124 Ellen Key her oath of allegiance, has ever hated dogmas, and has wanted life in its entirety. Those who are easily impressed, generally acquire opinions quickly, and change them just as quickly. Ellen Key, on the contrary, is extremely conservative in her emotional life, and has but tardily completed the process of development which her own life and experiences, as well as outward circumstances and environment, have induced. Previously to the books mentioned above, Ellen Key had published three smaller works on social and political questions, the most important of which is Individualism and Socialism.'- She had long thought on social- ism, and wished to see its theories justified, although her strongly individualistic nature was rather repelled than attracted b}^ it. The indignation inherited from her mother, at all social injustices, and the insight, gained at her father's side, of how wrongly a liberal movement often is judged from the outside, prepared her to understand socialism. Her warm interest in its teaching was not aroused, however, until there began to be heard the ^ Individualism and Socialism was published in book-fom in 1895, but had earlier been the subject of a lecture in Christiania and Upsala.