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my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell to and chaw, which took away the apprehension.'

Before we leave our subject we would draw attention to the spread of the use of tobacco not only among white men, but also among some of the lowest existing races, who have had little or no contact with civilised people.* Thus the Australian blacks smoke tobacco freely. The Andamanese use clay pipes, and even the few wild Veddahs surviving in the interior of Ceylon chew tobacco. The primitive races of the Malay Peninsula, Semang, Sakai and Yakun, are all fond of smoking tobacco, and some of them also chew it. In the western parts of New Guinea, the wildest and most untouched tribes yet investigated are smokers, and the custom is evidently not the direct result of white influence. Tobacco smoking on the eastern part of the island has probably been introduced only during the last quarter of a century; and in a few years it will be difficult to map the area into which the habit is of recent importation. It is not necessary to assume European responsibility for the introduction of tobacco, as a species of the plant is found growing wild, and is also cultivated in the very centre of the island. The Tapiro pygmies of Dutch New Guinea are also very fond of smoking. Throughout Africa, again, the use of tobacco is very widely spread, derived doubtless more or less directly from Arab and European sources. Into the Near East tobacco smoking was introduced in the 17th century, the period which also saw the commencement of opium smoking in China. The use of tobacco thus forms the unique instance in modern times of the world-wide adoption of a custom that originates with a barbarous race.

CHARLES SINGER.

* The writer has to thank Prof. C. G. Seligman for kindly providing him with most of the anthropological data which follow.

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Art. 8.-MODERN FEMINISM AND SEX-ANTAGONISM. 1. The Woman Movement. By Ellen Key. Translated by M. B. Borthwick. London: Putnam, 1912.

2. Woman and Labour. By Olive Schreiner. London: Unwin, 1911.

3. Woman and Economics. By C. P. Gilman. London: Putnam, 1908.

4. Woman and To-morrow. By W. L. George. London: Jenkins, 1913.

5. The Nature of Woman. By J. L. Tayler. London: Fifield, 1912.

6. John and Irene. By W. H. Beveridge. London: Longmans, 1912.

7. Sex Antagonism. By Walter Heape. London: Constable, 1913.

8. Woman in
in Modern Society.

London: Cassels, 1912.

By Earl Barnes.

9. A Survey of the Woman Problem. By Rosa Mayreder. Translated by H. Scheffauer. London: Heinemann, 1913.

IN a lucid little introduction to Ellen Key's latest book, Mr Havelock Ellis, after tracing the broad lines on which the Woman's Movement has developed, suggests that it is now entering a critical period. This view is evidently shared by most of the writers on modern feminism, including some who are not likely to exaggerate the symptoms. The avowed feminist and the declared antifeminist are both, of course, concerned to show that society is in a parlous state, either for want of, or because of, some readjustment of social relations on feminist lines which one desires and the other deprecates. We are too much accustomed to writers whose obvious desire is to 'make our flesh creep,' to pay much attention to jeremiads from either camp; and indeed the vast majority of men and women are sunk in too deep a sense of personal security to be capable of any very keen anxiety as to the future. The more thoughtful, however, and even some who are not usually thoughtful, have been shaken from indifference by recent developments of feminism. The suffrage campaign is only (on the surface) a by-product of feminism, and militancy is (on the surface) merely a

by-product of suffragism; but evolution from feminism to suffragism and from suffragism to militancy is too fundamental to permit that the last phase should be treated as a sporadic outburst.

The average man was not aware of feminism until the persistent advertising methods of the militant suffragette focussed attention on the woman movement. Now he is uncomfortably conscious of something stirring in the other sex which makes for change-exactly what kind of change neither sex seems to know; but it is certain that, in the words of Mr Heape, 'man's opinion of woman has been definitely modified; his attitude towards her as an integral component of society can never be the same again.' On the other hand, woman's attitude to man has suffered (in certain classes of society) a no less definite modification; and the result is a somewhat acute phase in the long conflict of the sexes.

Few writers on feminism appear to realise that social evolution must have its roots in natural law, and even when they do, they are apt, like Mrs C. P. Gilman, to ignore certain facts and pervert others in an almost grotesque fashion. Mr Walter Heape, who treats the subject of sex relations from a biological standpoint, does not get much further than a statement of the elements of the problem. He is a biologist and not a sociologist. His diagnosis of the condition of unrest which, to-day, permeates all civilised society is nevertheless particularly clear. He traces it to three sources, racial, class and sex antagonism; and he believes the last to be by far the most dangerous, since it is practically family war, and family quarrels are proverbially the most bitter. He agrees with Mr Havelock Ellis that the movement is entering on a new and critical phase-a conclusion which few students of feminism will doubt, having in view not only the excesses of a section of women and the change of attitude in both sexes, but the general anarchic trend of feminist literature and the wide extension of doctrines calculated to foster sex-antagonism among the very class which is destined to provide the teachers and models of the next generation.

It is a corrective to the somewhat gloomy perspective opened out by feminist literature to turn to Mr Beveridge's 'John and Irene.' When one is obsessed by the

apparently new and insoluble problems presented, one can find infinite consolation in this anthology of thoughts on woman. By quotations which range from Hesiod, the prophet Esdras and the Laws of Manu down to Miss Cicely Hamilton and the report of the Registrar-General for 1910, Mr Beveridge nearly convinces us that there is no new woman, nor new woman's movement, nor anything new to be said about woman and her movement. At the same time, in the allegory which is the prelude to the anthology, Mr Beveridge sounds one uncertain note; and it is to the implied question that one returns.

The allegory sets forth how John, a convinced and ardent feminist, fell in love with Irene, whose wise and careful upbringing had preserved her, hitherto, from serious thought about anything. With the imprudence of the reformer who can never let well alone, John

'began to educate her about Woman's cause. . . . She became filled with the delight of reasoning and understanding; she seized on and held her first conclusions with the dogmatism of the undergraduate, and was prepared to sacrifice everything to philosophy. John, on the other hand.... was a perfectly normal person desiring to govern his own life in normal ways.'

The exact nature of their disagreement is not revealed, but it culminated in the incineration, by John, of a volume believed to be the work of Mr Bernard Shaw.

...

'They parted in anger that afternoon and would not meet again. Irene . . . stepping into John's place in the (feminist) ranks, has bought the feminist library which he has sold, and John, who cannot dance, has again been seen at dances. . . So the story ends for the present on a note of hope renewed.'

The note is an uncertain one. John, it is true, will get himself a wife, a hearth, domestic joys, and live the normal life of the normal man. He will accept meekly, nay blindly, the yoke of his normal spouse. He will accept his share of the burden of carrying on the world's work on what he believes to be his own terms.' That

'Women have obtained their places in the world because they are desired by men on grounds which are not of the highest ethical quality; but these are the only grounds on which men will consent to . . . carrying on the burden of a society, about whose invention they were not consulted.' ('Essays in Fallacy,' Dr Macphail, p. 96.)

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they are not really his own may never occur to him, so long as his manhood is at once satisfied and exercised by his family relations. But what of Irene? Is she to be permanently contented with a feminist library and a cause?

Feminism, like socialism, is difficult to confine within the boundaries of a formula. Mr W. L. George in ' Woman and To-morrow' has done what is possible in this direction. Feminism, he says, is, broadly, the furthering of the interests of woman, philosophically the levelling of the sexes, and specifically the social and political emancipation of woman. Broadly therefore, many writers, such as Ruskin, or Dr J. L. Tayler, are feminists, though they accept neither the philosophy nor its specific application; while a large number of writers with a feminist bias, from Montaigne to Mazzini, might have accepted the philosophy but would probably have hesitated over the specific application of their theories. The modern feminist, particularly the female feminist, is distinguished by her attempt to reduce these theories and generalities to everyday practice.* In pursuit of this aim she may, like Irene, be forced to break off relations with the other sex, she may view the privileges of her sex as badges of degradation, and she may, in the pursuit of spiritual and political emancipation, find it necessary to place herself on the level of male criminals. Not having troubled much over the inductive processes by which her conclusions were reached, Irene that is Woman-conceives of them as something final and incontrovertible. John, who had been brought up by a managing mother and exacting sisters, theorises with some self-complacency (it rather pleased him to think of himself as an hereditary grand oppressor') on the equality of the sexes. Irene, with the practical, concrete vision of her sex, asks for its definite expression in the shape of a reformed marriage service, 'economic independence,' or a new conception of sexual relations. The keynote to these new relations is to be found in the word 'individualism.' The weekly

·

* These qualities of mind naturally drive women to literary interests which are concrete, personal and emotional. Men turn more easily... to the abstract generalisations of science.' (Earl Barnes, 'Woman in Modern Society.')

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