"Verily, in so deep a question do not decide, unless she tell it thee, who light, twixt truth and intellect, shall be. I speak of Beatrice."

Then he begins to apologize, as he feels the inadequacy of himself to meet the wants of a soul so passionately in love as Dante is, and offers this consolation: If my reason appease thee not, thou shalt see Beatrice, and she will freely take from thee this and every other longing."

Finally comes the farewell. Before the ascent of Purgatory is finished the man has outgrown the teachings of the intellect; and Virgil says good-by to him in those wonderful, prophetic words, which the race has kept studying and reading for hundreds of years, but which it has never thought of applying. "The temporal fire and the eternal Son thou hast seen, and to a place art come where of myself no further I discern. By intellect and art I here have brought thee. Take thine own intuition for thy guide henceforth, until, rejoicing, come the beauteous eyes which, weeping, caused me first to come to thee."

Virgil leaves him, and the Lady Matilda - the enlightening grace of God - becomes his guide. She baptizes him in the lethe of self-forgetfulness. His self-condemnation is washed away; he is born again in Eunoe, the stream of regeneration, "pure and disposed to mount unto the stars."

Can this be the same craven soul that shrank in fear from the panther, the lion, and the wolf? Redeemed from his false ways and himself, he waits for the vision of Paradise. This he attains through another, the divine Beatrice, the true praise of God. "With eyes upon the everlasting wheels stood Beatrice, all intent, and I on her fixed my vision."

So they journey from star to star. One glory after another passes before his enraptured gaze, but always "upward gazes Beatrice," and Dante looks at her. She sees God; he sees her. Does she look at him, it is to flash lightning into his soul, and deathless aspiration into his heart. This is the love that makes fair, that lifts up"

the love that fears not to tell her lover: "Turn thee around and listen; not in mine eyes alone is paradise." The highest womanly sees not herself, but the face of God, and she desires the same for her beloved - the beatific vision alone can satisfy. Seated on her throne, in the glory of the eternal light, the man sees her and continues his supplications, and implores her, by all the love she hath borne him, "Who for my salvation didst endure in hell to leave the imprint of thy feet." In return she smiles on him; "then on the glory of the light supernal fixes her steadfast gaze."

Her wise love knows the law that woman is the initiator that if her love would lift her beloved, it can only be done by desiring for him higher things than he seeks for himself;, for "the desire of woman's heart is the measure of the choice of man's will."

This is law, poetry, religion, philosophy - man will not rest until he regains paradise. But the good of the intellect will never open its pearly gates to him; only by the love of the eternal-womanly may he enter in. Grecian art, science, philosophy, and the knowledge of the brain will not wash away one stain of self-condemnation, or whisper peace to the storm-tossed soul. Only the eternal-womanly, made concrete in the woman he loves, can inspire him to be "pure and mount unto the stars."

What man is, what woman is, nobody knows; but everybody would like to find out. Let us join in the search. The story of Dante and Beatrice is the solution of the mys tery. "The fair, saintly lady, with eyes brighter than the stars," was then, is now, and ever shall be the magnet by which the race and the individual are blessed and redeemed; for Beatrice is deathless aspiration after goodness, beauty, and truth the eternal-womanly.

The nineteenth century will be known in history as the age of Helen, the age of self-activity, of self-consciousness, self-contemplation. But the sun and the stars are already whispering that the twentieth century shall be known as the reign of Beatrice — the age of God-activity, of God-con

sciousness, of God-contemplation when the ideal woman shall be made real in the lives of the women of earth; the age when there shall no longer be a separation between the woman in art and the woman in life, when it shall be as the laws of the Medes and Persians, "He loves not me who loves not honor more "— the age of applied idealism.

THE CIVIL AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF WOMAN - ADDRESS BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON OF NEW YORK; READ BY SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF NEW YORK.

It has often been stated that if the majority of women really wanted their civil rights they could have them. This is doubtless true, since a whole nation could not, in the nature of things, be decapitated, nor the combined and persistent claim of a whole class in a community be ignored.

But the majority of women do not as yet appear to desire civil and political privilege. It seems, in fact, that more men than women are in favor of granting such privilege. The men who are of this opinion believe in citizenship, and recognize that strength comes from the resolute shouldering of responsibility, as the long, slender stem of the date palm grows steady when the leafy crown becomes heavy. They regard the suffrage as an expression of the true republican sentiment that those who obey the law should understand it, and help to frame it. They believe that with the help of women civilization would move on with faster and longer strides.

What is the reason that so many women are indifferent or averse to the assumption of civic duties? I think their natural conservativeness and their conscientiousness stand in the way. They already find in the complexity of our life. numberless demands upon thought and strength. Their aspiration for increased knowledge and culture, their esthetic cravings, urge them to the limits of physical and mental endurance, and they feel that they can undertake

nothing more. If man is a little world, woman is expected to be a little universe-"all things by turns and nothing long." A woman must be versatile, and ready to fill any niche at a moment's notice. She must sew on a button or write a poem, must roast herself in the kitchen or receive guests in a drawing-room, with equal grace and facility; and what with keeping up her geography and her accomplishments she will beg to be excused from what she thinks the dry and uninteresting subjects of business, current events, and politics.

It is easier under such circumstances to lead the natural, old-fashioned life of daughter, wife, and mother in a sheltered home than to strike out upon the sea of life as a bread-winner in business or profession.

The former course keeps us in the beaten track of precedent, and holds us in what is particularly agreeable to timid and conservative people, a good fellowship with the majority. In Howell's "Undiscovered Country" we notice that the heroine gets tired of being phenomenal, and throws herself into the pleasures of dress and luxury with keen zest. It takes courage to go against the stream, to be independent and ahead of your generation; it needs a strong moral muscle to snap the withes of prejudice; it demands heroism to obey a law higher than the laws of sympathy and imitation; and if women, somewhat by nature and certainly by education, are lacking in such fiber, we can not be surprised at their slowness in rising to the emergencies of the hour.

How can we hasten the social and civil evolution of woman? Only by an education as to her true position in the physical and moral world, and as to her duty and her destiny. These views of women are not founded upon sentiment nor sentimentality- they do not take cognizance of her beauty and her helplessness, which are incidental merely but they are founded upon the broad basis of philosophy and ethics.

Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, the greatest phi

losophers of our day, find women to be structurally the converse of men. Botany and biology prove that differentiation into sex is a secondary step in development; that the woman must be brought to a common denominator with man, and be considered invariably as a human being. If we once settle that truth for ourselves, every deduction we make comes easily, naturally, and forcibly.

Then women are to do whatever they find to do with all their might. They are to be properly trained for business, profession, or art; they are to be protected by public sentiment and law, and to be encouraged until they can stand alone.

Either obstacles must be removed or women must cultivate strength to overcome them; and, more than all, they must be made to see that they are of the people, and that the state belongs equally to them with men, and therefore must claim from them intellectual recognition and moral support.

MARGARET PARKER OF SCOTLAND OPENED THE DISCUSSION

AS FOLLOWS:

I feel this to be one of the greatest privileges of my life to be able to follow your dear saint, Susan B. Anthony, as much revered in our country as she is in yours. I remember the time when these women were everywhere spoken against, and now you see this magnificent gathering is the result of their efforts. Let us, who are treading the flowery paths to-day, be thankful for the labors of those women who trod, with bleeding feet, the thorny paths forty and fifty years ago.

Now, your president has wished that all the discussions shall be both amiable and reasonable. I will try to be both. In the old Jewish days the men used to say every Sabbath morning, "I thank thee, O God of my fathers, that I was not born a woman;" and the women said, "I thank thee,