Introduction v natural instinct, so that when in 1895, at the request of the Committee of the Women's Exhibition in Copenhagen, she first entered the field in which she was to become so famous, by delivering a lecture on the "Mis- used Forces of Womanhood, " her ideas seemed to herself so much matter of course, mere commonplace truths which all developed women must hold, that she experienced some difficulty in giving expression to them. It was not until protests and even attacks followed the delivery and publication of this lecture that she realised that here was her mission and that the world had need of her message. To-day, Ellen Key stands at that point in the Woman Movement where growth is most vital and the conflict of opinions most acute. It is quite easy to display resentment towards Ellen Key, and to cast ridicule on her work; the one and the other have been done even by people who have themselves played a highly honourable part in the Woman Movement. But there can be no denying that Ellen Key is intensely alive, acutely sen- sitive to all the best influences of her time, and throughout, in her weakness and in her strength, a thorough and essential woman.