whatever upon an ethical, natural, or political basis where he concedes her the right and logic of the argument. This is the position of the book, and he supports his argument in the main very well indeed if one accepts his religious premises. It is true that we might hit back by reminding him that he is not so rigid in the application of other scriptural injunctions as in that dealing with the subordination of women, but all things being equal, he has done about the best that could be done on that side, which is no doubt the reason the Arena Company published the book. It believes that all sides of all questions should have a hearing, and that suppression is never argument; nevertheless. the Arena editor and the Arena Company, singly and collectively, are on the other side of this question, while it concedes the right of a full hearing to "A Lawyer."

There is an amusing passage, pp. 88-91:

No one can predict or foresee what will be the influence and effects of female suffrage upon society and law, and through them upon the government itself, until it has been practically carried to its ultimate end in the affairs of this country, state and federal. It cannot be fully worked out in one or even two generations. Old and established civilizations, with their customs ingrained in the character and interwoven with the daily thoughts and life of a people, do not so easily fold themselves up to be laid away in the lumber-room of history. Under the final operation of this principle all the restraints of honor and of chivalry, of society and of law, will be removed, and men and women will meet in their future dealings in the same way that men meet men in their trades and traffics; women will no longer be dealt with as women, but as citizens, because the law will not any longer so consider them. In the future they will be simply buyers and sellers, traders, merchants, with no legal difference between them and men. The social distinction will be in the dress, and in that alone. It will make the marriage tie simply a bargain and sale-a trade based upon the pecuniary ability of each or of one only to support the family. Husbands will be bought, and wives will be sold. It will degrade woman and unsex man.

Ultimately, when its fullest operation and influence are felt and developed under its exclusive sway, women will again become "hewers of wood and drawers of water," because men, with their wits sharpened by experience with other men and from constant trade, will soon absorb, in some way or other, beyond the protecting touch of the law, all the property owned by the women; consequently there will be eventually a direct antagonism and actual hostility between husband and wife as to property and rights of property, producing lawsuits to be followed by divorce suits, and leaving the children, if any, to the care of the world. Public honor having been lowered by this principle, and women claiming under it the right to buy from and to sell to whom they please, there will be no private reason left in the heart, mind, or conscience of men why they should not increase their own fortunes out of the property of their wives.

It will be legal; it will be common; it will be done every day. Might, aided by experience, will be the measure and test of right. And should sickness become the constant companion of the woman after her money was gone, she would be put aside as no longer fit for service, or dropped on the wayside in the journey of life like a lonesome weed.

Husband and wife could testify against one another, could sue one another, and could buy from or sell to one another. The marriage tie would be simply an agreement between a man and a woman to live in the same house and occupy the same bed, with no protection or exclusion against any intruder during the continuance of the contract. That will be the entire legal and moral extent of this contract. It would produce at once bickerings, charges, criminations, lawsuits, divorce suits; and when the different families of the interested parties took sides in the litigation about the property, there would be street-fights, bloodshed, and murder.

Now are not the woman's wits also sharpened? She is "in trade." But the author fears antagonism between husband and wife because he secures all the property, whereas he hasall along argued that as it is now the husband should own the property, and that it is unseemly for a wife to "control her own property or own it!" Now it appears from this last argument that woman suffrage will produce this very state of things which he has thought right! There is an occasional "lonesome weed" nowadays, so I have heard, and also there are weeds which yearn for a chance to be lonesome rather than to be the owned "queens" of men who are willing to subject them to such indignities. Much of this is a purely gratuitous assumption, and I presume that "A Lawyer" is not unaware that with the class of moral idiots he has described here (of whatever sex they may be) the lack of a vote fails to make the woman chaste or loyal or content with her husband; nor do the words of a priest restrain such a man, as the brothels will all attest. It is well known that these are chiefly supported by men who have accepted marriage with a disfranchised subordinate as a "sacrament."

The rest of this prophecy of the dire results of justice to woman is worth going miles to read. The author promises almost all the disasters known to man, and they are to appear "before the third generation shall have passed away" after woman suffrage is introduced. He appears to be in blissful ignorance of the fact that now the third generation born under woman suffrage is living very comfortably and hap pily in Wyoming, and that that state has fewer criminals, jails, asylums, and paupers to the thousand population than any other in America. But a fact of this kind need not and does not interfere with oceans of theory. He says, "By their effects shall ye know them," but refuses to look at effects or to listen to a proposal to "try all things and hold