Whoever looks upon life with the eye of broad imagination perceives that it is one comprehensive whole that cannot be divided, that the greatest thing in it completes the smallest, and the smallest thing in it completes the greatest. Among man's greatest delusions is the belief that he possesses a self independent of every other self, that he can live in isolation from his brother man, and that he can set up a barrier between himself and other people.

Perhaps the signs of this partnership appear between man and woman more than in anything else: man and woman are the two wings of a single bird, which is humanity, and the two pans of a single balance, which is the order of life; and whoever attempts to rank one above the other comes away defeated.

Woman's position in life is no less than man's, for the foundation of human society is the home and the family. And who can deny that woman is the queen of that home and the princess of that family?

He who advocates robbing woman of her liberty is a slave who has never been freed, for he who is freed turns to freeing whoever is enslaved, and he who is enslaved does not free, because he has lost his liberty — and he who lacks a thing cannot give it. Man has wronged woman only because he has not yet found his way to justice within himself, and he has enslaved her only because he has found no path to liberty within his own soul.

It is blasphemy that woman should beg her right to life and her liberty from man, when life in its entirety is hers. Nor is it in keeping with life's justice that man should enjoy a right which woman does not enjoy. There is no justification for his enjoying the freedom to vote

without woman — she who has walked beside him, side by side, in all the fields of life, from poetry to literature and music and the other great matters besides. In history and in present fact we have the truest witness to this.

"In our belief, the Lebanese woman finds in the support given her by

Mr. Kamadi Kamadi, Secretary of the Bar Association, a strong voice among the voices of the educated, conscious young generation, which has begun to feel that its national self suffers a grievous deficiency so long as woman is not given a real and genuine share in society."

For here we still read, from al-Khansa, from Maysun al-Kilabiyya, wife of Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, and from Layla al-Akhyaliyya, poetry and letters beneath which stands the verse of the master poets. And how many a woman of letters in our own age has hung a jewel about the neck of literature! What, then, is the meaning of this acknowledgment of woman's excellence in such great things, joined to the accusation that she is incapable of performing what is incomparably less? Indeed, upon my life, how can woman keep pace with man — and all but outstrip

him — in the field of the liberal professions, such as medicine, law, and engineering, which are the most exacting and difficult things in human society, and yet have no right to vote, when between the two there is a disproportion beyond all measure?

Nay, would that I knew: how can woman be a school that brings forth prodigies, raises up geniuses, and makes good men of many, and yet not be fit to choose the worthy among them? Which is greater — to create a thing, or to point it out? It is sheer folly to accuse woman of incapacity: for what incapacity can be ascribed to her who makes of the coward a brave man, of the weak a strong one, of the miser a generous, open-handed one, and of the stammerer an eloquent speaker?

She who directs the politics of the home — and the politics of the home is the nucleus of the politics of the entire world — will find

Woman: Body and Soul (Book Advertisement)

Just published:

the long-awaited book

Woman:

Body and Soul

by Dr. Georges Hanna

Publishers:

Dar al-Ahad — Beirut

To be ordered from the publishers

Price per copy:

200 piasters, or 230 milliemes, or fils