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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37964-8.txt b/37964-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..194256c --- /dev/null +++ b/37964-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13393 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Feminism and Sex-Extinction, by Arabella +Kenealy + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Feminism and Sex-Extinction + + +Author: Arabella Kenealy + + + +Release Date: November 9, 2011 [eBook #37964] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION*** + + +E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Martin Pettit, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/feminismsexextin00kenerich + + + + + +FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION + + * * * * * + +OLIVE SCHREINER'S GREAT BOOK + +WOMAN & LABOUR + +_Large Crown 8vo. Cloth._ + +8s. 6d. net + +"The feelings which are behind the various women's movements could not +find clearer or more eloquent expression than they do in this remarkable +book." + +_The Daily Mail._ + +"At last there has come the book which is destined to be the prophecy +and the gospel of the whole awakening." + +_The Nation._ + + +T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., LONDON. + + * * * * * + +FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION + +by + +ARABELLA KENEALY L.R.C.P. (DUBLIN) + + +"_A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can +a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit._" + +"_Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them._" + + + + + + + +London +T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. +1 Adelphi Terrace + +First published in 1920 + +All rights reserved + + + + +FOREWORD + + +Feminism, the extremist--and of late years the predominant cult of the +Woman's Movement, is Masculinism. + +It makes for such training and development in woman, of male +characteristics, as shall equip her to compete with the male in every +department of life; academic, athletic, professional, political, +industrial. And it neither recognises nor admits in her natural +aptitudes differing from those of men, and fitting her, accordingly, for +different functions in these. It rejects all concessions to her +womanhood; even to her mother-function. It repudiates all privileges for +her. Boldly it demands a fair field only and no favour; equal rights, +political and social, identical education and training, identical +economic opportunities and avocations, an identical morale, personal and +public. + +In _Woman and Labour_, Miss Olive Schreiner sums in a line the Feminist +objective: "_We take all labour for our province._" And this is the text +of the Feminist creed; the elimination of sex-differences and the +abolition of sex-distinctions in every department of life and activity. + +Feminists anticipate--the militant faction with zest--fierce economic +encounters between the sexes now that, War ended, our men, having fought +their own and woman's battle in the trenches, are returning to reclaim +their places in the world of work. Secure in that possession which is +"nine-tenths of the law," and armed with their new powers of +enfranchisement, it is further anticipated that the usurpers will be +able triumphantly to stem the masculine reflux, and to retain, on all +hands, their new industrial footing. + +By showing that, contrary to Feminist doctrine, the division of Labour +into two sexes, so to speak, is as natural and is as indispensable to +Human Progress as is the division of Life into two sexes, the purpose of +this book is to dissuade women from exploiting a world's misfortunes for +their own immediate profit, and to reconcile them, in their profounder +and more vital interests and in those of the Race, to surrender freely +all the essentially masculine employments into which mischance has cast +them. + +Human evolution and progress have resulted absolutely from an opposite +trend, in inherence and development, of the two sexes, as regards Life +and characteristics, aptitude and avocation. The progressive +differentiations and specialisations of vital processes and living +forms, whereby human character and faculty have been increasingly +advanced to higher powers, reach their most admirable culmination in the +complex division of Humanity into two genders; each of which is enabled, +by way of such complex specialisation, to promote, to intensify and to +dignify its own allotted order of qualities. To oppose and frustrate +this natural dispensation, whereby Human development is achieved by the +two sexes travelling along diametrically opposite lines of Ascent, is to +nullify all that civilisation has secured, and to transform the impulse +of Progress into one of Decadence. + +Nature, marvellously prescient in all her processes, has provided that +the sexes, by being constituted wholly different in body, brain and +bent, do not normally come into rivalry and antagonism in the fulfilment +of their respective life-rôles. Their faculties and functions, being +complementary and supplementary (and obviously best applied, therefore, +in different departments of Life and of Labour), men and women are +naturally dependent upon one another in every human relation; a +dispensation which engenders reciprocal trust, affection and +comradeship. + +Feminist doctrine and practice menace these most excellent previsions +and provisions of Nature by thrusting personal rivalries, economic +competition and general conflict of interests between the sexes. + + +Should any reader find in these pages allusions and passages which, +without biological or medical knowledge, may not be wholly clear to him, +let him remember that these are addressed to such as have dipped more +deeply into the subjects dealt with. + +The main outlines and implications of the new Hypothesis presented here, +of the origin and evolution of Sex, are all that he requires to grasp, +in order to follow the argument of the book in its relation to Feminist +methods. + +ARABELLA KENEALY, L.R.C.P. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + +FOREWORD v + + +BOOK I + +WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION + + I. IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM 3 + + II. INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND + FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONS + ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE 21 + + III. THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION 35 + + IV. ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE 51 + + V. MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS BY + MISAPPROPRIATING THE LIFE-POTENTIAL OF MALE OFFSPRING 73 + + +BOOK II + +WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE + + I. DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS + DUE TO FEMINISM 95 + + II. THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE 109 + + III. THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE 126 + + IV. THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES 146 + + V. MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE + DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT 166 + + VI. FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS + TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN FACULTY 190 + + VII. FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE + OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE AND PROGRESS 219 + + VIII. DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO + ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS 242 + + IX. THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN 264 + + +APPENDIX + +FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF BIOLOGICAL AND +MENDELIAN PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I 292 + + + + +BOOK I + +WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION + + + + +CHAPTER I + +IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM + + "The sexual love which has its origin in what is external and + accidental may easily be turned to hate, a kind of madness that is + nourished on discord; but that love, on the other hand, is lasting + which has its source in freedom of soul and in the will to bear and + bring up children."--_Spinoza._ + + +I + +There is no subject save that of Religion about which so much +impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written as has been spoken and +written round the Woman Question. + +For more than half a century--since Mill wrote his famous _Subjection_, +indeed--it has become an increasing vogue to regard Woman as a martyr; +more or less sainted, more or less crushed and effaced beneath the +iron-heeled tyrannies, personal, economic, and political, of the +oppressor, Man. And it has been in the spirit of this conviction and in +fervid endeavours--indignant and chivalrous on the part of the one sex, +and still more indignant and but little less chivalrous on the part of +the other--to liberate unhappy victims from a barbarous oppression, that +most of the impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written, and doughty +deeds done. + +At the certain cost, therefore, of being stigmatised as a reactionary +(severely qualified), I propose to unmask some of these which I believe +to be baseless obsessions, and to present a wholly new--and, I hope, a +more veracious and inspiring version of the case between the sexes. + +To begin with, I assert boldly that the so-called Subjection of Woman, +very far from having been a cruel injustice merely, on the part of man, +has served, on the contrary, as a blessing and an inestimable benefit +not only to herself but to the Race bound up in her. A blessing often +rough and painful in its methods, during epochs when all other methods +were both rough and painful, attended, too, by wrongs and cruelties; +yet, in the main, operating vastly to her well-being and advancement +and, in hers, to those of the Race. + + +Looking back upon the hard and bloody routes of Evolution whereby the +human Races have attained to present-day developments, we see our +forbears groping blindly, fighting blindly, advancing blindly; +stumbling, falling, picking up again; making new departures only +hopelessly to lose the road; making new departures, now to find it and +trudge on. In all its painful and laborious phases, a terrible and +sordid climb. Yet, nevertheless, in its great annals of Ascent, a noble +and a wondrous March of Progress. + +And whether we are Religionists or Evolutionists--or are sufficiently +broad-minded to be both--the history of Life is seen to have been a +history of deathless effort, never ceasing, never waning; renewed with +every generation; intensified by every further acquisition of new power, +as, with every further recognition of new goals and problems, the +ever-increasing Purpose and the ever-increasing perplexity and +complexity of The Purpose revealed itself at every step. It becomes +increasingly clear, moreover, that Creation, or Creative Evolution (to +employ Professor Bergson's phrase), has been the resultant of a +progressive aggregation of Atomic Matter about some vast immanent +_Idea_, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees materialising in the +objective. Very much as bricks are grouped about the pre-conceived plan +of a house, and could not be assembled in the building of the simplest +tool-hut without predetermination of the site of every brick, and of +the relation of every brick to every other. + +And in all those past ages of conflict, bringing Order out of Chaos, +Progress out of Order, and an ever-increasing domination of blind Energy +and Inorganic Matter by Mind and Purpose, the fighting male it has been +who, in his conquest of the Earth as in his conquest of other fighting +males, both brute and human, has borne the greater heat and burden of +the day. Women have striven also--toil has been the crux of their +development as of their mates. But men have striven twofold. While women +toiled in the security of homes, the sword, the blunderbuss or +press-gang, or the equivalent of these, according to the epoch, awaited +men and still await them at most street-corners of the arduous male +career. + +Women have suffered more, _psychically_; because this way lay their +nature and their human lot. Men have suffered more, _materially_; +because here lay theirs. And since advancement comes by suffering, women +are reaping to-day the harvest of past travail of their sex, in the +higher psychical development which now characterises that sex. During +centuries when men were vastly too hard-pressed by the struggle for +barest existence to have been aware that they possessed souls, women +were privileged to be aware of theirs--by the affliction thereof. + +The immediate purpose of this fencing of the women behind the stronger +frames, the stronger wills, and stronger brains of fighting males was +the Racial one, of course. While men battled with environment and with +alien aggressors for their lives and for their food, as for those of the +family, the sheltered women were alike the loom and cradle of the Race. +As well, they made havens, or homes, for the fighters to return to for +sleep and refreshment. They plied a simple, primitive agriculture, +practised a primitive healing art, and otherwise evolved The +Humanities. But since mortal power is limited, power expended in one +direction is power withdrawn from some other. Power spent in battle is +power lost to progress. The woman who, with the instinct for home and as +shelter for her babes, laid the foundations of Architecture in a hut of +mud, was enabled to do this solely by virtue of masculine protection. + +It is in peace only that Progress arises, in leisure that The Arts +evolve. And woman, walled in by the lives of the males, found leisure of +body and mind to pluck flowers for the adorning of her hut, to shape +platters of clay, and, later, even for embellishment of these with crude +designs. Thus she was the first artist. + +The fighting male was--by necessity--destructive. He invented a club. +The female was--by privilege--constructive. She invented the needle (a +fish-bone, doubtless). And while the male transmitted to offspring his +virile fighting and destructive qualities, woman tempered and humanised +these by incorporating with them her milder traits and artistries of +peace. Lacking the male aggressive and protective faculties, however, +increasing in skill and resource with his ever further Adaptation to +(and of) environment, woman's gentler and humanising aptitudes would +have had neither opportunity for evolution, nor scope for exercise and +further sway. + + +II + +I have been reading an account, by a naturalist, of some phases in the +life-history of crabs. And it is interesting to find even among +creatures so low in the Life-scale (although Darwin regarded these as +the most intelligent of _crustaceæ_) that same instinct of protection of +the female which is seen in the higher orders of creation. + +A crab, being encased in an unyielding shell, is able to increase its +growth only by "casting" its shell and developing one of larger size +over its increased bulk. During the interval between casting an old +shell and acquiring a new one, the crab in its soft, pulpy condition is +readily injured, or falls prey to its natural enemies. To protect itself +as well as may be, it shelters in rocky crevices or in other available +hiding-places. This shell-casting occurs in both sexes, of course. But +the circumstances under which the change is made differ widely in the +sexes. For while the male-crab has no protector during his defenceless, +shell-less state, his shell is cast a month or more earlier than occurs +in the female; after which he feeds up, in order to be in superior +fighting trim for her protection during her shell-casting phase. +Fishermen describe him as then spreading himself over her as a hen +covers her chicks, and in her defence desperately attacking all comers. +The result of such protection of the female is that, although males are +larger and fiercer, "hen-crabs" are numerous, while males are scarce. + +The like is true of nearly every species. The males protect the females. +Even the gorilla, savage and most terrible of beasts, lies at night on +guard beneath the tree in which his mate and offspring sleep. If need +arise, he fights to the death in their defence. + +With regard to the chivalrous devotion of male-birds, Olive Schreiner +thus comments in _Woman and Labour_ (an example of that I have ventured +to describe as the "impassioned fallacy" hurtling round the Woman +Question): "Along the line of bird-life and among certain of its +species, sex has attained its highest æsthetic, and one might almost say +intellectual, development on earth ... represents the realisation of the +highest sexual ideal which haunts humanity." + +(This however, less, I fear, to accredit the male-sex with chivalry than +to discredit the human male by ornithological comparison!) + + * * * * * + +One does not profess that such protective rôle of males--beast and bird +and crab--is the outcome of sentiment. It is instinctive, subconscious. +Nature's purpose being to preserve and to perpetuate species, she +achieves this by safeguarding the female. The province of the male in +reproduction is but slight and brief. It exacts so little from him as to +interfere not at all with those other masculine activities which are the +function of his sex. + +Whereas, as Professor Lester Ward says, "Woman [and the female of all +species] _is_ the Race." Out of her blood and bone and vital powers she +evolves and fashions it, nurtures and ministers to it. + + +III + +For the preservation of species, two rôles are essential: the Male rôle +of Combat, demanding strength and boldness, resource and +fighting-quality, in order to protect and provide for the female and +offspring; and the Female rôle of Devotion and Self-surrender, in order +to nurture offspring ante-natally, and, after birth, to nurture and to +tend its helplessness. + +Now all but biologists, perhaps, take it as matter-of-course that Love +had its origin in Sex. + +Seeing love between the sexes as the strongest and most dominant of the +civilised passions, it is natural to infer that it was born of the +instinctive attraction between male and female, and that this +instinctive attraction, with the growth and expansion of faculty, mental +and temperamental, has evolved to the high and tender issues to be found +in latter-day romantic passion; theme of poets, novelists, artists; +richest and most exquisite of life's emotions; inspiration and motive of +the finest human achievements. A passion which, for a space at least, +transfigures the natures and ennobles the lives of all but the crass and +the sordid. + +Nevertheless--Love did not arise out of sex. The sex-relation in primal +men and women held no element of affection; no sympathy, tenderness, +self-sacrifice, or other attribute of Love. On the part of the female, +it was compulsory surrender and the habit of surrender to superior +strength, mitigated, doubtless, by a subconscious instinct to secure +offspring. In the male, it was impulse as tyrannous and selfish as was +the instinct to kill. Like the instinct to kill, a factor in it made for +fitness for survival. There was in it, accordingly, an element of +instinctive selection. But the selection made for survival-fitness +merely in the mate. It owed nothing to sentimental appeal exercised by +one female, and lacking in another. The instinct to mate was implanted +by Nature for the continuation of species. If its observance contained +an element of gratification, it held no more of reciprocity than did the +gratification of that stronger lust, to kill, include a consideration of +the feelings of the prey, or than greed of any other form of possession +extends a grace of reciprocal benefit to the thing acquired. + +Modern savages have no conception of sexual love. There are no +love-songs, no courtship, no affection in their matings. The males marry +mainly in order to secure wives to work for them. And they select strong +women because these are best fitted for work. Or they select women who +have some or another small possession. Biological instinct is a factor, +doubtless, but it is not a factor of sentiment. + +In his fine book, _Natural Law in the Spiritual World_, Professor +Drummond says: + + + "Probably we have all taken for granted that husbands and wives + have always loved one another. Evolution takes nothing for granted + ... in the lower reaches of Human Nature, husband and wife do not + love one another ... for the vast mass of mankind during the long + ages which preceded historic times, conjugal love was probably all + but unknown.... + + "The idea that the existence of sex accounts for the existence of + love is untrue. Marriage among early races has nothing to do with + love. Among savage peoples, the phenomenon everywhere confronts us + of wedded life without a grain of love. Love then is no necessary + ingredient of the sex-relation; it is not an outgrowth of passion. + Love is love and has always been love, and has never been anything + lower." + + +Even to-day, despite the evolution of the higher faculties, despite long +centuries of inherited habit and tradition, and despite the circumstance +that in all the nobler types of men and women the sex-instinct is +spiritualised by affection and understanding--Even in this late day of +civilisation, the male sex-instinct may be seen still in all its native +tyranny and selfishness; seeking gratification in sensuality and +cruelty, with callous disregard alike of the welfare as of the suffering +of its victim. In the violation of women and children that occurs both +in peace and in war, the instinct manifests as an impulse of aggression, +and the sex-function as one of brutality or ruthless lust. + + +IV + +Respecting the origin of Mind and Emotion, Charles Darwin said: + + + "In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the + lowest organisms, is as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself + first originated." + + +And Huxley: + + + "I know nothing, and never hope to know anything of the steps by + which the passage from molecular movement to states of + consciousness is effected. The two things are on two utterly + different platforms, the physical facts go along by themselves and + the mental facts go along by themselves." + + +While Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace (the biologist who was working out the +theory of Natural Selection simultaneously with Darwin, both unaware +that the other was working in the same direction) attributes to a +Creative act of God, all the moral and intellectual qualities which have +been super-added in man to those lesser and simpler ones he possesses in +common with the higher animals. Wallace describes this as a "Divine +Influx," and regards it as being wholly distinct and apart from the slow +and gradual processes of Natural Selection. + +But yet, in point of fact, what was it that inspired and energised the +earlier processes, if not this same Divine Influx? The simpler processes +must, from their earliest rudimentary beginnings, have been leading up +to the later and more complex. And the later and more complex were, +surely, continuous with the simpler--since Nature abhors miracles, and +works by slow progressive biological sequences. + +Nothing shows as more impersonal than a crystal; cold, hard, senseless, +motionless. And yet in crystals is the element of Life, even the power +of reproduction, showing factors of sex already operative in them. While +living bodies, charged with warmth, mobility, sentience, intelligence, +have Inorganic Matter for their basis of construction. And that +Inorganic elements are very far from being the impersonal things they +seem, but are linked by subtle correspondences to living Mind and vital +powers, is shown by their effects on living processes and consciousness. +Given as medicines, digestion (which is a species of rapid evolution +from lower to higher forms of energy) develops such vital inherences +within them as prove their apparent impersonality to contain a principle +continuous not only with living processes, but with the highest +mentality. + +Professor Leduc observes in his illuminating book, "The Mechanism of +Life," "_the ordinary physical forces have, in fact, a power of +organisation infinitely greater than has been hitherto supposed by the +boldest imagination_." + +Coralline structures and beautiful shells, fungi, leaves, and plants +bearing coloured, flowerlike blooms spring into growth when a formless +fragment of calcium salt is dropped into a chemical solution. And these +"Osmotic growths," artificially produced, possess far greater complexity +of structure and of function than do the simpler living organisms of +Nature. + + +The evidences of a Vast Stupendous Plan, which every further scientific +discovery still further emphasises, are slowly forcing from our men of +Science the confession that behind the marvellous phenomena their +findings reveal, and which they are powerless to explain, must lie a +Cause, occult and irresistible, an Impulse, all-pervading, +incomprehensible. + +Bergson describes an _élan vital_--a living impetus--determining such +phenomena. + +In his Presidential address to the British Association at Dublin, in +1908, Professor J. S. Haldane summed up as follows the position of +Physiological Science: "The point now reached is that the conceptions of +Physics and Chemistry are insufficient to enable us to understand +physiological phenomena." + +Weismann says: "Behind the co-operating forces of Nature, we must admit +a Cause ... inconceivable in its nature, of which we can only say one +thing with certainty, that it must be theological." + +Drummond says: "Evolution is Advolution,--better, it is Revelation--the +phenomenal expression of the Divine, the progressive realisation of the +Ideal, the Ascent of Love." + +If, then, we admit Life to be the product of a Divine Influx, whereby +Inorganic Matter has been, by way of evolutionary processes, +increasingly empowered to fructify in living form and faculty, Human +Attributes are seen to be the flower of Spiritual seed, which, sown in +Life, has germinated; has struck roots of biological function into +living flesh and put forth leaves in living traits; has developed in +physiological processes and blossomed in powers of Mind and of body. And +as the stronger and deeper the grip of its roots in the earth, the +taller and nobler the oak towers heavenward, so it must be with human +characteristics. The deeper and more firmly the seedling faculties +strike roots in living function, the fuller and more potent springs the +impulse toward that evolutionary perfection which is the goal of Human +Being. + +If, however, living processes are the resultant of a Divine Influx, they +are Spiritual processes. Life is then a manifestation in Matter, of +Spirit. All the developments of Life are Spiritual phenomena, therefore. +The imperfection and evil found in living creatures are not attributes +of Life. They are crudities of rudimentary organisation, or are failures +in or aberrations from the normal development of Life. + + +V + +In the Evolution of Faculty, living traits are seen to have been all the +while attaining to higher power by the differentiation and development +of special organs to subserve their fuller function, their finer +conscious apprehension, and their more complex manifestation on the +material plane. + +The brain has been specialised thus to serve as the organ of +Consciousness; the eye, of Vision; the ear, of Hearing; the hand, of +Touch and of manipulation. The lowest organisms possess no such +specialised organs of sense or of consciousness. Nor are they equipped +with special reproductive organs. They reproduce by cleavage; by +budding a small portion of themselves, which, when separated, grows to a +mature organism. + +With other differentiations and specialisations of Function and Faculty, +there has developed--for the all-important racial purpose of creating +ever higher and more potent living species--the highly-complex human +reproductive system, which, by its close and subtle nervous alliance +with the brain, has become the medium and the instrument of a new and +irresistible emotion. So that it serves not only for the perpetuation of +a complex species, but, moreover, for the attraction, by natural +affinity, of the mates best suited to one another. + +And in course of evolutionary progress, the emotion of Love has been all +the while more and more so leavening and inspiring sex-attraction with +its purer and more tender attributes, that human passion has come to +combine--in those of higher nature--the flame and energy of physical +attraction with the tenderness and devotion of altruistic affection. +With the result that human parenthood, thus quickened and spiritualised, +has become ever further empowered to evolve more highly intelligised, +more beautiful and more efficient types of offspring. + + +That Passion, pure and simple, has evolved out of the Male sex-instinct +is certain. Even in its chivalrous development of romantic passion, are +found, in transfigured form, that flame and urgence for possession which +manifest crudely and cruelly in the primal male-instinct. Without this +virile ardour, indeed, the sex-relation is but a poor and tepid, or a +cold and sensual thing. + +Yet Passion is not Love. + +That meekness and forbearance, humility and self-surrender have been +reared in the Female sex-instinct of submission to passion (primarily in +aversion and fear more often than in acquiescence) is equally certain. +And without these chastening factors to temper, soften and anneal, the +sex-relation is a fierce and tyrannous concern. But no more than +passion, is submission Love. Neither in passion nor in submission, pure +and simple, is there joy of surrender or welding communion. + +Nevertheless, since every human faculty must have its roots in living +function, and every living function must possess some physical organ in +which its processes occur, from what human function sprang the Love that +is selfless, altruistic and pitiful; soul and inspiration of the most +sacred emotions--self-sacrifice, charity, mercy, devotion, tenderness? +In what nursery of Human Consciousness was this fair and gentle blossom +sown; to spring, to develop, and to make for gracious growth? + +Since, although it has come to lend its purity and sweetness to the +Sex-passion, it neither sprang from nor has been reared in sex-instinct, +is it a product of Parental Affection? Is it an evolution of the +self-negation and the tenderness of parents for their children? + + +VI + +Throughout Nature, the parental instinct is seen as a unique +development, detached from and high above all other developments. +Demanding, as it does, the complete surrender and self-denying labours +of one individual in the interests of another, it differs from and +traverses all other dictates. It impels a creature whose every instinct +it had been--whose religion of biological survival it had been, +indeed--to be wholly self-centred in its every aim and action, all at +once to make another creature the focus of its interests and efforts. +Where for a scratch, for a glance, the fierce female would have fallen +tooth and nail upon another, now she surrenders meekly to the pangs of +bringing offspring into life--and straightway licks and suckles the +frail being that has riven her. Where she would furiously have driven +off, or would have killed, another creature that approached her food, +now she gives herself as food for this. Where lesser Fitness for +survival on another's part had been signal for making such her prey, now +Unfitness in the extremest degree claims her devotion and care. + +Superfluous to cite cases of maternal altruism. The mildest and most +timid among creatures becomes fierce and courageous in defence of her +young. Style it "merely instinct," if you will. It is none the less +heroic on the part of every individual that obeys it, and does not obey +it blindly and mechanically merely, but employs all her poor wit and +resource to suit her heroism to the special circumstance. + + +Without care and attention from the moment of its birth, the life of an +infant would be reckoned in hours. The higher the organism, the more and +for the longer period its infancy exacts unceasing devotion and nurture. + +Fish and moth and other species of low order are cast off in the egg. +Chicks scramble out of the shell. + +The higher their grade in the scale of organisation and intelligence, +the more helpless and incapable young creatures are to feed and to fend +for themselves. Kittens are born blind and helpless, but after a few +days they see and crawl about. The elephant-mother suckles and +safeguards her baby-elephant for two whole years. + +Now, were there no purpose in all this--Were it not that such devotion +to offspring serves as impulse and spur to the evolution and development +of faculty in parents, Nature, in planning the complex human species, +would, surely, have endowed the human infant and child with fuller +powers of self-preservation. + +Were there other functions and aptitudes the exercise whereof would +better stimulate and foster human progress, it is inconceivable that +children would be, and would be for so long, the helpless, feckless, +dependent mortals that they are. + +For ten long lunar months, the human babe is part of its mother; homed +in the nest of her body, warmed by her warmth, fed by her blood. She +breathes for it, digests for it, assimilates for it, exercises for it. +For ten further lunar months, it is dependent upon her for the food by +which it lives. For nearly a year, save for an inept power of creeping, +with but small sense of direction, it requires to be moved and carried +everywhere. For years it must be washed, dressed, combed, laid down to +sleep at night, got up in the morning, taken for rides or for walks, +played with, bidden, chidden; comforted, warmed, cooled; defended, +cherished, instructed--in a hundred ways to be gently and progressively +adapted to life, by way of a more or less highly-specialised +environment. Even when no longer helpless, it must be provided for in +the matters of housing, food, clothing, education. It must be instructed +in a means of livelihood, and started on its young career. + +Among the poorer classes the child depends upon its hard-worked parents +for a period varying between twelve and sixteen years. In the +professional classes, the young son and daughter are not fully qualified +for independent existence before the ages of twenty-three or +twenty-five. In ill-health, in brain defect, and in other incapacities, +parents must provide for their offspring for life. + +And seeing how the demands of the young, and the response and exactions +of the parents multiply and amplify proportionally with the higher +evolution of both, we are forced to believe that the small +survival-value of the child, owing to its native unadaptedness to +environment, is part of The Plan, and that it subserves some high and +complex purpose in human development. + + +VII + +An essential obligation of Parenthood is, that, in order to fulfil this +duly, the parents require to undergo a wholly new and intrinsic +adjustment of faculty. Having arrived already at a complex adaptation to +a complex civilised environment, in physique and character, in mentality +and habit, now, by a revolutionary reversal of their human progress, +they must re-adapt to the simplest of all creatures and conditions--a +helpless, puling infant in a cradle. + +Where they had had a whole world, perhaps, of intellectual interests and +social pursuits to engage them, now they forgather beside a cot +and--according as they are human or are not--lose themselves, brain and +heart and soul, in the puling, impotent thing. They make themselves eyes +and ears, arms and legs for it; carriage, chair and bed. They gaze, +entranced, upon the marvel of the opening and shutting of its eyes. It +yawns; they tremble lest it dislocate a jaw. It sneezes; now they +shudder lest it may have taken cold. It gurgles, and they are +transported to a seventh heaven. + +Never has either been equally fluttered at their recognition by an +exalted personage as both exult when flattered by the flicker of an +eyelash that it distinguishes its father from its mother; or either from +its nurse. Both perhaps are self-contained and philosophic beings, yet +its cry distracts them; scatters their composure to the winds. The inept +thing cannot even tell them what it wants. Its cry for food is much the +same as is its cry when it requires to be laid down, or lifted up. When +its milk is not sweet enough, its inarticulate fury is expressed in +notes identical--so far as they can judge--with those of its impotent +wrath when a pin-point pricks it. + +But whatsoever the cause, to the winds the parental composure is +scattered, as hither and thither they scurry, distraught, seeking a +reason and a remedy. And this, of course, had been their tyrant's +purpose. He had meant to strike panic in his parents' hearts. He was +vexed or empty, or was otherwise uneasy. And behold the penalties of +those who suffer him to be vexed or empty, or otherwise uneasy! + +And whether they are rough, hard-working persons who have neither time +nor taste for fuss and nonsense; whether they are the Archbishop of +Canterbury and Mrs. Archbishop, Sir Isaac and Lady Newton, or the +Emperor and Empress of Japan, it is all the same to Baby. No other uses +have they in his absurd judgment than to obey his slightest gurgle. + +And the wonder of the business is that they too--provided they be +normal, wholesome-minded, natural-hearted persons--are of similar +opinion. Even a Professor of Archæology must feel a twinge of some +emotion when his first baby cuts its first tooth. King Lion himself +suffers it with patience when his cub scratches his royal countenance, +or gets its milk-teeth into his prize-bone. + +The whole face of the earth is transformed by the Baby, indeed. And how +much it is transformed for the better! It is not too much to say that it +is humanised, redeemed. The most grudging of curmudgeons murmurs only a +little to surrender his place at the fire to The Baby. The thirsty thief +forbears to drink his infant's milk. + +In his great story, _The Luck of Roaring Camp_, Bret Harte has shown, +and has shown as probable, the uplifting and regenerating influence that +"The Luck"--its mother a sinner, its father, Heaven alone knew +who!--exercised upon a rough community of vicious men. + +"It wrastled wi' my finger," says one in an awed whisper. To cover +sentiment he adds, "the durn'd little cuss!" But carefully he segregates +the member sanctified by the tiny, satin touch, from the other fingers +of his wicked hand. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND +FUNCTIONS ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE + + "The most beautiful witness to the Evolution of Man is the Mind of + a little child.... It was ages before Darwin or Lamarck or + Lucretius, that Maternity, bending over the hollowed cradle in the + forest for a first smile of recognition from her babe, expressed + the earliest trust in the doctrine of development. Every mother + since then is an unconscious Evolutionist, and every little child a + living witness to Ascent."--_Professor Drummond._ + + +I + +Tracing the attribute of Love to its source in the parental function, it +becomes clear that this function cannot be dismissed thus in a phrase. + +There are two parents. And the parts played by these, respectively, not +only differ widely in their nature, but they are signally +disproportionate in their share of the labours involved. For while the +male bears the brunt of the struggle with environment, for his own and +for survival of his mate and offspring, upon the female falls the +biological stress of pregnancy and lactation, and the material cares of +upbringing. + +The reproductive function of the male is but slight and cursory. With +the female lies the tax of havening the embryo before birth, of +nurturing it with her blood and substance, of suffering the drain it +makes upon her vital energy, the burden of its weight; with, finally, +the anguish and the dangers of delivery. And having come through all +this, the subconscious and involuntary sacrifice is replaced by +further--but now voluntary sacrifices. She not only continues to feed it +with her living substance, but she employs brain and wit and bodily +effort in tending, safeguarding and rearing it. + +Meanwhile the sire--among the lower creatures, at all events--detaches +himself with lordly indifference from any portion in these later, as he +went free of the earlier obligations. He shares his prey with her and +with their young. He defends them from the natural enemies of all. +Sometimes he condescends to play for minutes with his cubs. But +excepting among birds, the male parent takes little or no part in the +upbringing of his family. + +As with Love, so with Fatherhood, we take it as matter-of-course that +this sprang and has evolved to present developments directly out of +natural instinct. But as Love did not evolve out of the sex-instinct, +neither did father-love evolve from a paternal instinct inherent in the +lower animals and in primal man. + +Of this, Professor Drummond says: + + + "The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers, but there were + no Fathers, ... while Nature has succeeded in moulding a human + Mother and a human child, he still wanders in the forest, a savage + and unblessed soul. + + "This time for him is not lost. In his own way he also is at + school, and learning lessons which will one day be equally needed + by humanity. The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary to + human character as the virtues which gather their sweetness by the + cradle; and these robuster elements--strength, courage, manliness, + endurance, self-reliance--could only have been secured away from + domestic cares.... The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful a + process as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was almost as + formidable a problem to attack.... If Maternity was at a feeble + level in the lower reaches of Nature, Paternity was + non-existent.... When we leave the Birds and pass on to the + Mammals, the Fathers are nearly all backsliders. Many are not only + indifferent to their young, but hostile; and among the Carnivora + the Mothers have frequently to hide their little ones in case the + father eats them." + + +In place of saying, therefore, that Love sprang in, and has developed +from the exercise of the parental function, we must say that Love--in +all its higher aspects--sprang and has developed in the _maternal_ +function. + +But since every attribute, in order to be conscious and realised, is not +only rooted but is reared in living function--out of what living +function did Mother-love evolve? In the exercise of what vital processes +has it been fostered and furthered? + +In so far as these involve sacrifice of self in the interests of the +child, the maternal ante-natal processes are processes of +self-surrender. But these, when once incurred, are subconscious and +involuntary. The prospective mother has no choice but to submit to +physiological exactions. + +And only a few women--those in whom maternal love is deep beyond the +average--feel affection for their infants before birth. + +Since love must have an object upon which to exercise its faculties and +lavish its devotion, it is not, therefore, until the babe is in the +mother's arms that the Love-attribute begins to function. And then the +primal fount of all conscious and voluntary human selflessness and +sacrifice springs afresh in the individual when, in yearning toward the +helpless being in her arms, she wells with tenderness and gives herself +to be its life. + +In the altruistic tender yearning of the mother to her babe, whereat her +blood transforms itself to milk, Human Love first sprang and functioned +consciously. + +_This is my Body which is given for you.... This is my Blood ... which +is shed for you._ + +Says Goethe, "There is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest +on a deep moral foundation." He might have added "and on a great +biological function." Every act of voluntary sacrifice, every impulse of +compassion, mercy, tenderness, devotion, has had its inspiration and its +source in this which is discredited by some as being a merely physical, +and is despised, accordingly, as being an inferior process; this +mystical transmutation of the mother's blood to milk, and the +self-forgetting yearning wherein she yields herself as food for +offspring. By the evolution, upon ever higher planes of consciousness, +of this primarily instinctive sacrifice, not only Motherhood but +Fatherhood too, and the Love-passion between the sexes have been +fructified and purified, and uplifted down the ages. Other acts of +devotion arise out of maternal ministry. But this is the intrinsic +source of all. + +Travelling up through all the rudimentary phases of development, +simultaneously and side by side with the male fierce methods for the +Survival of _Fitness_, there was evolving in the female, subconsciously +and secretly, this sacramental impulse which was to inaugurate a new +era--an era wherein charity and ruth were to be born as response to the +claims of _Unfitness_. + +The first woman who, of her free-will, gave her breast to her babe was +the Mother of all the Humanities. She it was who prepared the way for +the coming of Christ. By her, Love entered first into human +consciousness. + +And by countless generations of such willing tender sacrifice upon the +part of mothers, human love has climbed out of the darkness of blind +subconscious instinct into the Light of a great transfiguration. + + +It is weighty evidence of the evolutionary impulse inherent in the +function of Lactation, that the development of this maternal trait +engenders species so far higher in organisation and morale than those of +creatures unequipped to suckle offspring, as to set the Mammalia in a +class by themselves in the van of progressive advance. The higher +organisation and morale of such result not only from the +self-surrendering instinct in the mothers of species, but doubtless also +from the superior nutrition promoted in the developing tissues of the +young of species, by the highly-individualised food elements which are +secreted by the maternal living cells. + +The vital significance of this new potence in blood to transform itself +to milk for sustenance of offspring is emphasised by the fact that the +Mammalia are warm-blooded creatures. While that this new quickening of +Life by the altruistic parental instinct originates in the female shows +her as medium of that Divine Influx inspiring Creative Evolution, and +evolving faculty by way of living function. + + +II + +The question now arises: If Love and the higher affections had their +origin in the maternal function, how happens it that man, in whom this +capacity is absent, and who is devoid, moreover, of an inherent paternal +instinct, has come, notwithstanding, to possess these higher affections? + +One may answer off-hand, with the lightness of the tyro, that these have +been transmitted to him by maternal inheritance. + +But complex biological problems are not thus easily explained. Nature +works by processes, not by implications. And the physical functions and +the mental attributes of the sexes are so dissimilar, and have, with +evolution, so diverged by ever further accentuation, that we must seek +for definite biological processes by way of which the male has become +endowed with, and whereby his primal characteristics have been +transformed by the evolution in him of the maternal instinct--under +guise of the wholly new and alien trait of Fatherhood. + +A study of Evolution shows the differentiation and intensification of +Sex-characteristics to have been the main feature in Human advance, and +to have been progressively achieved by incalculable centuries of +increasing differentiation and intensification of two opposite orders of +impulse and faculty. + +In savages and in all the less civilised races, the personal and +temperamental differences between the sexes are but slight, and last +for no longer than a few years of life. As with other faculties, +Sex-differentiations become ever further intensified and more +complexly defined as development rises in the scale. Man becomes more +man. Woman, more woman. Most notable during the period over which +the human organisation sustains its maximum of condition, these +Sex-characteristics take longer to arrive at their perfection, and are +longer and more fully sustained in the higher races and organisms than +is the case with the lower. Then, with that degeneration of tissue which +sets in with on-coming age, the old man becomes womanish, the old woman +mannish. + +It cannot be doubted that human perfection reaches its climax in the +accentuation of the differences between the Sex-characteristics, +physical and mental, of the one sex from those of the other. The best +types of men differ far more from the best types of women than inferior +men and women differ from one another. In body and in attribute, the +sexes are complementary and supplementary. And their dissimilarities are +the measure of their complementary and supplementary values. + +Their attraction to one another, their interest and happiness in one +anothers' company, are proportional to the degree in which members of +one sex supply for members of the other, sentiment and qualities lacking +in their own. Mannish women and womanish men are alike incapable of +experiencing and inspiring the love-passion, which charms and +transfigures life for true man and true woman. These unfortunate, +imperfect neuter-persons, because of the deficiency in them of normal +sex attributes and impulse, are shut out from the richest and sweetest, +most sacred emotions of Humanity--precisely as persons of defective +brain are debarred from the richer and fuller appreciations and joys of +consciousness. + +And yet, apart and distinct from, although at the root of this abnormal +neuterdom, wherein the traits of one sex are so antagonised by those of +the other that the finest powers of both are nullified--normally, +all men possess latent in them the qualities of Woman; all women +have latent in them the qualities of Man. Otherwise, this third +Neuter-gender--mannish women and womanish men--could not have come into +being. + +In crises of life and under other abnormal conditions, the dormant +characteristics of the one sex are seen to emerge in members of the +other, and to become dominant. A woman, in the face of danger, develops +the strength, the courage and the material resource of a man. A man, +when put to it, reveals the gentleness, patience and psychical resource +of a woman. And in neither is this substitution of alien traits +imitative, merely. That it is vital and intrinsic is shown by the fact +that not only mental characteristics, but the body itself becomes +transformed. If the circumstances--exposure to danger, to hard and rough +physical labours or to mental exactions which are the normal of the +male--continue for long, woman's physique, equally with her attributes, +becomes increasingly virile of mode. + +A kindred metamorphosis occurs in men. When called upon to exercise for +any length of time the functions of a woman, beside a sick bed, for +example--or, to state it otherwise, when the male in him no longer +receives the stimulus of the natural male rôle and activities--man's +virile qualities decline. He becomes emasculate. + +So too in disease. With the vital powers at low ebb, man's virility +ebbs low. He grows soft and sensitive, uncontrolled and emotional, loses +energy and initiative; lapses in outlook and temperament from the +masculine normal. In abnormal states of physical development, men are +puerile or womanish. + +Women, as result of like abnormal undevelopment, or after operative +removal of reproductive organs (_propter quos est mulier_) become +mannish of type. In extreme cases the figure changes to a strong and +sturdy maleness, the voice drops to gruffness; manners and speech become +terse and abrupt, the jaw squares; even moustache or beard may develop. +Such women lose, perhaps, every womanly characteristic; refinement of +form, mental delicacy and sensitiveness, emotion, subtlety. They lapse +to the biological grade, not of cultured, but of rough working men. In +lesser degrees of sex-extinction, such as are seen in many of our modern +girls, de-sexed by masculine training, the subjects are boyish merely; +lean, active, restless, hipless, breastless, lacking all those fair, +delicate artistries of face and form, as likewise the complex +sensibility and emotionalism which are the higher characteristics of +their sex. + + +III + +These and other singularities of the phenomenon indicate that man has, +so to speak, a woman concealed in him; woman has a man submerged in her. +The case suggests the little Noah and his wife of the toy weatherglass. +Under some conditions the man in woman emerges temporarily. Under some +conditions the woman in man reveals herself. But the emergence in the +one sex of the characteristics of the other, when appreciable and +permanent, is abnormal and unpleasing, and is obviously degenerative. + +Man is at his best when the woman in him is dominated by his natural +virile traits. Woman is at her best when the man in her is sheathed +within her native womanliness. This way, each is a highly evolved and a +finely-specialised creation. + +Nevertheless, such possession, in latency, of the qualities of the +other, not only enhances for members of both sexes the potence of their +own, inspiring and enriching these, but it engenders more perfect +sympathy and understanding between them. The woman in man endues him +with intuitive apprehension of the Woman-nature; of its needs and modes, +its disabilities, its sufferings and aspirations. The man in woman +informs her of the intrinsic values of his sterner calibre, and thus +lends her patience with his impatiences, moves her tenderness and care +for him in his rougher, more arduous lot, wins her admiration of his +enterprises and ambitions. Moreover, the man in her strengthens and +intelligises her mental fibre, stiffens and renders more stable and +effective her more pliant will and softer, more delicate aptitudes. + +While she, in her turn, endows him with her intrinsic mentalities. + +Masculine intellection, pure and simple, is initiative, vigorous, +enterprising; analytical, logical, critical; its outlook rational and +concrete, its disposition just and honest. Capable in the degree of its +virility, of strenuous and sustained endeavour, of keen concentration +and close application; taking nothing for granted, but questioning and +demanding proof of all things, it is an admirable executive agent of +Mind. _Per se_, however, it is rational and deductive, judicial and +judicious, rather than inspirational and creative. The blending with it +of the Woman-faculty in him quickens his male brain by contributing the +emotional element; endues it with intuitive sensibility, fructifies it +with female creativeness. + +Thus it blossoms in Imagination--a new talent, which his natural +intellectual energy and executive ability enable him to raise to highest +issues in Inductive Science and the creative Arts. + + +Sex, with its phenomena of the characteristics of both sexes blended +but, nevertheless, distinctive in the totally dissimilar constitution of +members of both, presents an enigma which all the thinkers of all the +ages have left unsolved. + +What is its significance--what its explanation? How has it been +possible--without miracle, but by way of biological sequences of form +and process, of function and faculty--for the divergent characteristics, +physical and mental, of the two sexes to have developed in both, not +only without either order of characteristics (normally) neutralising +those of the other, but, on the contrary, with both orders ever further +intensifying their differences in the sex to which they belong? + +By hereditary transmission. True! But by what precise means? Because +Nature achieves her results always by the continuous operation of +unerring Law and intensifying processes, not by eccentricities or +deviations. When she seems to us to skip at random, it means that we +have missed some intermediate footprints linking her progressive +sequences in a long unbroken train. + +This problem of human duality, physical and psychical, has baffled not +biologists only, but philosophers, religionists and seers. It fills both +life and literature with puzzles, paradoxes, incongruities. It has been +the source of perpetual misapprehension, misconception, +maladministration, personal and ethical. + +It lies at the root of the whole Woman question. It has supplied the +motive--and has made the mischief of the Feminist propaganda and +practice. + +Because, in view of the masculine qualities latent in women, allied with +the circumstance that masculine powers are those most profitable and +effective on the plane alike of physics and of economics, it has seemed +an inevitable conclusion that these dormant male potentialities were +_powers lying idle_; virgin soil which, tilled and cultivated, would +yield fruitful harvest. And this for the benefit not of woman solely, +but of Humanity at large. Strangely enough, the converse proposition has +not presented itself. A pity! For it might have brought enlightenment. +Because it presents itself outright in the form of a patent absurdity. + +Suppose a Man's Movement which should have had for aim the cult in males +of their potential woman-qualities! Not for an instant could the project +have found footing as being rational, its ends desirable, or as +improving upon Nature. Everywhere is pity or contempt for the effeminate +man. He is regarded as a poor creature, neither one thing nor the other; +as little the peer of true man as he is notably an unworthy counterfeit +of woman. + +Yet how is this? Is it that we admit the male-sex to be so vastly and +intrinsically superior to the female that we are not satisfied for half +only, but demand that the whole human species shall be male? +Nevertheless, since masculine qualities, although undeniably present, +are normally latent in women, they must be inferior in power and calibre +to these same qualities in men. Otherwise, in place of remaining in +latency, they would assert themselves like men. Woman's inferior +masculine powers, even when developed to the full, can equip her, +therefore, to be no more than inferior male; "lesser man" merely, in +place of being "diverse"--the highly-differentiated, finely-specialised +being for which Nature would seem to have been shaping in her, during +untold æons of progressive differentiation. + + +IV + +The prevailing notion is that these masculine potentialities dormant in +women are powers common to both sexes, which have been blighted in the +one by long generations of educational and vocational disabilities +precluding exercise and outlet for them. Or that they are powers which +have been dwarfed by long "subjection" of the sex in maternal and +domestic functions mainly. + +Consulting Biology, we find that such artificial repression of Faculty +in the mother (even were artificially-repressed faculty transmissible as +such) could in no way have limited itself, in succeeding generations, to +inheritance by daughters. On the contrary, the more we learn of the laws +of Heredity, the more it is seen that Faculty descends from mother to +son, rather than from mother to daughter. And yet, despite the +sex-disabilities, personal and social, which are now condemned as having +precluded the mothers of earlier eras from developing their masculine +abilities, such mothers transmitted masculine characteristics in +ever-increasing degree to successive generations of male offspring. + +Whereupon another seeming paradox confronts us. Namely, that the sons of +those earlier women, in whom masculine inherences were permitted to +remain dormant, were notably more virile of body and mind than are the +sons of latter-day emancipated mothers who have sedulously cultivated +and have fully exercised their male proclivities. + +And now upsprings a further momentous consideration: Is this cause and +effect? Were the sons of women in whom the potential male had remained +abeyant, more virile of body and brain than are the sons of women who +have cultivated masculine characteristics, solely and absolutely because +the mothers in the latter case had misappropriated to their own uses +powers that belonged by right of heredity to sons? While those other +mothers, by retaining such in latency, preserved them as a rich +inheritance for male heirs. Is it similar, indeed, to the cases of a +mother who realises and expends for her own purposes her sons' financial +patrimony, and of a mother who, expending the interest alone thereof, +retains the capital intact; and is enabled thus to pass it on as +heritage? Is the power held latent in one generation the potential of +the generation following? + +It may be asked: Why should woman forgo possession and exercise of +faculties available to her, in order to transmit these to sons? One +might answer as in respect of that other patrimony. If it be true that +she holds these powers in trust merely, they are not hers to spend. To +expend them is to despoil her sons; to make paupers and bankrupts of +them, humanly speaking. Further, since daughters inherit from the +father, the male entail woman forbears to realise and to exploit for her +own uses returns to her sex in the person of her grand-daughter--by +paternal inheritance. For the able father is the parent of the able +daughter. + +Thus Nature works with the eternal justice of eternal reciprocity +between the sexes; making them all the while more complexly diverse, but +nevertheless more closely interdependent. So that one sex can neither +progress nor can it regress by itself; but draws the other onward with +it, or drags it back. Thus, the bread of human heritage consigned to the +stream of posterity by one sex, for equipment and furtherance of the +other, returns to the hand of the sex that consigned it. + +If this be so--and I hope to prove it so--the woman who develops the +potential male in her defrauds of its lawful racial and personal entail +not only the opposite sex, in the person of her son, but she defrauds of +its dower her own sex too, in the person of her grand-daughter. + +Of the interesting and important biological processes underlying the +mystery of the Dual-Sex constitution and its manifold phenomena, I am +about to present a wholly new and--I venture to believe--a wholly true +and convincing elucidation. + +_Natura simplex est_, said Newton, _et sibi semper consonans_. (Nature +is simple and always agrees with herself.) Bewilderingly multiple in her +phenomena, she is superbly simple in her principles. By the operation of +her one great Law of Gravitation, she sustains the mighty Solar +systems--and brings the apple to the ground. By the extension, +counterpoise and co-operation of one Primal Cosmic Energy--with its dual +impulses, Centripetal and Centrifugal--she has generated all the diverse +marvels of a Universe. And in view of her simplicity of Principle, it is +conceivable that the Duality of Sex may be an extension into Life of +that same principle of Duality which characterises the vaster Cosmic +phenomena. + +If this be true, Man and Woman are the complex resultant of infinitely +many and varied evolutionary differentiations and associations of the +two modes of Primal Energy. If so, the principle of Sex must have +existed before Matter; must have been inherent in Creation before +Creation began to evolve. And if so, Evolution would seem to have had +for its purpose the ever further and fuller manifestation of these dual +and contrary inherences in terms of Life and Sex. While, to judge by +effects, it has had for its means such ever more intimate and intricate +co-operations of these as have resulted in the progressively diverse and +complex developments found to-day in Human Life and Human +Sex-Characteristics. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION + + "The idea that the female is naturally and really the superior sex + seems incredible, and only the most liberal and emancipated minds, + possessed of a large store of biological information, are capable + of realising it."--_Professor Lester Ward._ + + +I + +Those happy persons who do not perplex themselves concerning the +intrinsic causes behind all physical phenomena see it as only "natural" +that two parents of opposite sex should produce offspring of both sexes. + +And yet it is not only a great mystery, but, on the face of it, it is an +anomaly that a child who may possess an admixture of all the physical +and mental characteristics of its two parents, bears, nevertheless, the +sex and the sex-characteristics of one only. Sex, male or female, breeds +true in nearly every case; the rare exceptions merely emphasising the +rule. The mystery deepens when we realise that every individual is a +product of countless such admixtures of the qualities, throughout +countless generations, of countless forefathers and foremothers. And +although such a man or woman may hark back to any one, or more, of the +traits of his or her innumerable forbears, he or she, nevertheless, +"breeds true" in the factors of sex and sex-characteristics. + +Long and closely biologists have pondered these many and involved +problems. How is it, they inquire, that an embryo bred of two parents of +opposite sex develops the sex of one only of these? How is it that the +mother, who belongs to one sex only, produces--and produces in about +equal number--offspring of both? The phenomenon is expressed, +biologically, in the term, "sex-limited factor"--an incalculable +something in the embryo which limits its sex to the sex of one only of +its parents. But the "something," and the method of this sex-limitation +have remained enigmas. + +Sex is regarded by the new Mendelian school of biologists as that which +is known as a "Mendelian factor." And to follow the argument to its +conclusions, a few simple words about the Mendelian theory of Heredity +are essential to those unacquainted therewith. + + * * * * * + +About forty years ago, a German monk, Mendel by name, was struck by the +facts that in his bed of edible peas certain plants grew tall, while +others remained dwarf; that the blossoms of certain plants were white +always, while those of others were always coloured. He made a number of +experiments in crossing the plants, with a view to discovering the law +of inheritance by way of its operation in hybrid varieties. Briefly, the +results of his experiments--which have since been repeated and confirmed +by many later observers--were as follows: + +There are plants that are tall and can transmit only Tallness to +offspring. There are plants that are dwarf and can transmit only +Dwarfness to offspring. So too, there are plants of white blossom or of +coloured blossom that can transmit, respectively, only White or Coloured +blossoming to offspring. + +When a Tall is crossed with a Dwarf plant, however, or a Coloured with a +White plant, strange to say, the hybrid offspring of this cross shows +_one_ only of these opposite traits, to the exclusion of the other. No +intermediate, or mixed, forms are produced. + +Thus, a Tall crossed with a Dwarf produces only Talls. Plants of +Coloured flower crossed with those of White flower give only Coloured +flowering varieties. A yellow and a green-seeded cross produce only +yellow-seeded plants. + +In the cross between plants of opposite traits, _one_ set of traits +appears thus, exclusively, in the hybrid offspring. These +traits--because they _dominate_ growth and development--Mendel styled +"Dominant." While those traits which are dominated by the other and +opposite traits and do not appear in offspring, he styled "Recessive." + +On further breeding, a new and stranger thing happens, however. Because +when such hybrids--plants bred of parents that had borne, respectively, +"Dominant" and "Recessive" characteristics, but with the parental +Dominant traits so overpowering the Recessive traits of the other parent +that these latter are submerged and concealed--When these hybrids are +crossed with other hybrids like themselves, both the Dominant and the +Recessive traits of the original parents reappear in offspring. The tall +hybrids resulting from the cross between Tall and Dwarf plants, when +crossed with other tall hybrids of similar origin, produce both Tall and +Dwarf plants. So with Colour, and with the other so-called "Contrasted +Traits." + +It becomes evident, therefore, that although the Dominant traits of +Tallness and Colour overpower in the growth and development of the +second generation of plants, the Recessive traits of Dwarfness and +Whiteness, these latter traits are _submerged_ only, and are neither +impaired in their values, nor destroyed. In the third generation, under +different conditions of mating, the original Recessive, and submerged, +traits re-appear, and reveal themselves in offspring-plants as the +Dwarfness or the Whiteness that had characterised their grandparents. + +Mendel assumed that such hybrid plants--offspring of a Dominant and of a +Recessive parent--produce two varieties of sex-cells, or gametes, and +that one order of cells contain the Dominant traits of the Dominant +parent, while the other order contain the Recessive traits of the +Recessive parent. + +But any individual sex-cell, or gamete, cannot (according to his view) +bear both Dominant and Recessive traits. The Dominant traits and the +Recessive traits of the respective parents he regarded as being +segregated, absolutely, in one or in the other set of sex-cells produced +by hybrid varieties. And of these, the cells bearing Dominant traits are +able to transmit Dominant traits only to offspring; while the cells +bearing Recessive traits transmit Recessive traits only to offspring. + + +II + +Now, Biology shows that plants and living creatures develop from a +single microscopic cell, formed by the union of two half-cells, of which +each half was contributed by one of the two parents. + +Clearly then, a hybrid plant is one that has sprung from the union of +two half-cells, one of which bore the Dominant traits of one parent, +while the other bore the Recessive traits of the other parent. But +because Dominant traits overpower Recessive traits in development, the +cross between a tall plant and a dwarf plant produces tall offspring +only--Tallness being a Dominant trait which overpowers the Recessive +trait of Dwarfness. So too, the cross between a plant bearing coloured +and a plant bearing white flowers produces offspring bearing coloured +flowers only--Colour being Dominant over the Recessive Trait of +Whiteness. + +But because the Recessive traits of Dwarfness and of Whiteness were only +_overpowered_ in the plant-development, by the Dominant traits of +Tallness and Colour, but were neither lost nor impaired in stock, hybrid +plants that had shown only Dominant traits in growth and constitution, +produce, nevertheless, two sorts of sex-cells for plant-reproduction: +cells that bear the Recessive traits of the one parent, and cells that +bear the Dominant traits of the other parent. So that in the +fertilisation of one another by such hybrids, cells bearing Dominant +traits mate with other cells bearing Dominant traits, and produce plants +of pure Dominant type--Tall or Coloured, like one of the grandparents. +While cells bearing Recessive traits mate with other cells bearing +Recessive traits, and produce plants of pure Recessive type--Dwarf or +White, like the other grandparent. + +It is seen, therefore, that in plants, when a cell bearing Dominant +traits mates with one bearing Recessive traits, the Dominant +characteristics so overpower the Recessive that these latter lie latent, +and concealed, in the resulting plant. But when a cell bearing Recessive +traits mates with another cell bearing Recessive traits, the resulting +plant (its growth and development not over-ridden now by the more +assertive Dominant traits) is able to develop its Recessive +characteristics. + + * * * * * + +These interesting and significant laws of plant-heredity and +constitution, discovered by Mendel in peas, have since been found by +many expert observers to hold true as regards other species of plants; +as too in poultry, in mice, and in rabbits, and moreover, in the +hereditary transmission of human characteristics. + +In _Heredity and Variation_, Dr. Saleeby points out that in the mating +of a black with a white rabbit, some of the offspring will be black like +one parent, some white like the other, and some grey--a blend of the +colours of both parents. + +In the last case, the _Dominant_ trait of Blackness, derived from one +rabbit-parent, blends in the fur of the rabbit-offspring with the +_Recessive_ trait of Whiteness, derived from the other rabbit-parent; a +grey rabbit resulting. But that the Contrasted Traits come to no more +than a temporary and partial compromise during the life of such a +rabbit-individual, without either of the traits losing its intrinsic +characteristic--Blackness and Whiteness, respectively--is proved by the +fact that these grey rabbit-offspring, on further breeding, produce not +_grey_ rabbits, but black rabbits and white rabbits; proving that the +Black trait and the White trait in them remained distinct and +segregated, neither altering its character in the least degree. + +It is as though one should take a spoonful of black pepper and a +spoonful of white salt, and thoroughly mix them. A drab +"pepper-and-salt" mixture will result. But neither pepper nor salt will +have changed its colour or its properties one iota. Could they be +separated out again, each would be precisely as it had been before +mixing. So it is with the Dominant and the Recessive traits in living +organisms. They commingle intimately, but each retains its original and +intrinsic quality. + +All the diverse and beautiful varieties of vegetation and the loveliness +of flowers, in form and colour, result from multiple associations in +hybrid-plants, of those which are known as the "Contrasted Traits" of +parent-stock. + + +III + +The lay reader need not perplex himself with the problems and phenomena +of Mendelism. + +All he requires to remember are its three leading principles. Firstly, +that in the world of Life, plant and animal, living attributes are +divided into two contrasting orders. Secondly, that of these two orders +of so-called "Contrasted Traits" ("Contrasting Traits" would be a fitter +phrase), the two groups are as absolute and opposite in character and in +significance as are the _plus_ and the _minus_ signs of Algebra, the +Positive and the Negative potentials of Electricity, the conditions of +Light and Darkness, of Blackness and Whiteness, of Heat and Cold. +Thirdly, that the Dominant order of traits are paramount over and +extinguish the Recessive order of traits. + +To sustain her equilibrium by a counterpoise of dual and contrary +factors, physical and vital, Nature must preserve these factors absolute +and unchangeable as the constitution and the opposite attraction of The +Poles. But in order to produce her countless progressive variations of +form and attribute, physical and vital, she assembles these contrary +factors in countless progressively complex combinations, co-operations +and correlations. + +It is conceivable, therefore, that the infinite gradations and +variations of form and attribute found in the world of living creatures +are, as in the world of plants, phenomena of the ever further +differentiation and more complex combination, in the hybrid offspring of +two parents, of two orders of Contrasting Traits, transmitted by the +respective parents. + +In all their multiple associations and diverse developments, however, +the two Sets of Traits remain unchanged, precisely as do the individual +elements of chemical combinations. Variations in species result, +accordingly, not from change in the essential traits, but from changes +in the modes and the degrees of the commingling of these in organisms; +and in the modes and degrees of their ever more complex associations in +such. + +Tallness, being an impulse toward extension, can never be Dwarfness, +which is an impulse toward contraction. Black can never be White. Square +can never be Round. Yet two opposite traits, both influencing +development, may come to a mean, or poise, in an individual organism; as +is seen in the grey offspring of a black rabbit mated with a white +rabbit. But it is a _counterpoise_ merely of contrary factors. The +traits of Blackness and Whiteness remain absolute and unalterable. + +If now, the reader has grasped these leading principles of +Plant-biology, he is in a position to follow the new application of them +to Human Biology which I now venture to present. + +Without going into details of physiology, it may be stated that the +principles of reproduction are so identical in plants and living +creatures as wholly to justify argument from one to the other. The only +differences are in degrees of structural complexity as organisms rise +higher in the scale of development, and demand, accordingly, more +complex organs and functions for the more perfect manifestation of their +characteristics; as also for the transmission of these to offspring. It +may be repeated, however, that Mendelian law is found to hold good in +humans, both in the hereditary transmission of normal characteristics +and in the hereditary transmission of the abnormal traits of disease and +degeneracy. + +Increasing complexities, structural and functional, are indispensable to +the presentment of the attributes of the higher species, Man. But such +complexities are, nevertheless, continuous with and have sprung out of +the simplicities of lower and rudimentary organisms, precisely as the +branches and leaves and flowers of a plant are continuous with and have +sprung out of its roots. A vital and important biological detail (to be +considered later) is that plants are not, as living creatures are, +differentiated into a right and a left-side, identical in construction. +Another is that plants are self-fertilising. + +With the lower animals, plural births are the rule. And in these, the +still crude and imperfect differentiations of the Contrasting Traits +allow of piebald and other modes of chequered colour and amorphous +construction. + +The higher the organism, the more complex are the biological +requirements for its pre-natal development, as for its post-natal +nurture. The functions of Parenthood, both physiological and +psychological, are always evolving to higher and more complex issues, +therefore, as the species to be reproduced and nurtured becomes more +complex. In human births, single offspring is the normal. Twin births +are comparatively rare. And that these are abnormal is shown by twins +being below the average always in health or in faculty; usually in both. + + +IV + +As already mentioned, Sex is regarded by the large and ever-increasing +order of the adherents of Mendel as a "Mendelian factor." But in +applying Mendelian truth to humans, I venture to think the applications +have not been carried to their ultimate and most momentous conclusions. + +Because, given the keynote to the Principle of Duality in the phenomenon +of the Contrasting Traits found manifesting in plant-heredity and +constitution, the duality of the Human Sexes, with their respective +orders of Contrasting characteristics, suggests itself as being +analogous. + +Human attributes, physical and mental, are seen, like those of plants, +to group themselves into two distinct categories, the Male and the +Female sex-characteristics, primary and secondary. And these, though +wholly contrary in nature and in trend, are found--precisely as occurs +in plants--linked together in the hybrid offspring of the two parents +from whom they were, respectively, derived; blending in a temporal +unity, but remaining, nevertheless, unchanged in their essential +differences; coming to means and counterpoises in individual +organisations, yet nevertheless preserved distinct and unalloyed in +these, as is shown by their emergence, unaltered, in offspring of +opposite sexes. + +As a hybrid plant is the product of two parents characterised by +opposite traits--Tallness and Dwarfness, for example--so, I submit, a +human creature is the hybrid offspring of two parents characterised by +opposite traits--Maleness and Femaleness, with the Sex-traits +differentiating one sex from the other. + +And at once a solution of the many baffling presentments and problems of +Sex presents itself--of the enigma of man with Woman potential in him, +of woman with Man potential in her; a key to the mysterious Duality of +human biology and psychology, with its conflict of battling impulses, +its harmonies of blending attributes, its innumerable and diverse +developments in proportions, in means, in extremes; in normalities, +eccentricities, deviations and reversions. And the analogy between the +two orders of Traits--in Plant-life at the lower end of the scale of +species, and in Human life and psychology at the higher end--suggests +that the ever-increasing complexity of organisation and faculty which +has characterised Evolutionary Progress, has had for aim, as it has had +for method, the ever further differentiation and more perfect +segregation, but, nevertheless, the ever closer and more intricate +association of the contrary factors of Maleness and Femaleness. + +In the lower organisms--plant and animal--the two groups of Traits are +but crudely differentiated as characteristics distinguishing one sex +from the other. In such lower organisms, Sex-development is merely +rudimentary; the first foreshadowings in Life of two intrinsic orders of +Essential Attribute, the progressive evolution whereof reveals two +contrary trends in physiological and psychical inherences. + +Like Light and Darkness, Heat and Cold, Sex is a phenomenon of Dual +states which manifest by way of relativity. Without Maleness, Femaleness +has no significance--no existence, in fact. And the converse. And in the +lower and rudimentary forms of existence, in proportion to their degrees +of undevelopment, the dual states of Sex are but faintly defined. The +very lowly forms are bi-sexual and self-fertilising. While the first and +simplest mode of reproduction is by cell-division merely; the principle +of Sex, with its dual factors, functioning, but not yet differentiated +into dual forms. + +The evolution of Species and the evolution of Sex have been so +absolutely co-incident in biological progress, indeed, that we are +forced to perceive them as cause and effect; or, rather, as one and the +same thing. And the evolution of Sex has meant, of course, the ever +further divergence and the more complex specialisation, in form and in +function, of the characteristics of the one sex from those of the other. + + +V + +On still closer consideration, it appears, moreover, that the evolution +of Sex has meant pre-eminently the evolution of the _female_ sex--the +slow and gradual emergence and development, in species, of female +characteristics, as, in course of Evolution, these have freed themselves +and have risen ever further into evidence from long subjection by the +stronger, fiercer, more assertive--in a word, the Dominant--traits of +the male. + +(A conclusion as singularly interesting, I think, as it is instructive, +in view of modern Feminist doctrine and aims, which make, not for the +culture and the ever further evolutionary development of the +Woman-traits in woman, but, on the contrary, for a reversion to earlier +cruder states of the subjection in her of her Woman-traits by those male +Dominant ones, which, as the hybrid offspring of a male and of a female +parent, every female creature inherits from her father, together with +the Woman-traits she inherits from her mother. There is seen here the +irony that woman has, by long ages of biological development, released +herself from sociological subjection by the male, only voluntarily to +set the Woman in herself in far worse psychological subjection to the +male in herself.) + + +In the new and profoundly interesting light thrown by Mendel on some +previously unsolved problems of heredity, the reason for the long +subjection of woman, biological and sociological, becomes clear. + +Because, given the key-notes of Tallness and Colour as Dominant traits, +one identifies these, at once, as traits of Maleness; the greater +stature of male creatures and the richer colour of their fur and plumage +in the lower species pointing unmistakably thereto. Dwarfness (or lesser +stature) and Whiteness (or lesser colour) are Recessive, and are +obviously Female traits. The plant of Dominant type, though still +bi-sexual, is making for a male _genus_; the Recessive type is making +for a Female _genus_. White creatures are so feminine in general effect +that it seems an anomaly when they are males. The converse is true of +black creatures. The black horse is stubborn and restive; the white, +gentle and submissive. + +White poultry are prolific in egg-production; white cattle are good +milkers--a female characteristic. Jersey cows are both small in size and +pale of colour. + +The male sex stands presumably for Dominance. And his positive, or +objective, traits overpowering the negative, or subjective, traits of +Recessiveness, prevail accordingly in early biological development. + +The female sex stands for Recessiveness. Her less assertive traits yield +and recede into the background before those of the Dominant male. In +stature, in strength, and in colour, and in the allied mental +attributes, he holds the foreground in form and in function. The reason +being that his rôle in Life is adaptation to environment. + +The male, therefore, in his masculine rôle of Adaptation, with his +Dominant traits making fiercely for the survival and for the ever +further development of physical fitness--until physical fitness, or +Adaptation, had attained due degrees of ascendancy--was long lord of +Creation; the female, his vassal. And this not only in life and in +action, but too in the personal characteristics of both sexes. During +æons before the Recessive female-traits were able to come into evidence +as definite traits, they functioned as negations, merely; submerged and +over-ridden in all female creatures by the Dominant male-traits they had +inherited from their sires. + +Primal physical development may be said, thus, to have derived its first +impulse from those fierce and fighting male-proclivities which +characterised it in the epoch of that early savage struggle with +environment whence Species emerged. Only with further evolutionary +progress, do the female traits manifest as personal characteristics, +secure survival, and find increasing exercise and sway. + +The tigress is only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the +tiger. Primal woman was only less fierce, less strong, and less savage +than the male. It is only, indeed, in the maternal function and relation +that the female traits of both tigress and primal woman awake, and find +justification, impulse, and scope for development. And while the +material progress which has led to modern Civilisation resulted from +Adaptation to, and of, environment, and derived its impulse from the +male proclivities of strength, assertiveness and intelligence, the moral +progress thereof may be said to have derived its impulse from the +evolution of the female sex-characteristics. Because the evolution of +Woman-traits has meant the ever further tempering and counterpoising of +the fiercely active and aggressive male propensities, by the more +passive and self-surrendering qualities of the female. + +Judging the respective characteristics of the sexes by their +widely-differing rôles in the most important of their co-operative +living functions, the parental one--the sole function wherein the sexes +of lower organisation co-operate, indeed--the respective attributes of +Dominance and Recessiveness manifest clearly in these. The province of +the male being to fight for mate and young, providing food, defending +life--in order to fit him for this struggle for racial survival, his +traits of strength and stature remain long paramount, alike in +development and function, over those of the female, as regards his own +organisation and that of his offspring, both male and female. The +province of the female being to surrender her powers to the nurture of +offspring before birth, and, after birth, mildly to suckle and to tend +its helplessness, Nature equips her to these ends; inhibiting, or +negativing, strength and fierceness in her by the traits of +Recessiveness. + +Tigress or savage woman, her struggle with the rough conditions of +primal existence is only less fierce and less strenuous than her mate's. +It demands the positive male-qualities (which manifest first in stature, +strength and pugnacity) only less in degree than does his, therefore. +The negative female qualities which, manifesting first in passivity and +surrender, detract from her fierceness and activity, would have made for +extinction of species had they not been defended by those of her +fighting mate, as too by the male-traits she herself had inherited from +her fighting father. They could only evolve, accordingly, precisely in +proportion as they were sheltered behind the male dominant powers. The +tiger shelters his tigress only during her maternal phases, however. Her +cubs brought forth, suckled, reared, and thrust into the jungle to fend +for themselves, she must fight her own battles for food and existence. +And her brief maternal phases being all too short for more than the +scantest development of female traits--which derive their fullest +impulse in their exercise as mother-traits--she remains a tigress +merely, and produces tiger offspring merely, because only tigerishness +secures survival in her domain of life and attribute. + +With the further advance of progressing species, savage woman has +evolved from savage brute to savage woman by way of such increasing +shelter and protection by her Dominant mate as have permitted the slow +and gradual evolution of the Recessive Woman-traits in her; and thereby +the evolution of the Woman-sex. Her maternal phases and the unfitnesses +of these become ever more prolonged and incapacitating; her offspring +demands ever longer periods of suckling, devotion and care, as both she +and it rise higher in the scale of organisation. Thus, Sex has evolved +in the male by response to the ever-increasing claims upon him, by the +female and by offspring, of his traits of protective chivalry and +intelligent effort. And Sex has evolved in the female by response to the +ever-increasing claims by offspring upon her, of her traits of devotion +and ministry. + + +The evolution of the Woman-attributes has been rendered possible only by +that protection accorded by the male to the female as the due of her +maternal unfitnesses; securing thus for her and for offspring a more +privileged and kindlier environment. Environment which, evoking less of +fight and physical stress, enabled her inherent milder, +self-surrendering Recessive traits to emerge, to unfold, and to function +increasingly in life and heredity. + +And in the degree of her advancing evolution, the male evolved. Because, +just as in her earlier hybrid constitution, the Dominant male-traits she +had inherited from her father, submerging the Recessive female-traits +she had inherited from her mother, made her, for long æons, more male +than she was female, so now, with their progressive evolution, the +Recessive female-traits not only made _her_ ever more woman, but, +transmitted in ever fuller measure to her sons, increasingly tempered, +modified and humanised, the masculine fierceness and combativeness of +these. Whereby were substituted arts of peace and civilisation for those +of war. + +Thus, with advancing Evolution, the female sex-characteristics have +engendered, in both sexes, qualities of quietism and subordination, to +temper those of force and aggression; amenities of gentleness, +forbearance and affection, to soften assertiveness, turn the edge of +strife, and fructify intelligence. Thus, human civilisation has been +fostered and furthered. + + +In the hybrid creature that every man and woman is, are grouped two sets +of Contrasting Traits, or Sex-characteristics: traits Dominant, or male, +and traits Recessive, or female. And in the complex human hybrid, these +traits, ever increasing in complexity of constitution and further +diverging in trend, are associated in ever more close and complex poise +and counterpoise as both become more intensified and intelligised. + +Man is a hybrid in whom the male Dominant traits derived from his father +prevail in impulse and development over the female Recessive traits +derived from his mother. Woman is a hybrid in whom the maternal +Recessive traits prevail in impulse and development over the male +Dominant traits she has inherited from her father. + +The Woman-traits (which, as said, reach their highest culmination in +_mother_-traits), become in man _paternal_ traits; modified +mother-instincts which move him not only to love, in addition to +providing for and protecting offspring, but, transfiguring all his other +characteristics, move him to philanthropy, amity, tolerance and altruism +in his dealings with his fellow-creatures. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE + + "Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine, + Your heart anticipate my heart, + You must be just before, in fine, + See and make me see, for your part, + New depths of the Divine!" + + _Robert Browning._ + + +I + +On further applying the Principle of Duality, as operating in +organisation and heredity, strangely interesting and significant +developments appear. + +Because, with the ever further evolution of Form and Faculty as +organisms have risen higher in the scale of life, the bodies of living +creatures are seen to have become further differentiated into two sides; +a right and a left. Anatomically, these two sides appear identical in +structure and in function, although contrary in incidence to one +another. Each is incomplete and impotent without the other. +Nevertheless, paralysis and other diseases show that each is, as it +were, an entity totally distinct from the other. One side may be wholly +helpless and insensitive while its fellow remains sound and efficient. + +Complementary and supplementary each to the other, both are, in a sense, +complete. Further and closer comparison of function shows, however, that +although they co-operate in action, they are by no means identical in +power or aptitude. + +The right half of the body is, for both sexes, the active and executive +half; quicker and stronger, and in all ways more efficient on the plane +of physics. + +The left half is, relatively, passive and inert, is _responsive_, +mainly, to the initiative and requirements of the right half, by which +its powers are overshadowed in every form of direct activity. + +As with the two sides of the body, so it is with the two halves of the +brain, which are at the same time the agencies of mentality and the +centres for recording the sensations and for directing the movements of +the two sides of the body. The brain-half which controls the right side +is known as "the Leading half." It is the agent in concrete +intellection, as in physical activity. + +While, so far as biologists and psychologists have been able to +discover, the other half of the brain is negative in function--a blank, +as regards concrete intelligence and nervous or muscular initiative. In +disease, it has sometimes been found to undertake, and to perform feebly +and imperfectly, sundry of the duties of its active "Leading" partner. +But inert and inadequate in muscular action, it is negative in +intellection. It has been observed, however, that patients in whom this +brain-half is diseased show signs of moral deterioration. Yet whatsoever +its functions--and the fact that it does not atrophy nor degenerate in +the marvellous structure and complexity which characterise +brain-constitution shows that it functions duly--its operations are +totally dissimilar to, and are, moreover, wholly overshadowed by those +of its active, intelligent partner. + + +Here again, as in the two sides of the body, appear, surely, the factors +of Dominance and Recessiveness--in other words of Maleness and +Femaleness; of strength and activity upon material planes, and of +inhibition upon these. + +Developments which, being in full agreement with one another and with +others, suggest that the two orders of Sex-characteristics (derived from +parents of opposite sex) are centred, respectively, in the two sides of +the body, and in the two brain-hemispheres allied, respectively, with +these. One side of the body, with its allied brain-half, represents the +paternal inherences of the individual; the other, the maternal. If so, +the right side of the body, with its allied Leading, or Dominant, +brain-half is, clearly, of male inherence. While the left side, with its +allied Recessive, or Dormant, brain-half is of female inherence. + +The inference is further supported by the fact that the stronger right +side is rather larger and more masculine in form; while left-side limbs +are in normal right-handed persons, more slender and shapely and +delicate--in a word more womanly--than are those of the right. + +As regards the face, from one aspect both sides are complete, from +another aspect both are incomplete, without the other. And in +configuration and expression, the two sides of the face differ +appreciably; the left side being more psychical, emotional and +subtle--in a word again more womanly. + +In most persons, the hands and ears and eyes of one side differ from +those of the other, both in form and in function. In some persons the +differences are considerable. It happens occasionally, indeed, that the +eye of one side resembles in colour the eyes of one parent, while the +opposite eye bears the colour of those of the other parent. + +Strange to say, there are, moreover, in the human male, organs concerned +with the strictly female function of lactation. + +Indication of primæval human hermaphrodites formed one of Darwin's +greatest puzzles, indeed. In his _Descent of Man_, the following passage +occurs: + + + "It has been known that in the vertebrate Kingdom one sex bears + rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the + reproductive system, which properly belong to the other sex.... + Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to + have been hermaphrodite, or androgynous." + + +It escaped him as it has escaped later biologists that Man, the highest +of the vertebrates, _is still androgynous_. And this inevitably so, +since, being of bi-sexual parentage, the sex-characteristics of both +parents must be present in him. + +In _The Evolution of Sex_, Professors Geddes and Thomson state: + + + "Sometimes a fish is male on one side, female on the other, or male + anteriorly and female posteriorly.... Among invertebrates the same + has been occasionally observed, especially among butterflies, where + striking differences in the colouring of the wings on the two sides + have in some cases been found to correspond to an internal + co-existence of ovary and testes.... The prettiest cases of + superficial hermaphrodism occur among insects, especially among + moths and butterflies, where it often happens that the wings on one + side are those of the male, on the other, those of the female." + + +II + +Despite the fact that Nature has evolved the complex human races from +the single-celled microscopic _amoeba_ ("Protoplasmic father of Man," as +science has styled this), there are those who regard it as another of +numerous blunders on the part of the Great Mother that the left side of +the body is a more or less passive and powerless member. Accordingly, +the doctrine of Ambidextry has arisen. With the result that its wiser +exponents have abandoned it. Because it has been found that children +trained on Ambidextrous lines develop neurotic symptoms. This occurs +even in cases in which children naturally left-handed are taught to use +the right hand, as is normal. + +In a lecture given before The Child-Study Society in London, Mr. P. B. +Ballard, London County-Council Inspector of Schools, stated that +left-handed bowlers send down the ugliest balls, left-handed boxers deal +the most unexpected blows--blows that hurt terribly. To be left-handed, +it seemed, was to be not merely awkward, but to be wicked, moreover. Yet +any attempt to interfere with a child's natural habit is liable to make +him stammer. (The evil bent of left-handed persons has a special +significance in view of my hypothesis of the dissimilar mental functions +of the two brain-hemispheres. The term "sinister" expresses this bent. +The inference is that in such transposition of the normal functions of +the brain-halves, the tempering and humanising influence of the +Woman-half is counteracted.) + +Of a group of 545 left-handed children, 1 per cent. of pure left-handers +stammered, against 4·3 per cent, of 399, in course of being taught to +use the right hand, Mr. Ballard further stated. In another group of 207, +the figures were 4·2 per cent, and 21·8 per cent. respectively. Six out +of ten left-handed children who had been taught to use the right hand +were practically cured of stammering after having been allowed to use +the left hand exclusively for eighteen months. There are twice as many +left-handed boys as left-handed girls; and stammering is twice as +prevalent among boys. + +All of which indicates normal differences in function of the two sides +of the body--differences suggesting that, as I have surmised, each is +the site and the agency of a principle totally unlike that of the other. + + +III + +Upon referring to Biology--on the processes whereof every development, +both physical and psychical, of living creatures rests--this curious +dual constitution of the body, together with the problems of dual +sex-transmission and inherency, become explicable. + +And the solutions are at the same time so simple and inevitable as to be +the strongest possible confirmation of my thesis. + + +As already stated, living organisms, offspring of two parents, derive +half the source of their structure from one parent, half from the other. + +All plants and living creatures evolve their organisation from a single +microscopic cell, precisely as Life itself evolved primarily, and has +developed out of the single-celled, microscopic _amoeba_. The +microscopic cell which develops into a living creature is composed thus +of two halves, or "gametes," to employ the scientific term. One half was +contributed by the father: the other, by the mother. The two have united +to form a whole cell. From such a cell (zygote), half male, half female, +the body of every living organism has sprung. + +Now, although these two half-cells unite to form a whole cell, exchange +constituents, and appear to lose their identity each in the other, it +is, in the face of the strange dual constitution of the body, difficult +to doubt that each half actually retains its identity and +sex-inherences, and develops along its own lines (albeit in close +correlation with the other), throughout all the marvellous, intricate, +and complex processes of embryological existence, during which the +zygote is evolving into a living creature, capable of separate and +individual life. And the inherences of these two halves are represented, +at birth, in the respective sides of the body; each being, as it were, a +complete and perfect entity, although inseparably knit in one flesh to +its twin. And throughout all the further intricate and complex processes +whereby the creature comes to maturity, lives, reproduces its species, +and dies, each half preserves its individual inherence alike in +constitution and in function. And yet in the mystical unity of their +commingling duality, they are one flesh. + +Each of the parental half-cells contained, marvellously, the potential +moiety of a living personality. But either, alone, would have been but +an incomplete and valueless thing, had it not become united with the +complementary half-cell required to complete it structurally, and to +engender and energise its potentialities. Nevertheless, throughout all +the immature and the mature phases of life, from conception to birth, +and from birth onward to death, the opposite sides of the body represent +normally the opposite sex-inherences of their respective parents. They +are, in humans, the Man and the Woman--two in one--that exist in every +living man and woman. They represent contrary principles; they perform +different functions; they engender and energise dissimilar processes. +One is the centre of the Male characteristics, Dominant upon the +material plane; the other, of the Female characteristics, Recessive +thereon. + +Normality and health are the mean and balance, in the individual, of the +complementary and supplementary functions and processes of the opposite +sex-inherences of his, or her, body. Precisely as in the social economy +the complementary and supplementary rôles of men and women counterpoise +the aptitudes and determine the effectiveness of human life and action. + +The left, Female-half of the body, with its allied half-brain,[1] is +inhibitive, and engenders the evolution and the preservation, physical +and mental, of The Type; sustaining health and vital power by way of the +female attributes of rest and conservation. + +The right, Male half, with its allied half-brain, is executive, and +energises the development (Adaptation) of The Type in its relation to +Environment, and, disbursing and applying the vital resources, generates +and differentiates potential faculty in terms of living function. + + +IV + +This hypothesis of the dual constitution and of dual functions of the +two-sided body supplies an explanation, equally simple and inevitable, +of the parental transmission of Sex. _Natura simplex est_, said Newton. +And Du Prel, "Nature is much more simple than we have any conception +of." + +Because, as Biology shows, not only does each of the two parents +contribute to offspring, but there being both a right and a left +reproductive gland in members of both sexes, the contribution either +parent supplies must have been derived from one or other of these glands +in them. And if the two sides of the body are of different +sex-inherence, it is only logical to conclude that the contribution the +gland of one side makes will be of different sex-inherence from that of +the other. + + +Since all forms of Energy have two modes, potential (or latent) and +kinetic (or active), on the plane of physics, this must be true, of +course, of Vital Energy. + +Life-energy must be present in all living bodies in the forms, +respectively, of _latent_ Vital Energy and _functioning_ Vital +Energy--energy conserved and available for functioning, and energy +expending itself in the living processes of mentality and action. + +An individual is able to move his limbs by power of the _potential_ +motion stored, or latent, in the muscle-cells of his limbs. Just as a +locomotive-engine is enabled to travel by power of the _potential_ +motion stored in the steam generated in its boiler. And as in the +living organism, so in the engine, the mechanism and the processes that +engender in it the _potential motion_ of steam are wholly distinct from +those which convert this potential motion into _actual motion_. + +One is able to think, by power of the _potential_ mentality stored, or +latent, in his brain-cells. For not only the vital processes which +sustain the life of the organism, as those too which enable it to +function in terms of living personality and action, but brain-power also +must exist in the dual forms, respectively, of _potential_ Faculty and +_functioning_ Faculty. So too, Reproductive power. In all of these +appear again the modes of Dominance and Recessiveness, of powers +_positive_ and _manifesting_, and of powers _negative_ and _latent_. And +since the female sex is characterised by traits of repose and +conservation, and the male sex by traits of action, the dual modes of +vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy _in potential_, and of +vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy _in course of +generating function_, range themselves inevitably on the two sides of +the living equation as Sex-characteristics differentiating the male +organisation from that of the female. Thus ranged, they characterise the +two sides of the body as representing, respectively, a right, male side +which is the central agency in function, and a left, female side, which +is the reservoir of the _potential_ of function. + +If then the female mode of functioning is the Potential, or Recessive, a +mode of latency, it is to be inferred that the male traits every female +creature inherits from her father will, when incorporated in a body of +female prepotence, pass into the potential, or Recessive, mode; and will +thus become inhibited from developing as male-characteristics. +Nevertheless, this male potential will be preserved in that reproductive +gland which represents the paternal inherences in her, and will be +transmitted, as her contribution to male offspring, in the sex-cells +generated by this gland. + +While the female inherences every male derives from his mother will, in +the presence of the Dominant male-characteristics he derives from his +father, retain their latent, or Recessive, mode; and will thus not +emerge as female characteristics. The female inherences will be +preserved, however, in that reproductive gland which represents the +maternal inherences in him; and will be transmitted as his contribution +to female offspring. + +It will be seen thus that, as in hybrid plants, so in hybrid creatures +of both sexes, cells of two sexes are generated: in the male, cells +Dominant for maleness and cells Recessive for maleness--female that is; +in the female, Recessive cells, prepotent for femaleness, and Dominant, +or male, cells. + +And of these, the Dominant male sex-cells contributed by the male +parent, mating with the Dominant, or male, sex-cells contributed by the +female parent, male offspring results. While the Recessive female +sex-cells contributed by the female parent, mating with the Recessive, +or female, sex-cells contributed by the male parent, female offspring +results. + +Furthermore, Dominance being paramount in development, it must be from +the Dominant inherence imparted by residence in a male organisation to +the potential, or Recessive, female Germ-Plasm that the latter derives +the new developmental impulse it transmits to sex-cells. While +Recessiveness being Life and Faculty in the potential mode, it must be +from the Recessive inherence engendered in the Dominant male Germ-Plasm, +by residence in a female organisation, that its Dominance, passing into +latency, derives a new potential of further evolutionary impetus. + +The differentiation of living creatures into two sexes, therefore, of +bodies into two sides, of brains into two halves, and of Germ-Plasm into +two reproductive glands, would seem to have had for object the ever +further specialisation and segregation in the individual, for purposes +alike of constitutional organisation and of the evolution of Faculty and +Reproduction, of the two Orders of Contrasting Traits, which I have +assumed to be Maleness and Femaleness, respectively. + +From this view-point, the female Sex and Sex-traits are Recessive, or +Potential, always, on the material plane, and manifest increasingly +thereon only by way of ever more complex alliances with male-traits; +which, being positive on the concrete plane, equip the female inherences +for function thereon. Femaleness, or Recessiveness, on its side, +however--being Life-Energy in the potential--is all the while +engendering new potence for Dominance to transform into active, or +functioning, power. While although negative, it is equally potent, on +_its_ side of the equation, to alter the values and manifestations of +Dominance. Just as negative electricity inhibits the positive and +destructive forces of positive electricity, although it does not, of +itself, _manifest directly_. + +The Dominant traits of Tallness and Strength, for example, are direct +and _positive_ factors in physical development. Dwarfness and Weakness +are indirect and _negative_ factors therein. Nevertheless, degrees of +Dwarfness or of Weakness must proportionally reduce and modify the +tallness of Tallness or the power of Strength. + +But that Recessiveness is not a _minus_ sign merely, as algebraically +understood--but is an essential potence on another, and a psychical +plane, is shown by the lesser height of woman rendering itself as a +Grace; her lesser strength appearing in the new virtue of Gentleness. + +That the female provides, for fertilisation, only a single sex-cell, +from the reproductive gland of one or other side, while the male +provides multiple and commingled cells from both sides, supports the +view that sex-cells derived from one side are of opposite sex-inherence +to those from the other side. Otherwise, why two reproductive glands? + +The author of _The Causation of Sex_ adduces evidence showing not only +that the two glands are of opposite sex-inherence, but, moreover, that +normally they function alternately; so that now a cell of one, now, of +the other sex, is produced. It is likely, however, that function is +seldom so mechanical, but that personal constitution or nurture modifies +its operations. + +That the male cells are multiple in number points to such a struggle of +survival-fitness as ever characterises the more strenuous male destiny. +Not, perhaps, the fittest as regards intrinsic superiority, but that +most compatible with the requirements of the Queen-cell is selected for +mate. Should the Queen-cell be of inferior standard, therefore, then (as +happens in life) not the noblest of type, but that most adapted to +environment secures racial survival. + +So that here again, evolutionary racial advance may derive its impulse +from the Female factor. + +A singular phenomenon, recorded by the biologist, Rörig, and one which +materially supports my argument, is that disease of the ovaries of a +female deer will cause _male_ antlers to develop in her. Proving a male +organism concealed, or held Recessive, in her, by power of her female +sex-organs normally to inhibit the development of her inherited +male-traits. A strange feature of this abnormal occurrence is that +disease of _one_ ovary only causes antlers to develop on _one_ side +only--and this on the side opposite to that of the diseased gland. + +On the other hand, castration of male sheep of the Merino breed (only +the males of which are horned) occasions hornlessness. + + +V + +Male traits being paramount on the plane of concrete function, although +they exist (normally) in Recessive form in the female, it is from the +male inherence of her active right side and its allied brain-half that +she derives her concrete powers alike of body and of brain. + +It is obvious, therefore, that when abnormally stimulated by undue +exercise, such male-traits may develop into abnormal dominance. + + +The left arm of woman is essentially the woman-member. In its +half-passive action of supporting her infant for hours together, it is +stronger for this maternal ministration than is the more active and +doughty right arm of the male. Her left hand is more delicate of form, +gentler and more soothing of motion than her right hand is. It is the +hand she caresses with. While for direct, strong action--masculine +action, that is--the paternal right half of her is dominant, as in the +male. And although in our present-day stages of Evolution, the Recessive +Woman-traits have emerged as definite characteristics, emancipating +themselves from subjection by the Dominant male-traits, it must be +remembered that their impulse and their powers are yet but rudimentary. +Woman is still more male than she is female; her methods being more +masculine still than they are womanly. And this in the degree of her +cruder racial stock, or of the harder conditions (natural or artificial) +of the environment in which she finds herself, demanding more of +masculine proclivity in her--of physical activity and mental +assertiveness--than of her intrinsic Woman-qualities of emotion and +ministry. + +Civilisation, foreshadowing evolutionary ideals, discountenances, the +fighting female. Nevertheless, the cruder female _fights_ still with her +male right arm, and the more cultured female, with tongue and tactics. + +The intrinsic Woman-qualities, whereof Christianity is the gospel, are +yet in their infancy of development; are yet more ideals for which we +are shaping and waiting than they are realised and abiding facts. + +Even their own babes are not secure from the instinct of blows inherent +in the male-muscles of their mothers' right arms, when these are +restrained neither by a woman's tenderness nor by a man's chivalry. +Girl-babies, save those of the rarer higher types, beat their mothers +and nurses only rather less frequently and less fiercely than boy-babies +do. + +Later in their life-history, that new impulse to the evolution of the +Woman-traits which characterises their development to womanhood, +normally negatives and further tempers in girls the male instincts of +fight and of sport. But many of our modern amazons, brought up like +boys, are more male than are their brothers. The male fighting-instinct +which moved man to invent a club (destructive) has become so tempered by +the increasingly potent Woman-traits in him that, save when angry or at +war, he is content to turn his club into a golf-stick, a cricket bat, or +tennis racquet; his sword into a plough-share. Whereas, on the contrary, +the Woman-traits which moved woman to invent the needle (constructive) +are becoming so over-ridden by the male in her that modern woman, +artificially masculinised, abhors the needle, and is almost as much +dominated as the other sex is by the male instinct for a weapon in the +hand. + + +The class, Vertebrates, would seem to represent an adaptation to +environment typically Male; earlier than and contrary in trend to that +of the Mammalia, whereof the impulse was obviously Female. + +Increasing vertebration was characterised by such a progressive +differentiation of Male from Female traits as progressively segregated +these in opposite sides of the body; with spinal column and spinal cord +for, respectively, physical and nervous central lines of demarcation. +Thus the Male traits were enabled more and more to detach themselves at +will from Female inhibition, and thereby increasingly to specialise and +exercise those powers of force and fierceness and activity by way of +which species became ever more individuated; aggressive, intelligent, +efficient, in terms of _Fitness_ for the struggle for survival. + +Until that later evolution of female adaptation to _Unfitness_, in the +sacrificial function of Lactation, inhibiting and tempering the earlier +male trend, engendered the yet higher order of Mammalia. + +(With that intuitive illumination inspiring speech, men and races +lacking in virility are contemptuously described as being +"invertebrate.") + + +According to this hypothesis, the paternal (and male) inherences of any +mother may be said to be transmitted to the grandson in the direct male +line of her heredity--an unbroken line of Maleness reaching back to its +amoebic origin. While the maternal (and female) inherences of any father +are transmitted, in the direct female line, to the grand-daughter--a +similar line of continuity. The Woman-sex and traits of the grandmother +remain thus for a generation dormant, or Recessive, in the father; +"skipping a generation," as the phrase is. Then, in the third +generation, they re-appear in the grand-daughter; by power of a maternal +contribution in which the female inherence is prepotent. While the +male-sex and traits of the grandfather remain dormant, or potential, in +the mother; likewise "skipping a generation." Then they emerge in the +grandson, by power of a male gamete evoking the inherent male in them. + + +VI + +The attributes of the one sex invested thus in the other, although +normally submerged, form nevertheless a valuable endowment; supplying +supplementary and complementary factors to counterpoise, to energise, +and fructify the powers proper to the sex of the individual. + +Man bears throughout life the Woman-potential his mother transmitted to +him. But it is not his to realise. He bears it in trust for his +daughters. He transmits it to his daughters, and in them this potential, +recovering its woman-impulse, evolves to a further degree of +woman-power. The like with mothers and sons. + +All of which is supported by the Mendelian doctrine that the mother +transmits "Femaleness" as a Dominant factor to her daughters and as a +Recessive factor to her sons. + +But the method whereby this is achieved has remained a mystery. + +Professor Punnett says with regard to the phenomenon: + + + "The mother transmits to her daughter the dominant faculty of + femaleness, but to balance this, as it were, she transmits to her + sons another quality which her daughters do not receive ... among + human families, in respect to particular qualities, the sons tend + to resemble their mothers more than their daughters do." + + +A striking illustration of such transmission by mother to son of a +paternally-derived abnormal inherence _which she herself does not +develop_, is found in so-called "bleeders"; persons who suffer from the +disease, hæmophilia. The daughters of a "bleeder" father show no symptom +at all of the affliction, but they, nevertheless, pass on to their sons +this male heritage of the grandfather. + +There are numerous other examples of traits and diseases thus "skipping +a generation"--in other words, of lying dormant, or potential, merely; +overshadowed in the constitution and psychology of the sex to which they +do not rightly belong, but developing in a succeeding generation in +offspring of that sex whereof they are a natural trait, or (so to speak) +a natural defect. + + +Since the woman-half she contributes to their hybrid constitution +engenders the potential of their living processes, the mother may be +regarded as still mothering her children throughout development and +maturity, and to the end of their natural term. Accounting for that +mystical sympathy between mother and child which intuitively informs her +of fatalities occurring to absent sons and daughters--but to sons +pre-eminently. Marvellously, they remain one living flesh so long as +life persists. + +During the War, mothers at a distance have known by an intuitive flash, +and have told of the death of sons cut down in battle. One mother +described the sensation she experienced as being precisely _as though +one side of her body had been suddenly torn away_. So too, mothers whose +infants have died during childbirth or shortly after, describe as +persisting for months subsequently a sense as though part of them were +dead. + +The father too must function in the hybrid living constitution. With the +immense difference, however, that his part therein is a factor of the +development of traits, not of the mystical functioning of Life. A +notable feature of this paternal heritage is that in women at middle-age +(when the wane of reproductive power releases vital potential from +maternal investments) not only may masculine physical traits emerge, but +there may develop in them notable brain-capacities inherited from the +father. Capacities inherent in them previously, but long inhibited in +action by the normal female brain-Recessiveness. + + +VII + +Every higher evolutionary differentiation results inevitably not only in +progressive mutations in the traits of species, but, as well, in +variations of the reproductive processes of such. When _defects_, +physical or mental, are not reproduced in later generations true to +Mendelian law, however, this is not abnormal, but is beautifully normal. +Normality requires that defect--which is a deviation from The +Normal--shall not be transmitted in any ratio whatsoever, but shall be +corrected in a succeeding generation. + +Moreover, when we realise the number and the complexities of human +traits, all struggling to keep The Law, it is only to be expected that +any single characteristic owing to its sex-inherence, may pass into the +potential or Recessive, mode, and may thus vanish for a generation. +Further, by the law of compensation, any trait or determinant, although +itself Dominant, may be dwarfed and submerged by some other Dominant +trait more assertive than itself. + +Suppose a father normally larger and stronger than the normally shorter +and weaker mother: Stature and strength being both Dominant and +masculine traits, the traits of such a father, dominating the +development of his sons, should so over-ride the traits of lesser +strength and stature of the mother (in whom strength and stature are +normally Recessive) that his sons will be tall and broad and strong, and +mentally virile. On the other hand, the mother's traits, prepotent in +the development of daughters, will inhibit in these and diminish the +strength and stature of their paternal inherences. Thus, the woman of +pure Recessive (the essential woman) type is smaller, more delicately +organised, and weaker than the male. + +By such means, the normal of the relative strength, stature, and mental +qualifications of the sexes is preserved; the specialised +characteristics of both ever further diverging in trend, while at the +same time intensifying their intrinsic attributes. + +Suppose, however, a mother who deviates from the normal in having +developed along masculine lines, and who is, accordingly, tall or strong +or mentally virile: Far from supplementing, in her sons, the father's +traits of strength and stature, her sons will be more or less emasculate +in mind or body, or in both. Strength and stature and virile mentality +not being normal to her, these can only have emerged in her and can only +have been exercised by her at cost of the masculine potential she bore +in trust for male offspring. A woman who wins golf or hockey-matches may +be said therefore to energise her muscles with the potential manhood of +possible sons. With their potential existence indeed, since +over-strenuous pursuits may sterilise women absolutely as regards male +offspring. + +Thus it is that muscular and otherwise masculine women produce weakling +males. (Giant women--female-Dominants--are incapable of reproduction.) +Tall mothers may produce tall sons, by transmitting to them the single +trait of tallness of the maternal grandfather. But since tallness in +woman is development along masculine lines, and detracts from her +maternal power, the tall son in such case is likely to be defective in +other manly traits. Men are of greater height than women, mainly in +consequence of greater length of leg. The power expended in the male in +length of limb is absorbed in the female into complex pelvic +developments, wherein it is stored as Reproductive potential. + +The power thus stored in latency reveals itself in the amazing +evolution, as regards capacity and muscular equipment, by way of which +the maternal _uterus_ so develops during pregnancy as to enable it to +cradle an infant of 9 or 10 lbs. weight, and to deliver this by output +of immense energy--a marvel of biological function and mechanism. + +Since the male trait of Tallness may be transmitted by woman from her +father to her son, without manifesting in herself, it is obviously waste +of power for her to develop a characteristic she needs neither for +personal nor for hereditary purposes. Whereas, by further evolving her +own woman-traits of suppleness and grace, she contributes new factors to +those of the male. And so with all the other sex-characteristics. + +Mr. Horace G. Regnart, M.A., the well-known breeder of pedigree stock, +states that a bull of marked _masculine_ characteristics sires daughters +of marked _feminine_ characteristics. While the _feminine_ cow bears +sons of strongly _masculine_ type. On the other hand, the daughters of a +"steery" bull (a bull of de-sexed type) are themselves defective in +female characteristics, and bear sons defective in male characteristics. + + +VIII + +Clearly and fully defined, accordingly, as Sex-characteristics are in +proportion as the individual is of high and normal organisation, +obtrusions in the one sex of the traits of the other are as much +stigmata of abnormality as are cleft-palate, webbed feet, or other +deviations from the normal. Because they are reversions to lower types +of organisation in which sex was less highly differentiated than is the +normal of to-day. + +Although, with progressive evolution, the Sex-traits are spun ever finer +and finer, and are ever more subtly and inextricably interwoven with +those of the other, normally the threads run true and distinct as do the +threads of warp and woof in textile fabric. + +The ever finer spinning of the threads secures an ever closer, subtler +interweaving. Whereby the fabric of human organisation, of character and +Faculty, becomes ever firmer yet more supple, ever stronger yet more +delicate, ever more intense and rich of colour, but nevertheless more +beautifully harmonised and subtilised by half-tones and complex +gradations. + +This is the reason why the strongest and most virile men are the most +humane; the sternest are most tender; the greatest are most subtle. So +inextricably interwoven with their virile characteristics are the finer +spun Woman-potencies, as strangely and exquisitely to temper and +sensitise their Manhood's powers. + +And it is why the tenderest, most womanly women are the noblest; the +gentlest are the most enduring; the wisest are the sweetest. + +But no more than Black can be White, Acid, Alkaline, or the Straight +line a Circle, can Repose be Action, Sternness be Sweetness, Firmness be +Softness, Fierceness be Gentleness; Assertiveness, Selflessness; +Boldness, Modesty. Nevertheless, in the hybrid unfoldment of Contrasting +traits, Softness tempering Fierceness transforms it to Strength; +Sweetness tempering Sternness melts it to Mercy; Assertiveness +reinforcing Selflessness nerves it to Devotion; Firmness preserves +Softness from lapsing to Weakness; Altruism, inspiring Chivalry, +transfigures it to Heroism. But that Fierceness and Strength, Sweetness +and Selflessness, have only intensified as, with further evolution, they +have extended further into Life and Consciousness, is shown when they +tear themselves asunder from their counterpoising attributes. Fierceness +is seen then to be more fierce in complex man--because fierce in so many +more and deeper issues of Life and Consciousness--than is the fierceness +of the gorilla, which manifests largely in muscular savagery; champing +of jaws, and beating on its breast as on a drum. + +So too, the emotion of complex woman is more deeply rooted in her, and +is more intense, than is the instinctive emotionalism of the savage +woman which expresses itself mainly in reflex movements and hysterical +outcries. + + * * * * * + +Thus down the ages, man, by way of Fatherhood, has endowed woman ever +further with his developing traits of strength and intelligence. Woman, +by way of Motherhood, has endowed man with an ever fuller heritage of +her attributes of selflessness and intuition. + +So these poor souls--the Man and the Woman in all men and women--have +climbed the steep ascent together, hand in hand, toward the Light. +Without the other, neither could have come. So tragically drear and +solitary would have been the pilgrimage, save for the spiritual converse +of that mystical comrade. + +Only by way of this psychical comradeship, which solaces the one sex by +the inspiration of the other, do men and women win through the +terrestrial travail of the human destiny. + +The mystical Man (who is her father in her) when woman would falter and +fail in the fight, whispers, "Courage, dear Girl, go on!" + +The mystical Woman (who is his mother in him) goes with her son into the +murk and struggle of temptation, holding her lamp of The Good and The +True and The Beautiful before his blinding eyes. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] Owing to an interchange of nervous strands, the right half of the +brain controls the left half of the body; and the converse. Structural +details which need not be considered here, but which have clearly for +purpose the closer and more complex association and co-ordination of the +Contrasting Traits of the two sides of the body. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS BY MISAPPROPRIATING THE +LIFE-POTENTIAL OF MALE OFFSPRING + + "_The truth, when it is discovered, is what every one has known._" + + +I + +Mendel found that the hybrid plants resulting from his cross-breedings +of Dominants with Recessives produced, when mated with similar hybrids, +sex-cells of pure Dominant and sex-cells of pure Recessive types, and, +moreover, a proportion of sex-cells of mixed type, corresponding to the +grey rabbit-offspring of a black rabbit that has mated with a white. + +So too, are found among humans, four types of men and women such as +might be expected under my application of Mendelian doctrine: +_Homozygotes_ for Traits, or pure typical men and women--Dominant males +and Recessive females, respectively; and _Heterozygotes_ for Traits, or +mixed types--Dominant females and Recessive males. + +Of the pure Masculine type, are men who are wholly male in body, mind +and bent; active, energetic, enterprising; pioneers of material +progress; State-builders, city-builders, trade-builders, financiers, +explorers, soldiers, men of affairs. Of the Mixed type, are men who, +while being virile of body and mind, possess nevertheless a greater +admixture of womanly quality than is strictly normal. These are the +artists, poets, writers, doctors, priests, philanthropists. + +Among women also, are two kindred orders; the wholly womanly--pure +unalloyed types of natural woman, wife and mother, sister, friend; and +women who, while being wholly womanly too in attribute and trend, +possess, nevertheless, underlying manly faculties which give broader +scope and effectiveness to abstract and impersonal issues of their own +sex-characteristics. These are the artists and poets and writers who +present the Woman point of view. They are the Florence Nightingales, the +Charlotte Brontës, Mary Somervilles; the philanthropists, reformers, +born physicians, teachers, nurses, and so forth; whose part it is to +mother, befriend and inspire humanity at large rather than to minister +to individuals. Whose part it is, as well, to extend the tender, +purifying ethics of Woman and The Home ever further and more deeply into +public life, public work, and public administration. + +Such men and women possess the characteristics of their own sex fully +differentiated, but tinctured and fructified by more than a normal +quotum of the characteristics of the other. They are quite normal, +however, and are wholly invaluable in their contribution to the world's +affairs. Admirably manly or womanly, they bear but little likeness to +the hereditarily-defective or to the artificially-manufactured +species--mannish women and womanish men. They deviate from the essential +Man and Woman types by degrees of overlapping in the higher mental +attributes. In all the main characteristics of Sex, physical, mental and +functional, they are completely men and women. The abnormal mixed types +are, on the contrary, more or less degenerate, structurally, +functionally and mentally. These persons of natural Mixed Types are +Nature's workers rather than the parents of her Races. The daily round +is too restricted for them. Their abilities and bent claim wider fields. +The home cannot contain them. It is too round to fit their angles. They +are hampered by its reciprocities, stifled by its personal atmosphere, +restive beneath its obligations. And not seldom they succeed in making +homes as uncomfortable for others as they themselves find such. + +These Heterodox--of which mould Genius is--are indispensable to spur and +quicken human progress, while adding nothing to the personal evolution +of the Human Type. They advance the standards and the ethics of Humanity +by creating ideals in Art, in Literature, in Politics, in Reform and +Philanthropy. But only too often they fall short, in their own lives, of +the standards and ideals they establish for the world at large. + +The Advance-guard of Faculty, they break new ground of Mind and Morale +for others to cultivate. Although they themselves frequently quarrel +with life, they make life in general greater and happier for their +fellows. If women, they possess much of the initiative and energy, the +intellect and chivalry of men. But they apply these to womanly ends. If +men, they possess much of the insight and sympathy, the altruism and +creativeness of women. But they devote these to manly achievements. + + +Herbert Spencer held that Genesis (or reproductive power) and +Individuation (or Self-development) exist in inverse ratio. Which is +because individuation _beyond the normal_ can only be achieved by +drawing upon the vital potential of offspring. Hence, these strong +individualities of Mixed Type--because reproductive power is diminished +in them--but seldom transmit their abilities to offspring. Genius is +frequently sterile. Otherwise, its children are of inferior calibre. + +It is in imitation, doubtless, of the natural Mixed Types--which may be +described as a normal deviation from The Normal--that the cult of the +mannish woman is being cruelly and disastrously forced upon our +latter-day girls and women; resulting in wholly deplorable developments. + +The woman of natural Mixed-type is essentially womanly in aim and bent. +She does womanly work with virile energy and masculine mental grip. But +she never (or seldom) assumes male proclivities or adopts male habits; +crazes to wear trousers, to ride astraddle, to smoke, spit, swear, +stride, talk slang, or shoot living sentient creatures. Nor does she +otherwise exchange the more highly-evolved and delicate morale and +manners of woman for those of the male. In Art, in Literature, in +Science; in Industry and Reform, her aims and work preserve the womanly +mode and outlook. + + +II + +In consequence of doctrine which, for several generations, has trained +women to develop for their own uses the masculine potential belonging to +sons, many of our present-day boys and girls are seen actually to have +exchanged their natural sex-characteristics. Boys are born now, puny, +neurotic, and effeminate; while girls are strong and male and masterful. +And it is precisely in the families whereof the girls are strong and +male and masterful, that the boys are weakly and effeminate; the +degenerative lapse from The Normal expressing itself, in both sexes, in +terms of abnormal characteristics of the other sex. + +That at thirteen, girls now-a-days are taller and heavier than boys of +the same age has been established by the Anthropometrical Committee of +the British Association. + +Dr. J. J. Heslop, after carefully observing the health and the physical +growth of children in fourteen elementary schools belonging to the +Stretford (Lancashire) Education Authority, has published a striking +return of his investigations. The following table shows the average +height and weight at this age: + + ++--------------------------------------------------------------------+ +| | Height. | Weight. | ++-----------------------+--------------------------+-----------------+ +|St. Matthew's | Boys 4 ft. 7-3/4 in. | 5 st. 7-3/4 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 9 in. | 5 st. 10-3/4 lb. | +|Cornbrook Park | Boys 4 ft. 8-1/2 in. | 6 st. 0 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 10-1/3 in. | 6 st. 5-1/2 lb. | +|St. Anne's | Boys 4 ft. 7 in. | 5 st. 3-3/4 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 9 in. | 5 st. 10-1/2 lb. | +|Trafford Park | Boys 4 ft. 7-3/4 in. | 5 st. 4 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 9-1/2 in. | 5 st. 8-1/2 lb. | +|Gorse Hill | Boys 4 ft. 8-1/2 in. | 5 st. 10 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 10 in. | 5 st. 11 lb. | +|Seymour Park | Boys 4 ft. 8-2/3 in. | 5 st. 0 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 10 in. | 5 st. 11 lb. | ++-----------------------+-------------------------+------------------+ + + +The most notable development among girls takes place between the +eleventh and thirteenth years. + +The opposite bias in this abnormal substitution of alien sex-traits is +due presumably, in both sexes, to an antagonising and neutralising of +the qualities normal to the one sex by emergence of those of the other. +Thus, the boy is puny and emasculate because his impoverished maleness +is too feeble to dominate the Female traits inherent in him, as is +normal to males. The girl is big and crude and masterful because her +impoverished Womanliness is inadequate to inhibit and refine her +inherent Male traits. + +The aims of Feminism are being realised in unforeseen developments. +Because in addition to extinguishing the most beautiful and inspiring +order of human qualities, this masculinising of women is burdening the +Race and deteriorating type by producing an ever-increasing number of +neurotic, emasculate men and boys. + + +III + +The present-day Mortality-rate of boy-babies has become increasingly and +alarmingly high. + +The mortality-rate of males is higher always than is that of females, +because of the greater hardships and dangers of men's pursuits. This is +one of the reasons why, although, normally, boys are born in greater +number (about 1050 to every 1000 girls) the female (pre-war) population +of England and Wales exceeded the male population by the huge majority +of 1,205,311. + +But the excess of male over female infant-mortality has greatly +increased of late years. In 1860 it was only 9 per cent. In 1913 it had +leapt to the high figure of 23 per cent. And this diminishing vital +power of males begins before birth even, 180 boys being born prematurely +as compared with 145 girls. Of boys born, 7 die from inborn physical +defects, as compared with 6 girls. While, before the age of three +months, 4 boys die to every 3 girls. Among 1000 infants dying before +they are a year old, only 96 are girls, as compared with 120 boys. +Recent statistics show that in rural Westmoreland, 48 boys under a year +old died, while only 21 girls of the same age succumbed. In Wiltshire, +the ratio was _135 boys to 78 girls_. + +To quote from a writer on these startling statistics of the +Registrar-General:-- + + + "Tuberculous diseases, convulsions, intestinal troubles, bronchitis + and pneumonia, and other maladies, all kill more boy than + girl-infants in their first year. The figures are surprising. + Omitting fractions, we find that among 1000 infants of each sex 21 + boys die of intestinal troubles to 17 girls; 10 boys die of + convulsions to 8 girls; 21 boys die from bronchitis and pneumonia + to 17 girls; and 14 boys from other causes to 11 girls. + Whooping-cough stands alone, carrying off 3·15 girls to 2·65 boys. + Even when chloroform or ether is given for the purposes of an + operation it kills more boys than girls." + + +It may be objected that, according to my view, the mortality of girls, +bred of constitutionally impoverished males, should likewise have +increased. But this high mortality among boy-infants and children must +so weed out the weakliest males that many of these do not live to +become fathers. Moreover, by developing into abnormal dominance the +_male_ potential in her, the mother de-vitalises sons more than she +de-vitalises daughters. + +Further, these crude hoyden-sisters of the weakly boys fail rather in +the higher attributes of Sex than in mere survival-power. They survive, +but they are marred in type by the stigmata of sex-immaturity or +abnormality. + +Increasing sex-impoverishment is bringing into vogue--almost as a matter +of routine--the performance on male infants of an unnatural (and a +degenerative) Jewish rite. + + +IV + +Of the many theories advanced to explain the determination of Sex in +offspring, the true one is, undoubtedly, the relative parental power of +the respective parents. + +Normally, this being well-balanced, the ratio of the sexes is about +equal; the preponderance being on the male side, however, owing to the +maternal parental potential being normally greater, because conserved by +reason of her less onerous rôle in life. When parental potential is +relatively greater in the father, female offspring is born. When greater +in the mother, male offspring results. In the families of men notably +virile, daughters preponderate. In those of women notably womanly, sons +are in the majority. (Presuming in such case the parent of the other sex +to be of average potence.) + +The preponderance of male-births during War-conditions is due to the +fact that by far the greater stress of these conditions, with consequent +depletion of vital reserves, falls upon the males. Hence the women--who +although depleted likewise by the increased demands upon them, are less +vitally exhausted than the men are--become relatively prepotent in +parental potential. The more virile men being absent on military duty, +moreover, the less virile members of the sex it is who preponderate in +the paternal rôle. + +Other parental factors, as of age, health and circumstance, which affect +the sex of offspring, do so _indirectly_ by their effects upon the +relative vital and parental potential of mother and father. + +In corroboration of the view that power conserved in the mother +engenders Maleness and masculine vigour in offspring, I have received +the following letter from the Head-mistress of the village-school of +Corley: + + + "I was much interested in your article _re Boy-babies_. I think my + school here is unique, there being 86 children on the roll, of whom + 57 are boys and 29, girls. And of the children in the village who + will be of age for admission this year, 7 are boys and 3, girls. + + "In the village there are several families composed of boys only. + + One family has 7 boys and 2 girls. + + " " " 6 " " 0 " + + Two families have 5 " " 1 girl each. + + " " " 4 " " 1 " " + + "Of one family reckoning 6 boys (1 dead; making 7 in all) the + mother has but one leg--the other having been amputated when she + was fourteen.[2] _None of the mothers here (so for as I can learn) + do work outside their homes_; except in odd cases, an odd day's + washing or cleaning. + + "_None do regular work on farms, or otherwise._ + + "All the children are well-fed, clean and well clothed. Our Medical + Nurse says she finds the finest babies here--of the whole of her + district. For 57 years the yearly returns in School have shown a + great preponderance of boys over girls." + + +The writer contrasts this Utopian order of things with her experience of +the rickety and otherwise diseased and defective states of +school-children whose mothers were employed in factories. + + +V + +It would seem that the embryological development of the male brain and +nervous system, it is which demands more of vital expenditure on the +part of the mother than does that of the female brain; less elaborately +differentiated as is this in respect of concrete intellection and +physical adaptation. + +For this reason, not only is more constitutional vitality on the +mother's part required for the production of sons--and more particularly +of virile sons--but the production of male offspring entails more +stress, and exacts a greater toll, physical and psychical, than does the +ante-natal nurture of the female embryo. Mothers who have borne female +children with but little constitutional strain or suffering may be +greatly debilitated, even invalided, during pregnancy with male +offspring. One finds women permanently weakened in constitution and +function, indeed, from the strain of producing a male. In such cases, +the male may be exceptional of type. Or the mother may be of +exceptionally low vitality. + +It has been argued that defect and degeneracy, as hare-lip, +cleft-palate, clubbed or webbed-foot, are more common in the male +because he is normally less highly-developed than the female is. The +contrary is obviously the case. In creating a difficult and a simpler +thing, there will necessarily be more failures in the difficult than in +the simpler product. Being nearer to Nature, the female is usually more +true to the normal type of species. But the type is not so fully +differentiated, or specialised in relation to environment, as is the +male. + +It is significant that the female _aphis_, when its vital potential is +stimulated by summer heat, is able to breed without co-operation of the +male, but breeds _females_ only. Supporting not only the view that the +female is the rootstock of species, while the male is, so to speak, an +alien grafted upon it, but indicating too, that the production of +females represents less output of reproductive energy, since one sex +alone is able to accomplish this. + + +VI + +Absence both of womanly emotion and of spiritual attribute disqualifies +the faces of the greater number of our modern "beauties" from being +truly beautiful. They lack those last exquisite touches which psychical +qualities bestow; sweetness, tenderness, gaiety, pensiveness, mystery, +mockery, witchery, wistfulness, surrender, resistance, maidenhood, +motherhood--the celestial and the terrestrial melting into one another +like the colours of the rainbow. + +Since evolution is advancing in some stock, modern beauty is, no doubt, +of higher calibre than has been attained in any previous epoch. But for +the most part, the faces of our handsome women are pre-eminently +pagan--bold, sophisticated, clever; without sweetness, softness, +imagination, sensitiveness--in a word, without Soul. The outlines, +howsoever fine, are hard and antipathetic in their uncompromising +firmness. The eyes are cold and critical and challenging, so that their +relentless gaze is sometimes rather of the nature of a blow than it is a +sympathy. + +Owing to that setting of the jaw which attends strong muscular action, +the shaping bones of the faces of developing girls thicken and coarsen, +and the naturally delicate, beautiful contours of chin and of cheek +deteriorate to the crude and heavy lower jaws characteristic of a very +large order of the sex to-day. + +The weak receding, or the sharply-pointed chin of the over-feminised +type--both early-Victorian and modern--errs in the other direction. To +give fine balance to the face and form--as to the mind--the Male traits +must be duly represented. These broaden and strengthen the curves, and +preserve them from lapsing to narrowness and feebleness; lending touches +of straightness and firmness which nobly enhance the graces. In excess, +they mar and deface, however; as is exemplified in the strong and +slovenly features, without drawing or delicacy, which characterise the +new type of girl being turned out by our schools and colleges, most of +which make now-a-days a speciality of sports. Similar heavy jaws and +blunt, amorphous features are replacing in our working-girls, de-sexed +by masculine employments, the classic, nobly-modelled lineaments which +made our Anglo-Saxon Race once the most beautiful, as it was the most +vigorous and enterprising, of the nations. Such faces may be deplorably +senseless for the sense--and lack of sensibility--in them. + +The facial type of the opposite extreme is ultra-feminine--a cameo-like +reversion to an earlier Victorian physiognomy, to which several +generations of mothers have failed to add any new quality. But, unlike +its Victorian prototype, the modern ultra-feminine face lacks blood and +emotion, and shows like a faded attenuation thereof. The cold, delicate +features, with the pinched nostrils which, owing to adenoid +obstruction, have never expanded to a full, inspiring breath of Life, +suggest further cameo-comparison; as being the daintily-carven shell of +an extinct creature. + +So devitalised and neurasthenic are many of our pretty young girls, that +their flowerlike faces, topping over-tall and undeveloped bodies, +suggest delicate blossoms crowning long attenuated, sapless stems. +Neither faces nor bodies are vitalised and athrill with powers rooted in +healthful organs; vivified by healthful functions, and instinct with +warm, iron-rich, magnetic blood. They show that making for beauty which +is inherent in the Woman-traits, but which, in latter-day girls, owing +to defective constitutional vigour or to educational, social or +industrial exhaustion, has been able to realise itself only in sickly +and weed-like development. + +Life manifests in these neurotics in the form of vivacities merely; not +as vitalities. + +Severed from their natural roots in Life and vital function, they +resemble nothing more than charming cut-blossoms gracefully fading on +drawing-room shelves. + +The truth is that girls brought up on modern strenuous methods skip the +years between 16 and 26. If young and fresh at 16, all at once we find +them 26 in constitution and in temperament--a little lean, a little +lined, a little wan, a little shrill, a little chill, and only too often +more than a little disillusioned and cynical--in a word already +_passées_. Some are, of course, an interesting and attractive 26, but +the fresh, warm, vital and beautiful years from 17 to 27, the years of a +natural woman's most charming bloom of mind and body, have dropped from +their lives, like petals from roses. So that our girls in their 'teens +require to hide the ravages of time by every sort of artifice. And at 26 +in years, they are approaching the forties in constitution and +temperament; are even keen on politics, cards, finance--resorts, +pre-eminently, of materialistic middle-age. + +This blighting of young womanhood, with loss of youthful bloom and +responsiveness, it is that has led to the decadent and demoralising +vogue of the Flapper. Since, beyond all things, men seek vital youth and +freshness in the other sex, to find it now-a-days, they must seek it in +children. + + +VII + +Deplorable are the degenerative processes by way of which those noble +natural characteristics of the Woman-sex which Nature has achieved by +ages of evolutionary advance may be observed to lapse, and are presently +all but obliterated from the woman form and face. + +Increasingly the curves straighten; the conflict between straight lines +and curves occasioning wrinkles. The jaw squares. The lips lose womanly +fullness, sweetness, and their natural colour and texture of +rose-leaves; becoming thin and pale and stern. Shadows gather round +them, foreshadowing, it may be, a masculine growth of hair. Hair loses +lustre and grows sparse, particularly above the brows. The chin loses +its feminine softness; rigidity and grimness being substituted. Eyes +lose fullness, tenderness, brilliance, and woman's normal melting +expression. The glance grows chill, hard, shrewd, direct. Crowsfeet mar +the modelled lids. The serene, inspiring woman-brows are furrowed by the +permanent frown of eye-strain or of nervous tension. The voice falls +flat and metallic, or drops into gruffness and harshness; losing its +delicate tuneful inflections, its sympathetic timbre, its joyous +quality. The cheeks hollow; the white temples are wrecked. + +In the faces of women whose systems are functioning healthfully, a +number of exquisite artistries in cellular texture of skin and in +tinting appear; the skin beneath the eyes differing from that of +the cheeks, that of the brows differing from that of the chin, +that above the mouth from that below, and so forth. In women +subjected to constitutional strain, all these exquisite artistic +differentiations--product of incalculable evolutionary developments--are +obliterated; the skin over the whole face becoming of the same grain and +hue, as is normal to the male. The body becomes spare and sinewy, or set +and spread; its movements heavy and abrupt. And more and more the hidden +male emerges from the wreckage. The male right arm, swinging like a +pendulum, suggests itself as being the motive-power of the ungraceful +mechanism. + +With the increasing maleness of physique, male mental proclivities +develop; obsessions to wear trousers, to smoke, to stride, to kill, and +otherwise to indulge the masculine bent. + + * * * * * + +It may be objected that Beauty takes too high a place in the counsels of +this book. _Beauty is Normality_, however. Nature, in her every aim and +handiwork, makes beyond every other thing for grace. Weed and moth, +shell and beetle, humming-bird and dragon-fly--all are lovely in +technique and artistry. Plainness and uncouthness in humans only too +often belie noble mind or disposition. This results, however, from such +failure of vital resources that the individual had fine material only to +equip his mind, and none left over to adorn his body. + +One sees the converse too, where all the available potential of beauty +has been lavished on handsome exteriors. + +Plainness is a mark of abnormality. The victim may be normal in other +respects. But in this, he or she is abnormal. And more particularly +_she_--since Woman is both medium and Creatrix of living harmony and +grace. So is comeliness declining, however, that one of the +specifications of a recent Baby-Competition was that beauty would not be +a necessary qualification. + +Yet Beauty is the natural birthright and The Normal of all babes and +children. + + +VIII + +The Male cult is impressed now at the earliest age. Some of our hapless +little girls, in consequence of having been subjected early to strain of +masculine drill, hockey, cricket and other rough and strenuous +exertions, are more like colts or smaller-sized bullocks in their crude +conformation and ungainly movements, as also in their crude mentality +and manners, than they are like charming human maids. + +Few developments in life are prettier or more engaging than is a natural +little girl. The sex of her, with its fair Woman-attributes, reveals +itself early in children of high organisation. Crowned by her curls, in +her simple white frock, she is as fresh and dainty, as winsome and +elusive as a fairy. Her little Woman-soul begins to make for beauty ere +ever she can walk. Ere ever she can walk, she moves her limbs in rhythm +of the dance. She tries to sing. She stretches out a tiny finger and +reverently touches a bright colour--a blue ribbon, a gold button, a pink +flower on a chintz. Set her in a field, she runs to cram her hands with +daisies. She fills, within the House of Life, an exquisite small niche +that nothing else can fill. + +Yet now they are cropping her fair curls, are exchanging her white frock +for masculine knickers. They are training her soft limbs and exquisite +elastic movements to the hard and rigid action of the soldiers' drill +and march; are teaching her to stride her pony that once she sat as +prettily and lightly as a bird; are making a hard, boisterous tom-boy of +her, with lusty, hairy limbs and uncouth manners; perverting all her +natural highly-differentiated delicate attributes and graces to clumsy +lower-grade form and activities. + +They have robbed her of her Doll, whose helplessness and wax perfection +fostered sentiments of worship, tenderness and ministry in her. They +have given her a whipping-top, which--unlike the boy, who pleasures in +the skill and mechanism of its handling--she lashes with contorted +features and neurotic spitefulness. + + +With characteristic scorn of physical disability, Feminism contemns old +age as disease or degeneracy--a weakness to be combated with latter-day +strenuousness, cloaked by a counterfeit youthfulness, forced exertions +(even games!) simulated youthful zests and gaieties. + +Beyond all things, women are exhorted not to allow themselves to "grow +old" as their grandmothers did, sitting, comely and tranquil and wise, +at their quiet firesides. + +Yet the truth is, Age is a natural beautiful phase; in its way, as +natural, as healthful and as beautiful as are any of the younger +seasons. Calm and stately as the snows of Nature's winter, as Nature's +winter shows us, old age does not presage death--because there is no +Death. That we call Death is but a temporary Recession from the Outer +and Terrestrial to the Inner and Celestial zone of Being. And with the +vital quietude and longer-sightedness of eyes, come spiritual quickening +and longer-sightedness of mental view. So that both eyes and mind +perceive The Outer more and more obscurely, focusing more and more on +The Remote. The stream of life runs stilly for the reason that it runs +more deep; centring again to that Within and Spiritual, whence it issued +in Birth, and will issue again in re-Birth. + +Compare such serene-faced, dignified age, cause to all of reverence and +tenderness, for the mystery and pathos of its wise and tranquil +resignation--Compare such with the restless, harried, malcontent old age +of modern counsels! + + +IX + +Before the advent of that admirable institution, the Eugenics Education +Society, for the establishment of a new Science of Heredity, as, too, of +a new propaganda of Race-Culture, vital and illuminating data, not only +of supreme scientific interest but, moreover, of the greatest practical +significance, passed, for the most part, unnoted. + +I venture to believe, however, that Eugenic propaganda has been too much +in the direction of eliminating defect from the Race by prohibiting +marriage to the so-called "Unfit." Whereas the true way of Racial +health, of normality and excellence, is, surely, to eliminate from life +the many conditions, material, economic, and personal, which make for +Unfitness--which preclude, indeed, the survival of little save +Unfitness. + +For since we are not in the secret of Nature's aims, and are wholly in +the dark as to the human type for which she is aiming, to prohibit +parenthood to any but the flagrantly abnormal, the insane and imbecile, +the epileptic and the hopelessly-diseased, might be to quench the +evolution of such higher Fitness as we are not qualified to foresee. +That which shows like disability in one age may be the incipient ability +of a later. In cruder, primitive days, when standards of Fitness were +physical strength, rapacity and cunning, honesty and mercy, and more +delicate organisation of body--the starting-points of new routes of +evolutionary development--would have been condemned as worthy only of +extermination. + +In sickly and declining stock there may exist, moreover, an ebbing vein +of rare faculty, which, re-vitalised by a due potential of maternal +re-creative power, might come to throb with genius. + +Realising all the factors--the innumerable lives, the incalculable +personal traits, endeavours and experiences, that have gone to make the +Individualism of any strain of stock, and realising that just these +factors of Individualism can have occurred in one line only of human +ascent and can never be repeated, it becomes clear that summarily to +extinguish any human strain, by arbitrary prohibition, would be to +exterminate a unique branch of the great Life-tree, and thereby to +deprive the Race of a specialised route of further ascent; a route which +no other stock could supply. + +The fact that great families, with great histories and talents behind +them, fall into decadence shows that even in decadent stock are +inherences of greatness which might be recruited to greatness again. +While apart from all this, the right of Parenthood, with the +evolutionary impulse to character and faculty consequent upon the +exercise of parental functions, is the birthright of every individual +capable of fulfilling such. The counsel of Selective Parenthood is +dangerous doctrine, indeed. Given Life, Nature by her methods of Disease +is able to eliminate stock too deteriorate for, or beside her purpose. +But she alone knows her purpose. And she alone can judge as to what is +intrinsic Fitness for Survival. + +Selective Parenthood makes, moreover, for the elimination of those +valuable object-lessons of inherited defect and disease, whereby Nature +points her inestimable morals of healthy and disciplined living. For +evasion, too, of those penalties and burdens in the care and maintenance +of the Unfit, which a nation justly incurs by such social wrongs and +maladministrations as are largely responsible for disease and defect. + +The doctrine of operative sterilisation is not only humanly repugnant +but, in view of the psychological import of every physical function, it +is essentially evil. + + +X + +Some momentous morals of the Feminist trend are pointed by the +Insect-world, which may be regarded as a devolutionary back-water, +wherein Life is slowly ebbing toward extinction by fluctuating out in +ever smaller, meaner, drabber, ineffective, pulseless and spectral +existences--chill and teeming myriads unwarmed by the throb of emotion, +unillumined by the light of Mind. Dust which, raised from dust by power +of Life, has caught the trick of living, and goes on living and +perpetuating, without cause or impulse other than age-old, time-worn +mechanistic habit imparted by the state of living. + +And in this phantom under-world of Decadence, cast by the shadow of Life +and peopled with distorted images thereof, the females are +Dominant--larger in size, stronger, more active, more enterprising and +ferocious than the males. As in the world of Vegetation, by way whereof +Matter first quickened into Life, so in this realm of _Insectivoræ_ by +way of which Life is gravitating back to the inertia of Inorganic +Matter, in ever shallower, denser and more sluggish strata, the male is +seen as appanage and victim of the female. + +In the beehive, he appears as ineffective drone amid a throng of +strenuous neuter female-workers. And a female is his Queen. + + +Significant again is it that insect-females are seen increasingly to +have emancipated themselves from mother-instincts and maternal +functions, as regards nurture or affection for their young. The single +process wherein the warring males and snarling females of finer fierce, +evolving species sheathe their claws and mute their hates in a +co-operative, self-effacing instinct--Reproduction, here in this +disintegrating world of Devolution, functions without welding spark, or +lighting gleam of parent-altruism. At best, it is as chill, as +colourless and meticulously mechanical as the interminable tickings of a +world of clockwork. At worst, it is a repulsive rapacity on the part of +females to secure perpetuation. And this secured, they straightway sting +the craven male to death, or tear him limb from limb and ghoulishly +devour him. + +Queen Bee leads her vassal suitors so strenuous and dizzying an +ante-nuptial dance, for privilege of mating with her, that only one +survives to claim the prize; the others dropping, dead and dying, in the +wake of her murderous supremacy. And, as with other masculine and +muscular females, her progeny are neuter working-females (sterile) and +emasculate males (drones). + +As Feminists demand for human babes, the Bee-mother hands over her +offspring to be brought up by the State. While some other +insect-mothers, having reposited their eggs (to serve as bombs that +explode and devastate their living hosts) straightway abandon them, and +return to the more strenuous and repulsive female-pursuits of this +Phantasmagoria-world--a clockwork kingdom fabricated of Life's debris, +and drably mimicking the throb and motion of its mechanism in ghoulish +mockeries and vacuous reiterations; the while it runs down slowly, +ticking back to the molecular vibration of mineral inertia. + + +END OF BOOK I + +NOTE.--_Mendelian and other readers interested in the more scientific +aspects of the subject are referred to an Appendix at the end of this +volume, in which these issues are further considered and some important +evidences adduced._ + +FOOTNOTE: + +[2] I have observed that lameness in women, by restricting physical +activities and thus conserving vital energy, conduces to male offspring. +The fact may well have been the origin of the Chinese custom of +crippling the feet of female children. In my own professional practice, +by prohibiting all strenuous and exhausting pursuits, intellectual, +social or athletic, before and after marriage, I have succeeded in +securing male offspring in patients whose stock had for generations +given birth to girls only. In those _organically_ de-sexed by male +pursuits, rest will not avail, of course.--_Author._ + + + + +BOOK II + +WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS DUE TO FEMINISM + + "This is the function of our and every age, to grasp the knowledge + already existing, to make it our own, and in so doing to develop it + further and raise it to a higher level. In thus taking it to + ourselves we make it different from what it was."--_Hegel._ + + +I + +Ancient history is depressing study. + +It shows us peoples rising slowly and laboriously out of states of +barbarism to high degrees of culture and enlightenment, and then, more +or less suddenly, falling upon decline; lapsing to total extinction, +even. One after another, we may watch them climb the Evolutionary Hill, +then slacken pace and struggle on spasmodically. Till presently we find +them steadily losing ground; slowly at first, but, gathering momentum, +regressing more and more rapidly, until finally they are seen racing +headlong to destruction. + +Of some among the proudest and the greatest Civilisations, so absolute +has been their ultimate extinction that nothing more than ruined temples +and some statuary remain to mark their quondam glory. + +Biologists tell us this is natural. Races, they say--like +individuals--have only a certain life-tenure. They are born, develop, +attain maturity, lapse to old age and then die; just as men do. + +The analogy is not sound, however. Because although individual men die, +the stock they leave behind, if duly preserved and replenished by fresh +blood, may live indefinitely. Moreover, such records as remain show +that these past civilisations died, obviously, not of natural old +age--but of disease. Natural old age is sane and wise, and +self-controlled; healthful in mind and in body. Whereas the main +features characterising the decline of these great powers, were +viciousness and licentiousness; physical, mental and moral corruption. +Theirs was no passing in gradual waning of strength and quiet +dissolution; not even in senility. They may be described, on the +contrary, as having rushed helter-skelter upon death in full vigour of +their prime. We see in them, indeed, all the vehemence and +self-destructive forces of "sthenic" disease--disease as it occurs in +strong men struck down in full health. They died in riot, venality, and +lust, and every other form of vice and evil. Clearly, they died +unnaturally--of disease, not naturally of old age. + +How and why then did this happen? How and why should disease thus have +stricken these in mid-career? Since history shows the political +institutions, the laws and the administration of many of such mighty +decadents to have reached high levels of excellence, in respect of +justice and intelligence, while Culture, Art and Industry were likewise +notable among them, the causes of their downfall must be looked for +elsewhere than in their sociology. + +And since all human processes, sociological as well as natural, have +their roots in Biology, we are led to examine such records as remain, +for evidences of biological failure. Healthy and vigorous races do not +decline in consequence of unjust laws or maladministration. If they are +healthy and vigorous, they reform these. + + +II + +Investigation shows one striking feature as having been common to most +of these great decadences. In nearly every case, the dominance and +licence of their women were conspicuous. And realising Woman's +portentous rôle in Racial advance, it is difficult to believe anything +but that her rôle must be equally potent in Racial decline. + +A nation becomes decadent because the individuals composing it have +become decadent. The individuals composing it can only have become +progressively decadent by progressive hereditary decadences. And since +Woman is the racial reservoir and the Agency of Evolution, hereditary +decline of individuals and nations must have its source in a decline of +mother-power. + +History confirms this view. It shows the progress and waxing supremacy +of these great powers to have been concurrent with rising levels of +womanly character and virtue, with high regard for woman by man, with +high estimation and observance by woman of the functions of motherhood +and of The Home. While neglect of the home, contempt for and evasion of +the duties of motherhood, immorality and general licence among their +women characterised their downfall. + +And comparing some modern developments with these records of Ruin, one +can but be struck by notable resemblances between these latter and the +present-day trend of all our greater civilisations. + + +In the decline of Rome, the Roman women went to two extremes. A tendency +that shows increasingly among our modern womanhood. They separated into +two main orders. "Blue-stocking" and "Rake," they were then designated. +"Mannish" and "Womanish," or "Feminist" and "Ultra-Feminine," better +characterise their latter-day presentments. + +In America, these two orders of women are known as the "College" and the +"Society" types, respectively. The "College" type makes a cult of +masculinity of body and of brain. The "Society" type makes a cult of +feminine graces and social accomplishments. + +In the poorer, as in the superior classes of all nations, similar +extremes are found. One order is virile and hard-working; and for the +most part plain and moral. The other is womanish and pretty; and for the +most part frail. + +With us--as with those earlier peoples--the demand for liberty and +unrestricted economic opportunities for women is occasioning contempt +for and evasion of the functions of wife and of mother, emancipation +from the home, increasing absorption in public affairs, fever for +pleasure, lapse of womanly traditions and morale. All of which +developments passed rapidly, in those others, into general laxity, +licence and corruption; culminating finally in total ruin. With them, +the claims of Home and of The Family became, as they are becoming more +and more with us, secondary merely and subsidiary to other pursuits; to +personal ambitions, public careers, to pleasures, excitements, crazes +for notoriety. Woman's inherent erraticism--defect of her intrinsic +spontaneity, her bent for novelty and strong sensation--degenerated, +under the licence accorded her in ancient Rome, into the appalling +orgies of The Bacchanalia; which were instituted by the sex. + +Women attended the displays of gladiators. They watched the wild beasts +tear their victims. They themselves dressed as gladiators, and held +mimic combats. By cult of muscle, they grew taller than the men. + +Sallust writes thus of a notorious Roman matron: + +"Sempronia had committed many crimes of a boldness _worthy of a man_. +Blest alike in family and beauty, in husband and children, she was +well-read in Greek and Roman literature; could sing, play and dance more +gracefully than any honest woman need; had many of the other +accomplishments of a riotous life. She cared for nothing less than for +decency and modesty." + +Fifty years later, Seneca takes up the story of a rapid decadence: "The +ladies do not reckon the years by the number of the Consuls, but by the +number of their husbands." + +Much the same licence, extravagance and viciousness of the sex +characterised the greater number of those other old-world wreckages. + +The higher Woman-attributes ceased to evolve; ceased to be exercised; +ceased to inspire. Women cultivated solely, or pre-eminently, the +male-side of their natures; muscle, intellect, ambition, concrete +activities, indulgence of sex-instincts. By power of which masculine and +alien proclivities, they increasingly dominated the men, in whom the +virile traits had proportionally declined. Thus, more and more, the +purifying, uplifting and inspiring potence of true Womanhood, together +with the softening refinements of The Home, became ever further +withdrawn from the national life. Thus corruption undermined; and chaos +finally engulfed. + + +III + +Things were different in Ancient Greece. + +It has been said that Greece fell because she did not give her women +liberty. For a time comes, in the development of every nation, when its +women must be freed. Or decadence sets in inevitably. And some of those +old civilisations declined, undoubtedly, from lack of progress in this +respect. + +It would seem that the first sips of liberty require to be administered +to the sex with caution, however; the effects observed carefully, the +doses increased warily. Otherwise, impulsive and impressionable as they +are, women lose their heads; become intoxicated, and get out of hand. +And once women get out of hand, it is next to impossible to bring them +again under control (as was seen in the outbreaks of Feminist +militancy). Civilisation forbids that men shall deal with them as with +masculine rebels. And fenced thus behind the privileges of their own +sex, when armed with the prerogatives of the other, they may prove +dangerously difficult customers. + +In ancient Greece, the wives and mothers and the other reputable women +had but little or no freedom. They lived, for the most part, in +seclusion; dull and unintelligent and uneventful lives. There was no +pure, wholesome, and inspiring social life. The only women who were free +were the _hetairai_, those famous ladies who shed a lurid brilliance +over the corruption and decline of this great State--a decline wherewith +they had, most certainly, much to do. A faction apart from the wives and +mothers--although many among them were courtesans, they stood apart too +from the courtesan class. Women who had found in the unfreed state of +the wife and mother of their epoch, inadequate scope for their impulses +and talents, they broke away from domestic conditions, to form a coterie +of free lances--a cultured, brilliant and alluring band of renegades, +sought and esteemed for their beauty and intelligence by all men; +aristocrat, philosopher, and pleasure-seeker. + +More likely than that Greece fell because she did not emancipate her +women, it is that she fell because the women who emancipated themselves +abandoned the rôles of wife, of mother, and other reputable functions. +For these Grecian _hetairai_ comprised, in the main, the flower of their +generation. One sees them, indeed, as brilliant Racial poison-blossoms, +greedily appropriating and exploiting to their own purposes the nation's +beauty and the nation's talent, its aspirations, potence, +passion--without transmitting any of these racial attainments to a later +generation. In place of endowing their kind with such nobler light and +faculty, inspiration and sweetness, as supply a people's evolutionary +impulse, they abandoned the home and the sacred and spiritualising +functions of true wifehood, and of the motherhood of such higher living +types as are indispensable to lead a nation's progress. + +A kindred movement--modified, for the present, by the more enlightened +traditions of our Century--is foreshadowing itself across the higher +civilisations of our day. More and more, our better types of women (the +misinterpretations of the Feminist Movement having imparted a distorted +bias and direction to their powers) are similarly abandoning the Home, +or are withdrawing their best interests and talents from it; are evading +wholly, or are gravely restricting their maternal obligations to the +Race; regarding children as bye-products, merely, of life--vastly less +important than some hobby or career. In place of realising the new +generation as the Vanguard of Life and Evolution; that which beyond +every other human achievement counts in the Universe. + +Worse than this even, more and more, everywhere, women are failing in +the maternal power of transmitting to offspring the health, the beauty, +the abilities and aspirations which are the model and ideals of our age. + + +IV + +A menace to the Race more alarming than that of the hard and mannish +woman (who, because of her lack of womanly attractiveness, is debarred, +in considerable degree, from marriage) is another and less ungraciously +obvious deviation from The Normal--an order of the sex, modern and +artificial, and rapidly increasing in number, over-civilised and +highly-feminised both of physique and of temperament, which may be +described as an Ultra-Feminine, or, in contradistinction to the +Feminist, as a Feminist order. + +Their womanhood but lightly rooted in neurotic systems, the women of +this sect are unstable and erratic, seeking distraction for their +restless, ill-balanced forces, in cards, crazes, drugs; fads and freaks. +Unfitted for wifehood and motherhood--some by faulty heredity, but a far +greater number by educational strain and consequent warp--some of these +ultra-feminised and frequently interesting creatures absorb themselves +feverishly in public movements; religious, social or political. Some are +persons of irreproachable morale and ideals; devoted, gifted, wholly +admirable. And being wives not seldom of men as talented, it is +deplorable that warp of culture, unfitting them for motherhood, should +have left such to waste their powers and aspirations in beating the thin +air merely of Utopian propaganda. When, otherwise, they might have led +the true and only way of Progress by endowing the Race with living +presentments and evolving treasuries of the parental ideals and +endowments. + +The greater her charm, the nobler her character and talent, the more the +pity is when woman is defective in the power to transmit her high +qualities, or has power to transmit these in inferior degree only; thus +sealing up for ever, or gravely impoverishing a vital spring of living +faculty and individualism--a unique line of Human Ascent which no other +stock can supply, and one which may have been leading up to the +production of genius such as the world has not yet known. + + +Another--and quite different--sub-order of this neurotic (and +partially-sterilised) type, in losing its higher potential of motherhood +has lost the racial instinct wherein personal virtue is rooted. The +lives of these are free and irregular. Not measures, but men, are their +vogue; to serve as admirers of their charm and talents, as spectators of +their temperamental extravagances. Incapable of the emotions of love, +they seek, are discontented, and seek further when they do not find in +its excitements, the joys and contentment that reside alone in deep and +abiding emotions. The poise and repose, the charm, the refreshment and +the inspiration of true Womanhood are lacking in them. They demand +increasing novelty and change of venue for their ill-ballasted powers +and capricious sensibilities. And this precisely in proportion as they +are deficient in those womanly emotions and illusions which endue the +least and simplest things with glamour and with beauty. + +This type, which can scarcely be said to _live_, but merely to frolic +through life, is pre-eminently dangerous to progress. Because, while +possessing the psychology, the appeal and influence of women, some of +these have cast off, utterly, the traditions, the nobler aspirations and +the functions of the best womanhood. + + +V + +It is universally admitted that a bad woman is far more wicked than a +bad man is. She is more callous, ruthless, wanton and debased. The +irresponsibility regarding concrete affairs (innate in a sex whereof The +Concrete is only secondarily the province) makes her a dangerous and a +demoralising factor when her acquired male brain and activities (for the +clever, bad woman is always of masculine bent) over-ride her own natural +aptitudes. Because the powers she has artificially acquired--in +substitution for her native ones--do not alter her inherent constitution +of a creature builded upon instincts; instincts which her native higher +qualities are alone adequate to guide and inspire. One may acquire some +of the characteristics of an opposite sex, _but never the morale_; which +is inborn and inherent to the natural sex-characteristics. + +Faculty declines in the inverse order of its development. The bloom and +beauty of the peach and of the flower are the last things to come--and +the first to go. So, in forfeiting her womanly qualities, woman forfeits +earliest the best of these. Love and purity and spiritual aspiration +perish first; with the result that the lower-grade female Subconscious +emotionalism, instinct and palpitant with animal impulse, comes into +play. + +Man requires to degenerate to far inferior levels than is the case with +woman, before he so loses his normal rationalism as to forfeit his sense +of proportion and of his responsibility with regard to material affairs, +and that stern obligation to conform to environmental conditions which +has been the impelling force of male development. Irresponsibility is in +him an acquired--and a feminine--defect; not an inherent failing of his +sex. The very basis of the manly character is a recognition of the male +responsibility in life's affairs. It was the impulse of man's primal +struggle. It is the mark of his civilised manhood. + +Irresponsibility is, on the contrary, innate in woman. It is part of +that spontaneity, plasticity, and versatility which have engendered the +racial evolutionary mutations; and by way of these have engendered the +progressive transitions to ever higher forms. And indispensable as her +native mutability is in making her the agency of evolutionary change, it +is an insecure and a dangerous basis for too heavy a super-structure of +male characteristics, physical or mental; as also for too heavy a burden +of male responsibilities. It disqualifies her for liberty and scope of +action identical with man's, in material affairs. + +The further we fit her, moreover (beyond her normal capacity), for such +affairs, by artificially equipping her with masculine aptitudes, the +more we unfit her for her evolutionary rôle of spontaneous advance. Her +chiefest values lie in the spring and the plasticity which enable her to +adapt her nature to the evolutionary impulses of life inherent in her; +and thereby to engender further human evolution. For this, it is +important that she shall not be moulded on those firmer and more +definitely prescribed lines of masculine development which are +indispensable to the pioneering of material progress. Nor should her +powers be equally differentiated, or similarly expended. They must be +left, in far greater degree, conserved, unformulate and unadapted. + +Normally, she is the child of Nature, in whom (because she is the +mother of the human child, who shapes to the maternal model) Nature is +unfolding the type of our Perfecting Humanity. She should remain, +therefore, more or less in the native and spontaneously fructifying +state conducive to evolutionary unfoldment. When she adapts as closely +to concrete conditions as it is imperative for man to do, not only does +she exhaust the potential fertility indispensable to the further +evolution and growth of racial faculty, but her powers lose that mode of +flux which enables them to tide to higher levels. + +While man stands for Civilisation, woman stands for Nature. Generatrix +of Life, she is instinct with vital impulses. And when these are not +expended, as is normal, in the creation of and ministration to living +and beloved beings, they generate warped, erratic and chaotic +aberrations. Because, no matter to what degree she may acquire masculine +characteristics and aptitudes, she remains, at core, a creature of +instinct; not of reason. As a creature of instinct she is invaluable to +life--because Life is moulded upon instinct. But instinct and +rationalism function on different planes of mentality. To over-develop +rationalism in her is to quench emotionalism in her, and the higher +illumination of her Supra-conscious faculties; thus rendering her the +prey of smouldering subconscious impulses which burst fitfully and +mischievously into flame. + +For Progress, man must be always the leading half and controller in +politics and civic affairs. These are his province. His sex stands for +permanence and conformity--and, accordingly, for uniformity. And +uniformity is the model for Civilisation, making as it does for justice +and the common good. + +Woman's non-conformability adapts her admirably to the personal +relations of life, but not to the political. Man builds institutions and +administers them by more or less rigid impersonal rule. Woman transforms +them into homes, and humanises them by individual concessions and +exceptions. + +So the two are supplement and complement in the public as in the natural +sphere. But their respective rôles are contrary in every mode and issue. +Man's conformity, political and civic, is continually leavened by the +element of non-conformity and change he inherits from his mother, with +her other Woman-traits. But in him, her spontaneity and impulse are so +intelligised and stabilised by his masculine rationalism and bent for +order that, in place of operating emotionally and spasmodically, they +become tempered and restrained. Under his administration, material +advance proceeds slowly, but surely and securely. His masculine +intelligence and sense of responsibility cause him to adjust the +maternal evolutionary impulses,--which he inherits as reformatory and +revolutionary impulses--to the exigencies of practicability, and the +requirements of circumstance. + + +VI + +There is no more difficult, or possibly mischievous, person than a +strong and clever woman whose over-developed masculine energies and +abilities are controlled neither by a man's reason and sense of +responsibility, nor by a woman's natural disabilities, affections and +restraints. She is sometimes prodigiously clever; adding to her male +talents a woman's fertility, versatility, adaptability, complexity and +intuitiveness. And yet with all their gifts, such women accomplish +little but harm--alike to themselves and others. + +Erratic, fickle, irrepressible, they are perpetually flying off at +tangents. Now they are one thing too much. Now they are the opposite--in +an equal extreme. + +Medleys of contradictions and perversities, they are no sooner repressed +in one direction, or become fatigued by the monotony of any single line +of action, than they burst forth in some other. Their abnormal +mentality and energy, allied to their innate impulsiveness and craving +for change, impel them to break loose from those bonds of affection, of +tradition and of aspiration, which are woman's safeguards. There is in +the nature of most women, this dangerous quicksand of irresponsibility, +which may, in crises, topple and submerge the soundest structure of +education and of habit builded over it. This is seen in the abandon and +anarchy of the sex in riots and in revolutions. + +Such women rebels become increasingly a law unto themselves, and see no +reason why all others should not do likewise. They lack the masculine +grip of concrete principles to recognise that general lawlessness and +individual liberty cannot co-exist. Because where every man is free to +do as he pleases, no man is free to do as he pleases, owing to some +other man's abuse of his liberty encroaching on that of his neighbours. + +Women of this order are the Cleopatras, Agrippinas, Messalinas and the +Catharines of Russia; the de Pompadours, de Staëls, Georges Sands, and +the innumerable other self-centred, unconscionable female-egotists whose +extravagances shriek discordant down the ages. + +Lacking both a woman's morals and a man's ethics, they are freaks of +Nature; or are Frankensteins of abnormal culture. When they are not +Empresses, to indulge in shameful licence--their male abilities +exaggerating their woman-instincts to the dimensions of +megalomanias--their inordinate ambitions make them mistresses of crowned +heads, or of others whose rank or wealth supplies their mistresses with +means and scope for their unbridled prodigalities. Privileged by their +sex and by masculine favour, their lawlessness protected from its +merited penalties by the law-abiding of their fellows, they become +intoxicated--frequently insane--as result of their successes and +excesses. The famous courtesans have been (and are still) for the most +part women of this ilk; persons of steel brain and will, without a +woman's aspirations or emotions to soften their self-centredness; nor a +man's code to discipline their wantonness. They make men the instruments +and the victims of their feminine defects, which are all--or nearly +all--of woman they possess; self-consciousness distorted to a monstrous +vanity, emotions dwarfed to greeds and lusts. + +One after another, they exploit their victims, by exercise, precisely, +of the same masculine business-abilities and ruthlessness which make men +fraudulent company-promoters, profiteers, or sweaters of the poor. When +one has served their purpose, they cast him off for another. +Cold-blooded, clever, and emotionless, although sometimes sensual in a +fashion purely male (in keeping with their other male proclivities) they +are adventuresses, spies, poisoners, adultresses, monsters; abiding +reproach to a noble sex; terrible example of the fate awaiting that sex, +as penalty for abnormal development of masculine characteristics beyond +the capacity of its Woman-traits to counterpoise and guide. + +Power, which strengthens and steadies all but weak men, only too often +drives women to destruction. A factor in this is that those privileges +of their sex which have become, more or less, their civilised +prerogative, preserve them from the salutary harsh and stern rebuffs +which men in like circumstance inevitably encounter. + + +If women are to have scope and authority identical with men's, then they +must forgo all privileges; must come out from their fence behind strong +arms and chivalry to meet masculine blows in the face, economic and +ethical--if not actual, indeed, as Prévost has predicted. + +And then, Heaven help them--and men--and the Race! + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE + + "I am for you and you are for me, + Not only for your own sake, but for others' sakes, + Envelop'd in you, sleep great heroes and bards, + They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me." + + _Walt Whitman._ + + +I + +A French biologist has discovered that when a female oyster is starved, +and its constitution thus deteriorated, it becomes transformed into a +male. + +The male oyster must be inferior, therefore, in organisation to the +female. Its constitutional potential is less, since the constitutional +potential of the female contains both its own, and the potential of the +male. And the lesser, it is admitted, cannot contain the greater; +although higher evolutionary forms, when subjected to conditions which +preclude them from sustaining these their higher forms, may lapse to +modes less complex. + +Further and more striking examples of such Sex-transformation are +afforded by so-called "mules," or "neuters," which occur in other +species. A well-known case is that of a pea-hen belonging to Lady Tynte. +Having laid eggs from which chicks were raised, this pea-hen, after +moulting, developed feathers proper to the other sex; appearing like a +pied peacock. In the third year the same phenomenon occurred in her; she +developed spurs, moreover, resembling those of the cock. _She never bred +after this change in her plumage._ + +As already mentioned, kindred phenomena of sex-metamorphosis are +observed in women after operations involving removal of reproductive +glands. + +That the female is, indeed, a more complex order of organisation than +the male, is not to be doubted, since masculine characteristics emerge +from it when it lapses from its normal of condition. + + +Adolescence as it occurs in the boy and in the girl emphasises this +conclusion. + +To the age of twelve or thereabouts, the normal boy- and girl-child are +like enough to one another; smooth-skinned, active, simple creatures. +The boy is, normally, larger, sturdier, stronger and rougher than the +girl. But, save for the cut of their hair and of their clothes, the two +are very similar. + +With the transition to manhood and womanhood, respectively, notable +differences accrue, however. + +From having been a strong, young, active, boy-like creature, +now--provided her development be allowed to take the normal course--the +girl loses physical activity and strength. A phase of invalidation sets +in. Instinctively, she no longer runs and romps. New languors invest her +in mind and in body. She is indisposed to brain-work or to much +exertion. She lounges and muses. Her mind is clouded with the mists of +awakening sensibilities. She suffers from lassitudes. + +She becomes a complex of disabilities, indeed; disabilities which in +delicate, sickly or over-taxed girls, show in chlorosis, anæmia, +hysteria and other ills. Obviously, profound changes, with +re-adjustments of her constitutional resources, are taking place in her. +And most significant of these is that which shows like an _arrest_ of +development, physical and intellectual. Because, normally, she develops +but little further along direct lines of intellect and muscle. Yet that +she is still developing, and this upon wholly new--subtler, higher and +more complex lines, is manifest at the end of this transition-period +whence she emerges, a woman. + +Her developmental arrest and her disabilities (resulting from an +intensification of Recessive processes in her) are seen now to have +subserved a phase of higher evolution. Nature suddenly locked the door +upon her differentiating and escaping energies, in order that these +might be conserved and knit into organisation. The active muscularity +she has lost reappears in the new factors of symmetry and delicate +modelling of limb; in repose and grace of movement. The straight, slim, +boy-like lines of the hoyden girl have evolved into the curves and +rounded suppleness and beauties of a woman. The girlish, agile and +abrupt movements have passed into a woman's poise and grace. The +unformed features of the child have become now delicately modelled; the +curveless, emotionless lips have bloomed into the flower-like, rosy +fullness of a woman's mouth; passionate and tender. New mystery and +brilliance light her eyes. Eyes and brows are charged with potencies; +with seriousness, with modesty, serenity, elusiveness. Hair and hands, +voice and expression, have become transfigured by the magic of a +re-creative impulse which has regenerated her whole being. + +So too her brain development, arrested along lines of concrete +intellection, is seen to have evolved to higher, subtler forms of +mentality; to be instinct with delicacy, sympathy, tact, and with that +incalculable mode of supra-conscious cerebration which is intuition. In +so far as she is of high, womanly type, she is now warm and emotional, +sympathetic, intuitive; consciously pure, yet delicately passionate. +From a crude and sexless hoyden, she has evolved into an exquisite +complexity; invested all round with higher values, human and psychical. + +As in their earliest beginnings, however, so now again the Woman-traits +manifest as Unfitnesses. Her new departure has actually undone in her +much that had been achieved in physical adaptation. + +Biologists, observing this arrest of development in the female, have +interpreted it as sign of an organisation inferior to that of the male. +In point of fact, the contrary is the case. Her arrest of development +along lines of masculine inherence no more proves her inferior to the +male than does the human developmental arrest along lines of that tail +our ape-progenitor possessed, prove the human inferior to the +ape-species. + +This arrest of tail-development occurred first in the female, doubtless; +being one of those evolutionary mutations in the direction of advance of +Type which are engendered in her sex; and which are characterised by a +conversion to higher potential, of differentiations in respect of +adaptation to environment that have been achieved in the male. +Conversion of male Fitness to female Unfitness, therefore. + +Seeing that the ape is vastly more adapted than is man to natural +environment, it is obvious that the trend of adaptation to environment, +far from having been along lines of evolving ape to man, must have been +always, on the contrary, impelling reversion of the human to the +ape-type. Darwin relates how he and Huxley, watching some boys bathing, +"marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no +longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all +other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on earth." + +Hugo de Vries says: "Natural Selection (whereof Adaptation is _modus +operandi_) ... does not single out the best variations, but simply +destroys the larger number of those which are, from some cause or other, +unfit for their present environment. In this way it keeps the strains up +to the required standard." + +While Hoffding states explicitly: "Adaptation and Progress are not the +same." + +Clearly there are Dual Principles operating in progressive development; +one adapting the organism to environment, the other adapting it to the +Typal model inherent in species. + + +II + +In the male of stock impoverished by artificial conditions of +civilisation, the transition to manhood is attended likewise by some +languors, physical and mental. New powers are being developed and +occasion more or less strain upon the constitution--a strain wherewith +our present-day masters and pastors, in their zeal of intensive culture, +reckon far too little. In healthy boys this is in no way comparable, +however, with the constitutional stress which adolescence causes in +healthy girls. The youth continues to wax in strength of brain and body. +The arrest, or involution, normal to the girl, does not occur in him. + +While she becomes gentler and more tranquil, by reason of a new poise in +her of mind and body, he becomes forceful and restless by reason of a +new release in him of energy. Yet though he gains in strength of brain +and body by this further differentiation of his resources into concrete +faculty and virile energy, he lapses notably in organisation. From the +supple, fine-skinned boy--clear-eyed, sweet-voiced, womanly almost in +refinement and comeliness--he grows large and hard and muscular; more or +less sinewy and rough-hewn, according as he is, or is not, manly of +type. His skin loses its fine grain and smoothness, becoming coarser and +hirsute; thus reverting, in degree, to the inferior, animal grade of +skin. His voice falls nearly an octave, lapsing from sweetness and +purity to gruffness and volume. Obviously--although all this being +normal, the male has a virile charm and handsomeness of his own--man's +is notably a less highly and subtly-evolved organisation than is +woman's. + +In the boy, is seen a progressive adaptation of body and brain to +environment, in order to fit him for his man's task of coping with and +advancing the conditions of life, material and ethical. And for this, +the more delicate and sensitive woman-physique, demanding more of vital +conservation for its upkeep, would be a handicap. + +Biological adaptation for his part in reproduction occurs too. But the +male development at this epoch is pre-eminently one of adaptation to +environment; equipping him with bone and muscle, brain and enterprise, +aggressiveness, initiative and energy. Racially indispensable as the +reproductive function is in him, it is obviously incidental and +subordinate to his general development. + +The girl's transition to womanhood is seen, on the contrary, to be one +almost entirely of adaptation, physiological and psychical, to the +functions of wifehood and child-bearing. Her growth ceases. She loses, +in place of gaining, nerve and muscle-power. While, in becoming +emotional, her changed mentality unfits far more than it fits her to +cope with life at first hand; with life unadapted, that is, and herself +unshielded by the male. Her intelligence at eighteen is normally less +keen and active--although of higher and more subtle quality and +trend--than it had been at twelve. + +Indications of Nature which point unmistakably to diametrically +different modes of culture and of training for the sexes, and, in +consequence, to wholly different applications of their respective powers +and aptitudes in every department of life. + + +In the boy, the Male-traits receive, with adolescence, a great influx of +energy; wholly dominating the Woman-traits which had made him more or +less a feminine creature. + +More and more each day, the potential virile in his every cell asserts +itself in structure and in function; dominating the Woman-traits +inherent in him. He waxes big and strong of body; restless and active of +mentality. And the less, within normal limits, virility has been +prematurely forced in him by too hard strain of mind or body, the better +for the evolution of his manhood. Unless the Woman-traits have been +unduly drilled and hardened out of him, they will now refine, inspire +and fructify his awakening masculine powers. The too hard struggle for +existence put, by necessity, on boys of the poorer classes, and, in the +higher classes, forced on sensitive boys called upon, too young, to +fight for survival in the semi-savage communities that public schools +are, hardens them too soon and too summarily, and thus frustrates their +best development. + +It is said that there is no atrocity a boy-community will not commit. + +In this stage of development, the moral consciousness of the _genus_ is +at low ebb. The accentuation of Male-traits now occurring occasions a +recrudescence of primal instincts. And the collective atmosphere such +recrudescence engenders in a boy-community, marooned in school-life +apart from the refining, softening influences of home and womenkind, is +only too often an evil and a demoralising one. Boarding-schools should +be abolished; good day-schools substituted. + +More than at any other phase of his existence, the masculine needs now +the Woman-influences from _without_; because the Woman-traits _within_ +are, for a period, submerged beneath a surge of Maleness. + +Notwithstanding these obvious truths, however, during the years when +body and mind should be adapting gradually, consciously and +subconsciously, to the social environment wherein their lives are to be +passed; when the mental horizon should be expanding simultaneously with +the expanding intelligence, when the moral should be rising to the new +demands upon it, boys are imprisoned in scholastic institutions, where +they are hemmed in by routine and restrictions, in an atmosphere of +puerile conceptions, puerile traditions, puerile conventions and +associations; their chief outlet and respite the narrow rules and the +narrowing absorptions of so-called "Games," supervised by martinet +Games-masters. + +And then, when we bring them to the field of life, we are surprised to +find many of them unintelligent, unadapted, unadaptable; resourceless, +inept and incompetent. Cooped during those impressionable years in a +wholly artificial environment, when confronted by the world of living +actualities, which is not ruled by similar narrow restrictions, nor +shaped upon the artificial forms and puerile misconceptions in which +their young ductile natures have been run and have set--they show +themselves wholly unfitted for life, with its varied, difficult and +complex conditions and adjustments. They have become, in point of fact, +mentally and temperamentally "provincial." + +The good form which some of them acquire is derived less from +school-ethics or training than from an aristocratic strain of boys with +whom they have been associated. And being acquired, when it is not the +form of their own social order, it appears only too frequently as a +counterfeit; engendering insincerity and snobbishness, and marring +individuality. + + +It has seemed to me that, in both sexes, the first seven years of +life--during which native faculty and attribute are evolving at great +pace--are a phase in which the Recessive, or anabolic, mode, +conservative of the resources and vitalising of the tissues, is in the +ascendant. The true child of both sexes is normally, during these years, +a typification of the Woman-traits; receptive, plastic, gentle, +affectionate, trustful, intuitive, emotional; quickly fatigued, quickly +recuperative; more or less lovely and angelic. In this phase, native +intuitive faculty makes children sometimes phenomenal; lightning +calculators, musical prodigies, precocious poets, artists. So too, their +marvellously rapid apprehension of the complex meanings and +implications of life betokens Supra-conscious mentality. + +At seven years old and thence onward to fourteen, a male, and katabolic, +phase sets in. Phenomenal faculty vanishes. Concrete development of +body, brain and energy proceeds apace. The child becomes active, +intelligent, enterprising, inquiring. The boy becomes appreciably male; +the girl more or less of a hoyden, more male, indeed, than she is +normally at any other period of her existence. Unless, that is, this +hoyden phase is rendered permanent in her by masculine training. + +At fourteen, with the evolution of sex, the sex of boy and girl, with +its respective opposite modes of constitution and of function, makes for +marked development, each along its characteristic lines. + + +III + +The French have a saying: _La femme est une malade_. Woman is not, of +course, an invalid. Nature does not fashion invalids. Woman's +organisation is normally delicate and sensitive and highly strung, +because of its special and complex sex-differentiation. She resembles +the child, in that howsoever healthful (in proportion, indeed, as she is +normal and healthfully organised) her cells of brain and body re-act +resiliently and vitally to all the agencies, physical and psychical, +about her. + +This sensitive re-activity is not only a sign, it is, as well, a +_source_ of health. Because the greater delicacy and sensitiveness of +organisation which characterise women and children, resulting in their +quick re-activity to deleterious conditions, secure a permanently more +highly-vitalised condition of body than is the case with man, whose +cells are less sensitive, more tolerant of fatigue, of cold, and of +other injurious agents. Immunity against injurious factors is the +parent of degeneracy. Life being re-activity, in terms of living +processes, to the factors of environment, such immunity entails loss of +vital re-activity to _vivifying_ as much as against deteriorative +factors. + +We complain that Nature, in place of making our bodies of cast iron, so +to speak, makes them, on the contrary, vulnerable at every point. The +reason is, surely, that the less we are constituted like cast iron--the +more vital and complex, intelligent and responsive, our tissues are, +accordingly--the more conducive to change and advance (because the more +sensitively re-active to subtler and psychical stimuli) they are +likewise. We cannot be, at the same time, hardy and obtuse, yet +exquisitely sensitive. Living tissue-cells are characterised, beyond all +other developments, by a range of contrasting abilities. An arm serves +as softest cushion for a child's head, or, by stiffening of its muscles, +becomes rigid as steel. An eye that sees for miles will focus to a +pin-point. But being, as we are, still in the making, our tissues +necessarily have limitations--and the defects, accordingly, of both +their sets of qualities. High sensitiveness of function is necessarily +attended by corresponding complexity and delicacy of structure. Such +structural delicacy obliges us to adapt environment to its complexities. +It is thus an incentive to progress. + +It obliges us, as well, to moderate our activities, and, by thus +restricting the output of our cruder powers, our resources are husbanded +and directed into higher channels. + + +The purpose of the complex differentiations which handicap the +adolescent girl is obvious. The curving bones, the expanding pelvis, the +rounded contours, the inhibited muscles, the languors and recurring +disabilities, are designed to restrict activity, physical and mental. + +Physicists tell us that the Conservation of Motion and the Conservation +of Energy are one and the same thing. This must be true, as well, of +_Vital_ Energy. The conservation of Vital Activity subtends the +Conservation of Vital resources. The new developments are by no means +incidental merely to the new processes; they are an integral part of The +Plan. In half-closing the doors on avenues of active output, Nature +conserves the Woman-powers for more intrinsic use. Every brain and +body-cell is raised thereby to higher levels both of constitution and of +function. + +As stored _mechanical_ energy becomes transformed into the higher form +of _electrical_ energy, so the power stored in Woman's anabolic cells is +raised to higher evolutionary forms. Thus she becomes fitted to be +mother of the Child--the blossom of the Race. Her part in the child will +contain the inherence of these new higher evolutionary values, as the +father's part in it will contain the inherence of the concrete powers he +has developed. And while her body spontaneously raises all its issues in +order to fit her to be a Mother, so it develops powers and functions +adapting her to serve as soft environment, physical and attributal, for +the rearing of her child. + +All this complex differentiation and evolution are designed, as well, to +adapt woman for the love-passion, and to draw and bind her mate to her. +And Nature has so cunningly interwoven the two plans and the two +developments that, for the most part, those physical traits and +emotional attributes which best qualify for motherhood most potently +attract and closely attach the woman's mate to her. + +Woman is "_une malade_," because, throughout the more than thirty years +of her potential maternity, she suffers periodically those which, +biologically speaking, are _minor childbirths_; each entailing a cycle +of complex physiological processes, with more or less considerable +constitutional and nervous stress, debility and incapacitation. Nature +exacts from her this recurring toll to Life and to the Race, not only to +preserve in her, in healthful and efficient function, the power and +mechanism of actual child-bearing, but (only second in importance) +perpetually to recruit her emotional womanhood and wifehood. + +When girls in course of developing the maternal function, with all its +attendant psychical implications, are strained by athletics, by +over-culture or industrial exhaustion, the vital resources are so +diverted from the evolution of this function as to cause incapacitation +in them, partial or complete, for wifehood, and for the bearing of sound +and fine offspring. Sterilisation, absolute or partial, is induced; with +dwarfed structure, blighted emotions and warped instincts. Even in women +who have developed normally, disease or atrophy of reproductive organs +may follow constitutional strain or undue effort. + +Toll to Life, in genesis of potential lives, is exacted likewise from +the male. It is a reflex in him of the vital maternal function, inherent +in his Woman-side. And this perpetual Life-tax upon his energies so +reduces these as to temper his physical and nervous activities and his +bent for individuation, and thus inhibits him from squandering his whole +potential of Life-power in volitional output. Thus is preserved in him +that normal proportion between Individuation and Perpetuation which +Herbert Spencer describes as existing in inverse ratio to one another. + +Thus also is preserved in him the normal mental balance between the Male +and the Female departments of his dual brain. Men muscularly or +intellectually overactive become lopsided and ineffective; restless and +wasteful of their forces, chill and sterile of temperament; having lost +that fine fructifying calm wherein creative potential is engendered for +concrete achievement; having lost also that equipoise of faculty +whereon mental and moral stability depend. + + * * * * * + +The Life-tax levied on the male is incomparably less, however, than that +exacted of the female. + + +IV + +It is because of their _anabolic_ mode of tissue-cells, less wasteful +upon the material plane, that girls and women normally require less food +than boys and men do. Notwithstanding that their bodies are more highly +nourished than are those of males. Healthy young women continue to be +plump and pretty, healthful and active on bread-and-butter, fruits and +sweetmeats. While mannish women, whose physiology has deteriorated to +the _katabolic_, disruptive and forceful, male mode, possess frequently +the hungry appetites of men; not only for food but for drink. And yet +withal, they are lean and for the most part plain, and poorly nourished. + +With the wane in her of the _anabolic_ mode of cellular conservation, +and the release thereby of vital resources which, sealed up in her +tissue-cells at adolescence, remain invested in organisation during her +years of possible motherhood, woman in whom sex is not highly developed +reverts more or less (as does the constitutionally-deteriorated oyster) +to the masculine type. She lapses to a _katabolic_ metabolism. + +At middle-age, accordingly, provided she be still healthy, she derives a +considerable accession of energy, physical and intellectual. Now for the +first time relieved of the Life-tax upon her resources, her powers are +released from bond, and become more fully available for individuation +and personal activity. + +At the same time, with this conversion of constitutional investment to +the form of current and available energy, there occurs a +proportional--sometimes a very signal--impoverishment of organisation; +and, after a phase of recrudescent emotionalism, a cooling and thinning +of passional feeling. Because such realisation of invested vital capital +is inevitably the precursor of decline. Thenceforward her cells, no +longer sustaining their high evolutionary states, generate more of +concrete energy, and endow her with increased powers of action. But +their conditional deterioration is manifest in general deterioration of +physique, of looks, and frequently of health. + +Not seldom, indeed, when her constitutional reserves had been previously +depleted by over-expenditure, physical or mental, the cell-deterioration +of this epoch lapses to serious disease or disability; to rheumatism, +gout, cancer or other perverted forms. + +With the constitutional and biological changes come psychical changes +too. In women in whom sex is not highly-specialised, middle-age entails, +with its quasi-masculine physical phase, quasi-masculine mental traits. +They may become strenuous and combative, sometimes difficult and +domineering. Perhaps they attach themselves to political and ethical +"anti"-movements, as arena for their new combativeness, their augmented +intellection, and increased physical activity. + +In the most womanly of women also (as in men at a later epoch) there +occurs at this period a natural transposition of the parental traits of +Altruism and Chivalry to the impersonal plane; moving them to mother and +father the world in general, by way of Charity, Philanthropy, Reform. + + +V + +Is it not waste of power and faculty, is asked, for able and cultured +women to permit their development, physical and mental, to adapt to the +simple requirements of a nursery? + +Uncultured and more or less brainless women of an inferior class, it is +said, should be adequate, surely, to cope with the minds and the needs +of these immature beings. + +Immature they are, in truth. But they are nevertheless strangely +complex; exquisitely sensitive. And they are men and women in the +making--or the marring. Behind the eyes of any child that looks at you +in dumb and wistful impotence to express itself, to defend itself, to +provide and to care for itself, may lie the mind, in bud, of a +Shakespeare, of a Newton, of a Shelley; of a Florence Nightingale, a +Mrs. Somerville, a Charlotte Brontë. + +How the most ordinary child, indeed, of cultured parents suffers acutely +in feeling, and deteriorates in mind and character under the regime of +blundering rebuffs, scoldings and misapprehensions, he meets at every +turn in the nursery ruled by a crude, hard woman of the labouring +classes! + +How, when they have grown older in years but are still only young in +understanding, all youth suffers from the shallow motherhood that was +kind, maybe, and helpful to it in its childhood, but fails it utterly in +the stress and difficulties of its teens! + + +True motherhood is the greatest of the Creative Arts; Mother-craft, the +most vital and complex of the Sciences. Life has never received more +than a tithe of that which Nature destined for it, owing to lack of +mother-nurture. Genius has never fruited to full bloom and potence, +because the mothers have so seldom realised the greatness of their task. + +Nearly all the records of childhood that writers have given us are +annals of bewildered mental suffering and of moral torture, which have +left their evil mark in injured health or warped mentality--not seldom +in both. + +The home, with all the intuitive wisdoms, the powers and sympathies and +the maternal ministry of a true mother, is indispensable to the nurture +of Individualism, and thereby to the evolution of human character and +faculty. + +The true home is the temple of the soul. Souls are exquisitely +sensitive, infinitely shy. And only in the warm and fostering +atmosphere of kindred beings do they find courage to unfold in living +attribute. Every home should be a unique environment, pre-eminently +specialised and adapted to the evolution of the young and tender +nursling-individualities shaping in it. To uproot these prematurely from +their native soil and transplant them in an alien one, is to blight +nascent talent and to warp character. For the reason that it +necessitates too early individuation, with precocious development of +self-protective and other qualities of worldly expedience. + +To plant out the shivering, exquisitely sensitive seedling, the human +Babe, in the chill, communal atmosphere of a Crèche or other +institution, is as inhuman a social crime as it is an inhuman social +crime to defraud its mother of her highest evolutionary impulse and +function in the nurture of her little one--a responsibility she has +incurred, a privilege she has earned by right of her maternity. + +In her nursery, the mind of woman opens new windows of illumination, +glimpses new vistas of thought and emotion, higher and lovelier +apprehensions of the profounder meanings of Life. In her nursery, her +eyes learn tenderness, her voice sweet modulation, her speech new purity +and fondness. + +In good and happy homes where young persons, in place of being banished +to schools, grow up in the natural bracing and inspiring atmosphere of +parental influence and affection, Sex evolves new issues, in those +attractions and sympathies of its Contrasting Traits which are evoked by +the relations of mother and son, of father and daughter, of brother and +sister. + +Under modern conditions, in which children and young persons renew +intermittent acquaintance merely with parents and brothers and sisters +during brief holiday visits--returning home, with every added term of +absence, more and more strangers to their kin, their personalities and +interests increasingly detached from those of the home circle--such +potent and inspiring developments of sex are vanishing. + +A wide gulf, truly, separates from their fathers these modern +self-centred, self-opinionated young sportswomen and over-academised +girls. The charming filial relation, engendering new and tender +sex-amenities in the daughter's hero-worship and reliance on the manhood +of her sire, in the father's protective chivalry and recruital of his +youth in the company and interests of his young daughter, is waning +toward extinction. The vast majority of fathers feel dismally +constrained, indeed, and out of countenance in the presence of their +girls--so smart and sophisticated, so superior, critical and +self-sufficing are our latter-day school and college-maidens. For the +most part, their own daughters are the last among womenkind to whom men +turn, to reap something of the freshness and fairness of the younger +generation they have sown and laboured for. + +While the up-to-date mother aspires to no higher or more beautiful place +in her boy's life and affections than that of "good chum!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE + + "We may outrun, + By violent swiftness, that which we run at, + And lose by over-running." + + _Shakespeare._ + + +I + +How now, in detail, does the Feminist creed lend itself to the +biological developments and indications of Nature described in the last +chapter? + +Unfortunately, as already intimated, it ignores, violently combats at +every turn, and only too frequently wholly frustrates them. + +Feminist leaders have shown themselves deplorably indifferent alike to +biological and to sociological law. Losing sight of the truth that the +intrinsic and eternal function of Humanity is Parenthood--and more +particularly Motherhood--they have made, all along the line, not for the +true emancipation of woman but for her commercialisation, merely. + +The economic viewpoint has obsessed them wholly. Not to free woman from +disabilities under which her womanhood, her wifehood, and her motherhood +were suffering, but to convert her powers into industrial and marketable +commodities has been the aim. That higher ideals are bound up with +economics, is true. The rights of honest self-support and adequate wage, +leading to kindlier, healthier and happier life-conditions, are, by +improving constitution and character, important assets on the side of +Evolution. But by far the most urgent and important consideration in +economics, as these affect women, is the fundamental biological +principle that, because their greatest of all values lie in their +evolutionary and racial endowments, rather than in their concrete and +commercial efficiencies, the sex requires and is entitled to such more +lenient and privileged social and industrial adjustments as admit of due +quota of its vital resources, physical and mental, remaining conserved +in the potential. In place of these being differentiated and expended to +the degree natural to man, and exacted of him by his prescribed rôle in +progress. + +In direct and violent opposition to Nature, the Feminist system does +everything possible, however, to frustrate that normal phase of arrest +along lines of concrete development whereon the higher evolution of +woman--and in woman, of the Race--depends. Just at the age when Nature +locks the door upon her constitutional resources, for the purpose of +evolving these to higher organisation, the schools and industries do a +strenuous best to keep the door forcibly open, and to wrest the +resources from the storehouse of potential. With a view to fitting woman +to compete with the male, in whom such arrest of individuation, in the +racial interests, is occurring to vastly less degree. + +In all ways, the natural languors and disabilities of the girl's +adolescent phase are vigorously combated. The unfortunate young +developing creature is exhorted, spurred--compelled by rigid rule, +indeed (whatsoever her physiological disabilities), to take her part in +strenuous exertions; hard drill, cricket, hockey, football; with the aim +of developing masculine muscles where feminine muscles should be. At the +same time, her brain is forced, crammed and exploited by perpetual +mental tasks; by competitive examinations, or by some or another strain +of specialism, intellectual or industrial. The result is that she is +forcibly precluded from evolving to those higher, subtler modes of body +and of mind, which are the essence, the charm and the inspiration of +the sex; and the model of the Race to be. + +Our school-girls and work-girls, in whose already impoverished, or +degenerate, bodies this battle for their resources between Nature and +Culture (or Industrialism) is waged--the one to make them normal, the +other to make them abnormal--are all more or less in states of disease; +are chlorotic, anæmic, neurotic, dyspeptic, hysterical; or suffer from +ailments special to their sex. While some are sturdy and florid and +buxom (prematurely middle-aged), more are neurasthenic and attenuated, +ill-nourished, spectacled, breastless, hipless, pale or pimply; are +restless, emotionless, joyless, cynical, discontented. In but few +are found the thrill and joy, the pulse and spring and natural +enthusiasms of healthy, happy young creatures in the dawn and grace of +maidenhood. Such as are charming and pretty possess these natural +woman-characteristics only too often in fragile and weed-like +form. The constitutional degeneracy of some shows in precocious +sex-development--all precocity being degeneracy, development too +rapid and exhaustive, and entailing therefore flimsy and unstable +tissue-cells, faulty functioning and premature decline. + +A proportion, one is thankful to say, are normal and healthful and +charming, endowed with the attributes and graces, personal and mental, +for which Nature is shaping in the sex. Others are, biologically +speaking, mere lamentable "spoiled copies"; amazons of the hockey, +football, tennis or hunting-fields, only just distinguishable in general +characteristics from the male, and lacking more or less wholly in +womanly psychology and aptitude, and in all the fairer and nobler +attributes of their sex. Still others, although handsome and finely +female of physique, are "splendidly null" in respect of the emotions, +and of the other subtler and psychical developments of natural +womanhood. + +The Greeks, with their intuitive apprehension, pourtrayed both Athene, +goddess of Intellect, and Artemis, goddess of Sports, as sexless, +passionless, unwedded and childless; scorners of men, devoid of all +womanly impulse and sentiment. (Strangely enough, as though anticipating +the argument of this book, Athene is described as having sprung, in full +life, from her father's brain. While Scripture tells of Eve derived from +Adam's side.) + +In _The New System of Gynæcology_, the latest and most authoritative +treatise by eminent specialists in women's diseases, the following +passage occurs, under heading, "Derangement of the Sex-Characteristics": + +"It is our belief that the more truly feminine a woman is, psychically +and physically, in instinct and in performance, so much the more +complete and normal will be the functions of her mind and body. We have +already alluded to inverted instincts. And in the perversion of +functions and characteristics (physical phenomena) we may observe all +grades from almost complete masculinity in appearance, _with the +disappearance of the feminine functions_, to the lesser degrees of +disordered function and characteristics." + + +II + +Nature is so complex, yet so subtly consistent in her workings, that +the neuter-state shows in the faces of many of our women as the +typical look of the mule--cross between horse and ass, a creature +incapable of reproduction. In the eyes of young women of strenuous +pursuits--academic, industrial, or athletic, this characteristic sterile +glint, part boldness, part antagonism, is common. + +The normal condition of woman is attended by the normal expression of +woman. The womanly biology entails the womanly psychology. And modesty +is one of the natural female secondary Sex-characteristics, attendant +upon healthy structural development and function. The hard, bold +glance--the "mule"-look--of some masculine girls and women by no means +necessarily implies conscious immodesty. It is mainly biological and +subconscious; sign of an attribute missing, as result of deterioration +of the function in which the attribute is normally rooted. + +With reduced values of that Reproductive function it is modesty's +province to defend, the attribute of modesty declines. + + +The girls and women of old Sparta, as ignorant of biology as women are +to-day, made a cult of athletics--good and zealous, but mistaken +patriots!--for the express purpose of mothering a fine, athletic race. +These high and praiseworthy aims failed signally. For Sparta, with all +her zeal of racial improvement (so drastic in its methods that she +killed her weakly girl-infants) fell upon decline and degeneracy. Noble +civilisation that she had been, she died in decadent corruption. + +And showing the relation between athletic pursuits and extinction of +womanly qualities, the Spartan cult of Maleness led to such decay of +modesty that it became the custom for women to run with the men in The +Games, naked as they. A custom that sprang less from actual immodesty +than from lapse of that normal Sex-specialisation, whence arises the +normal sex-consciousness which engenders wholesome reserve between the +sexes. Modern developments of a similar extinction of womanly modesty +are seen in the conduct of latter-day girls and women in public parks +and elsewhere; in the unseemly familiarities of mixed bathing; in the +decadent, unduly-familiar or frankly indecent dances, and the frankly +indecent modes of dress just now in vogue. As too in that so-called +"candour" which permits women of culture to talk openly of the most +intimate physiological functions, and, without sense of shame, to +discuss across the dinner-table prurient scandals and other unsavoury +topics. + +The mystery of the creative powers of Life occulted in her has ever +invested woman, for man, with glamour and reverence, enhancing a +thousandfold her charm and appeal to his chivalry and tenderness. In +stripping herself of womanly reserve and dignity, alike in demeanour and +dress, she shatters her mystery for him and forfeits her supremest claim +upon his manhood; while robbing him of his fairest illusions and most +inspiring incentives. + + +III + +In cases of sex-transformation in the lower creatures, the lapse to a +masculine type is found to be accompanied by atrophy of reproductive +glands. As recorded in a previous chapter, investigations by Rörig show +that when the ovaries of female deer atrophy from any cause, male +antlers develop. + +Mannish sex-characteristics in women are as abnormal and as unnatural, +and arise from a similar cause as do male antlers in female deer. + +With the wane of parental power, normal to middle-age, there occurs a +like--but in such case a natural--atrophy of glands. And this it is that +causes some women to acquire masculine traits at this epoch. + +Degrees, greater or less, of such a decline (natural to middle-aged +women) are being artificially, and prematurely, induced in our girls and +young women. Some of them become actually sterilised, and are wholly +incapable of reproduction. The greater number are only partially +sterilised. They are capable still of being mothers. But the function, +in place of being the crown and the fulfilment of their natures, is a +disability; is more or less of a morbid process, indeed. And their +offspring are more or less deteriorate. Not a few, after +marriage--called upon to fulfil functions the resources whereof have +been sapped by other and abnormal activities--become invalids; a number +require surgical treatment. + +Non-development, similar atrophy, or other deterioration of the mammary +glands precludes the vast majority of our young mothers from nourishing +their babes--a deplorable injury to these as well as to the mothers +themselves; physical and psychical function being closely and subtly +allied. + +Women who fence or play hockey and other rough games during girlhood, +become, owing to such degenerative atrophy, incapacitated for lactation. + +The following is an interesting example of the manner in which cruder +and lower-grade power may be increased at the cost of higher faculties. +A patient told me that, having been naturally a poor walker--two miles +having been her limit--she had determined to train herself out of this +which she regarded as an infirmity. Accordingly, by persistent practice, +she succeeded in raising her walking-power to ten miles daily. She +mentioned incidentally--seeing no relation of cause and effect--that, +for several years (the years during which her walking-powers had been +increasing) _she had become progressively deaf_. + +That she had been, in point of fact, sapping the potential of the +complex, invaluable faculty of hearing, in order to equip her +leg-muscles, was confirmed for me a few weeks later, when I +read of a number of cyclists, who, after one of those deplorable +pacing-exhibitions common to-day, came in, one and all, stone deaf: a +consequence of nervous strain. The deafness in these cases passed off +with rest. But it is easy to understand that from such temporary +functional depletions frequently recurring, permanent structural +deterioration must result inevitably. Thus it is that over-use, in +sports and games, of the muscles of shoulder and chest, occasions +atrophy of mammary glands. + +By no other way than by artificially inducing in them a premature +(partial) climacteric, by perverting their young organisations to the +quasi-masculine type of the middle-aged woman, and thereby releasing, +for available output, power which should have remained conserved for +many years in organisation, can women be fitted for masculine pursuits. +And such sterilisation, where it is not producing actually diseased and +degenerate offspring, is producing a pitiful race of pallid and +enfeebled babes and children; dyspeptic and spectacled, +adenoid-afflicted, unchildlike and generally deteriorate. + +That other factors contribute to the wave of Racial decline now menacing +our modern civilisations, great and small, is true. Yet mothers of fine +vital potential are able to counteract and to minimise the effects of +constitutional disease in the other parent to degrees but little +realised. Because such mothers are so lamentably rare. + + +IV + +It is the natural release of vital forces, consequent upon the normal +wane of mother-power at middle-age, that has been mainly responsible for +the errors of the Woman's Movement. + +In all its aims and methods it has been essentially a Middle-aged +Woman's movement. There are no young ideals in it; no concessions to +youth, to love, to graciousness or sentiment; none to wifehood or to +motherhood. It has been, for the most part, a grim, dour striving after +neuter standards, neuter models, neuter efficiencies, neuter lives and +neuter recompenses. + +Identity of brain and muscle, of aims and claims, of games and +avocations; equal rights and equal work and equal pay have been the +watchwords of its propaganda. "Fair play and no privileges!" its +promoters rigorously demand for these poor weedy girl-neurotics who, +beyond all else, require industrial concessions and the human clemency +of adequate rest and leisure, to allow of normal and healthful +development of their growing brains and bodies. + +Pioneered by strenuous, middle-aged women--with the best intentions, be +it said--Feminists have adopted the fatal policy of sternly impressing +the model of their own quasi-masculine middle-age as the standard of +youthful development. Without, for a moment, suspecting that such +wresting of male energies and efficiencies from its young women-victims +has inevitably entailed upon them degrees of that climacteric of +womanhood which is the herald of decline. On the contrary, this +middle-aged, quasi-masculine state, because of its release of power for +sterner purposes, has been hailed as a triumph of Emancipation and of +higher education; proof positive that woman is not man--only because she +has lacked opportunity to become so. + +In point of fact, these unfortunate young creatures have been, and are +being all the while ever further despoiled of their youth, of their sex, +and their fair heritage of life and happiness, of function and of +faculty. And the Race has been robbed of priceless living wealth in +human health and capability. + +The breasts of these despoiled have shrunk, in place of blossoming. +There are no founts of altruistic life in them. Never will they be +capable of nurturing babes, or of contributing their mysterious due to +psychical attribute. The pelvis remains narrow and puerile. Never can it +serve as hostel for a babe of normal, healthful type. + +In the vast majority of modern girls and women, the reproductive organs +are structurally immature or functionally defective. + +Dr. Gaillard Thomas, an eminent American gynæcologist, estimated, some +years since, that only about 4 per cent. of American women proper were +physiologically fitted to become wives and mothers. + +The United States have been and are all the while deriving fresh influx +of vigour and vitality in stock, from the continuous immigration of +simpler and more vitalised peoples. But American women proper have never +recovered from the strain and hardships of adaptation to a new +environment, which settlers in alien and undeveloped countries +necessarily encounter; the deteriorative influences whereof are shown in +constitutional impoverishment of the parent-stock. This is true, as +well, of our Colonial kin. Not only the strain of acclimatisation, but +too the hard and rough life-conditions women have to cope with in +undeveloped lands are responsible for the constitutionally-debilitated, +or, on the other hand, for the rawer and less highly-organised racial +types found in new settlements. + +In the United States, moreover, the standards of culture and of training +are pre-eminently artificial. Democratic sentiment and material +prosperity induce persons of working-class biological organisation to +over-tax their children's brains and constitutions by forcing these to +the educational standards and culture of stock that has evolved, by +generations of higher nurture, to higher evolutionary grades. The +"newly-rich," eager for their families to profit (as they regard it) by +opportunities denied themselves, invariably commit this radical error of +over-estimating academic education and social accomplishment. They fail +to realise that one can no more attain culture than one can acquire +breeding in a single generation. It takes _three_ generations of +culture--of comparative ease and freedom from the strain of industrial +labour and living--to evolve the crude muscular arm of a working woman +into the shapely, refined arm of a gentlewoman. And so it must be with +brains. In nineteen cases out of twenty, a 'Varsity education serves as +irreparable injury rather than as benefit to a working-class youth, +depleting health or warping character as it inevitably does. + +The strain of living above the evolutionary level is exhaustive and +harmful, physically and mentally, both to individuals and to stock. The +prudence of apportioning education to the grade of evolutionary +development is strikingly shown in the cases of negroes, who, when +over-taxed by the education normal to white races, not seldom become +blind or consumptive. And always the morale deteriorates. The forcing +upon our own labouring-classes of an education above that suited to +their natural powers has contributed largely to the constitutional +deterioration and the neurasthenia common among them to-day. + +One of the factors of modern Labour-unrest, indeed, is the physical +unfitness of debilitated and neurotic working-men to cope capably and +cheerfully with the tasks of earlier and sturdier generations. + +The urgent need of all our over-civilised races is not more education +but more _native faculty_. + +Every form of disease and degeneracy, physical and mental, is rampant. A +well-known authority on brain-diseases warns us that if mental +defectiveness continues to increase at its present rapid pace, soon we +shall be unable to support the asylums required to accommodate and +segregate the unfortunate victims thereof. They must remain at large--to +perpetuate and multiply indefinitely their terrible afflictions. + +Yet how is it possible that such weedy, half-sterilised creatures as are +so many of our modern mothers, should bear sound and sane and vigorous +offspring? + +Inherited debilitation and defect are further aggravated by present-day +educational methods. + +Our modern rendering of the training of the young is the _straining_ of +the young. + +Developing creatures should never be allowed to over-use function or +faculty. Because to over-tire an immature faculty is to deplete its +vital resources of development. Nor should young developing creatures be +permitted to do anything too strenuously or for too long a time. +Narrowness and mental warp result inevitably from too early and too long +periods of concentration in one direction, of the ductile shaping brain. + +In defiance, nevertheless, of this first principle of rearing, boys and +girls, after the morning's brain-work, are kept at strenuous games for +hours in succession. + +Body and mind, after having been cramped between the covers of +text-books, now are cramped within the narrow rules and rigid form of +such miscalled "games," supervised by over-keen experts--the whole +business exacting sustained muscular tension, temperamental excitement +and competitive nervous strain. The powers are stretched to win some +goal, in place of being unbent in leisure and in pleasure. True play is +spontaneous enjoyment of the moment, not fierce concentration upon +goals. This latter induces excitement, which may be pleasurable, but it +entails its tax in reactionary exhaustion. Because of the spur of +competition in them, sports and games, as now rendered, act as powerful +nerve-stimulants that deplete and waste the vital powers. + +School-boys and school-girls live, for the most part, in alternating +states of high tension in sports and reactionary languors from the heart +and nervous strain resulting therefrom. + +Since sports and athletics became a cult, heart-diseases have increased +by 50 _per cent._ We complain that our young men are limp and +unintelligent, lacking in initiative and enterprise. Apart from the +serious circumstance that, mentally, they have been trained for +cricket, not for life, most of them (to employ their own phrase) have +"gone stale" in heart and brain, in consequence of forced athletics, +long before they come to the momentous business of living. Even their +muscles have wasted, in place of developing. With the result that +instead of being finely-built and graceful, numbers of our youths are +stiff, stoop-shouldered and abnormally attenuated. + +Education should aim at keeping young persons fresh and unstrained; +charged with vital energies for growth of mind and body, filled with +zest and enthusiasm for the career before them. + + +Everywhere, mothers deplore bitterly that they can obtain neither duty, +obedience, nor affection from their girls. Many will not mend their +clothes even; refuse so slight a domestic concession as to arrange +flowers for the home. Lacking the morbid excitement of competitive rough +games, an abnormal craving for which has been artificially created, and +home-tastes extinguished, at school, modern girls are bored and +disaffected save when indulging in sports or in other excitements. The +more delicate, sympathetic, and humanising amenities have no appeal for +them. + +All the subtler, vital and inspiring impulses of natural womanhood have +been rudely smothered in tussles of big muscles, in sensational crazes +for making hockey-goals, and similar crude aims, quite alien to natural +girlhood. The recurring stimulus of such, in addition to over-developing +male muscles and proclivities in them, creates both the habit and the +craving for excitement; effects pernicious and demoralising as are those +of all habitual strong nerve-excitants. + +It is impossible to exaggerate the cumulative effect of habit upon +disposition--and this particularly upon the plastic, shaping +dispositions of young girls. + +Youth is at the mercy of its pastors and its masters, to spoil or to +foster its best growth. We feed the bodies and cram the brains of our +young people, while, in sending them away from the home which is their +natural environment, we starve and dwarf their emotions and affections; +giving these nothing to evoke, nothing to nurture them. The abnormal +cold-heartedness and self-absorption latter-day mothers bewail in their +girls are the inevitable outcome of their unnatural upbringing. + +The spectacle of young women, with set jaws, eyes strained tensely on a +ball, a fierce battle-look gripping their features, their hands +clutching some or other implement, their arms engaged in striking and +beating, their legs disposed in coarse ungainly attitudes, is an +object-lesson in all that is ugly in action and unwomanly in mode. The +so-called "tennis-grin," which on many women's faces does duty for +smile, shows how the muscular tension of forceful effort permanently +mars higher attribute. So too, the proverbial quarrelsomeness of +tennis-playing women results from the combative habit of mind. Light and +exhilarating, in place of strenuous competitive exercises, enable girls +to develop their womanhood in healthy structure, efficient function, and +beauty of body and mind. Dancing--the poetry of motion--particularly +conduces to health and to grace. True dancing, that is, not the +acrobatics of the professional dancer, which result in coarsened ugly +limbs and stilted action. + + +There is a well-known Girls college which makes pre-eminently for the +cult of Mannishness. + +And here are seen, absorbed in fierce contest during the exhausting heat +of summer afternoons, grim-visaged maidens of sinewy build, hard and +tough and set as working-women in the forties; some with brawny throats, +square shoulders and stern loins that would do credit to a prize-ring. +All of which masculine developments are stigmata of abnormal +Sex-transformation precisely similar in origin to male antlers in +female-deer; namely, deterioration of important sex-glands, with +consequent obliteration of the secondary Sex-characteristics arising +normally out of the functional efficiency of these. + +It has been said that the "hardening" process for children succeeds in +rearing sturdy families, by killing off those of more delicate (and +higher) organisation. And this and other such latter-day schools earn a +reputation for rearing amazons, by so breaking the health and +constitution of their more delicately-constituted members that these are +compelled to withdraw. Following the rule that healthy bodies rebel in +terms of illness against deteriorative conditions, it is the normal and +healthfully-constituted girls who fail beneath such injurious strain. +While organisations less sound of constitutional morale, in place of +sustaining their typal ideals, conform to these deteriorative methods, +and degenerate from higher to lower-grade standards of structure and +function. Precisely as happens to minds when exposed to demoralising +influences. + +And to what end is it all? The training of modern young persons should +fit them for Twentieth-Century existence in all its varied, complex and +psychical developments. Yet now-a-days we train our girls as though +their destiny were carpet-beating or the forge, rather than the higher +human amenities. It is not surprising, therefore, that they frequently +play hockey with the higher amenities. So impressionable and mimetic the +sex is, and such its bent toward extremes, that women trained to Sports +comport themselves in after-life as though playing a competitive game. A +mental warp which has been one of the sources of latter-day +strenuousness, as too of that fierce social rivalry which is wrecking +older and fairer ideals and methods of friendship and hospitality. + +Over-development of the large and cruder muscles dwarfs those smaller +and more delicate ones which adapt to the softer and subtler departments +of faculty. And while despoiling these smaller muscles which subtend +gentle and delicate artistries, the crude larger ones, hypertrophied by +athletic activities, become alike a burden and a curse to their +possessor. Because not only is their upkeep a continual and a +superfluous tax upon her vital powers, but their hunger for continued +function in further such crude activities afflicts her with turbulent +impulses, for which the more civilised vocations supply no scope. The +militant Feminist movement was as much an explosion of suppressed +muscularity in young women deprived of other outlet for accumulated +muscle-steam, as it was an ebullition of masculine mentality on the part +of its leaders. + +Hysteria and other neuroses, obsessing hobbies and crazes, are, more +often than not, morbid and distressing consequences of habits acquired +at school and college, of developing abnormal high-pressures of muscular +and nervous energy. Masculine war-occupations have similarly evoked male +muscularity and mentality in women. So that--War over--they find it +well-nigh unendurable to return to the more refined and humanising +womanly employments of their pre-war days. While on the other hand, +employers are bewailing the rough and coarsened manners, personality and +speech, as too the clumsy movements and ineptitudes of domestic +servants, nurses and others, de-sexed by War-work in respect of the +higher qualities and efficiencies of their sex. Many of these sturdy +motor-drivers, lusty W.A.A.Cs. and strapping Land-girls have lost all +taste as well as aptitude for the finer arts of life and of the home. +Efficient in the handling of plough or gun or lorry, woe to the hapless +babe or invalid subjected to their hard, forceful touch! + + +V + +Language is scarcely emphatic enough to characterise the painful (and +insane) exhibitions of Public-school and College "Sports," in which boys +and young men, whose vital forces are needed beyond all things for +development, may be seen with faces whereon is neither joy of action nor +pride of achievement, but only the pained rigidity of supreme heart and +nervous strain, as they strive for goals that are no test of true +physical fitness, but, on the contrary, prove physical lopsidedness. + +In confirmation whereof is the fact that many such athletes die young, +and die suddenly. Or they live the years when men should be still in +their prime--valetudinarian and hypochondriac. The secret of health and +nervous power is the constitutional capacity to _store reserves_ of +vital energy, for expenditure as required. Exhausting sports in youth +engender habits of _over-expenditure_ thereof. + +Trials of skill and of strength are admirable spurs to development and +self-discipline. But these should make for excellence in that fine poise +of Mind and Muscle which is the hall-mark of human achievement, not for +extremes of crude brute-force (muscle being the lowest grade of human +powers) which strain the living mechanism; and, straining, leave +inevitably weak and warped links, when not actually snapped ones +therein. The human body is a marvellous and delicate psychological +instrument, not a mere muscular implement. When the hearts of boys are +"sounded" after competitive sports, "murmurs" are heard; showing +valvular incompetency. Temporary in the majority of cases, but none the +less indicative of gravely-weakened states which can but permanently +injure the fine-spun valvular apparatus. "Dilated hearts" caused numbers +of our "fine young athletes" to be rejected as unfit for military duty. + +Young men "in training" suffer from albuminuria, showing serious +derangement of the kidney-function; derangement which inevitably entails +such permanent structural deterioration as lapses readily, in after +years, to grave disease. + +The fallacy that the excitement of games distracts the attention of +youth from the processes of sex-development has been disproved. While +all athletic boys are not vicious, it is now recognised that the most +vicious are the athletic. The languors of body and mind reactionary upon +the exciting strain of games are unwholesome languors; and breed +unwholesome self-absorptions. A fresh and active imagination, to keep +the mind interested at every turn, is the best of all safeguards. It is +in the imagination, moreover, that higher moral and ideals arise. + +It has been said that "the battle of Waterloo was won on the +playing-fields of Eton." It was far more likely won in the pages of +_Jack the Giant Killer_! Because in war, as in most other things, moral +is more potent than muscle. There is, it is true, a moral of Games. But +its outlook and its application are both contracted of range and +artificial of form. Games are useful in forming habits and in exercising +faculties of co-operation in concerted action. But being played in +company with others, and played in obedience to rule and regulation, +they allow no scope for the development of individualism in mind or +character, initiative or resource--outside the narrow boundaries of +cricket-pitch or football field. + +By perpetual absorption of the powers in the movements of a ball, the +mind becomes contracted and set in puerile mould, during years when it +should be germinating and expanding in response to the countless varied +and inspiring stimuli and factors of natural environment. Over-keenness +in sports destroys the sense of beauty, love of art and love of Nature. + +The grey matter of the brain--the medium of Mind--wherein arise +imagination, inspiration and those noble talents and the noble dreams of +enterprise which make for noble lives--this highest and most complex of +the human tissue-cells becomes starved and atrophied from continued +waste of brain-resources by those lower-grade cerebral motor-tracts +which control and energise the muscles. + +The popular impression, both lay and medical, that muscular exertion +supplies rest to the brain and recuperation to the nervous system, is a +sad delusion. One cannot raise a finger without expending brain and +nervous force, the muscles being implements by way of which the brain +transforms purpose into action--being _brain_-implements therefore. So +that brains--and particularly young brains--unduly taxed by muscular +activities are robbed of power to develop or to function in their +intellectual and other higher departments. + + +If my hypothesis be true, and the right side of the body with its allied +brain-hemisphere is the executive and expenditure side, while the left +is the Life and asset side, it is obvious that excessive brain-work, or +Sports, for which the executive power is supplied by this right side and +its allied brain half, must necessarily deplete and exhaust the left +side, which is the power-house and reservoir of Life and Mind whence the +executive half derives its mental, nervous and vital potential. + +It goes without saying that such careful economy of the powers is +superfluous in truly healthful and normally vigorous males. But +latter-day stock has been, for the most part, so far depleted by +generations of neglect of natural law as to require the strictest +husbandry of its vital expenditure, in order to apportion its means to +the best all-round advantage. + + +Object-lessons in such extremes of athleticism as destroy the normal +balance of the counter-poising Sex-traits have been supplied by War. + +The faces--as the natures--of some of our soldiers have become crude, +coarse and deteriorate in intelligence, others abnormally harsh and +fierce; the softer human qualities having been trampled out of them by +stress of militarism, some to degrees of brutalisation and criminality, +even. While a very great number show lined and haggard from heart or +nervous strain. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES + + "_My state is like the lightning's light-- + Now it shines forth, and now 'tis gone from sight. + At times, amid the heavens I find my seat; + At others, I am lower than my feet._" + + Sa'di (Persian poet). + + +I + +Of what order is this Woman-half of Mind which Feminism seeks to +extinguish? + + * * * * * + +The cerebral processes appreciable upon the Outer plane, and calculable +by Science, represent no more than a tithe of brain-activities. They are +but a single highly-specialised focus of brain-functioning. + +Behind concrete Volition, Intellection, and Action, are the silent, +ceaseless, inner and incalculable workings of innumerable brain-cells +concerned with the mysterious constitution and metabolism of Life, and +its strange, potent relation and correlation with Mind and with +environment; concerned with character and attribute and impulse; with +ancestral vestiges and personal experience; with memories and instincts; +with an infinitude of occulted and imperishable records of previous +terrestrial existences, perhaps; concerned, in a word, with all the +secret springs and complex potences of Individuality; which +differentiates every thought, emotion and action of any human person +from those of every other. + +And in these recondite mysteries fructifying in a hundred million +bi-sexual brain-cells, it may be that the subtle counter and +inter-operations of the Man and Woman-traits find their highest +activities, and make for their supremest issues. + +Every man and woman is to every other a Sealed Book, whereof no more +than a few pages have been glimpsed--even by those nearest and dearest. +We are Sealed Books to ourselves, indeed, because we do not know the +language we are written in. For of all the muted mysteries spinning +ceaselessly within the silent-functioning cells of twin +brain-hemispheres, Science affords us but the scantest and most sketchy +information. That the grey matter coating the brain-convolutions is the +site of mentality; that the higher the intelligence, the deeper and more +intricate these convolutions are; that disease of a certain area +destroys the power of speech; while disease of some other occasions +paralysis of this or that group of muscles, loss of sensation in this or +that tract of skin. Baldly it states that a portion of a certain +convolution controls a certain movement of a hand. But the thousand and +one emotions and incentives prompting such movement, and differentiating +the resulting action across the extensive range between the noblest +benefaction and the blackest murder, baffle every scientific method. + +The processes of Mind and Impulse occur on planes we have no means of +penetrating, possess no appliances whereby to estimate the ethereal +undulations thereof. + +What are we? Who are we? Whence are we? Whither do we go? + +All is locked within the occulted silence of our hundred million +brain-cells; each of which holds and keeps its own intrinsic secret; +each the mysterious record, it may be, of one of those countless +experiences, forms and phases, ancestral or individual, whereof every +living person is the last resultant. But the Twin-hemispheres, face to +face within the skull, like opposite pages of a book, are key to one +another; one page written in the mystical language of The Past and +Future, the other in the concrete language of The Present. + + +II + +Is that which I surmise to be the _Woman_--and emotional half of brain, +the site of the mysterious province known as The Subconsciousness, into +the strange powers and phenomena whereof scientists are now beginning to +inquire? + +Is it the seat of that which Myers designated "The Subliminal +Consciousness," but which might well be called the Supra-Consciousness, +because, in the regions of its higher functioning, it cognises things +beyond power of Concrete Consciousness to apprehend; intuitions, +premonitions, apparitions, telepathic messages? + +Is it medium of those inherences and that sub-intelligent emotionalism +known as _Instinct_; which may be regarded as the implanted religion of +rudimentary organisms, leading them upward in blind subconscious +obedience, at sacrifice of their self-interests and disposition? + +Respecting the regeneration of the crystalline lens of the eye of a +Triton, Bergson says: + + + "_Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing + principle in order to account for this convergence of effects._" + + +May it not be that this brain-half--seemingly functionless, albeit as +marvellously constructed and constituted as its fellow-half--is, in its +merely organic departments, the agency of such an "inner principle," +engendering the vital potentials of Life and Evolution, of health, of +nervous recuperation and of biological repair? While in its departments +of Mind, it functions as instinct, as intuition, as inspiration, +aspiration; serves as the subtly receptive medium by way of which The +Divine Influx wells in human attribute; whereby Divine Revelation is +communicated to the concrete brain-half, for interpretation in speech +and in writing. Bergson says also: "The consciousness of a living being +may be defined as an arithmetical difference between _potential_ and +_realised_ activity. It measures the interval between representation and +action." (Duality is indicated.) + +The trait essentially distinguishing the human from the brute-mind, is +Intelligent Purpose. And Purpose is the product of Impulse (or Instinct) +and Reason, (or Concrete Intelligence). (Duality again.) Impulse is an +emotion and is feminine. Reason is masculine. Intelligent Purpose may +well be, therefore, a resultant of the co-operation of the feminine half +of the brain, which supplies Impulse, with the masculine half, which +supplies Reason. + +Instinct, Professor James, the American psychologist, has pointed out, +exists independently of any recognition of its purpose. While Reason +exists apart from instinct--apart therefore from the emotional impulse +which gives it the personal motive-power to become purpose. Thus, either +mode of brain without the other to supplement it would be incapable of +function. + +_Self_-consciousness requires two departments of Consciousness--each of +which is aware of the other. So that a man may judge and restrain +impulses in himself that are contrary to reason and expedience, or, on +the other hand, may choose to sacrifice both reason and self-interest to +emotional impulse, noble and uplifting, or ignoble and debasing. + + +Describing Intellect as characterised by a natural inability to +comprehend Life, Professor Bergson further says: "Instinct, on the +contrary, is moulded on the very form of Life.... If the consciousness +that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge +instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could +reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of Life." + +Again Duality of mental processes is inferred. As too in the following +passage: + +"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also +reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations--just +as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into Matter.... +Intelligence, by means of science ... brings us, and moreover only +claims to bring us, a translation of Life in terms of inertia.... But it +is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us--by Intuition +I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable +of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely." + + +III + +The phenomena of Hypnotism seem to set the Duality of cerebral processes +beyond dispute. + +Dr. George H. Savage, Consulting Physician and late Lecturer on Mental +diseases at Guy's Hospital, in his Harveian Oration, October 1909, +testified as follows to the strangeness and authenticity of hypnotic +evidences: + + + "Wishing to follow our great master in not accepting anything + without personal investigation, I took advantage of the opportunity + offered by Dr. Wright, to test some of the points of most + importance to which I have referred. + + "A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by + Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various + stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down + and talk quietly about his relationship to hypnotism. Then he was + told to go to sleep. A few passes being made over his head, he + slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping + placidly. By the gentle stroking of his left arm this was rendered + inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal, + but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was + slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly). + After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of + fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done + during the period of hypnosis. + + "He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then + suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power + and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a + cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of + the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had + been roused, _his right arm fell useless by his side, he passing at + the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis_. _This is common + when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of + the right side, including the face, was insensitive_; the pupils + were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed + smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of + anything which had been said or done. He was later again + hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done + formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts. + + "It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts + performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are + fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side + by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he + heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While + unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark + upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a + cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong + smell of violets came. + + "I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it + seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory + existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting + was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he + had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when + once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just + dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is + in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during + sleep." + + +Be it observed that when at the end of seven minutes (as had been +"suggested" to him should happen) the subject lost all power and +sensibility in his right side and "_his right arm fell useless by his +side_," he passed "_at the same time into a partial state of hypnosis_. +_This is common_," Dr. Savage adds, "_when a post-hypnotic suggestion is +being carried out_." + +Here is strong corroboration of my argument that the right side of the +body, with its allied half-brain, is the agent of Material +Consciousness, of muscular action and of physical sensation, and that it +operates normally in fencing in the higher faculties of Mind from the +outer plane of concrete happenings, as also of interpreting them upon +this plane. + +Hypnosis is induced by devices occasioning muscular exhaustion, and thus +temporarily paralysing "voluntary muscles"--muscles, that is, which are +under conscious control. It is induced as well (as in the case cited) by +stroking, and thus putting to sleep the sensory nerves--nerves which +define the patient's consciousness of his material personality. It would +seem that by such inhibition, or paralysis, of the perceptions of the +outer consciousness, faculties of Subconsciousness--even of +Supra-consciousness--are exposed, so that Mind itself may be dealt with +direct. + +Every form of insensibility is closely allied with muscular relaxation +or paralysis. + + +IV + +Examples of the operation of the Supra-conscious faculties upon the +concrete plane are supplied by the marvellous feats of "lightning +calculators." + +The most intricate mathematical problems--calculations that would call +for lengthy and complicated intellectual processes on the part of expert +mathematicians to work out by ordinary methods--are solved +instantaneously by the genius of such natural "calculators." You cannot +puzzle them; you cannot baffle them. Scarcely have you stated your +problem than they have calmly presented you with the solution. As +Maeterlinck records in his interesting book, _The Unknown Guest_, this +genius for figures developed in Colbourn and Safford at the age of six, +in Mangiamele at ten, in Gauss and Whateley at three. All that and more +than expert mathematicians laboriously acquire by decades of study and +practice, these boy-prodigies achieved by way of native faculty. Such +have not the slightest notion how they arrive at their results. These +are obtained automatically--are products of unconscious cerebration. + +Maeterlinck observes of this, that the resultant "appears to rise, +infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and cosmic reservoir +wherein the answer to every question lies dormant." + +What is this "eternal and cosmic reservoir" if it be not Mind, or +Supra-consciousness, as distinguished from conscious intellection--a +native intuitive, but undifferentiate, or potential, consciousness which +holds the answer, "infallible and ready-done," to every question. + +Truth _Is_. There is but one solution--the true one--of a mathematical +or any other problem of exact science. + +A significant fact is that such prodigy boys generally lose their +mysterious faculty "_at the moment when the possessor begins to go to +school_." So soon, that is, as he develops the power of conscious +brain-processes--the power to work out his problems by concrete +methods--his native supra-conscious gift of solving them spontaneously +fails. + +Intuition, the woman-mode of arriving at conclusions, lightning quick +and true without reason or reflection, is a kindred potency of Mind. +"When a man," says a French writer, "has laboriously climbed a +staircase, he is sure to find a woman at the top--although she will be +unable to say how she came there!" + +He did not add the further truth, that--as with the prodigy boys--the +more you educate her to come at her conclusions by processes of +intellection, the more you rob her of her native woman-gift of +divination. + +With the rising level of Faculty engendered by progressive evolution, +woman's powers of intellection have developed too. + +While her own mental attributes are themselves of a very high order, and +give to her mentality an inductive subtlety and illumination lacking in +that of the male. And this high quality of brain it is that is now being +extinguished in her by straining her to masculine standards. + +Progress awaits, indeed, the new and quickening impulse Life and Faculty +should derive from the Woman-mind fostered along its own inherent +lines--to supplement the mind of man. For as Bergson says, "it is to the +very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us." + +And Intuition is the woman-mode of Mind. + + * * * * * + +The women intellectuals who have done great work have been women who +inherited talents so far above the average, as spontaneously to have +reached high mental levels, without need to have sacrificed those +womanly traits which gave the noblest values to such work. + +The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards +of the man of average brain only at cost of her health, of her emotions, +or of her morale. + + +V + +Herbert Spencer said profoundly, "_Mind is as deep as the viscera_." +Indicating it as being vital and intrinsic, at one with the occulted +sources of Life. + +Mind is of an order of mentality wholly different from that of +Intelligence or Intellect. Mind is of the nature of Emotion. It is +personal, is sympathy, is divination. It is the cerebration of the Soul. + +The Soul, or essential Individuality, must abide amid infinitely +delicate and delicately infinite brain-cells attuned to those spiritual +vibrations whereof Mind is the reflex. And if Mind is Emotion, the Woman +brain-half, which is the department of human emotion, must be the +mainspring of the human mind. + +Great intellect, pure and simple, may exist in man or woman without or +with only a fractional leaven of Mind. This is seen in the abstractions +of scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, astronomers, +financiers, and others. Such brains are special organs of a high order +of Intellection, clear, calculating and precise of observation and +reflection; rational, deductive; admirable in their unswerving +rectitude, pitiless in their impregnable emotionlessness; rejecting all +but incontestable evidences, scrupulously aggregating and faithfully +interpreting their dry bones of numbers and data and vestiges--skeletons +of Life long since extinct, or scaffoldings of Life that lives and moves +and laughs and weeps, and bears no more semblance to their bloodless +tabulations of its modes and processes than warm, creative Mother-Earth +resembles the geological strata they describe in her; or than a +beautiful flower-garden blooms in botanical treatises; or than living +men and women are pourtrayed in text-books of Anatomy and Physiology. + +Many men of Science--and all the great ones--have been men of Mind as +well as of Intellect. But the intellectual processes of Abstract Science +are no more operations of Mind than the paths by which we climb to +sun-illumined peaks are the Light upon those peaks. Mind is Spiritual +Illumination--a glimmering of The Infinite, reflected in the highest and +most subtle order of the brain-cells. Rays from it are deflected toward +the concrete, to function as Intellection. But these rays enter the +brain at a different angle from that of Mind-rays. + +Like woman its medium, Mind is inspirational, wayward and elusive. It +comes we know not whence. It goes we know not whither. Receptive, +intuitive, creative, colourful, it may be unwitting of Astronomy, yet it +roams amid the stars. Ignorant of Geology, in it Immortal, the dry-bones +of The Past become immortal--arise eternally in everlasting re-creation. +Its Biology is in the lives and loves, the hopes and fears, the throes +and tears of human souls and stories. It inspires the poet, priest, +historian, romancist, artist; the seer and statesman; the philosopher +and wondering child. It exalts the humble and meek. It may be lacking in +the cleverest and most learned of men. It is found in the most ignorant +and simple women; in whom it is dumb, however, failing the intellectual +talent of expression. + + +VI + +The Woman brain-half being medium, in its higher region, of that +_Supra_-conscious emotionalism which engenders Mind, and in its lower +region, of that _Sub_conscious emotionalism which engenders vital +impulse in the body, woman's range of mentality is wider than is that +of man; extending both higher and lower in its opposite reaches. + +But because her Intelligent Consciousness is not inherent in her own +brain-half, but is supplied by her borrowed masculine brain-half, her +intelligence is more superficial, is weaker and less deep and strong of +grip than is his. And when the gap between her upper and her lower +registers is not duly bridged and stabilised by an efficient +middle-register of male-intelligence, she tends toward two extremes of +mentality, both of which are emotional. Thus she lives on the plane of +her highest emotional impulses. Or she lives on the plane of her senses. +Some women act and re-act perpetually between these two extremes. + +In her highest _Supra_-reaches, she is athrill with Supra-faculties. In +her lowest _Sub_-register, she is instinct and palpitant with the +colour, the magnetic vibrations and the blind forces of Matter, which +her vital processes are evolving into Life. + +Extremes which are shown, at the one end, in the reasonless animal +emotionalism of hysteria, with its abandon of control, its +inco-ordinated muscular movements, its senseless weepings, cries and +laughter; at the other end, in catalepsy, in which she exists detached +from earth and its material needs and consciousness, subsisting, it may +be for weeks together, without food or drink, withdrawn into the Inner, +and potential, zones of Life and Mind. So that, no longer subject to +limitations of Matter, she perceives without aid of the senses, +apprehends without aid of intelligence, discerns without help of the +eyes, hears without instrumentality of ears. And Time and Space no +longer circumscribing her essential faculties, she visions happenings at +the Antipodes, overhears whispers across a Continent, recalls The Past, +foretells The Future. + + +It is because of the potence of the Subconscious medium in her, +instinct with the magnetic forces of Evolving Matter, that, in her +intelligence, she shows as more materialistic than man is, although +warmer and more quickened in her feelings. + +Living personalities and issues mean to her more than intellectual +abstractions do. She is more materialistic because she cares more for +the things that matter! The puddings which in her children's young +bodies will be transmuted into living flesh and function, are to her of +more significance than the Isosceles Triangle is. + +(All that is true of the Woman brain-half must be true of the Woman +brain-half in man. In him, however, his own hemisphere dominates the +bent and faculty of its female counterpart.) + +It is in the emotional impressionability of the Subconsciousness that +habit, good and bad, is formed. Hence woman's native susceptibility to +her environment--a susceptibility which renders indispensable due +protection of her mind and nature during years when habits of thought +and of conduct are shaping in her. Normal man, whose emotionalism is +(like woman's intelligence) a borrowed faculty, differs essentially from +her in this. His intelligence is inherent and more stably rooted. He is +far less mimetic, far less a creature of circumstance. His firmer will +and stronger intellect enable him to rise superior to environmental +conditions, to shake himself free alike of habit and of circumstance; +his pioneering spirit disposing him to new departures. + + +VII + +Dual Personality, Catalepsy, Epilepsy, Shock, Insanity, Chorea are +explicable as effects of abnormal dissociations or inherent discrepant +relations between the two brain-hemispheres, which represent, +respectively, Conscious (or objective) Intelligence, and +Subconsciousness (which is subjective). + +Such discrepancy occasioning confusion between the two planes of +mentality, perception becomes so blurred that, as in insanity, +_subjective_ impressions are perceived as _objective fact_. And some +idea or spectre of his own mind becoming thus objective, and being seen +out of all perspective with the facts and conditions of everyday life, +the patient may be so haunted and dominated thereby that not only his +mentality, but his actions too may take distorted shape. + +While the Conscious Brain-half is a lens that focuses the Concrete, the +_Sub_conscious Brain-half is a highly-sensitised mirror (or retina) that +reflects and retains, in terms of potential Memory, all impressions and +experiences. It becomes charged thus with a medley of strange and +incongruous imprints, which, so long as the lens keeps these submerged +and subconscious--because unfocused on the plane of consciousness--do +not obtrude upon mentality. Flaws or failures in the lens of reason +allowing certain imprints to emerge, these become fixed ideas and +obsessions. + + +It is by way of the Subconsciousness, that the hypnotist impresses +"suggestion." + +Clairvoyants and other "mediums" employ crystal-gazing and other devices +in order to fatigue, and thus to paralyse or inhibit the visual function +on the outer plane of Sight. By such means, the Subconscious visual +faculty comes into operation, and sets them _en rapport_ with their +client's subconscious mentality. This becoming _objective_ to them, +those endowed with the gift of "Second-Sight" (a faculty not to be +denied) are able to visualise in it misty impressions of the subjects' +character, thoughts and circumstances. Those rare clairvoyants who are +able to establish rapport with their client's Supra-consciousness may +catch glimmerings of future events, even. Because Supra-conscious Mind, +being Supra-Natural, is not bounded by the limitations of The Natural, +in respect of Time and Space. In it, that which Was still Is, and that +which Is-to-be already Has Been. + +"Spiritists" who see or hear phenomena they attribute to "spirits" are +(when such are genuine) for the most part visualising or overhearing +phenomena of their own (or of some other's) Subconsciousness, which, +owing to errors of refraction in the lens of Consciousness, have become +_objective_ to them. + + +It may well be by way of magnetic vibrations communicated to Ether by +the _Supra_ or the _Sub_consciousness, that apparitions and telepathic +impressions are transmitted from the brain of one person to that of +another. So too, apparitions seen of persons lately dead, and so-called +spiritist "communications" with these, may be (when genuine) phenomena +of such etheric vibrations communicated to the Supra or the +Subconsciousness of a living person, and apprehended by him in the +objective forms of "ghosts" or "voices." + +Kindred vital and powerful electric vibrations emanating, at the moment +of death, from the Subconsciousness of victims murdered, may so charge +the etheric element of houses and localities as to be communicable, for +long periods afterwards, to the Subconscious mentality of "sensitives," +which serves thus as "wireless receiver." Such sensitives derive the +impression that the scene of the tragedy is haunted by the actual +"spirit" of the murdered. + +It is as incredible, of course, that an immortal soul should be chained +to the scene of the violent death of a mortal body as it is incredible +that a "spirit" should be at the call of a "medium," who--perhaps, for a +fee--should be able, at will, to summon it back to the plane of concrete +conditions, in order that it might talk (for the most part) irrelevant +nonsense. + +On the other hand it is to be believed that, for a brief period after +death, a spiritual entity may remain sufficiently in touch with the +material plane as to be able, by way of those Etheric undulations +continuous through all the planes of Being, to manifest its existence to +one in close sympathy with it. + + +VIII + +In an article by me, "_Is Man an Electrical Organism?_" which appeared +in _The Nineteenth Century_, July, 1914, I showed--on the evidence of +careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert--that the two +sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different +electrical potential. The active, right side is _positively_ +electrified, while the passive, left side is _negatively_ electrified. + +Mental Telepathy and Telæsthesia prove, surely, that brain and +nerve-currents are electrical--one brain-hemisphere operating as +transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employs _one_ Law only +to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an +apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employ _two_ laws +for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively? + +The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles +of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or +potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night. + +Is Sleep a recession merely from the state of Consciousness to the +potential states of Sub- and Supra-consciousness? And do these two +states alternate normally in the opposite halves of the brain, +concurrently with the alternation of Day and Night? Night-blindness +suggests such an alternation in the dual factors of Vision--which +comprises the intrinsic _faculty_ of Vision and the concrete _function_ +of visualising the external. Every concrete function normally wanes with +the waning of Day. + +Hence increasing drowsiness, passing into Sleep. + +Morning and evening mentality differ greatly. Intellect, reason and +physical activity are paramount during the day. Emotion and imagination +intensify with the approach of night. + +Is this an alternation in function of the Male and Female +brain-hemispheres, coincident with the alternation of the dual +luminaries of our earth--the positive, unchanging Dominant Sun; the +changeful Moon, with her Recessive phases and her mystical influences +upon Life and Mind? The ante-natal life of the embryo is set in terms of +lunar months. The word "lunatic" expresses the effects of lunar phases +on persons of unstable mentality. + + +Whence do we derive our daily influx of Life? Though we have sunk to +rest with dissolution in our bones, we awake re-charged with powers of +living--a phenomenon for which Science has no explanation. + +Life does not originate in vital processes; vital processes originate in +Life. Do we, in sleep, when processes have exhausted our daily influx of +Life-power, recruit this again from a psychical source? Are living +processes the wick of a lamp which is filled with the Spirit of Life at +each recurring dawn, spent by the day's endeavour, and re-filled again +with the following dawn? + +Failure of sleep kills more swiftly than starvation. And +drug-insensibility will not preserve life unless natural sleep +supervene. + +If nervous energy is a complex form of electrical energy, then the brain +in which this is stored is an electrical dynamo. Is this dynamo +re-charged during sleep from some Occult Power-station? + +Since, in every equation of Science, an unknown factor reveals itself, +why not candidly confess this to be a Spiritual factor? + +Spirit is no more a hypothetical medium than Ether is. And Science has +been forced to assume the existence of Ether, as a basis for its +calculations. Ether and Spirit are conceivably the same medium +manifesting on different planes--the one of Physics, the other of Mind. + + +IX + +According to Professor Clarapède: + + + "The intellect appears only as a makeshift, an instrument which + betrays that the organism is not adapted to its environment, a mode + of expression which reveals a state of impotence." + + +A saying which supports three clauses of my hypothesis: First, that the +brain, with its tributary spinal-nervous system, is an instrument of +Consciousness wholly differentiated from, and supplementary to the +organism of Life. Secondly, that it is an instrument designed for the +adaptation of the organism to environment (the rôle I have assigned, +throughout, to the male). Thirdly, that the organism of Life is not +itself adapted to its environment, and that, accordingly, Adaptation to +Environment cannot be regarded as the impulse of Evolutionary +development, since the living organism has so far failed to adapt itself +to environment that it requires a highly specialised instrument to serve +as medium between itself and its surroundings. + +That Intellect--being an instrument by way of which Life is adapted to +environment, as also, on the other hand, by way of which environment is +adapted to Life--is a makeshift that "reveals a state of impotence" is +not to be admitted, however, in view of the fact that it is an +instrument which preserves Life from developing along the lines of its +environment; an adaptation which would necessarily involve lapse from +typal ideals. + +Intelligence taught man, in place of so adapting to environment as to +have developed the fist of a gorilla (which at a blow can crack a human +skull), to arm himself with a club. And by thus adapting environment to +his evolutionary requirements, he conserved his resources and applied +them to development along higher lines. Such impotence as may be, arises +out of the undevelopment of a rudimentary organism. Of an organism in +course of development, however. In the meanwhile, both man and woman are +provided, in their hybrid constitution, with the "makeshift" of an +instrument of opposite sex, which supplies both with the powers neither +has yet developed in himself or herself; but without which neither is +able to exist or to function. + + +Hybrid Humanity is still amphibious; a creature living between two +planes, the Without and the Within, the Material and the Spiritual. And +like all amphibious creatures, the human species is, in a measure, +clumsy and imperfect. Because while fitted still with organs and +faculties that have adapted to a lower plane, it possesses likewise +organs and faculties that are adapting to a higher. Its powers thus +handicapped by requiring to engender the vital potential and the +developmental power to equip it with two orders of implement, neither +order has attained perfection of construction or of function. And both +ministering to the requirements of the other, necessarily hamper the +operations and mask the characteristics of the other. + +The two sexes are making all the while for higher development, each +along routes of its contrary trend. Man develops human faculty in the +direction of the Outer and material plane of Being. Woman develops it in +the direction of the Inner and psychical plane. + +Man transmits to woman a brain-hemisphere and powers ever further +increased and intensified in their relation to the concrete. Woman +transmits to man a brain-hemisphere ever further indrawn and illumined +in respect of the emotional and intrinsic. Woman's brain-hemisphere, +adapting to its concrete fellow, becomes increasingly empowered to +manifest, upon the outer plane, its own essential Woman-traits in Life +and Consciousness. Man's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its diviner +fellow, becomes increasingly illumined and inspired thereby to leaven +and exalt its concrete outlook and activities. + +Man's brain, by way of its responsive adaptation to the brain of woman +interior to it in the zone of Mind, becomes thus ever more +sympathetically intelligent, or intuitive, in respect of human life and +conditions, of Science and the Arts; while losing nothing of its +Dominance and concrete power, but interpreting its operations in terms +of a profounder and a nobler Chivalry. Woman's brain becomes ever more +intelligently sympathetic and practically helpful; losing nothing of its +Recessiveness, or emotional impulse, but, on the contrary, intensifying +all its Woman-attributes by extending the range and the operations of +these in terms of a profounder and a nobler Altruism. + + * * * * * + +Because of their hybrid constitution, there is necessarily a borderland, +alike of faculty and function, wherein the organisation and the +characteristics of the sexes merge and approximate one another's trend +and traits. This borderland represents, however, the crudest and least +differentiated department of the personal and mental powers of both. It +is a zone of Neuterdom, and marks a grade of rudimentary organisation in +which the Sex-characteristics have not yet sufficiently diverged in +development, as clearly and finely to differentiate themselves as traits +of pure and unalloyed type. + +The cruder the species or the evolutionary stage of species, the less +Sex is specialised in it. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT + + "_In conjunction with any other beings but men, women would have + been angels; but with men they are just women, which when all is + said and done, is much the same thing._"--De Livry. + + +I + +Among many other misconceptions with regard to Sex-characteristics, is +the modern teaching that the sex-instinct is identical in men and women. + +Ignoring the truth that a higher moral code is the mark of psychical +superiority, and moreover that the exaction of it from women, under +social penalty, has done more than any other thing to purify and to +exalt the woman-character, impassioned fallacy now sees this higher +standard demanded of the sex as a stigma of inferiority, and as an +injustice. Accordingly it preaches equal liberty in this as in other +respects. The trend toward equalisation is unfortunately (but +inevitably) in the direction of lowering the woman-code rather than of +raising man's. + +No falser or more disastrous doctrine could be promulgated. As in all +its other attributes and functions, so in this, the woman-nature differs +wholly from that of the male. The primal male sex-instinct was one of +tyranny and subjugation. There was no element of affection in it, and +its bent was toward promiscuity. In the primal female, the instinct as +an initiative impulse was non-existent. The surrender was to fear, and +to habit engendered by fear. Fondness for her mate came to woman by way +of her love for his child, a source essentially monogamous in trend. + +Physical passion in woman is derived from the Male-traits in her. It is, +accordingly, a borrowed, not an inherent instinct. And in all natural +women, passion is secondary to love; love belonging to her own intrinsic +nature. Because of its heritage, there is, in a true woman's love, +always a maternal altruistic element: unselfish, ministering, devoted. +Love has come to be intensified in her by fire of passion and by force +of personal attraction. It is no longer a mere meek surrender, with fear +for spur and maternity for solace. In proportion as she is of high +organisation, it has become a complex of mind and emotion and sense; +intense and vital. But always, in proportion as she is womanly, her own +way of loving--the way of devotion and tenderness--is ascendant over +passion. + +In man, howsoever it be leavened by the higher love, passion dominates. +When in woman passion dominates love, she is loving with the Male-traits +in her--not as woman. And in the measure wherein she falls short of the +womanly monogamous ideal, she is less woman than she is male. + +Mr. Justice Hannen, for long President of the Divorce Court--and a +subtle expert in women--observed that it was not the passionate, +warm-eyed women who figured most before him, but, in far greater number, +the cold-blooded, greedy and emotionless. Because for one woman who +succumbs to love or passion, twenty transgress from motives of vanity or +gain; or from mere frivolous craving for excitement. + +It is the sexless women who are most immoral, for the same reason that +some dyspeptics are always hungry. Persons of healthy digestion eat, and +are satisfied. The healthfully-sexed love, and are content. The +emotionless woman is for ever seeking in novelty, emotions she lacks the +emotion to feel. Such women exploit passion for vanity, for +distraction, or for the primal male-instinct of subjugation. Their +desire for a lover is less a sentiment than it is of the nature of that +craving for drink, or for drugs, or for dress, which many of this order +also indulge. All are megalomanias--natural instincts distorted to vices +by warp of abnormal self-centredness. + +With its foundations laid in instinct, its organic emotionalism, its +streak of mental irresponsibility, and its hunger for approbation, the +Woman-nature, when lacking in the higher Woman-traits of affection and +selflessness, or when these are not duly absorbed in the natural +interests and functions of the sex, may degenerate to a very ugly thing. + +Some of our latter-day "smart" young married women, childless or with +one or two children consigned to hirelings, their passions excited by +marriage and not duly assuaged by maternity, their impulses unchastened +and their powers unexpended in affection and care for the family, seek +outlet and distraction in promiscuous philanderings, in intrigue or in +vice. + +Human faculty and impulse diverted from their normal channels readily +find crooked and dangerous courses. + +In the fourth year of War, the Prussian Protestant State-Church declared +that "immorality among German women has attained such a degree that the +very foundations of Society are threatened." This and kindred +developments in other War-ridden countries are not due to women having +changed their natures, but are the outcome of conditions so altered as +to have released them from the wholesome disciplinary exercise of their +accustomed duties, relaxing thus the salutary curbs of habit and +convention. Child of Nature that she is, woman is a born rebel; for ever +in revolt against the law and order and restraints which man has imposed +as indispensable to Progress. Whereas men abhor, women exult in crises +and upheavals. Because these serve for outlet to their restive +emotionalism and supply scope for exotic sensation, while at the same +time giving them temporary mastery over the male--who is always at a +disadvantage in exhibitions of feeling. + +And this temperamental erraticism is valuably disciplined by the +masculine bent for rule and method, and normally finds admirable +safety-valves in wifely, housewifely, and motherly functions. + + +II + +To advocate a moral standard higher for women than for men is regarded +now as reactionary and regressive. + +Nevertheless, it is certain that beyond all the other virtues, personal +purity is essentially the highest, and is racially the most valuable of +all the Woman-qualities. Lapses in the other sex are in no way +comparable, as regards moral, biological, or sociological significance, +with kindred lapses in woman. Because of her native non-conformability, +once she has deviated from the monogamous code, she is dangerously +likely never after to conform to it. (It is a truism that _The woman who +has one, has many lovers_.) Her non-conformity requires, accordingly, to +be protected by a social ordinance more rigid than is that of man. Man +being less complex of psychology, moreover, that which in him is merely +biological is vice in woman. The fact alone that the male is able to +employ the sex-function as a weapon of brutality (as in violation) +proves him totally dissimilar to woman in this relation. + +Man disperses; Woman absorbs. And the consistency of Nature is such that +these two diametrically-opposite biological modes in reproduction are +reflected on the planes of mind and impulse. The diametrical difference +of the modes disposes outright of the Feminist demand for identical +moral codes for the sexes; the sex-functions of the two being so +intrinsically contrary in method and inherence, with correspondingly +signal differences in moral impulse and significance. + +Biologically, the masculine function concludes with its fulfilment. +Whereas the feminine function _begins_ mainly therewith, and continues +thence onward to operate in an ever-deepening, broadening, and +intensifying tide of issues; biological and psychological. And so potent +and subtle is Nature's consistency with regard to this primary and vital +function of woman in Life, that whether or not biological issue results, +psychological issues do inevitably. Woman's mode and mood of +_receptiveness_ in this mysterious union so operate that, in her +surrender, she admits to the inmost sanctuary of her being an alien +presence--which remains with her till death. Fade as it may from her +consciousness, it remains, nevertheless, impressed for ever after on the +vibrant records of her sensitive Subconsciousness, as vitally as in the +hour of her surrender. And underlying mind and character and conduct +ever after, it for ever after contributes its quota to these. + +Because of the vivifying potence of her creative womanhood--the function +whereof is to engender Life--the stranger admitted to her citadel +becomes endued with Life, and takes up his abode with her to the end of +her natural term. For this reason, the adulterous woman is adulterous in +a sense impossible to man--adulterous in both a vital and an intrinsic +psychical sense that is revolting. + +With the increasing intensification in the male, with advancing +evolution, of his inherited Woman-traits, he has become ever further +endowed with Woman's Sub- and Supra-conscious faculties. So that the +function which was, in its primal moral, but brief and cursory, ending +summarily with its biological fulfilment, has become increasingly endued +in him with the vital emotionalism, and accordingly with the moral +significance inherent to the Woman-nature. If his experiences fade more +quickly from his consciousness than hers do, they remain nevertheless +(in the degree of his psychical development) potent still in his +Subconsciousness--as possibly adulterating and debasing factors. But +since his Subconscious emotionalism is an acquired and not an inherent +part of his male mentality, it is a medium vastly less sensitised and +operative in him than it is in her; of whom it is the very basis of her +being. + +This is no apology, of course, for masculine aberration, but a counsel +of feminine virtue--a counsel making indirectly, therefore, but none the +less surely for masculine virtue also. The reasons for chastity in the +one sex differ diametrically from those which should be the motive +thereof in the other, however. + +Chivalry and Prostitution are incompatible. + + +It must be confessed, however, that deterioration of the +woman-organisation and temperament conduces greatly to masculine +promiscuity. Not only because this entails loss of power to charm and +bind the mate, but because with the sex-immaturity, on the one hand of +the over-Feminised type, on the other, of the Mannish woman, women lose, +in greater or less degree, the natural power of one sex to assuage +passion in the other. + +Man is deteriorated, moreover, by moral and psychical deterioration in +that sex whence moral impulse springs, because, in such case, the appeal +of woman ceases to be, as is normal, to the emotional and chivalrous in +him, but evokes, on the contrary, biological instinct mainly, or merely. + + +It is well-established truth that her first lover (or her husband, +supposing she had loved him) retains a unique hold upon a woman's mind +throughout her after-life--his personality or memory dominating her +imagination as no later-comer is able to do. This is because that first +enters into possession of both Consciousness and Subconsciousness while +the tablets of these are still virgin and unblotted. This first +impresses himself, therefore, clearly and strongly defined upon her +exquisitely-sensitised tablets of remembrance. + +Latter-day young girls, permitted the injurious licence of free and +unchaperoned association with the other sex, even when they come to +marriage, inviolate, have, many of them, passed through experiences +which so have blurred and sullied their young highly-impressionable +temperament and senses as to have despoiled these of that fair purity +and freshness indispensable alike to potent impressions and to deep +attachments. In natural woman who has arrived at womanhood without +premature arousing of the senses, soul and sense are at fine poise, and +respond in vital unison to love. In girls whose innocence and conduct +have not been duly safeguarded, the prematurely-excited senses have +become detached from the soul--from the higher emotions, that is. With +the result that this fine poise of mind and body, which is the Hall-mark +of Woman-development, and whence romantic passion issues, has been +irretrievably lost. + +The same is true, in degree, of young men. They too deteriorate when +biological instinct is dissociated in them from the higher impulses of +passion. But in men, the poise, being less delicate, is not only less +readily lost, but it is more readily recovered. In this, as in other +things, the normal male makes for means; while woman's bent is toward +extremes. Further, physical passion being normally far stronger in him, +and _initiative_ in impulse--whereas in her it is mainly +_responsive_--the senses assert sway over him spontaneously. While in +natural girls these lie more or less dormant, unless artificially +roused, or until aroused in natural response to love. + +Early philanderings (more serious than boy-and-girl comradeship and +innocent flirtation) prevent women not only from ever attaining their +highest levels of organisation and temperament, but they destroy +effectually their power to love profoundly and whole-heartedly. They rob +them, accordingly, of the greatest transfiguring potence and happiness +of life. + + +III + +Odious and startling evidence that because of woman's vital emotionalism +and sensitive psychology, her nature retains ineffaceable vestiges of +all that has happened to her, is the fact that a woman's children by a +second husband may resemble her first husband far more than they +resemble their father. A significant and repulsive adulteration of type, +and one so intrinsic that a woman who had been previously wife to a +negro or a Chinaman will present her second husband, typically European, +with offspring of negroid or of Mongolian type. That husbands and wives +come to resemble one another in physiognomy and characteristics, is +further indication of the subtle and potent temperamental fusion and +implications of the mysterious sex-union. + +The adulteration of type which may thus repulsively mar the offspring of +women twice-mated is seen, at first hand, in that adulteration of +personality which results from sex-promiscuity. Not only is the +individuality both of mind and character obliterated, but the +individuality both of form and feature is obliterated too. The features +of persons of irregular life become blurred and more or less mongrel; +character and expression so degenerating as to produce eventually that +which has been styled a "composite face"--the face resulting when a +number of portraits of different persons are printed one over another on +the same photographic plate. + +The degree to which in the sex-union--howsoever lightly entered +on--they twain become intrinsically and remain irrevocably one, in the +vital records of individualism and character, is wholly unsuspected. But +in this--which is a complex phenomenon of Hypnosis--indelible undying +images, such as are impressed upon the Subconscious mind in every other +form of Hypnosis, remain impressed thereon; to inspire and fructify, or +to weaken and vitiate nature and faculty. + +That vigilant supervision of her young daughters for which the early +Victorian mother is now decried, secured a purity of racial type, in +fine physique and constitution, in notable talent and enterprise, in +rare womanly beauty and virile handsomeness, which proves the unique +potentialities inherent in our Anglo-Saxon stock. No merely material +service a woman can render to the State approaches in value the +all-potent one of safeguarding the virtue of its young daughters. + +Each sex has its own morale to sustain. And personal virtue is woman's. +The desire for equal liberty in this respect is added proof of the +ascendancy, in modern women, of Male over their own natural +Woman-traits. It springs not from an intensification of passion, but, on +the contrary, from a waning of that power to love which holds a woman +true to one mate. + +Last and most cogent of reasons: In view of those long centuries of +suffering and aspiration, by way of which the evolution of the +Woman-traits of love and purity has been achieved in blood and +tears--albeit the monogamous ideal is far yet from attainment--beyond +all else, the sex should strive toward this, both personally and +socially. + +It is the soul of Love and Life, the impulse of Human advance. With +decline of this ideal, the emotions cease to centre in the Home and +Family, and civilisation relapses to barbarism. + + +IV + +Ellen Key, in _Love and Marriage_, observes: "Few propositions are so +lacking in proof as that monogamy is the form of sexual life which is +indispensable to the vitality and culture of nations." And further: "all +the progress that is ascribed to Christian civilisation has taken place +while monogamy was indeed the law, but polygamy the custom." + +She overlooks the portentous truth that a law is the expression of a +general aspiration toward an ideal for which a people is striving. That +a law is broken proves that the higher in man moves him to set a +standard beyond his power--or beside his inclination--to sustain +undeviatingly. Yet although he may not act up to it undeviatingly, it +stands, nevertheless, for the ideal he realises that he should reach. + +Abolition of a good and elevating law proves, therefore, not only the +serious lapse of a community from an established standard of conduct, +but it inevitably lowers the level of conduct by removing +barriers--self-respect and self-restraint, public opinion and so +forth--standing in the way of laxity. Despite the death-penalty, murders +are committed. But were the death-penalty to be abolished, murder would +increase by leaps and bounds. The human mind is strangely susceptible. +And the power of habits acquired under fear of penalties is an +invaluable force for good. The higher minds of a community evolve and +establish codes for lesser minds to shape by. And undoubtedly the +subconscious as well as the conscious shaping toward such standards +furthers development in the directions thereof. To make honesty a matter +of personal choice, with no penalties attaching to theft, would be in +itself an incentive to theft. + +Comparison with polygamous countries, of countries in which monogamy is +the law, refutes straightway Miss Key's discredit of monogamy; showing +the polygamous uncivilised, unenlightened, unprogressive, subject to +monogamous races, and in every sense, both materially and morally +decadent. And if, with a notion of establishing equality in all things +between the sexes by emancipating woman from the higher moral code, +leasehold marriage or other forms of wedded laxity should be +substituted--not only would national purity, but personal character and +happiness too would suffer grievously. + +If men have not kept the monogamous law, the instinct of jealousy, +reinforced by repugnance to supporting alien offspring, has seen to it +that wives should trespass as seldom, at all events, as was possible to +be guarded against. Custom and public opinion, furthered by personal +fear and fear of divorce, have all contributed toward advancing ideals +of womanly honour and conduct. And from monogamous mothers--whether +voluntarily or involuntarily so--progress has derived immense impulse. +Apart from biological considerations, the benefit to the family of the +mother's influence centred in her home and kept from straying thence, +either by her own aspirations, by public opinion, or by fear of the +husband, has been incalculable. + +During and since the War, crime among children has increased by 50 per +cent., largely owing to absence of mothers from their homes, working or +drinking, or otherwise dissipating, while their children have been left +to run wild in the streets. + +Our reformatories are full to overflowing with these neglected +unfortunates; deprived thus of the haven of homes and maternal control. +As a man is responsible to the State for the support of his family, so a +woman should be held responsible to the State for the proper care and +supervision of its future citizens, who, without due care and +disciplinary influence, become a burden and scourge to the community. + +In all these vitally-momentous issues, let us free our minds alike of +sex-bias and false sentiment, in order that we may see clearly, and may +act honestly and wisely in the interests not only of women themselves, +but in those of the Race. + + +V + +The sex-instinct in woman having had its origin in surrender, retains +much still of this primal element. And both middle-class men of lower +evolutionary grade, and men of the working classes, exercise still, to +considerable degree, the brute-trait of terrorism over women--moral +rather than physical terrorism. + +In rescuing young girls from molestation in the streets, one may see in +them the panic of such intimidation. They are pale and trembling, with +pupils widely dilated. In full daylight, it may be in a crowded +thoroughfare, with police at hand, primal instinctive emotionalism +paralyses reason, resource and will-power. Weak-minded women, who lack +their due share of masculine combativeness to stiffen resistance in +them, frequently marry, or otherwise yield to such men, far more because +they are afraid than because they are fond of them. And the terrorism +husbands have exercised over wives has nerved wives against the +terrorism exercised over them by other men; and has thus served to +protect them from their own weaknesses. + +The Woman-traits, always at a disadvantage in concrete affairs against +superior strength, have been buttressed thus and coerced--often cruelly +and tyrannously, 'tis true. But they have nevertheless been greatly +furthered in development by a mate who, if he did not recognise the +higher calibre of woman's nature, nor himself aspired to the code he +exacted from her, recognised, at all events, that this higher code he +exacted of her was that best adapted to progress. Thus has poor +mortality been beaten and shapen on the anvils of compulsion and +exigency. And always the woman has most suffered--to be beautiful of +nature. + +Were it not that an advance-guard of higher and chivalrous men stand, by +force of the laws they have made, between women and the lower and +coarser masculine orders, no woman's life would be worth the living +because of perpetual affront. With existing laws, indeed, which protect +even the most degraded of the sex, the women of the poorer classes are +everywhere subject to insult and unseemly jest, open or covert. Because +to many men of crude order, the eternal mystery of Sex shows mainly as +subject for levity. The crass and unimaginative frequently deride thus +things too high for their dense understanding. + +Women have come to take their chivalrous protection by law as mere +matter-of-course, precisely as they take it as matter-of-course that men +should labour, and should endow them with the benefits of their +industry. These things are by no means matter-of-course, however, but +are matter of chivalry--chivalry so innate as to have become convention. + +It would be occasion for laughter, were it not cause for profoundest +regret, that the hypertrophy of male-traits in woman has engendered +to-day a sex-antagonism which has set her in open revolt against man, +from whom, if she has suffered and suffers, and will continue to suffer +at the hands of his defects, she nevertheless derives, and has always +derived from his chivalries her most gracious human privileges. + +That the obligations and the recompenses of the sexes are reciprocal, +is true. It is equally true, however, that the choice has lain +with men to have ignored the nobler issues of the compact. As the +seraglio-imprisoned women of the less manly and progressive peoples +prove. + +All our civilisation, with its complex sociological, intellectual, and +moral developments, rests on a basis of Force. Men must still prove +their right to each and all of their laboriously-won achievements by +arms and the valours of war. In peace, the laws--which alone make life +tolerable--rest equally upon the powers of masculine will and strength +to inflict due punishment for violation thereof. + +And laws having been made by men, it was clearly optional with them to +have left women unprotected, or far less protected than the other sex; +in place of having extended special protection to their more delicate +attributes. + +In safeguarding women in general, men safeguard their own individual +women, of course. Human motive is involved; is the product of a number +of factors. That this is so is reason for eliminating no single one of +these factors, lest the resultant undergo a wholly unexpected and +disastrous transformation. + +The Plan sets most women at the mercy of most men, by reason of the +greater physical strength of males, and by temptation of their more +urgent sex-instinct. In view of her inherent disabilities, it would have +seemed, _a priori_, that no woman could in ruder days have attained to +womanhood, inviolate. + +And yet that her very disabilities have served for her increasing +protection is shown by the fact of her increasing protection as, with +the evolution of her higher organisation, her disabilities have +intensified. + +Civilised woman, with her more delicate organisation, is far more +defenceless than was savage woman. But in response to the claims of her +increasing defencelessness, the instinctive chivalry of the stronger +male, her natural protector, has become progressively the intelligent +and moral chivalry of higher man. No strength or capability of woman's +own to defend herself could so have served her; nor could so have served +the other sex for fine incentive. + +To free woman of her highly specialised and inspiring disabilities by +substituting in her, powers, muscular and mental, that would fit her to +meet the male on equal terms, would be to frustrate the method of the +male evolutionary ascent, by eliminating the humanising and uplifting +appeal to his manhood of these her inspiring unfitnesses. + +The deplorable decadence in masculine regard for and bearing toward +women, which has resulted in direct proportion as the sex has +substituted male efficiencies for womanly ineptitudes, serves for one of +many other valuable object-lessons of the War. + + +VI + +Among other Feminist fallacies, the _demi-mondaine_ has come to be +regarded as victim merely, on the one hand, of an unjust, +man-administered economic system, on the other, of masculine +libertinism. The truth is that the vast majority of immoral women are +under no compulsion, but voluntarily adopt this mode of life either to +escape work, or because of a natural vicious proclivity. A number are +mental defectives; some actually feeble-minded, others only morally +deficient. + +It must always be remembered, moreover, that, biologically speaking, the +separation of the _genus_ woman into the folds, respectively, of sheep +and goats is of signal racial and social service. That some goats are in +the sheep-fold, some lambs among the goats, is not to be denied. +Fatalities, injustices, and incongruities are inevitable to all broad +human classifications. In the main, however, the women who resist +temptation and remain virtuous are obviously better fitted to be the +wives and mothers of the Race than are they who fall. + +And although this is not, of course, the calculated purpose of this +lamentable under-world, the rough division of the sex thereby into two +main classes has been of service, by supplying a sociological backwater +wherein the worst of our racial derelicts--mental and moral +defectives--are segregated; and are precluded, for the most part, from +perpetuating their mental and moral defectiveness. + +Women, like men, must uphold and battle for their standards in the +teeth of circumstance. The most notable types of parasite-women, +selfish, slothful, worthless, venal, vicious, whose standards are jewels +and clothes, their goals luxury and pleasure and the evasion of all that +is difficult and distasteful in life, are found among the aristocratic +and the plutocratic orders; safely secured against economic necessity or +lack of scope and outlet for their powers. + +The Feminist fallacy that prostitution is almost entirely a product of +male economics has been strikingly refuted, too, by War-conditions, +which opened numerous well-remunerated employments for the sex. Yet, +coincident with a sad deficit of women to fill these, prostitution has +waxed rampant. + +Wise and discreet were those early Victorians, with their uncompromising +ostracism of loose women. Apart altogether from such salutary expression +of their condemnation of impure living, they were vastly too clever and +far-seeing to admit persons of notoriously evil habit, peeress or +actress, to association with their clean young girls, as modern mothers +do; to meet and to mix freely with them socially or at Charity Bazaars, +on Flag-Days, and so forth. With the result that girls all the world +over have become increasingly lax and decadent in tone and manner, in +dress and morale, from confusion of their young standards by social +tolerance and recognition of such persons, as also from corruption by +demoralising contact with and observation of such. + +Intolerance? Pharisaism? By no means! + +The strong and straight, uncompromising moral standards of its women +serve as landmarks of, and impulse to a nation's progress. Clear and +definite lines of demarcation between good and evil, between possible +and impossible modes of conduct, point the moral of advance, and turn +the scale in the upward direction for the weak, the hesitating, and the +imitative. + +Dread of consequences went far, in less sophisticated days, to +safeguard and foster womanly virtue. Modern expedients have, +unfortunately, removed all cause for fear in this relation; permitting +an impunity of action demoralising to the weak in will or principle, who +require every possible aid and check to guide them aright. In simpler +days, girls who had lapsed were steadied and strengthened in character +and self-restraint by the compulsion to support, as too by their natural +fondness for the unwanted child. Now the first step--having cost them +nothing--predisposes to further backslidings. And both character and +self-control degenerate increasingly. + + +VII + +To weaken the marriage-bond by setting it for a term of years only, or +by making it terminable by consent, would virtually destroy marriage and +family-life. The fact that the bond would not be binding would make +persons more careless even than they are at present in selection of the +mate, and would thus multiply the number of mis-matings. Which would be +still further to deteriorate species, since the finer types of children +are born only of well-mated parents. + +The finality of the bond, if it does not always prevent one or both from +meeting some other they prefer, prevents the scrupulous, at all events, +from seeking such. Or having found, it keeps many from fostering and +from yielding to temptation. Were marriage terminable, or, as is +sometimes proposed, were it abolished wholly, and love the only bond +between the sexes, there would be no confidence, no sense of security +between the partners, no stability of family life; no centring of +interests in this, and but small endeavour to retain affections which +for the many could be easily replaced--and replaced, moreover, with the +zest of novelty. On the contrary, a curse of unrest would afflict the +vast majority of married folk with the unsettling--mayhap with the +alluring--prospect of meeting their further "Fate"; perhaps their +second, possibly their third, it might be, their seventh "Fate." + +Only the few are strong enough of heart or stable enough of character to +remain steadfast for a lifetime in any undertaking, unless bound +stringently thereto by authorised obligations, incentives, and +penalties. Only the few are deep enough of nature to love for a +lifetime; or are deep enough of nature to love so intensely as to +justify altering the marriage-code in order to spare these few +suffering. The wane of nine out of ten honeymoons impresses the value of +an inflexible decree that declines to reckon with disillusion, but +sternly bids the disillusioned take up their burden and make the best of +it. And having no choice, many do this and make a success of it--on new, +and, it may be, on far higher lines than those they had set out upon. + +That but few love so deeply as to love for life by no means implies that +marriage for less than a lifetime should be substituted. It shows, on +the contrary, that the majority of persons would prove as incapable of +loving No. Two for long as they had been incapable of loving No. One; or +as they would be incapable of loving No. Three, or No. Ten. A bond that +rivets them for life to No. One therefore, and entails loss or suffering +when they fail to abide by it, is safeguard for them against such a +succession of loves as would be as demoralising to the individual as it +must be destructive of society. + +Examples of this tendency to amorous licence have been furnished by the +complications of War-"widows," who, on report of the death of +soldier-husbands, remarried in unseemly haste--only to find the husband +return. So too, by the widespread infidelity of wives to absent +soldier-husbands. If the grave and moving circumstance of a husband +facing death or mutilation in the trenches, for his country's defence, +was not grave nor moving enough to keep his wife faithful to him, then +we should congratulate ourselves upon a marriage-law which, by exacting +penalties whereby such a wife suffers material damage, supplies the only +argument likely to stiffen the morale of so light-minded and callous a +creature. + +Nothing less binding than a lifelong contract is coercive enough or is +sufficiently chastening to bridle woman's native changefulness and curb +her instinctive emotionalism. The realisation that there is no way out +of a situation is her finest incentive to nobility. She bruises her +impulses against the iron of circumstance, and the essences of her +intrinsic Woman-soul distil in patience and in sweetness. Under the +harrow of sacrifice, she feels herself martyred. And yet without the +sense of martyrdom, as may be also without the conditions thereof, no +true woman is ever wholly content that she is fulfilling her destiny. + +Ellen Key writes of "_all the impurity that the sexual life shuts up +within the whited sepulchre of legal marriage_." She falls here into the +common error of assuming such evil to be restricted solely to the state +of marriage. Whereas the higher interests, the duties and affections of +the family life--purifying and inspiring influences lacking in +unsanctioned unions--make inevitably for the uplifting of the relation. +That some husbands and wives fall short of the pure intensity of passion +possible to some others between whom love is the sole bond, is true, of +course. But as are most other human developments, this is a matter of +the character of individuals rather than of the terms of the bond +uniting them. Certainly, high and tender passion is scarcely to be +expected in a union for no better reason than that this is illicit. + + +VIII + +Were life designed for happiness and pleasure merely, the case would be +different. Were one life our sole portion, it might be different too. +Having one life only, we might be justified in claiming for it the joy +of the best love available. An unhappy or a less than happy marriage is +only one, however, of the many expedients for the evolution of faculty. + +If the evolution of the individual progresses by way of countless +earth-existences strung upon a thread of spiritual continuity, one life +is but a brief and single page of everybody's great Life-serial. +That is, doubtless, why all feel their lot to be an episode +merely--unexplained, and incomplete, rather than a finished story. And +in our innumerable pages and innumerable episodes, we must resign +ourselves to sundry matrimonial vicissitudes. + +Says the author of _The World-Soul_, "The more function is specialised +in either sex the less able either is to stand alone." This is argument +for further and fuller specialisation of their respective functions, in +both sexes, because so great is the happiness of fulfilling for that +other his or her great need of us, and of being blessed by that other in +our own need. But too, it raises the voluntary surrender of such +happiness for honour's sake, for holiness' sake, for God's sake, or for +children's sake, to the height of a renunciation which transfigures +human life and character, and proportionally ennobles both. + +That both man and woman should be entitled to divorce for infidelity, +for incorrigible drunkenness, criminality or insanity on the part of the +mate, would be just and reasonable clauses in the marriage-code. +Because, apart from the unmerited cruelty and shame of such bondages, is +the risk of entailing degenerate offspring. Otherwise, it appears that +relaxation of the Divorce-Law would result in evils far worse than any +it would remedy. And these evils would re-act inevitably far more +cruelly--both temperamentally and materially--upon women and children +than upon men. + +The conjugal and the paternal instincts being traits the sex has +acquired by long ages of developmental progress, for men to lose these +would be as easy as the loss would be degenerative to themselves and to +those others. Folly to suppose that having reached a certain stage of +human character-building, we can, with impunity, kick away the +foundations whereon our house of evolution has been raised; and on which +it must rest for all time. + +The irrevocability of the marriage-contract is woman's greatest +security. Realisation of that sex-lawlessness which is an innate +Male-trait--relic of the promiscuous and cursory nature of the primal +male-instinct--should set us on guard against weakening, in the least +degree, this covenant, which is the best among those privileges whereby +man, in the teeth of his inherent instincts, has chivalrously protected +woman and the family. In the teeth of these, he has applied his natural +intelligent bent for Conformity in concrete affairs to the repression +and regulation of his impulses by the institution of Marriage. And +this--the apotheosis of masculine conformity to the exactions of +Progress--is now menaced by the native Non-conformity of woman, +exploited by Feminism. + + +It is notable that men are but seldom truly fond of, nor are they +faithful to the wife who works outside the home. In France, where the +clever, industrious wife of the middle and lower classes is more a +business-partner than she is a wife, conjugal fidelity is not expected. + +Not only is a house without a woman in it to devote her best interests +and powers to the arts of home-making, not a home, but the bond of that +fraction of interest and affection left over to her from her work +outside it is a thing too slight to bind her husband to her. He finds no +difficulty in substituting--should he seek this--a haven with more +atmosphere of home and sentiment in it, companionship with more of +temperament in it, more resiliency and freshness, than that of the +industrious and wage-earning, but fatigued and jaded working-wife. + +The children of such a union--if such there be--supply no bond either to +draw together and unite their parents. Children reared by servants, +without understanding or affection, are but seldom affectionate or +charming. Moreover, the children of hard-working mothers are but seldom +true children. They bring to the home nothing of the freshness, the +vitality or charm of natural childhood. + +If father and mother possess æsthetic sensibilities, these are offended +probably by the plainness and the lack of graces in their +offspring--bye-products merely of their economic assiduities. Perhaps +the big spectacles through which the young eyes gaze forth like doleful +prisoners from behind bars, make them feel strangely uncomfortable; as +in the presence of weird and reproachful intelligences. + +Neither derives interest or joy enough from the family circle to repay +them for their parental obligations and responsibilities. + + +IX + +Love between the sexes, being a need alike of souls and biogenesis, is +regarded by some as reason enough in itself for relaxing the +Marriage-law--even for the abolition of Marriage; making affection the +sole bond between the lovers. + +We cannot, logically, abolish the legal contract uniting two persons in +marriage, however, without at the same time abolishing every other form +of legal contract, and the legal liabilities thereof. Logically, we +cannot make conjugal duty and family responsibility mere matters of +personal conscience, unless we are assured that the human species has +reached such a phase of moral integrity as to need no other incentive +than its own integrity to secure fulfilment of its obligations, moral +and material. If we abolish the legal factor in marriage, to be +consistent we must abolish the legal factor in business partnerships and +in all other sociological compacts. We must make the payment of rent, of +rates and taxes, of tradesmen's bills and so forth, debts of conscience +and of honour merely; for the discharge whereof conscience and honour +must alone suffice. + +It may be objected that these are purely material obligations, while the +bond between the sexes is an emotional one. And yet--Have we reached +such a stage of development that emotional considerations are more +binding on us than material ones are? + +Moreover, if we are to make love the sole bond--clearly the waning of +love must release from the bondage. Further, when we sift out the purely +emotional element in the vast majority of unions, we shall find it but a +very slender factor among other more binding reciprocities. Certainly a +far more slender thread to trust to in the safeguarding of a contract +than is, for example, the factor of commercial honesty. Commercial +honesty is not, perhaps, a conspicuous virtue of the times. +Nevertheless, the sense of honesty in business is a good deal stronger +in most men than is their sense of honour with regard to love. And their +sense of honour in love has developed mainly as a direct consequence of +those legal compulsions and responsibilities of love which have been +exacted and fostered by the legality of marriage. + +How many men are there, for example, who, having come to care for some +other, hold themselves bound in the least by an illicit tie; howsoever +much they may have cared at one time for the woman in the case? Lightly +come--lightly go! And if the terms, marriage and love, are by no means +necessarily synonymous, it has been, nevertheless, greatly by way of the +obstacles and compulsions and the social penalties attaching to +violation of the marriage vows that the love-passion has been purified +and uplifted out of the barbarism of mere instinct and promiscuity, +into the graces of emotion and the virtues of monogamy. + +Had any man and woman, reciprocally attracted at their first meeting, +been free always to have carried this attraction straightway to its +biological conclusion, the sex-relation would be still the merely +physiological incident it was in primal forests. The circumstance that +such attraction has been debarred from ready consummation by the +obligations and the obstacles engendered by a recognised and legalised +bond between the sexes, has been debarred, moreover, in innumerable +cases, by one of the attracted couple being subject to this bond--all of +this has preserved the nascent emotion from straightway relapsing to the +basic level whence it sprang, and has fostered the evolution of love in +the higher reaches of emotion; of imagination, of controlled and +chastened passion. + +It may be said that modern men and women, loving one another with the +more highly-evolved passion of our enlightened epoch, would love as +devotedly and would remain as constant in an illicit as in a legalised +union. If so, such constancy would be an echo mainly of the +long-dignified state of wedded constancy; and the greatest of all +tributes to the values of this. Nevertheless--For how long after the +clarion-note of aspiration sounded by Marriage should have ceased to +vibrate, would the echo of it last? + + +Should woman, in her short-sighted efforts to "emancipate" herself still +further, release herself wholly (as she now inclines to do) from the +marriage-bond, she will have thrown back in man's face the very +tenderest guerdon of his worth and of his high regard for her. And she +will have destroyed, at a blow, his most vital incentive to further +advance, her own and her children's most powerful safeguard, and the +main buttress not alone of national but, as well, of Natural human +progress. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN +FACULTY + + "_A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to + make a home._"--Chinese Proverb. + + +I + +The paths alike of progress and of happiness lie, obviously, in the ever +further dignifying and enhancement of the functions of home and of +wifehood, by way of every further interest and charm that higher, fairer +Womanhood confers. + +The chief cause of latter-day conjugal unrest and disaffection is to be +found--not in the natural state of marriage, but in a decline of those +personal traits which make for happiness therein. Girls brought up as +now, without home-interests or training, but, on the contrary, with +mainly self-realising and self-absorbing aims and pursuits, are +deficient not only in domestic aptitudes but lamentably also in +emotional qualities. And the home-life without the emotions to give +values to it, is like a fine air played on the keyboard of a piano from +which have been removed the strings that transform the movements of the +fingers into melody. + +So keenly self-centred the majority of women have become, so bent upon +their hobbies and careers, as to have lost nearly all of that +sympathetic adaptiveness natural to woman, which enables her to +forget--and to forget with pleasure--her own in the personality and +interests of others. + +How eagerly latter-day girls seek refuge from their boredom in the +tennis-court, the Bridge-table, the dance, or in some other mode of +direct action which entails but little temperamental tax or output! + +To such degree the sexes are now drilled to the same standards, +interests, and points-of-view, that neither brings to the other any new +thing, of freshness, of colour, or of inspiration. The interchange is +only too often a competitive struggle, indeed, as to which shall know +(or shall appear to know) more than the other knows (or appears to know) +of topics equally trite to both. There is little or nothing of the zest +and glamour of a delightful picnic of two; whereat each keeps producing +some new and unexpected thing to supplement the new and unexpected of +the other. Modern woman has no novelty in language even for her mate, +but deals him back his own slang--a vernacular which among women of the +working-classes not seldom takes the forms of blasphemy and obscenity, +wholly disqualifying for the rearing of children. As, indeed, do the +coarse and vulgar phrases in vogue now among the cultured of the sex. In +view of woman's native faculty of music and her subtle aptitude for +naming (as for nick-naming), one cannot doubt that she it was who +mothered Language. Yet now-a-days, adopting virile lingo, her "rotten," +"stick-it," and the like are murdering the infant of her quondam genius. +And what genius it was, that gave birth to our surpassing mother-tongue! + + +In case of engagement between a young man and his bored one--whom, by +the way, although he may suspect that the relation is not all that it +might be, he never suspects of being bored--manlike, he trusts to +marriage "to put everything right." Yet although the newly-wedded more +and more relieve themselves of the strain of a honeymoon, with its +unmitigated (or inimitable) company of two, a month or six weeks of +wedlock find most young modern couples wofully at cross-purposes. +Possession has freed the man of the obligation to woo. And when the +wooing--which had engendered for the woman a flattering and intoxicating +sense of being a coveted prize--comes to a more or less abrupt ending, +she feels herself defrauded. + +He too! Because while Courtship is man's affair, Marriage is woman's. +And where love is not, to recruit and quicken passion and to take the +place of novelty, the wane of honeymoons is sad indeed. + +(There are faults and failings on the bridegroom's part, 'tis true. That +belongs to another story, however. Sufficient for these pages is the +unpleasing task of holding a mirror to the faults of a single sex.) + +It should be remembered that men, for the most part, are not eager to +marry. Considering the nature of the bond, with its lifelong +obligations, responsibilities and sacrifices, this is little to be +wondered at. A week after marriage a wife may be crippled by an +accident, may become insane; or may otherwise be thrown, more or less a +burden, on her husband's hands. Or she may develop disagreeable and +wholly uncongenial traits. In spite of which, even though they wreck his +happiness, he will have bound himself to her--and will have bound +himself to maintain her--till death them parts. + +He too, of course, may turn out wholly unsatisfactory. That belongs +likewise to the other story. But from the material standpoint, the onus +of support which falls on him, and which, in the case of an invalided or +of an obnoxious wife, may prove nothing but a carking care, makes the +liabilities unequal. + +It is, doubtless, because of these his greater material obligations and +responsibilities, that passion has been planned to beset man more +urgently than woman. And had Church and State not taken advantage of his +inherent, chivalrous instinct, and so turned it to account, both for his +own moral uplifting and for the founding and maintenance of the family, +woman and society--and man, accordingly--would have remained at very low +grades of development. + + +II + +Among other "wrongs" resented by women is that his obligation and his +economic means to support a wife have endowed the male, in the majority +of cases, with the lordly prerogative of selecting his mate. On her +side, while having much to gain materially by marriage, unless she is +unusually attractive she has but little range of choice. + +And yet this masculine prerogative of selection has served as the +strongest incentive to the culture both of higher attribute and charm in +woman. Failing that economic struggle which has been man's spur to +development, this incentive has operated vastly to her benefit; inducing +her parents to educate and to enhance her gifts, and influencing her to +do the like for herself. A proportion of women have always been +self-supporting, of course. But their work has been mainly in fields of +unskilled labour, and has lacked, accordingly, the stimulus of +competition. The goal of marriage has not only supplied thus the element +of emulation, but it has turned Woman-culture in the direction of +developing personal traits and morale, rather than industrial or +professional specialisations. And this has been the right direction, +seeing that the rôle of the sex is one demanding personal qualities and +virtues rather than economic technicalities. + +As regards human values, it is a higher privilege to be a charming +personality than to be a successful stockbroker. So that in this, as in +other things, woman has been privileged by her disabilities. + + +III + +An ever-increasing number of working-class girls, on leaving school, +enter a work-shop, a factory, or an office, and spend their time and +powers in minor mechanical tasks; gumming labels on jam-pots, making +match-boxes or tags for boot-laces, addressing envelopes, and other such +employments, deadening to female intelligence, impulse and temperament. +Their minds and natures become too warped and narrowed to adapt later, +with ease and interest, to the many and varied intelligent functions of +the home. They escape thence, accordingly, after a few months or years +of marriage (supposing them to have given up their industrial tasks for +a space even), and abandoning home and children, return to the old +narrow, mechanical routine, to which alone their poor stultified brains +have been shaped. In the education of girls, the Subconscious mimetic +element in their impressionable natures should be borne in mind. It may +be turned to excellent, as to disastrous account. + +M. Vologotsky, head of the Omsk Government, has called attention to a +significant phenomenon of modern Russian life--namely, that the women +take no interest in their homes. This he attributes to their low states +of culture. Could they but be persuaded to become "house-proud"--with +all that this means and entails--he considers that the task of the +Regeneration of this vast unhappy, although singularly gifted, people +would be greatly furthered. + +Constitutional deterioration, inherited or acquired, entailing defective +sex-development, causes many young working-women to be deficient in the +maternal instinct, whence spring fondness for and interest in children. +The same defective sex-development, disqualifying them for wifehood, +results in the vast majority of working-class wives lapsing, after a +few years of marriage with normal, virile young men, into haggard, +neurasthenic wrecks. + +The whole of this vital and important department of the +woman-organisation is not only ignored in so far as scope for normal +development is concerned, but, despised as subserving inferior and +"merely physical" functions, every other capacity and aptitude is +fostered or forced at the expense of constitutional reserves and +resources which belong, by rights of Life and Love, to this. With the +result that the vast majority of modern women are physically unfitted +for, as an increasing number are temperamentally averse to the +sex-relation--_fons et origo_ of Life. + + +IV + +To such degree the doctrine of Expedience and Self-for-Self-solely has +spread that there are women who seek now to escape wholly the natural +pangs of childbirth. Such persuade their doctors to induce labour a +month or more before term; in order that the smaller-sized infant may be +born with less discomfort to themselves. Others restrict their diet or +abstain from certain foods, in order that the babe, starved thus and +ill-nourished before birth, shall be soft and frail and easier of +delivery. Dread of pain at whatsoever cost to the future of a human +being--and that being their own child--actuates these unnatural and +pusillanimous practices. + +It is becoming a vogue for expectant mothers of the wealthier classes to +enter Maternity-Homes, where, in luxurious surroundings, they are +enabled, under spinal anæsthesia (Twilight Sleep), to conclude their +mother-function without suffering or inconvenience; lying in a torpor of +crass insensibility while the greatest of Human Events is taking place +in them. Meantime, the sensitive infant-body is dosed with the powerful +drug circulating in the maternal blood. + +But--whither is all this trending? Can we believe that true intelligence +and progress consist in grasping greedily all the pleasures and the +privileges to be had from life, and basely shirking all the hardships? +Can we believe that--suffering and effort being the laws alike of Life +and Progress, and the rungs whereby we have climbed the Evolutionary +ladder--we can continue to climb when, with short-sighted selfishness, +we shall have stripped the ladder of its rungs? The humane use of +chloroform duly assuages the worst pangs. While the fine courage, +fortitude and sweetness wherewith the soul of woman fares forth +naturally upon her Great Adventure, to meet this the Apotheosis of human +pain, prove and still further enhance her nobility. Even weak and flimsy +women rise to greatness at this crisis. Powers they had never glimmered +in themselves emerge and armour them, and--be it remembered--leave +eternal records upon mind and character; striking spiritual roots still +deeper into living function. + + +V + +With characteristic Feminist materialism, Olive Schreiner lightly +dismisses Maternity as a merely "passive" form of labour. + +Heaven save the mark! Is it passive so to equip a microscopic cell with +living human powers and aspirations that, within the space of months, it +makes that miraculous pilgrimage of the pre-natal evolutionary ascent +whereby it becomes Man? Passive--so to serve for living environment to +this developing organism as to supply it with the multiple, complex and +diverse elements, material and vital, biological and psychical, required +for the manifold needs and adjustments of its evolving life and +faculties? + +During the ante-natal months of this miraculous Ascent, the embryo +"climbs its genealogical tree," as biologists style it. That is to say, +it passes, in turn, through all the countless evolutionary phases of all +the countless evolutionary ages whereof Humanity is the culminating +product. Fashioning out of formlessness, slowly it attains to form. +Shaping, shaping, ever marvellously shaping, it evolves, in succession, +through fish, amphibian and other rudimentary life-grades. Climbing, +climbing, ever marvellously climbing, day by day, to nobler heights, it +is transformed at last to human shape; lower human first, then higher +human, and finally to the highest human possible to its stock, its +parentage, and the resources, physical and psychical, available to it. + +It is the most stupendous miracle in Nature; a miracle so sacred and so +tender that every man in passing an expectant mother should mentally bow +the knee. Individually, socially, morally--she may be a person of but +small significance. But because of the mystery of Life enshrined within +her, she is a living Testament of Evolution. The pregnant woman is, +moreover, pregnant with the destiny of Races. + +During those ten lunar months there is enacted in the tender darkness of +the mother's womb the whole wonderful drama of the Human +transfiguration. With lightning swiftness, the evolving babe climbs in +the footsteps that its countless ancestors had trod, in forms +innumerable, along the route interminable of the Human Advent. In +flashes of progressive, infinitesimal transitions, through incalculable +phases and mutations, the single cell of double parentage unfolds the +marvel occulted in it. Until at last, the living product stands +triumphant on the topmost branch of its genealogical tree, a perfect +human babe awaiting birth; the last achievement of its Race, the latest +and most perfect bud of its hereditary stock. + +In so far as all this occurs subconsciously within the mother, the +materialist may lightly dismiss the evolutionary marvel as a "passive" +form of labour. But although subconscious, these unceasing processes +demand inevitably such proportional vital potential and activities on +her part from whom the powers energising it are derived, as to be a +continued tax and strain upon her strength and health. There are women +who feel this strain but little. A rare few of these because they are so +richly endowed with maternal potence that the subconscious processes +have remained, as Nature doubtless intended, for the most part +subconscious and painless. Far more often, however, when Maternity +exacts but little from the mother, _it is because she is contributing +but little to the child_. I have observed that the finer a child in +physique and in brain, the greater the stress and disability the mother +had suffered prior to its birth. + + +VI + +Indifferent, notwithstanding, to all the vital activities and psychical +evolutions taking place within the mysterious laboratory of the mother's +body; reckless of the circumstance that any interference with, or +hampering of the least of these must inevitably jar, and warp, the +delicate complexes of infantine development, we scruple not to strain +and burden, to harass and deplete, the prospective mother even further +by strenuous breadwinning. Her whole physiology and psychology are +profoundly altered by her momentous condition; by the new adjustments to +the needs of the developing babe, of the maternal circulation and +digestion, assimilation and elimination, mentality and intricate nervous +constitution and processes. Fatigue, noise, turmoil, effort, shock--any +one or all of these which are inseparable from industrial +employment--cannot but injuriously re-act upon the delicate evolutions +mysteriously occurring in her. + +The infant brain is complete at birth. From its lowest to its highest +departments, all the marvel of exquisitely-delicate construction and +association of its complex cells is achieved pre-natally. And according +or not as her vital powers have been rich and otherwise unexpended, and +according or not as the embryological processes of development have +occurred in quietude and freedom from strain upon the mother's part, +will be the quality for life, in vigour and in sanity, of her child's +intelligence and character. + + +VII + +In view of those lower biological grades through which the embryo passes +before arriving at the human stage, it is inevitable that maternal +over-fatigue, shock or undue effort may arrest its physical development +temporarily upon any of these lower levels. And such arrest must +inevitably entail some warp or bias of a lower animal phase; which may +so impress itself permanently on embryonic development as to detract +more or less gravely from the final transition. + +It is, doubtless, for this reason that many modern humans show in their +configuration, degrees of reversion to ape, sheep, fish and other lower +species. + +Shock or nervous perturbation in the expectant mother may occasion, in +the babe, appalling monstrosity, or such minor defects as cleft-palate, +hare-lip, and other deformities. Showing the vital and--inevitably--the +psychological effects on offspring, for good or for evil, of maternal +conditions and impressions. + +The Germans record that of infants born during the war, a number are +gravely degenerate of type, an infant-degeneracy attributed by some to +the creed of Hate obsessing German mothers. The same phenomenon is seen +however in the offspring of mothers exhausted by religious preachings +and marchings, in furtherance of their creed of Christian Love. + +For Biology recognises no Theology except its own--that of Evolution. + +At a representative meeting of London doctors, it was stated recently +that the number of imbecile infants now coming into existence with us is +no less than appalling. + + +A medical wiseacre has adventured the amazing dictum that _Every infant +is born healthy_! He might, with equal truth, have said that every +infant is born wealthy, or is born a Chinaman. Some infants are born +alive, a great number are born dead. And between those born alive and +healthy and the still-born, lie all the infinite gradations of +constitutional condition between life and health, between disease and +death. + +One child inherits from its parents a tuberculous tendency; another a +neurotic, another a strain of alcoholism or other taint. One is born +blind or a hopeless idiot; another with hare-lip or clubbed-foot; +another with congenital heart-disease. One babe is born with a beautiful +head; all its brain-faculties nobly developed and splendidly balanced. +Another is born headless, or with a skull which, from crown to brows, is +a rapid descent--showing lack of all the brain-powers involved in higher +mentality; is born, in short, of criminal inherency. + +The degrees in which individuals strive against inherited tendencies +differ greatly, as do the life-conditions wherein their will and moral +power are tested--to make or to break them. Man is not, of course, _the +creature_ merely of his heredity or of his environment. But he whose +mother has equipped him with physical defects instead of with qualities, +even though he fight against his disabilities, is obviously handicapped +for the life-struggle. A great musician may charm fine music from a +poor fiddle, but in no degree so fine as he will bring out of a more +perfect instrument. + + +VIII + +A phenomenon which has baffled vital statisticians is a curious relation +between the Birth-rate and Infant-Mortality. A high birth-rate is found +to be associated with a high rate of infant-mortality; while with a +lower birth-rate, the death-rate among infants and children decreases. + +Long and careful observation has left me in no doubt as to the cause of +this phenomenon. Which is, that under strain of disease, of industrial +exhaustion or strenuous activities of any sort, but particularly as +result of _the constitutional drain entailed by pregnancy_, mothers may +so draw upon the vital powers of their children in order to recruit +their own, as to occasion fatal illness in their families. + +The evil is so great in its effects, not only upon the health and +constitution of the rising generation, but, as well, upon the physical +and mental development thereof, that such maternal depletion is, I am +assured, a cause of widespread disease among children; of infantile +paralysis, degeneracy and mortality. It is reason enough, in all +conscience, to call for the legalised prohibition of all mothers with +young families from engaging in professional or industrial employment. + +Because although such depletion of her children's health is graver in +degree during a mother's pregnancy, at all times over-worked, sickly, or +strenuous women recruit their powers from the constitutional resources +of others. Only, indeed, by such depletion of their neighbours can many +of our present-day neurotic, overactive women (some of them with +ill-nourished bodies and feeble assimilation, but with, nevertheless, +indefatigable energies) contrive to keep going. + +Strong-willed, self-centred women, keen in pursuit of business, +athletics or pleasure, will, by sapping the nervous forces of these, +keep all the members of their households--husband, children, +servants--more or less de-vitalised, neurasthenic and characterless; one +or more actually invalided, perhaps. + +If nervous energy is, indeed, a complex form of electrical energy, this +nervous interchange is intelligible; obeying the law that bodies +under-charged with electricity charge themselves from bodies more highly +charged, until equilibrium is established. + +Who among doctors does not know the wan and listless, semi-paralytic +babes that working-mothers--and most particularly _pregnant_ +working-mothers--bring to the consulting-room? The hapless victims lie +limply, or sit hunched upon the woman's lap, nerveless, wasted, +apathetic; faces white and hopeless, abdomen lax and tumid; the blenched +limbs soft as butter, weak and dangling. They are suffering, perhaps, +from some specific ailment, bronchitis, paralysis, gastric or intestinal +troubles; perhaps only from mysterious wasting and inanition. Not seldom +there is an elder child too, white and weak and fretful, and the subject +of "infantilism"; growth stunted, development arrested. Such children, +in their mental hebetude and physical degeneracy, suggest a degree of +cretinism. And in the suggestion, a possible cause appears for the +cretinous offspring of the hard-living, over-worked mothers of Swiss +cantons. + + +IX + +Drummond says of Motherhood: + + + "_Even on its physical side ... this was the most stupendous task + Evolution ever undertook._" + + +While on the physical side, we see that Nature has made infancy and +childhood increasingly helpless as species advances in evolutionary +values, in order to call forth increasingly intelligent, and sympathetic +response and resource in the mother. Feminism in _un_making the mother, +is undoing the labours of countless ages of evolutionary advance. The +intensifying mentality of woman, destined for the more subtly +intelligent and sympathetic nurture of the Race's increasingly valuable +and complex offspring, is being diverted, more and more, by Feminist +counsel and practice from human and vital into merely economic channels. + +Life is so constituted that its most cruel disabilities and evils are +borne inevitably by the children in the van of the Great March. These +hapless ones it is--soft buds pushing from the Human Tree--that bear the +brunt of the evolutionary impulse. + +In the main, the very finest children of The Poor succumb. Because the +higher the organism, the more complex and delicately-fitted to its vital +needs its life-conditions require to be. Briars flourish where +rose-trees die. Degenerate children struggle through where better types +go under. We are not ready, it is true, for exotic humans. But we need +urgently, indeed, all the healthy, intelligent, well-balanced stock we +can produce. + +A certain uniformity of type is secured by the expedients of Natural +Selection; by that continual correction of premature evolutionary +unfoldment which results from the checks and prunings of developmental +exigencies--in the necessary acclimatisation and adaptation of the young +and tender organism to environment. And Nature herself provides all the +checks and prunings required, in her tests of teething, of measles, and +the other diseases and trials of infancy and childhood. + +The respiration-curves and the brain pulse-waves of young infants show +serious disturbance as result of sudden loud noises. The consequent +nervous jar perturbs both breathing and circulation. + +The whole organisation of an infant is so delicate and is so subtly +balanced as to require the gentlest possible treatment. One sees on the +faces of infants and young children a chronic look of painful +expectancy. Their brows are knitted as though to brace their +hyper-sensitive systems for the next distressing shock. Women accustomed +to hard, laborious work (or sports) lose power to adjust their movements +to these delicate needs. And when, unkind and impatient, they fly at the +unfortunates and shake or beat or scold them violently, they have no +suspicion that for hours afterwards, perhaps for days, the children's +nervous systems may be so shattered and disorganised, digestion and +assimilative powers so impaired, as to interfere gravely with growth and +development. Degrees of "shock," akin to shell-shock, result from such +maternal violence and chronic terrorism; occasioning feeble-mindedness, +morbid timidity, mental hebetude and, moreover, subconscious +impressions, which, later in life, may emerge as obsessions, or as other +forms of insanity. Fear is the most shattering and paralysing of the +emotions. Yet not only brought up by hand, the majority of our little +ones are brought up by _violent_ hand. + +All day long and during every moment of it, a thousand delicate +processes of growth and unfoldment and of intricate adjustments are +going on mysteriously within the shaping brain and body of a child. +Subconsciously, these are a continued tax and strain; making him +hyper-sensitive, irritable, cross, perhaps, for causes that appear +inadequate. A child is like a convalescent, in that he uses up rapidly +for growth and development all the nutritive material and vital energy +at his disposal. This is true of healthy, well-nurtured children. What +then of these child-martyrs of The Poor, who in addition to the strain +of growth, are ill-fed, poisoned by unsuitable foods; are sickly, +rickety, bronchitic, dyspeptic, syphilitic, phthisical? Nevertheless, +all the maternal care these miserables receive are such rough dregs of +kindness and of patience as may be left over from the toil of their +working-mothers' hard, exhausting days. + +It is no less than monstrous that our laws allow the nation's babes and +children--to whom are due all the best resources of maternal care and +tenderness and duly-trained maternal powers--to be thus martyred. As +substitute for the home and for their mothers--which are every child's +birthright--more and more, infants and young children are consigned now +to Crèches; chill institutions of alien atmosphere, alien surroundings, +alien nurses, where, unmothered, they are ciphers among other unmothered +alien ciphers. Yet babies and young children are so pathetically +constituted that they prefer blows from their mothers to caresses from +strangers. + + +X + +The life-story written in the faces of the great majority of our +Twentieth-Century babes and children is a terrible one, in its +revelation of tortured helplessness, hopeless resignation, unnatural +fortitude, blank despair. See them sunk, limp and dejected, in their +prams or go-carts, eyes staring forward on the dreary waste their lives +are; limbs dangling, like those of toys with broken springs. + +In cities, mothers, ignorant of the shock and injury which noise and +turmoil inflict upon these sensitive brains and nerves, wheel them amid +jostling crowds--in order that they themselves may enjoy the excitements +of the shops. At the low level of their prams, they breathe air vitiated +by the passers-by; are in the exhausting whirl and press of swirling +nerve-currents. In their poor ill-made carriages, they are jerked +abruptly, now up, now down, at every kerb; with no more care or +tenderness than though they were baskets of clothes. They sit patient, +leaden, apathetic; cruelly strapped for hours together in one position; +neither pulse of health nor spirit in them. + +In cold weather, their heads but thinly thatched with hair are bare. So +too their limbs; though warmth is life to young, developing creatures. +In hot weather, the sun beats mercilessly down upon their hatlessness, +their exquisitely-sensitive brains but slightly shielded by their thin +un-ossified skulls. Degrees of sunstroke, with lifelong injury to health +and faculty, occur. They knit their pale brows in fruitless attempt to +defend their weak eyes from the glare. Many keep their lids close shut, +to protect both eyes and brain from the nerve-shattering solar rays, +which are far too powerful to be allowed to fall, untempered, upon an +infant's highly-sensitive body. With closed eyes, the poor things miss +all the joys of their ride; the colour and movement about them, and the +spurs to intelligence these should supply. Their unobservant mothers and +nurses suppose them to be sleeping! + +Children old enough to walk are walked to stages--sometimes to extremes +of exhaustion. You may see them dragging heavily along, with wan, +exhausted faces; peevish and cross, and scolded and shaken and slapped +for being peevish and cross. Exhaustion from such over-fatigue will keep +a child below par for days; checking its growth and development--to say +nothing of its happiness. Children derive but little benefit from their +holiday changes to sea or country, because of the exertions forced upon +them, or the too strenuous play to which they are exhorted. + +Children who go bare-headed suffer, in large number, from eye-strain, +with resulting permanent frown. As too, from ear-ache and from +ear-diseases; from headache and toothache. In as many as 75 per cent. of +school-children, vision is defective. + + +The obsessing aim of many mothers is to "harden" their children. Yet no +more than a clay model in the shaping may be hardened and set, should +the process be applied to children in the shaping. + +Healthy children are inevitably _delicate_ children, because of that +highly-sensitive re-activity to surroundings which not only +characterises but _conduces_ to the developmental state. (Such delicacy +must not be confused with _sickliness_.) The finer the organisation the +longer it takes (within normal limits) to come to full growth. Our +greatest men and women were delicate in youth. Hardy children are always +of inferior type--for the most part, plain and shrewd and unimaginative, +insensitive, unlovable. They have matured (have adapted to environment, +that is) precociously. Evolution of higher faculty has been prematurely +arrested in them. + +Modern children are described as "super-children," for their abnormal +sharpness and worldly perspicacity. They are merely precocious, which is +to say, they have missed their childhood. And too early development +entails inevitably early decline. Not only America, but England now has +produced a grey-haired boy of ten! + + +No less amazing than it is lamentable is the light neglect by the +majority of cultured mothers, of their grave maternal obligations. From +earliest infancy, they hand over their children, body and soul, to the +ignorance, the carelessness, the cruelty (not seldom to the viciousness +even), of stranger-women of the uncultured classes; women of whose +character and disposition they know nothing, and who are only too often +unfitted by nature, by upbringing, and by habit for this most delicate, +difficult and important of all human tasks. + +It is by no means uncommon to find prostitutes, grown too old for a +trade that has vitiated every cell and secretion of their bodies (to say +nothing of mental vitiation), officiating in the capacity of nursemaid +to children of culture. + +Every child is a new creation, with a highly specialised organisation of +mind and of body. For the nurture and best development of these, are +required high degrees of intelligence, of understanding and of sympathy +in treatment. To realise its idiosyncrasies, constitutional and +temperamental, and to adapt to these in its rearing and surroundings, +with respect to diet, exercise, play, sleep, moral supervision and +discipline, demand intuitive perceptiveness, intelligent discrimination, +and practical resource such as no other department of life demands--or +is worth. + +Notwithstanding all this, mothers who can afford to shelve their duty +upon paid substitutes abandon the most complex and sensitive, the most +beautiful and valuable, and moreover, the most helpless thing in +Nature--the mind of a child--to be shaped and coloured, during all the +most impressionable years of its development, by persons with neither +aptitude nor faculty for this supremely complex and difficult function. +In place of so adapting its environment to the child-organism as to +enable it, fenced within the tender mother-fold, to enjoy to the full +and to develop to the full the lovely, inspiring beliefs and illusions +of natural childhood, latter-day mothers now cruelly rob their little +ones of this fructifying phase, by prematurely forcing worldly knowledge +and distrusts upon them, in precocious adjustment to mature view-points +and conditions from which they should be carefully secluded. + +In that mysterious Mind-department, the Subconsciousness, with its +highly sensitised brain-tablets, every smallest happening of a +lifetime--scenes, experiences, mental impressions--are photographed, to +be stored for ever after as ineffaceable records. And though, perhaps, +wholly forgotten, these subconscious records nevertheless colour and +influence for ever after every thought and impulse and action. +Sometimes they flash up as memories. They can be recalled under +hypnotism. + +The young mind is like an unfurnished house. The rooms are empty. There +are no pictures on the walls. But its unblotted, exquisitely-sensitised +spaces are ceaselessly filming indelible records of everything seen and +felt and apprehended. One impression may correct, or may distort, +others. Or that right point-of-view which is judgment may focus all +impressions in the true perspective which reveals their true values and +proportions. But until such judgment has been formed by mental +development, it is vitally important that all the impressions absorbed +by young minds, whether of their life-conditions and associates, of +books or of plays, shall be fair and simple and wholesome. + +Thus, the foundations of mind and of character are laid in clean, +intelligising and uplifting influences. + + +XI + +While we deplore, as appalling, that during the first fifteen months of +War, 109,725 of our fighting men were killed or died, the returns of the +Registrar-General show that during the twelve months of the peace +preceding War, _there died 140,957 of the nation's children_, at less +than five years old; 95,608 of these at less than a year old. + +Consider it! War, with its destructive engines of bomb and shell, more +or less swiftly and painlessly kills just over a hundred thousand men, +in the course of fifteen months. Peace, with its destructive +transgressions against Nature, kills in less time a far greater number +of defenceless babes and children, by slow and more or less torturing +forms of disease. Babies, even when unhealthy, come into existence +endowed with a certain Life-potential. And they struggle hard and +painfully to live. It is amazing to see the odds against which the poor +things battle; and battle successfully. It is only the fearfulness of +the odds to which most of them are subjected that succeeds in killing +them. + +Pain and suffering are spurs to adult development. In children they are +as needlessly cruel as they are permanently injurious. Far from fitting, +they _unfit_ them for life. + +The ratio of mortality is no guide, of course, to the immeasurable +injuries wrought to mind and body by these same fearful odds upon the +children who survive; and who survive, maimed, diseased, degenerate, to +live out lives of disability, of joylessness and ineffectiveness. + +It will be said--and said truly--that much of this high infant-mortality +results, not from maternal omissions, but from paternal commissions. +Well, that alas! is another of the terrible wrongs against children +which lie at the door of the sex. Were there not women whose lives are +passed in engendering and transmitting the direst of all the diseases +human evil has bred, the hapless imbecile and paralytic, the blind, the +deaf, the ulcerous, the slowly-wasting, tortured little ones who fill +our asylums and hospitals would not be. + +At every turn the truth is more and more impressed, that the fate of +Humanity rests, in some or other form, with its women. Woman is +Redeemer; or she is Destroyer. Because, while man's province is the +material, with its roots in temporal things, woman's province is the +vital, with its roots and stem and blossom in functioning Life. + +The burning wrongs of women? Alas! what are they beside the burning +wrongs of helpless babes and children? + + * * * * * + + +XII + +An anomaly of Feminism is the admission, on the one hand, that +Motherhood was woman's most valuable function, and her greatest claim +on the community in days of barbarism, and the denial, on the other, +that it is her most important function in civilisation. + +The illogic of the position is patent. + +That the production of savages should be primitive woman's chiefest +claim to honour; while the production of highly-evolved and complex +human beings should be civilised woman's least. + +The potence and the values of fine motherhood are proven by the fact +that every great, or good, or clever man or woman has been the child of +a great, or good, or clever mother. Not of one who has made her mark in +the world of affairs. Such, for the most part, have not reproduced at +all. And when they have been mothers their children have been notably of +inferior calibre. + +On the other hand, bad men and bad women have in nearly every instance +been sons or daughters of bad women. + +Examples innumerable might be cited to show that both genius and moral +greatness are variations (mutations) of the human species which have +their origin in mother-genius and greatness. + +Great scientists, it has been noted, have been sons of women +characterised by intense love of Truth. The love of Truth in the +mother--for Truth's sake--became in the executive, concrete mentality of +the son an intuitive apprehension of the truths of Science, and an eager +and indomitable aspiration to render these in terms of intellection. + + * * * * * + +Shall woman leave to man no field at all of natural supremacy? Shall she +not be content with her beautiful part as generatrix of Faculty, but +must seek to be exponent too? + + +That all women do not marry--cannot marry, indeed, because of their +preponderance in number over the other sex--is no reason for dissembling +the truth that in wifehood and motherhood lie woman's most vital and +valuable rôles. + +Nor is it warrant for training the whole sex as though none were +destined to fulfil this, their natural and noblest--if not always, their +happiest vocation. + + +XIII + +Feminism repudiates, from time to time, the charge against it of +belittling Motherhood. Yet how can it profess to credit the maternal +function with due values or significance when it denies the obligations +and responsibilities thereof, asks no economic concessions for it? And +when, in place of demanding privileges indispensable to its exercise and +complete fulfilment, it makes no distinction, in respect of work and the +worker, between childless and unmarried women and mothers and expectant +mothers? And this despite the fact that, for a period of eighteen months +at very least, the mother's best vital resources belong by rights, +biological and moral, to each babe she produces--nine for the pre-natal +building of its body and brain, and nine for lactation. + +Her moral obligation to nurse, and the criminality of her omission when +able to do so, have been emphasised as follows by Sir J. +Crichton-Browne: + + + "Dr. Robertson, Medical Officer of Health for Birmingham has shown + that while the infant-mortality of breast-fed infants is 7·8 _per + 1000 births_, that of infants receiving no breast-milk is 232 _per_ + 1000. And Sir Arthur Newsholme, Medical Adviser to the Local + Government Board, has shown that the probability of death from + epidemic diarrhoea is 54 _times greater among infants fed on cow's + milk_ than among those fed on breast-milk, and 150 _times greater_ + amongst infants fed on condensed milk. + + "But it is not merely in a high infant death-rate that the evil + effects of the want of breast-milk stand confessed. Where it does + not kill it often maims, and is responsible for malnutrition, + rickets, tuberculosis, and a multiplicity of ailments. Every doctor + is familiar with the alabaster babies, flabby, limp, languid, and + painfully pallid, who have never tasted their natural nutriment." + + +Dr. Truby King records the interesting fact that the finest calf-skin, +known as Paris Calf, is obtained from calves reared by their mothers, in +order to provide the finest veal for Paris. So supple and smooth-haired +and superior is the skin of these mother-suckled creatures that dealers +are able to distinguish it at once from the skin of calves that have +been artificially fed. + +About this, Mr. Horace G. Regnart kindly supplies me with the following +significant data: + +"If we feed a calf, 'on the bucket,' the calf's coat loses its shine and +becomes dull. We say it is 'dead.' A couple of days is sufficient to +deaden the coat. And it takes three weeks or a month 'on a cow' to get +the gloss back. _A quart of milk direct from the cow is as good as a +gallon of milk out of a bucket._ + +"We do not attempt to feed our female calves so well as we feed the +bulls. It is too costly. Our heifers are put on 'the bucket' when three +days old. I buy a cow to rear my bull-calves on. I once reared a bull on +'the bucket' satisfactorily. But I gave him twelve gallons of new milk +every day after he was five months old, and kept it up till he was +fourteen months. _One cow that gives three gallons does a calf just as +well as twelve gallons_ viâ _the bucket, and is much cheaper._ Some +crack bulls have three and four five-gallon cows at once, and go to +Shows with all their nurses in attendance. + +"Once I reared a bull as we rear the heifers. But he was a failure. His +daughters are only half the size they ought to be." + +(An example of direct developmental inheritance--in terms of +deterioration--from father to daughter.) + + +XIV + +Comparing a calf with a human baby, it becomes self-evident that the +diet suited for the large, crude creature which trots about on four legs +shortly after birth must be wholly unsuited to the delicate digestion +and the subtle psychological needs of the small and complex, +highly-organised human infant, which remains so long a helpless infant. + + +The all-important _proteid_ of every order of creature differs from that +of every other. Before any form of alien _proteid_ can be built into the +body of a living organism, the digestion and assimilation of this +creature must first have laboriously disintegrated and reconstructed it +to the form of its own individual _proteid_. + +The Irish tradition that persons not nursed during infancy by their +mothers are beings without souls has much to justify it. Even the +ill-nourished, sickly babes of working-mothers have an essentially +_human_ look in eyes and features, possess far more of nervous power, +and are of appreciably higher and more intelligent psychology than are +the bottle-fed infants of the cultured. + +The bottle-fed start handicapped for life, both in constitution and +mentality. It is safe to say that all great men and women have been +suckled by their mothers or have come of stock thus humanly nurtured. +That they were thus humanly nurtured during their momentous first nine +months of life, is the reason, doubtless, why so many of our greatest +men have sprung from humble origin. + +The incapacity of a mother to nourish the babe she has borne should be +known for a mark of degeneracy--sign, too, that she was unfitted to +have borne a child, because deficient in the vital reserve requisite to +carry her maternal function to its normal biological and psychological +conclusion. Just as a statesman or a general would be held unfitted for +_his_ function, if he should lack the physical and mental enterprise to +complete his national undertakings. + + +That for the nine months preceding its birth the infant obtains its +nourishment directly from its mother's blood, and for nine months after +birth it obtains this, normally, from her milk--_her_ digestive +processes having so assimilated the originally brute and vegetable +proteids of her food that these are now _human_ proteids, and are ready, +therefore, to be built into the infant's body with the least possible +tax upon its own assimilative powers--proves a number of important +facts. + +First: that an infant's digestive powers remain, normally, for nine +months after birth, in a more or less embryonic state; slowly and +gradually developing capacity to convert the products of the brute and +vegetable kingdoms into forms suitable for building into its human +organisation. (Just as we see the digestive organs of the child +progressively developing power to assimilate an adult dietary.) + +Secondly: that the infant's digestion remains thus undeveloped obviously +in order that as little as possible of its vital power may be expended +in the complex processes of assimilation, all available vital-power +being urgently required for its exhaustingly rapid brain- and +body-building. + +Thirdly: that where an artificial diet forces precocious development +upon the infant-digestion--since all precocity is degeneracy, all the +organs concerned in digestion will be, necessarily, more or less +structurally defective and functionally inefficient; as a consequence of +not having been permitted time and rest to develop slowly and stably +over the normal allotted period. (Proof is supplied by the premature +development of teeth, which occurs in artificially-fed babies some +months before dentition is normally due. And these teeth and those that +succeed them are of such perishable structure that present-day children +need perpetual dental repairs.) + +Fourthly: that such misapplication of vital resources for the premature +development and abnormal functions of precocious digestive organs +entails inevitably corresponding loss of vital power for general +development. + +Fifthly--and by no means lastly, but perhaps most important of all: that +since the infant-digestion is quite incapable of properly converting +brute and vegetable-proteids into human proteid, infants artificially +fed must necessarily _build into their brains and bodies lower-grade +proteids_--and proteids so imperfectly assimilated as to be something +less than human, and, accordingly, more or less brute or vegetable still +in their inherences. And since all living cells and tissues reproduce +upon the plan of the parent-cells and tissues they were derived from, it +is clear that the abnormal cells and tissues constructed of these +half-brute, or half-vegetable proteids must be abnormal; unstable and +degenerate, and prone to lapse readily to still further degrees of +deterioration and disease. + +Hence a source of our neurotic, neurasthenic, adenoid-afflicted, +mentally-defective and otherwise diseased children. Hence too the +increasing criminality--which is _animality_, of course--that +characterises a considerable proportion of the rising generation. + +Each further generation artificially fed in infancy can but deviate +still further from the Human Normal, becoming ever less human; brain and +body-cells reproducing themselves, throughout life, on the plan of their +infant-construction of half-brute or half-vegetable proteids. One sees +the ox in the dull, soulless eyes, in the bovine flesh, the stolid +faces, and in the crude animal natures of many modern little ones, to +whom calf-diet was fed before they had developed the digestive power of +transforming this into substance highly vitalised enough for human brain +and body-building. And the less their systems have rebelled against and +have rejected, but, on the contrary, have conformed to and have thriven +upon such brute-diet, the cruder are their organisations. Of this order +are the insensate child-monsters who win prizes at Baby-shows. + + +To one who realises that, of all the powers of Woman, the ability to +nurse her babe is second in importance only to her first and vital +function of producing it, the cry and clamour and impassioned fallacy +that have swirled around the trivial detail of her Suffrage-disabilities +show grotesque beside the human tragedy of her increasing biological +disability and her increasing psychical aversion to fulfil this +indispensable and sacred mother-office. To despise which, as being a +function woman possesses in common with the humbler creatures, is as +narrow-sighted as it would be to scorn the genius of Shakespeare because +both dog and pig, poor things! possess brains. Moreover, in forfeiting +this maternal faculty, woman reverts to the mode of those crude +rudimentary species _below_ the Mammalia. + + + "... _Each mother's breast_ + _Feeds a flower of blue, beyond all blessing blest._" + + +Notwithstanding all this, Feminism, in its grim materialism, blind to +the mystical beauty of Life and the sacredness of Individuality, regards +women mainly as parts of an economic machinery. And to serve as such, it +standardises all in body, mind and aptitude, to economic ends; the young +and tender girls whose shaping frames are shaping to become the mystical +looms of evolving Humanity; the young wives in whom love and marriage +have set mysterious processes in motion; the young pregnant mothers in +whom the shuttle of Life is already marvellously flying, interweaving +the luminous threads of a soul with a body of flesh. + +Nature made women ministrants of Love and Life, for the creation of an +ever more healthful and efficient, a nobler and more joyous Humanity. +Feminism degrades them to the status of industrial mechanisms, whereof +the commercial products are the chiefest values, and children no more +than bye-products. + + * * * * * + +And what bye-products they are! God help them!--Who alone can help +them--this pathetic rubble of pallid, sickly, suffering, and dejected +infant- and child-Life; the violet-hued babies, with their dull eyes +glazed by misery, their leaden, half-paralysed limbs; the blind and +crippled, halt and deaf, the imbecile and feeble-minded children, +apathetic, neurasthenic, joyless; as too, on the other hand, the +low-browed, sturdy and soulless, or the debased and evil--All the +generation of degeneracy which our deteriorate and enfeebled looms of +womanhood are grinding out to-day. + +Though shut from sight and thought, in the prisons, hospitals and other +institutions of our modern civilisations is an ever-swelling, +ever-rising, further-menacing tide of diseased, defective, insane and +criminal mankind, product of ours and of those others' violations of +Natural Law; clogging the River of Life, choking the Springs of +Evolution, damming the current of Progress. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE +AND PROGRESS + + "A woman versed in that finest of all fine arts, the beautifying of + daily life." + + +I + +In _Woman and Labour_, Miss Schreiner laments as follows, picturesquely +but speciously: "Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge +buildings steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands +(often those of men) produce the clothings of half the world; and we +dare no longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our +peoples!" + +A scene is conjured of brute-men with clubs savagely attacking and +destroying hapless women's innocent spinning-wheels, as Mrs. Arkwright +ruthlessly destroyed her husband's cherished models. Yet who, regarding +the subject dispassionately, sees cause for anything but gladness that +modern woman has not still to spin the linen of her household and the +garments of its members--for anything but thankfulness for that +intelligent male-brain which carried the woman-invention of the needle +to its higher adaptations in the weaving and the sewing-machine? Who can +justly regret that the taking over by men, in factories, of wholesale +brewings and bakings, jam-makings, and so forth, has relieved the other +sex of ceaseless drudgeries; and in so relieving it of drudgeries of +house-keeping has left it free to develop the higher and the more +intellectual arts of home-making? + +"_Slowly but determinedly, as the old fields of labour close up and are +submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the new_," Miss Schreiner +affirms. And to emphasise our determination, the demand is printed in +her book, as I have reproduced it, in Italics. + +Losing sight altogether of the inestimable benefits to woman secured by +the intervention of men between her and the hardest and the most +debasing employments, she further protests, "any attempt to divide the +occupations in which male and female intellects and wills should be +employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and arbitrary +division." + +"Our cry is, _We take all labour for our province!_" + +Nevertheless, clever and intuitive woman as she is, she confesses (now +the Italics are mine), "_It may be with sexes as with races, the +subtlest physical differences between them may have their fine mental +correlatives_." And yet, oh why, having come upon so promising a vein of +truth, did she not follow it to its logical conclusions, and find in it +all the answers to her extremist demands, and, with these, the +refutations of her Feminist plea and claims? + +Men and women are unlike not only in "_the subtlest physical +differences_" which "_may have their fine mental correlatives_." They +are unlike in the most obvious and basic facts of physical constitution +and of biological function. And these must inevitably entail mental and +temperamental correlatives more intrinsic and farther reaching even than +the subtler physical differences she recognises as being possibly +modifying factors in psychical aptitude. + + +Advocating soldiering even for the sex, Miss Schreiner says: " ... +Undoubtedly, it has not been only the peasant-girl of France, who has +carried latent and hid within her person the gifts that make the supreme +general." + +Here is fallacy again. Joan of Arc was, beyond all things, woman. Not +the man in her, but the woman in her, and her Supra-conscious womanly +attributes it was which (inspiring her by way of mystical voices and +visions) impelled her so to transcend her woman-nature that without +knowledge of arts military or of strategic science, as, too, without +experience, she was able, by intuitive prescience, to lead her +compatriots to victory. For the soldiers, perceiving the Light in her +face, followed in awed confidence whithersoever she led. + +In earlier days of civilisation, this intuitive and visionary faculty of +woman was recognised and honoured. + + +II + +In _The Human Woman_, Lady Grove presents a wholly contrary view to Miss +Schreiner's. + +With her, woman suffers less in being shut out from the labour-market +than in having been driven from the home. + + + "The woman has been driven from her home into the labour-market. + The fact of 82 per cent. of the women of this country working for + their living is an ugly rebuff to the pretty platitudes about the + home," she says. + + " ... The stupendous mistake that has been made up to now is in + supposing that it is men's judgment only that should decide + questions, and hence the hopeless state of unravelled misery + existing in the world, side by side with all the wealth and wonders + of the age. + + "If we examine the conditions of the working-classes, after years + and years of male legislation, what a hideous set of conditions we + find. Intemperance, bad-housing and the cruel struggle for + existence among the poorer classes. And yet we spend over + £22,000,000 annually on the education of these people. Surely there + is something wrong somewhere. What is it that we, seeing this + condition of things at our very door, have, as women, to be so + grateful for in male legislation?" + + +The writer fails wholly to perceive that these factors she deplores as +due to defective masculine legislation are effects less of faulty +measures than of faulty Humanity. Measures are the gauge of the men who +frame them. And men are very much the measure of the mothers who bore +them. Those which she properly characterises as the "hideous" conditions +of the working-classes, "intemperance, bad-housing and the cruel +struggle for existence" are circumstances legislation cannot remedy +unless the hearts of legislators are moved to do this, and their hands +are empowered, moreover, to do it, by the collective will of those they +represent. + +Except all are content to subordinate their personal interests to the +general welfare, and to improve their personal morale for their own and +for the common good, Acts of Parliament can do but little. Drunkenness +can be penalised by legislation, difficulties put in the way of +obtaining drink. But intemperance can be effectually stamped out only by +individual men and women so rising to higher levels of thought and +self-control as voluntarily to become sober; or by men and women so +improving in brain and constitution that the craving for drink--now +recognised as a disease--no longer obsesses them. + + +Acts of Parliament may condemn insanitary and defective dwellings, may +compel landlords to repair them to degrees of decency and comfort; may +pull them down and build others in their stead. But none of these +measures will eradicate the bad housing of dirty and comfortless, or of +demoralised and demoralising homes. The best house possible becomes bad +housing for its occupants when the woman at the head of it fails to do +her duty therein, in consequence of industrial labour which leaves her +neither time nor energy to make a clean, well-ordered, cosy and +inspiring home of it; or because her own idleness or ignorance, her +drunkenness or worthlessness, results in her neglect of it. Human +conditions, like human measures, result from the personalities, good or +bad, capable or incapable, of those who create them. + + +III + +The Feminist's faith in the masculine prerogative of Legislation, as +being a possible panacea--had _she_ but part in it--for every ill +beneath the sun, is one of her gravest disqualifications for taking part +therein. + +Legislators who are over-confident in the efficacy of The Law express +their over-confidence in terms of premature and unduly-coercive +legislation. Procedure which, more often than not, frustrates the ends +to which it was designed by the methods taken to secure these. Progress +is personal, moreover. It is the sum of the advance of individuals. +Legislation is the statutory _formulation_ of public opinion; it is not +the _source_ of this. It merely crystallises public opinion. But before +crystallisation of thought (as of chemical) sets in, saturation-point +must first have been reached throughout the medium wherein it occurs. + +Were any other development required to show the utter inadequacy of +Legislation to attain its ends--when not reinforced by personal +co-operation and initiative--this has been supplied in that latter-day +demoralisation of young girls, the consequences whereof will be vastly +more baneful and farther-reaching in contributing to national decline +than even that other dire factor of the flower of our virile youth +struck down before its prime. + +Girls are fully protected by law to the age of sixteen. Yet many of the +demoralised girls seen consorting freely with Tommy or Reggie, according +to their class, are well below that age. Legislation is powerless, +however, failing parental vigilance and co-operation to invoke its aid. +Nevertheless, with its characteristic blind confidence in the male +prerogative of Law, Feminism now advocates raising "the age of consent" +to eighteen. But to do this would no more protect the girl under +eighteen than the existing law protects the girl under sixteen--or, for +that matter, protects the girl of twelve. Law can do little or nothing +unless, as happens so seldom and happens too late, parents requisition +its assistance for menace or for punishment. Mothers themselves should +see to it that their little daughters have neither temptation nor +opportunity to consent to their own ruin. + + +IV + +We saw lately a militant rising of women against men and their laws; the +object being to compel concessions from the male by way of violence. And +so short-sighted were the leaders of this Movement that not only did +they seek to prove their right to make laws, by breaking them, but they +showed themselves ignorant of the first rudiments of combat by electing +to fight the enemy with his own weapon--that weapon of Force which is +man's especial Fitness and Woman's Unfitness. Woman's Unfitnesses have +prevailed, it is true, in the counsels of progress, but, obviously, they +have not prevailed, nor can they ever prevail by being pitted directly +against masculine strengths. Her way of supremacy is one by far more +subtle and sublime. + +The leaders of Militancy seem never to have suspected, moreover, that +while they were demanding to be liberated from all womanly privileges, +they were, nevertheless, waging their deplorable skirmishes from behind +a strong wall of such privileges. Men who should have adopted such +tactics would have received but short and scant shrift. + +Were the sex to be confronted, indeed, with that "Fair field and no +favour!" for which some members of it are so clamorous, these would find +it a grievously different thing from the privilege they paint it. + +Marcel Prévost has said that when men find women competing with them in +fields of Labour, to degrees injurious to masculine interests, they will +turn and strike them in the face. There are indications to the contrary, +however. Among decadent races and savages, the emasculate sons of +deteriorate mothers assert their masculine authority otherwise. + +Far from combating their women's right to work, they force them to +work--and to work in support of the males! + +More and more every day, civilised men, indeed, released by +working-wives from their natural obligation to maintain the family, are +seen so to have lapsed from their sense of virile responsibility as to +be coming further and further to shelve upon such working-wives the +burden of the family support. Among the labouring and artisan classes, +the wife's contribution to the exchequer leaves the husband more money +to spend on drink or on gambling; or on both. In superior classes, too, +it leaves husbands with more money to spend on amusement--of one sort or +another. + +Responsibility and effort are natural spurs to masculine development. +Relieve the male of these and he degenerates. As woman released from +child-bearing and the duties entailed by the family, degenerates +rapidly. We can no more improve on The Plan than we can improve without +each and every appointed factor of it. + + +V + +Another disastrous blunder of Feminism is to make for equal wage for men +and women. + +The higher wage of men springs, economically, from the fact that the +industrial output of women is, normally, less than that of men. But +there is a deeper, and a biological significance involved. Which is, +that men's greater output of work results from more of their energy of +brain and body being available to them for work, because far less of +their vital power is locked-up in them for Race-perpetuation and +nurture. There is the implication also that man being the natural +breadwinner of the family, his wage should suffice for its support. + +A system of equal wages for the sexes would press as cruelly upon women +as it would be disastrous to the Race. Because it would compel woman, +despite the biological disabilities that handicap her economically, to +force her powers to masculine standards of work and output. It would, +moreover, by qualifying her to support the family, serve as cogent +excuse for her husband to shirk his bounden duty. + +The crux of the demand for equal pay for equal work is that, because of +her natural lesser strength and endurance, when a woman is doing work +identical in nature and equal in quantum to that of a man, it means that +_she_ is doing _more_ than a woman's work, and is overtaxing and +injuring her constitution, therefore; or it means that _he_ is doing +_less_ than a man's work, and is "slacking," therefore. + +A further important issue is that when rendered too easy by both husband +and wife earning wage, marriage is entered upon far too lightly, and at +too early and irresponsible ages, than happens when the whole burden of +support rests with the man. Moreover, in such case masculine selection +makes only too often for economic rather than for human values in the +wife. A man upon whom is to fall the whole tax of supporting the home +and the family regards marriage more seriously, and delays it until he +is more mature of years and of settled position. Moreover, he chooses +more carefully. And the Race benefits proportionally. + +In manufacturing towns, with opportunity for both husband and wife +earning wage, boy-and-girl marriages, feckless, discordant homes, and +sickly degenerate, neglected children are the rule. + +That women should be paid for work they do, a salary enabling them to +live honestly and in comfort, goes without saying. Economics should be +adjusted on a far higher basis than that mainly of a competitive +struggle which allows the employer to fix wages less according to the +value of work done, than by the number of persons at his mercy, who, in +their eagerness to live, will undersell their values and thus cheapen +labour. Nevertheless economics have, in a degree, adapted to the +evolutionary trend. Because, in the main, the more skilled and difficult +tasks are more highly remunerated than the less skilled, and are +performed by the more fit. And not only are these better qualified to +expend such higher remuneration intelligently, and with benefit to +themselves and to the community, but they are able to secure thereby +those better conditions which are the due and the need of families +higher in the scale of humanity, and requiring, therefore, higher +conditions of nurture. + +The cases of colliers and of other rough-grade humans who earn wage +beyond their mental calibre to expend intelligently, show how an income +too large for its possessor leads to coarse and demoralising +extravagances, rather than to personal happiness or elevation. (The like +is true of many plutocrats.) War has shown us boys' lives wrecked by the +same factor. No greater fallacy exists than that of supposing progress +to lie in freeing persons from all disabilities--poverty, and other +restrictive conditions. + +Wives should be legally entitled to a just proportion of their husband's +income, as a _right_, not merely as dole. This, in recognition of their +invaluable work in home-making, and of their invaluable service to the +State in producing and rearing worthy citizens for it. + + +VI + +Masculine legislation, making all the while, in the face of economic +difficulties, for the ever further release of women and children from +the more laborious and debasing tasks, has made compulsory, in their own +and in the interests of their unborn infants, a month of respite for +expectant mothers, and a further month for mothers after delivery. +Extending thus to these poor victims--beasts of the burden of toil, and +beasts of the burden of sex--a mercy and consideration wholly lacking in +the Feminist propaganda. For this latter repudiates indignantly all need +for concession or privilege to wifehood or to motherhood, equally with +womanhood. + +To justify the claim for equality in all things, women must be forced, +at all cost, to identical standards of work and production. To ask +privileges and concessions would be to confess, in the sex, weaknesses +and disabilities that must disqualify it from economic identity with the +other. + +Far, indeed, from such vain-glorious and disastrous straining for +equality, the leaders of the Woman's Movement should, before all else, +have demanded insistently still further industrial concessions and +privileges for a sex handicapped for industry, by Nature. First and +foremost, they should come into the open and boldly proclaim--what it is +useless to deny, indeed--that in the function of parenthood, at all +events, men and women are wholly dissimilar. They should reject outright +all tinkerings and half-measures for relief of this great human +disability, whereof one sex only bears the stress and burden for the +benefit of both, and for survival of nations and races. + +Not only for the pitiful respite of a month before and a month after +the birth of her child, should the mother be prohibited from industrial +labour. By that time all the damage will have been done. The power that +should have been put into the evolution of her infant will have been put +into the revolutions of a lathe. The life-potential that should have +gone to build its living bone and brain and muscle will have gone to +feed the life of a machine. The breath she will have drawn for it will +have been contaminated by the dust and fumes of toil. Its poor nascent +brain and faculties will have been dulled and depleted, stupefied and +vitiated by the stress and turmoil of its mother's labours. Only the +dregs of the maternal powers will have been invested in the Race. The +finest and most valuable will have gone to swell the balance-sheets of +Capital. + +The trumpet-cry of The Woman's Movement should be, indeed, _The Absolute +Prohibition of young Wives and Mothers from all Industrial and +Professional employment!_ + +Such a prohibition, by lessening the competition of the labour-market, +and by thus increasing the value of labour (which the flood of female +industry inevitably cheapens) would automatically so increase the wage +of men as to make of these true living wage, sufficient for the +maintenance of home and family. Such a prohibition would, moreover, so +diminish the competitive pressure among women as to make it possible for +unmarried women, the future wives and mothers, as well as for the older +spinsters and widows, to select in every fitting trade and industry, +work suited to the lesser strength and endurance of the female brain and +body. + + +VII + +Nothing has characterised the Feminist Movement throughout so much as +lack of knowledge of human nature (both masculine and feminine), lack +of prevision to foresee the trend of new developments, lack of intuitive +apprehension to gauge the issues of such trend. Its leaders have never +suspected, accordingly, that, in propaganda and in practice, they have +been tampering with a great biological ordinance; and that, in +obliterating women's Sex-characteristics, they have been destroying that +counterpoise of human powers and faculties whereon progress and +permanence rest, and that morale which is the inspiration of advance. + +Regarding their own masculine Rationalism as the ideal and standard for +all women, they have believed it possible to shape all women +successfully thereto. Nature is not to be thwarted, however. And when we +destroy the balance of the Normal, abnormal developments--gravely +mischievous and singularly difficult to deal with--crop up and require +to be dealt with. One may raise the familiar cry that some modern +developments are due to our being in "a transition stage." But from that +remote day when Nature first evolved us as a race of _amoebæ_, further +to evolve into the human species, we have been always in "transition +stages." Normal transition upwards is so slow an impulse as to be +well-nigh imperceptible, however. Rapid change invariably betokens +regression--descent being vastly easier and swifter in movement than +ascent is. + +Deplorably mistaken has been a doctrine of Emancipation which, by +disparaging the arts domestic, has sent out young girls and women, +indiscriminately, from the sphere domestic, to de-sexing and +demoralising work in factories and businesses; and has engendered the +race of stunted, precocious, bold-eyed, cigarette-smoking, free-living +working-girls who fill our streets; many tricked out like cocottes, eyes +roving after men, impudence upon their tongues, their poor brains +vitiated by vulgar rag-times and cinema-scenes of vice and +suggestiveness. + +Some of our working-girls are charming-looking, pretty-mannered, pure +of thought and life, of course. A small minority--alas, how small!--are +normal of development and sound of constitution. But these are not the +average. And it is the average with which a nation has to reckon. + +Emphatically, men are not as women. In body and in mind they are by +nature rougher, tougher, and vastly less impressionable. A regime that +_makes_ a boy will wreck a girl. Of more sensitive calibre, she requires +more kindly, protective conditions, moral and industrial, than does he. +Notwithstanding which, little girls now run the streets and take their +chances as they may--in capacities of over-burdened errand-girl, +telegraph-messenger, and otherwise--at ages when their developing +womanhood requires due care of nurture, moral supervision, and freedom +from physical strain. Sedentary occupations are a natural need of their +sex, moreover, as is indicated by the breadth and weight of the female +pelvis and hips, as too by the delicate adjustments of those important +reproductive organs, the future products whereof are of inestimably +higher national values than are the industrial assets of these poor +children's labour. As Girl-guides and so forth, young girls parade our +towns in meretricious (albeit hideous) uniform; developing thereby that +love of publicity and of unwholesome excitement to which the sex is +prone. Small girls just fresh from school are even now employed in +barbers' shops to shave men; destroying thus in them, at the outset of +life, that natural diffidence and reserve toward the other sex which are +the first defences of womanly honour. + +In demanding absolute emancipation, industrial and personal, Feminists +had no other thought but that such new liberty would have widened +woman's scope for usefulness, for happiness, for self-development. Yet +what has been the outcome of it all? For one who has used her new +freedom for the ends designed, very many more have used it to their +serious injury; only too many to their moral downfall. + +Already everywhere such liberty has fast degenerated into licence. Our +girls were no sooner emancipated by their mothers from the usually +wholesome--if sometimes too severe--control of their fathers, than +straightway they have emancipated themselves from the indispensable +maternal rule. Strict supervision and guidance in a world they are +ignorant of--or if sophisticated are in far worse case--are essential to +the well-being, physical and moral, of the young and immature. + +Young girls, on first discovering their attraction for the other sex, +become intoxicated by the sense of their new dangerously-alluring power, +and lose their heads. Beyond all things, they require at this phase a +mother's strict and careful supervision, with sympathy and firm control; +to tide them over their perilous phase, and thus to preserve them from +consequences of their ignorance or folly, or from those of a pernicious +bent. Nevertheless, young girls of every class are granted now +disastrous latitudes of thought and action. The vigilant chaperonage +indispensable to protect them from the biological impulses--which they +mistake for "love"--of the careless or vicious young men to whom +(equally with the chivalrous and honourable) modern mothers abandon +their daughters, has become a dead-letter. The girl only just in her +teens is free to play fast-and-loose with boys and men--as too +with life, before she has learned the merest rudiments of living. +All too soon she learns her lesson. And becoming precociously +sophisticated--only too often precociously vicious--her nature and +future are wrecked at the outset. Because nothing wrecks a woman's +disposition so effectually as sex-precocity does. Sex is the very pivot +of her nature. On this she swings up--or down. And early habit decides +her bent. + +That many of these cigarette-smoking, decadent young creatures are no +worse than impudent, feather-brained and misguided, does not save the +licence allowed them from being as harmful to physical as it is perilous +to moral health; nor from the experiences resulting from such licence +wholly unfitting the majority for later wholesome restraint, and for +purer and fairer ideals of womanly conduct and living. + +For much of this Feminism is gravely to blame. Not only because it has +led to the absorption of the mothers in outside pursuits, as being of +greater importance than the fulfilment of their maternal duties and +responsibilities to their young daughters, but because, too, the partial +sterilisation of girls, by masculine training and habits, in robbing +them of womanly qualities, robs them of natural reserve and modesty, and +of the other more delicate instincts and aspirations of their sex. + + +Significant, truly, of latter-day maternal neglect of young daughters +was the disclosure by a doctor, in a recent _British Medical Journal_, +that of a hundred men infected with venereal diseases, more than +_seventy had contracted disease_ from "_amateur flappers_." Yet as with +a child badly burned by playing with fire, we blame the mother or +guardian who exposed it to danger of thus injuring itself for life, so +the mothers of these unfortunate girls were to blame for gross neglect +of their duty to safeguard these young lives. + +Nature avenges her betrayed girls, however. For medical authority shows +that these youthful unfortunates transmit disease in its most virulent +and destructive forms. It is as though all the vital potential of their +developing womanhood is perverted to a malign poison, charged with the +forces of their blasted youth. + + * * * * * + +The Victorian, who brought up her daughters to marry in ignorance of +biological fact, went to the other extreme. But it was a far less +harmful one than that in vogue to-day. + +Like that of the child, the immature, susceptible mind of a girl, +incapable of apprehending the sex-factor in its true perspective with +the other factors of life, becomes unduly dominated by consideration +thereof when too early instructed. She is far better left, for so long +as is practicable, ignorant or hazy concerning this vital phenomenon, in +place of being fully informed, as girls are now-a-days. So that they +know all that there is to be known about sex--except its seriousness and +sacredness. And divorced from the seriousness and sacredness of Love and +Birth--which mere knowledge of biological fact is wholly inadequate to +impart--such knowledge of fact presents a crude and bald distortion of +the truth; only too often imparting an ugly and demoralising warp to +mind and conduct. Ignorance is not Innocence, 'tis true, but it serves +the same purpose in safeguarding innocence that clothes do in +safeguarding modesty. And for one girl who falls in consequence of +innocence, twenty fall from sophistication. + +Unless masculine traits have been over-developed in her by abnormal +training, in which case (as occurs sometimes in the quasi-masculine +woman of middle-age) sex-instinct may acquire an unnatural and +quasi-masculine insistence, this instinct is, in the normal girl, +_responsive_ rather than _initiative_. (Wherein she differs +diametrically from the male.) And such natural dormancy may be +advantageously preserved by haziness of knowledge, and by the careful +surveillance required for protection of immature minds and powers. The +bald, matter-of-course view-point of many modern girls with regard to +sex, their knowledge of vice, and their cynical acceptance and +discussion thereof, as too of the vulgar intrigues of notorious dancers +and peeresses, to say nothing of the ugly and debasing personal +experiences only too many of them have incurred, are among the evils of +the injurious licence at present accorded to young persons. + +Feminism, having thrust such disastrous liberty on creatures as eager to +grasp as they are unfitted to cope with the dangers thereof, is striving +now, by way of women-patrols and police-women, to stem the evil with one +hand--while with the other, it continues to open the flood-gates still +wider. The only way to stem the evil is to stem it at its source. The +home, with the vigilant supervision and guidance of a mother whose duty +is publicly recognised and her authority strengthened thereby, whose +time and faculties are devoted mainly to the making of home and to the +safeguarding and disciplining of the young creatures she has brought +into existence, is environment and shelter as indispensable to the +impressionable youth of both sexes--but more particularly to the +impressionable youth of one--as it is for the rearing of infancy and +childhood. Such home-influences, reinforced by the strong hand of a +father who likewise recognises his parental responsibilities, are the +first of all the rights that matter for young womanhood. + +Later, should come a term of domestic service. Mistresses of households +should realise not only their human but likewise their national +responsibility to these young humbler members thereof. No other public +service possible to them would equally conduce to national progress. + +As fathers are legally responsible for debts of sons under age, mothers +should be responsible to the State for the virtue of daughters under +sixteen. + +In the _personal_, vastly more than in any other field of operation, +woman's chiefest value lies. When she exchanges it for public functions, +and seeks to further progress by officialdom and politics, by +institution of women-patrols, police-women, Mayoresses, and so forth, +the supreme importance of the personal factor becomes impressed by the +discovery of the utter inadequacy of any substitute to take its place. +"If mothers did their duty, there would be no need for us," a +woman-patrol stated recently. + +By the time young women have reached such phases of demoralisation that +their conduct in public demands the intervention of police-women, it is +too late to reform them, moreover. They will have lost the best promise +and hope of their womanhood. + +And so it is and must be ever all along the line. The home and the +family are the nursery of civic as they are of racial progress. We +regard it as proof of civilisation that Law-Courts for Children have +been instituted. Yet what a blot it is, in truth, upon both parentage +and parenthood that, in our day of enlightenment, such should have +become necessary. + +So have mother influences and maternal sense of responsibility declined, +however, that mothers on all sides openly confess their utter lack of +power to control boys and girls just in their 'teens. + + +VIII + +The fashion is to pity and deride the "poor" early Victorian because she +lacked the manifold and nerve-wracking outlets for that restlessness and +boredom from which modern women suffer. + +The "poor" Victorian was a more harmonious, better-balanced and more +tranquil being, however. And she was far less cursed with "nerves," with +feverish unrest and carking discontent, than women are to-day. + +Mrs. Craigie observed that the Victorian, with her backboard and gentle +accomplishments, produced (without the pusillanimous expedient of +"Twilight Sleep") notably stronger, finer, and more clever children than +do present-day over-educated or athletic women--athletic women, whose +muscles of arms and of legs have so sapped the powers of important +internal muscles that most of them are incapable of bringing their +infants into life without instrumental aid. + +One does not, for a moment, counsel reversion to the type or to the +methods of an earlier generation. Evolution and development must +advance, and are, of course, advancing satisfactorily in some stock. But +the Victorian served her generation nobly, producing splendid specimens +of men and women, and handing on a generous racial constitution--now +being squandered recklessly, alas! by her descendants. The tide of +greater freedom, of broader outlook, and fuller effectiveness for woman +has set in, however. Albeit, owing to Feminist misapprehensions, it is +not only moving too rapidly but it is moving in a wrong direction; +because in direct opposition to biological law. + +_By their fruits ye shall know them._ And the Victorian so preserved her +woman-powers and attributes that she was an excellent and a contented +wife, and could bring into existence--without instrumental aid--a family +of comely, clever boys and girls; nurse them all from eldest to +youngest; rear and discipline and put such stuff of health and sanity +and enterprise into them as shames some flimsy, feeble-minded, +characterless modern stock. We have far to look to-day, indeed, for +statesmen and soldiers, poets and artists, business and craftsmen, and +other such virile and talented personages as those early and +pre-Victorian mothers endowed their epoch with. + +And were further evidence needed that our great-grandmothers equalled +our own women in the qualities we pride ourselves upon as triumphs of +Feminism, the strength and courage, the resource and fortitude those +others showed throughout the stress and horrors of the Indian Mutiny are +proof sufficient that, beneath their gentler virtues, lay the sterner +fibre of nobility. + + +IX + +To prove to what a third-grade power Woman, once so potent an +inspiration of life, has lapsed, we need but go to The Drama--reflex +ever of its period. Consider Shakespeare's women--subtly wise, +profoundly clever, beautiful and gracious, true and charming, strong and +tender, chaste and gay; warm with temperament, crystal-sparkling with +wit and parry! + +And comparing these adorable beings with the posturing, tricky, +intriguing, slangy, spotty creatures--neurotic unfaithful wives and +erratic "bachelor"-daughters--of the modern stage, the deplorable +deterioration of our womanly ideals becomes patent. + +Women have sinned in every age, but they have sinned in some ages +picturesquely and pathetically, because Nature led them. While the +morbids and neurotics of our modern Plays are for ever noisily turning +out the dusty corners of their warped psychologies, in order to discover +some loose end of Nature in them to condone their erotic eccentricities. +Strange, that Twentieth-Century woman tolerates the mirror held to her +in these abnormal and distasteful creatures! + +The modern dramatist is handicapped in his art, it is true, by lack, in +our latter-day actresses, of that personal charm and magnetism, and the +vital power to render the higher and subtler emotions and passions, +whereby the actresses of earlier days held audiences spell-bound. + +Politics and Sports destroy alike the Muses and the Graces. One who +attempts to combine them with the delicate psychological arts and +artistries of The Drama is bound to failure--in her art, at all events. + + +Time was when the best men reverenced women as beings of more delicate +calibre, to be shielded from the rougher and grosser contacts of life. +Chivalry forbade that they should have taken these to coarse +exhibitions, prize-fights and the like. And to such restriction woman's +purer instinct and her finer taste assented. + +The male being practical and rational, however, since women themselves +are changing all that, he too is coming to believe that any and every +thing is good enough for a sex which more and more repudiates its +subtler quality. + +That native delicacy which preserved her once from masculine habits of +thought and indulgence, taught man to realise woman as belonging, by +nature, to a purer and daintier order. (Howsoever inferior to himself in +some other respects he may have held her.) + +It won his reverence and worship that these frailer and more +exquisitely-constituted creatures should possess, despite their +exquisiteness, such fine mettle of resistance in their softness as +withstood the fire and urgence of the masculine siege; that within their +(possibly) ignorant little brains was light that flashed straight to +intrinsic truths and right courses of action; such intuitive +apprehension of The Good and The Beautiful, without experience of the +base and ugly, as taught them to distinguish clearly, to select, and to +hold fast to the fairer in thought and in conduct. + +To encounter in woman his own traits touched to higher, subtler issues, +and transformed to novel and alluring quality by the charm and graces of +another sex, has made always an enchanting, an inspiring, and a baffling +enigma of her--to endue woman for man with eternal values and +impenetrable mystery. For he has visioned in her--without +formulating--the mystery of the Human Duality. + +Trembling in the delicate poise of her twofold being, between the soft +impressionable, variable woman in her and the man of steel æsthetically +sheathed within the velvet of her womanhood, the play of her swift +supple transitions, the kaleidoscopic changes of her perpetual new +combinations--giving ever fresh bewildering effects of colour, light and +mode--have made her infinite variety for him. While her soft, immediate +adjustments to his own moods and needs have been his wonder and delight; +presenting to him all that there is in himself, yet in modes impossible +to himself. All that he knows by acquaintance she knows by +intuition--and in a fresh and fairer way. All that he sees, her eyes +make him see again in new and more exquisite lights. All that he thinks +had been already in her woman-heart ere ever man began to think. All +that he loves she shows him a reason for loving--yet not by way of +reason. All that he craves with his soul, her soul can confer. All that +his body and sense have desired, her body and sense can bestow--But with +all the immeasurable differences and enhancements of her unlike sex. + +"_Away, away!_" cried Jean Paul Richter, apostrophising Music, "_thou +speakest to me of things that in all my endless life I have not found, +and shall not find!_" + +Wagner said, "Music is a Woman." + + +Dr. Havelock Ellis, himself a zealous Feminist, has said, that, in their +ardour for emancipation, women sometimes seem anxious to be emancipated +from their sex. While Ellen Key, most impartial of critics, observes: + +"But full of insight as they are into the _ars amandi_, have modern +women, indeed, learned how with all their soul, all their strength, and +all their mind to love? Their mothers and grandmothers--on a much lower +plane of woman's erotic idealism--knew of only one object; that of +making their husbands happy.... But what watchful tenderness, what +dignified desire to please, what fair gladness could not the finest of +these spiritually-ignored women develop! The new man lives in a dream of +the new woman, and she in a dream of the new man. But when they actually +find one another, it frequently results that two highly-developed +brains together analyse love; or that two worn-out nervous systems fight +out a disintegrating battle over love.... Of love's double +heart-beat--the finding one's self, and the forgetting one's self in +another--the first is now considerably more advanced than the second." + +The reason why the New man and the New woman, having found one another, +find no more inspiration or sweetness each in the other than to "fight +out a disintegrating battle" is because both are male of brain and +bent--one normally so, the other abnormally. + +And when two males meet, their nature is--to fight! + + * * * * * + +Into every clause of this book must be read the many inspiring +exceptions to be found among those modern men and women and children who +are advancing normally along evolutionary lines. Such are so fine of +type, in body and in mind, that they blind not a few to facts of racial +deterioration. We point to these and say: One cannot speak with truth of +the degeneracy of nations which produce such noble specimens! + +These exceptions prove the principle I am endeavouring to impress, +however. That were we to apply ourselves to correction of our biological +and social errors, we have with us stock of the noblest Race +conceivable, and the noblest possible future for that Race. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS + + "_Every child comes with the message that God is not yet + discouraged of Man._" + + +I + +Since women possess native gifts of highly-differentiated faculties and +aptitudes, not only their greatest effectiveness, but, too, their +well-being and happiness lie in finding highly-specialised and selective +application for these, in Life, in Art, in Science, and in Industry. + +Their rôle in every field of operation should be recognised as being +wholly different from that of man, however; and their own natural +view-points and special abilities should be fostered, accordingly, by +suitable training; in order to fit them for the special departments for +which they are essentially suited. + +The charming artistry and fancies, spontaneous and full of delicate +insight, feeling, and sense of line, which a woman puts into her +illustrations of a child's Fairy-story, are art as true, for example, +and if less great of achievement, are nevertheless as intrinsically +valuable in The Scheme of Things as are the virile masterpieces of a +Michael Angelo or Turner. + +Few men attain the exquisite artistry in colour that even indifferent +women-painters show. It is an expression, in mentality, of the +biological fact that the colour-sense is naturally so highly developed +in woman that Colour-blindness--comparatively common among men--is rare +indeed in her. + +On the other hand, woman is inherently weak in drawing. When she is +trained, however, to draw with masculine strength and precision, she +loses her natural freedom and delicacy of touch, her sensitive feeling +for line, her exquisite colour-sense, her fertile fancy. Rosa Bonheur's +horses are as strong in drawing as they are baldly deficient in +sentiment. Men have painted horses bolder still in line, but +nevertheless noble and beautiful in feeling. + +The same is true of Literature. Mrs. Browning would have been a great +poet had she not taken her husband for model. Some of her delicate +woman-fancies, tricked out in Robert Browning's over-virile style, are +like charming women masquerading in fustian trousers. + +George Eliot, too, affected the masculine both in viewpoint and +method--a bad habit which so grew upon her that her later novels are +ponderous as political treatises, and devoid of human interest. + +Far different, Charlotte Brontë. True to herself and to her sex, she +wrote and has written for all time--as those others did not--as a woman, +and as only a woman could have written. Jane Austen, likewise. + +The woman point-of-view and method are regarded, for the most part, +however, as mark of the amateur--the model aimed at being the eternal +masculine in mode and trend. + + +If the demand, "_We take all labour for our province!_" be safeguarded +by recognising and differentiating the province into two distinct and +separate--supplementary and complementary--departments, for the +respective labours of the two widely differing sexes, the claim comes +first within the range of reason and discretion. + +As woman was the first doctor, so she was the first artist. Man inherits +from her not only his artistic faculty, but he derives from her his +faculty of creative inspiration. Applying his native intelligence, his +executive ability and power of sustained effort, to this end, he has so +developed The Arts as to have carried these to their modern +realisations. And though woman, in her turn, may learn of him, it by no +means follows that his standards or technique are best adapted to her +modes of inspiration, to her ideals or attainments. + +Trained along the lines of natural inherences, and trained, accordingly, +without injury or warp to health or faculty by straining after standards +not their own, women would not be disqualified, as so many are now by +avocational specialisation, for wife and motherhood. They would, on the +contrary, be the better adapted. And health and charm and emotion not +having been sacrificed in them by de-sexing pursuits, such would be +eagerly sought. Thus Racial advance would be secured by its wives and +mothers having been drawn from the best orders of women; the women +naturally endowed with faculty and character; self-reliant, but +unspoiled by abnormal training. + +A number of latter-day women being unfitted, alike by nature and by +inclination, for marriage, two orders of the sex should be clearly +distinguished and administered for; as being wholly different types, for +whom wholly different creeds and employments are indicated. + +Those whose aims and talents incline them to public careers should be +content with the lot to which they are best suited; and content to +accept the privileges thereof, and the disabilities thereof. They should +not be greedy, and demand, at the same time, the liberty of the +free-lance and the privileges of the wife and the mother. + +So with the wife and mother. She, for her part, must forgo the liberty +of the free-lance. Because, with her privileges, she has undertaken +functions and duties which, for their complete fulfilment, demand her +best powers and activities. + +Men who marry are similarly restricted. The bachelor lacks the interests +and happiness of the husband and father. The husband and father lacks +the personal liberty and the freedom from responsibility enjoyed by the +bachelor. + +It is women, mainly, who demand both the prerogatives of the married and +of the unmarried states. Notwithstanding that it is wholly impossible +for them to fulfil the functions of both, because it is impossible for +them to possess either the aptitudes or the energies for both. + +In view of all that men have attained by devotion of their lives to the +civilised achievements which now dignify existence and ennoble faculty, +when one sees women more clamorously confident in their bounden right to +inherit lightly all that the other sex has so laboriously won than they +are reverently grateful for the inestimable human privileges and the +treasuries of Art and Mind-wealth available to them by way of these +surrendered masculine lives, it seems cause for indignation equal to +that aroused by the phlegmatic calm wherewith most men accept as +matter-of-course--instead of as matter for reverent gratitude--the gifts +of Life and Faculty, to evolve and to transmit which to them, their +mothers and all the generations of mothers before them surrendered their +lives and their powers. + +Recognition of the intrinsic differences, in trend and in function, +between the sexes, should go far to dispel misconceptions and points of +variance between them. The prevailing notion that the one sex is a sort +of muddled version of the other--and not a highly-specialised +presentment of an invaluable order of qualities, with inevitable +shortcomings in the complementary order of qualities--is greatly to +blame for sex-misapprehensions and antagonisms. + + +II + +Feminists anticipate that War-experiences will further and finally +eliminate all economic sex-distinctions, by having supplied convincing +object-lessons that their sex is able to do, and to do efficiently, all +that the other sex can do. + +Far from object-lessons in the suitabilities, however, the experience +has furnished terrible examples pointing the contrary way. Because +although women have shown themselves both willing and efficient in these +new capacities, results have proved at what cost to themselves and to +life they have done men's work. Apart from a deplorable deterioration in +morale, showing both in coarseness and in viciousness, the blight of age +which has swooped upon both young and old, as direct consequence of the +hardship and strain of masculine employments, robbing them of youth and +health and joy and beauty, of repose and higher appeal, and transforming +them into the grim, drab, harassed spectres many have become, should be +warning enough, in all conscience, of whither Feminism is leading us. + +Many of our young women have become so de-sexed and masculinised, +indeed, and the neuter state so patent in them, that the individual is +described (unkindly) no longer as "She" but as "It." + +Dire have been the disillusionment and bitterness among our fighting +men, upon returning to the homes and wives or loves they had long +dreamed of--to find the wife or love a shattered wreck, or a strenuous, +graceless, half-male creature; the home a place of nerve-racking unrest. + +It is consoling to know that a number of those who have been de-sexed +merely, and not disabled, will continue to find useful and contented +outlet for their masculine developments in filling still the places of +our fallen heroes. Cruelty lies in the fact, however, that the womanhood +of many will have been wrecked quite needlessly; by strain of +superfluously strenuous drill and marchings, scoutings, signallings, and +other such vain and fruitless imitations of the male. + +The greatest care should have been exercised to have selected the +strong and able-bodied, the older women and the women of the +characteristic worker-type (corresponding to the sterile female-worker +of the bee-hive), for the rougher and the more exhausting tasks. The +young wives and mothers and the young girls should have been rigorously +excluded from such. + + +Of all human prerogatives, the greatest is that of being preserved, by +class, by ability, by means, or by privilege, from gravitating to levels +of work that coarsen and debase; or that, at all events, do not exercise +and foster the development of higher tastes and faculty. And this human +privilege is, in proportion to their degrees of civilisation, accorded +to women by all civilised peoples. As men have stood between them and +the perils of battle and shipwreck, the slaying of wild beasts, +pioneering, exploring, and the like, so they have stood between them and +the coarsest, ugliest, and most debasing industrial functions. + +Nevertheless, Feminist anger at restriction whatsoever in the matter of +employment ignores all cause for gratitude on the part of the sex, that, +being at man's mercy as she is, civilised woman is no longer (as the +woman of inferior civilisations is still) a beast of heavy burden. Far +otherwise, indeed, Feminism aims at nothing so much as to repudiate her +established privileges, abolish all distinctions, and to make woman once +again that beast of burden the chivalry of man--at first instinctive, +later magnanimous--has progressively rescued her from being. + +And yet the degree to which sex is defined in Labour (as in Life) is at +the same time the gauge and the cause of human development. Wheresoever +are found low intelligence, crude morale and lack of progress, there the +women are employed in men's work. Wheresoever women are employed in +men's work, there are low intelligence, crude morale and lack of +progress. + +"Thank Heaven for the War!" Feminists have said, however, "because it +has enabled our sex to prove its worth--by enabling us to quit ourselves +like men. The world knows now that women can conduct omnibuses, drive +ploughs, clean stables, kill chickens, ring and slaughter pigs, quite as +well as men can." + +It is as painful as it is amazing to find intelligent and cultured +persons so blinded by the obsessions of their creed as to suppose that +in ploughing and hoeing and making munitions, women are doing finer and +more valuable work than they had been doing previously; that the woman +bus-conductor is a more important person than the children's nurse; that +to drive a cab or clean a boiler is a nobler occupation than the +teaching of music or the cleansing of clothes; that to spread manure is +more dignifying than to make beds; to amputate the limbs of wounded +soldiers is superior to the subtler, far more difficult art of medically +treating the complex ills of women and children. + +That these other employments have been demanded by the times, is +undeniable; as, too, that honour and credit are due to those who well +and capably responded to the exigencies of the hour. But this does not, +in the least degree, lessen the illogic of the claim that such response +to the cruder and less-civilised demands of War proved woman's value +more than did the devotion and efficiency she was previously showing in +the far more complex and progressive arts of Peace. The main value of +her War-work was that it fitted the times. But the times have been +woefully out of joint! + + +III + +At a recent Feminist Meeting, one of the leaders of Militancy detailed +to an audience of fierce-eyed, sombre-visaged members of her own sex, +and sundry meek-browed persons of the other, her latest exploits in the +matters of arranging Labour disputes and averting strikes of +working-men; of sending Governmental male officials to the right-about, +and of disposing, in general, of masculine concerns. + +The main issue of her story was lost sight of, alike by herself and by +her audience. This was--or so it seemed to one among the latter: What +manner of men were these who required or tolerated it that a woman +should take them thus in hand, and, as though they had been whipped +children, dispose of them and their men's affairs--between worker and +employer, between man and man? What order of creature will be the sons +and the grandsons of men ever further emasculated by every further +generation of subjection by such masterful persons; female-Dominants who +arrogate the virile rights and prerogatives of their menkind; their +initiative and enterprise; their capacity to think, to speak, to plan +and to act for themselves? + +The Subjection of woman by man--What was that evil compared with this +other enormity: the Subjection of man by woman, which is fast replacing +it? + +Men who--saving under stress of War--permit women to usurp the functions +and prerogatives of their natural domain, in capacities of Mayor, of +Chairman of Companies and so forth, are, frankly speaking--Muffs! + +Not of such sires were our great Anglo-Saxon Races gotten. Not such was +it who have made England what she is! And the England we look to will +never be the England we look to--until such effeminate blood shall have +been bred out of her sons. + +The male becomes emasculate when women invade his domain. And with the +increasing Hugger-mugger of the sexes, it grows, every day, more and +more difficult for men to escape into the bracing, invigorating +environment and moral of their own sex--a moral untempered by amenities +due to the other, and one indispensable to string them to the pitch of +virile thought and action. Our sailors and soldiers and aviators are +still _men_, because woman has not so far invaded the Navy, the Army, or +the Air. + +Feminine invasion everywhere else--in schools and colleges, in the arts, +in politics, in commerce and in sports--is undoubtedly enfeebling the +fibre of our manhood and the quality of masculine achievements. Man is a +pioneer; aggressive, progressive, ever breaking new ground; conquering +new territory and new forces of Nature. And this alike in politics, in +commerce, and in other material affairs. When he fails to pioneer, +reaching out to new horizons of thought and activity, engineering new +enterprises, while at the same time strengthening and consolidating all +he had already acquired--then the world, in place of progressing, +regresses. And for pioneering, whether in political or in geographical +regions, woman's presence hampers him. + +The less men are in a position to escape from the other sex, the more +they lose the impetus and characteristics of their own. + +The like applies to women. Women who mix too much and too freely with +men deteriorate signally in womanly values and quality. + +Both sexes benefit by segregation from the other, in order to +adapt--each to its own characteristic morale and moral. Neither sex is +wholly unconstrained and candid when in company of the other--unless +both are demoralised. + +Sex operates as a stimulant. And to be always under influence of a +stimulant is enervating. On the other hand, when, from over-indulgence, +Sex or any other stimulant ceases to release new inspiration and forces, +it is sign of a permanently enervated state. Or sex operates as a +hypnotic. And to be always under hypnotic influence is as destructive of +individuality as it is fatal to achievement. + +The sexes require to separate, accordingly, in order to derive fresh +impulse on coming together again. + +Both work more seriously and sincerely, more efficiently and more +effectively, apart; taking counsel, when need be, one of the other. + +The dilettante spirit and amenities of mixed companies, destructive of +"thoroughness," are greatly to blame for that decline of British +commerce which has followed on the Feminist invasion of business-houses. + +Significant of the trend is the fact that young and pretty and +inefficient girls are selected for business positions, as clerks and so +forth, while older women of experience and accredited ability are +rejected summarily. It is, doubtless, amusing and flattering to +masculine employers to be surrounded by attractive youth of the opposite +sex. But it is conducive neither to commercial enterprise nor to +achievement. + + +IV + +Because of the intrinsic variability underlying her duality of +constitution, the happy mean and balance (difficult to all humans) are +especially difficult to woman. + +Man, like herself, is of dual constitution. But he is more firmly, +because less finely, poised between his two orders of Traits. She, on +the contrary, tends to oscillate between the opposite extremes of her +two-sided nature. A bent which may be traced, throughout history, in the +excesses, in one or the other direction, that have characterised the +careers of many famous women-personages. + +The Ultra-Feminine extreme, which results from lack of due balance of +her woman-side by the masculine side of her, and the Mannish extreme, +occasioned by over-development of her masculine inherences, may be +regarded as, respectively, the Scylla and Charybdis--the rocks of the +Male-traits, or the vortex of the Female-traits--whereon, equally, may +be wrecked the noblest characteristics and the highest values of the +sex, when it fails to steer clear, _in medias res_, of either. + +In a number of women, the Feminist and the Femininist (Ultra-Feminine) +types alternate in the same person. In place of being stably and +permanently centred in the woman-side of them, with the masculine to +steady and intelligise, such persons act and re-act, in more or less +violent pendulum-swing, between their two orders of impulse. Thus we get +women, intellectual, progressive, strenuous, engrossed for part of their +time in serious, perhaps in public avocations--and then plunging, in +violent recoil, into social frivolities; vanities, dissipations, pranks, +intrigues, excesses. + +Men, too, act between extremes. In far less degree, however. Life +demands from most of them over-accentuation and concentration of their +male-abilities, in physical and mental specialisations. And in reaction, +they plunge into follies and vices. But the more virile keep their +heads, and preserve a certain stability and conformity in their +aberrations. While effeminate men, it is mainly who lapse into vicious +excess. + +Since woman supplies the inspiration and the morale of life, however, +and since her momentous function of motherhood empowers her to make or +to mar the Race whereof she is creatrix, a nation has a greater claim +upon its women, and has, at the same time, more reason and more right to +restrict their liberty of action, and to direct their bent, than it has +in the case of its men. Its survival and its downfall tremble in the +scales of Life which woman holds. To compensate her for such restriction +and limitation of her scope, obviously it owes her privileges, personal +and economic. And a subconscious recognition of this fact has been, +doubtless, the source of such privileges as she now enjoys. + + +There have always been, as history shows, women in whom, from faulty +heredity or culture, or from stress of circumstance, the Male-traits +have been abnormally developed; virile-brained, stout-hearted, muscular +chieftainesses, chatelaines, abbesses, matrons; or (in less agreeable +guise) amazons, shrews and viragoes. But always such were recognised as +being abnormal, and for the most part as being repellant. It was not +sought to manufacture them. It is only of late years that Mannishness +has become a serious Cult. + +And now a dangerous thing has happened. Because where formerly symptoms +of Feminism attacked individuals only--and these mainly the mature and +eccentric--now the young and the normal are being indoctrinated +wholesale. Young girls taken during the malleable phases of growth and +development, and forcibly shaped to masculine modes, become more or less +irretrievably male of trait and bent; losing all power to recover the +womanly normal. + +While on the other hand, there are assembling to-day, in an opposite +ever-increasing and menacing camp, those others for whom Feminism, with +its extremist, exacting, self-reliant codes and modes, has no appeal; +the pretty mindless, the idle frivolous, the pleasure-seeker, the +freakish and the conscienceless--in a word, the Ultra-Feminines; in whom +the woman-failings are unfortunately more conspicuous than are the +woman-virtues. Between these two extremes stand (and stand so far in +gratifying number) the natural, admirably-balanced, noble and invaluable +Moderates--normal women content to be normal women, and to fulfil the +destined rôle of such. And these are the saving grace of nations. + +Apart from these, the sex is ever further and more dangerously +separating into the two extremist camps; the Mannish and strenuous, and +the Over-Feminised and purposeless, more or less idle and frivolous, +selfishly absorbed in clothes, in luxury and pleasures; exacting +masculine tribute in mind and kind, with but little return in affection +or ministry. + +In place, accordingly, of that fine normal poise of the Contrasting Man +and Woman-Traits--which is the way of Evolution and of Progress--there +is being substituted in the sex this degenerative segregation of its +Traits in two wholly opposite, and equally lopsided types. And of these, +the purposeful and strenuous, all the while making for masculine +standards, are all the while further discarding the beauty, the +emotions, the delicacy and morale of true woman; while the mindless and +vain, the attractive and charming, are more and more divorcing +themselves from purpose, from seriousness, from noble endeavour and +usefulness. + +And since rights accorded to women are shared by all, every new +privilege Feminists win for the sex in the sweat of their assiduous +brows--liberty, latchkeys and general latitude--the Ultra-Feminines +snatch, and apply to frivolous and profitless, or to demoralising ends; +licence, extravagances, vices. + +The Ultra-Feminine, for the most part shallow and mindless (although +many clever women belong to this order), absorbed in complacent culture +of her oftentimes alluring personality, enhancing it, attiring it, +developing its charm and graces, eager of homage and of tribute, is +example of that Parasitism Miss Schreiner condemns in the sex; example +of qualities normally making for beauty, but from loss of balance, owing +to warp, hereditary or of misdirection, morbidly feeding upon +themselves. + +This Parasitism is seen in its worst guise in the vast armies of +prostitutes, who in every clime and epoch ravage the fair fruits of +human life and achievement. + +Against this Parasitism in herself, self-absorbing, self-indulgent, +enervating--defect of her reposefulness, of her æstheticism and vital +self-consciousness--every woman needs to be upon her guard; to repress +with firmness the smooth easy lapse it prompts toward sloth and +pleasure; to exorcise the soft dry-rot of it, by power of aspiration and +by prayer of ministry. (For noble truth it is that _Laborare est +orare_.) + +The Woman's Movement did good service for the sex in the early chapters +of its history, when it made for due education of woman's higher +masculine inherences; intelligence, application, self-reliance; as also +in finding further fields of usefulness and self-expression for her. + +But unfortunately in the later chapters, over-cultivation of these +traits has increasingly annulled and extinguished her own. And this with +the unforeseen, disquieting resultant that a compensatory movement has +set in apace among that other faction of the sex. So that the more +mannish the Feminists become in mode and aim, the more womanish become +the Effeminates. Thus, albeit sincerely despising and decrying this, +Feminism has nevertheless indirectly fostered the growth of Effeminacy. +While, by supplying it with ever further liberty and scope for the +indulgence of its freaks and failings, Feminist propaganda has directly +played into its hands. Motherhood strikes deeper roots of attribute even +in the Ultra-Feminine; brings thin streams of altruism to her +neurasthenic breasts. In her children she forgets clothes, grows less +greedy of masculine tribute, forgoes pleasures and excitements that had +been the breath of life to her. + +The increasing emancipation of the sex from home-functions and from +womanly and mother-duties, however--claimed and obtained with a view to +further economic scope and application of its powers--has been +exultantly hailed and exploited by the Ultra-Feminines for ever further +indulgence of and wider range of action for their dangerous defects. And +Feminism will find--and this soon to its dismay--that the battle it has +waged against the other sex has been as nothing to the battle it has yet +to wage against its own, in the person of the Eternal Effeminate; idle, +luxurious, parasitic and effete, who, with her brood, engenders the +dry-rot which crumbles mighty civilisations, or topples them in +Revolution. + + +V + +Of the two camps, the vast majority of masculines will always seek their +loves and wives among the Ultra-Feminines; frail and erratic, but +attractive and more or less womanly. So long as men are men, the +feminine graces, even in their spurious forms of Effeminacy, will +possess more vital appeal for them than do the intelligences and +utilities. + +The Feminist camp, further and further commandeering the intelligent and +self-reliant, the worthy and purposeful of the sex, while more and more +discarding the charms and the softness thereof, will be further and +further deserted by men. And of the happy mean--the well-balanced woman, +at once tender and intelligent, devoted and charming--there will be ever +fewer available. + +What then is the future, biological and sociological, of Races whose +wives and mothers will have been drawn mainly from the shallow-brained +and shallow-hearted, from the less dutiful, the less high and +right-minded? To say nothing of the less constitutionally-sound, the +Ultra-Feminine being, for the most part, a neurotic? The great majority +of such will decline part, indeed, in functions so dull and distasteful +as the mothering and rearing of children. + +The Feminist wife, with her intelligent grip of economics and her stern +sense of citizen-duty, would fulfil her racial function (in accordance +with Malthusius) during intervals of more absorbing and strenuous +activities. But when once the novelty--which gives a certain piquancy +for some men to a mannishness some women are able to wear quite prettily +and attractively in early youth--shall have worn away, the poor +Feminist's chances of marriage will be few, indeed; save with +men-weaklings, requiring the virile support of a strong-minded, +muscular wife. + +The Feminist makes a far more honest and reliable, sincere and helpful, +mate than does the Ultra-Feminine. But men prefer the latter. + +Male characteristics are to be found among their male acquaintance. And +it is not a normal, nor is it a wholesome instinct in a man, to seek in +sex the traits of his own. + +In the cult of Mannishness, woman loses her strongest, her noblest and +tenderest appeal for true men--the appeal of her womanhood. And losing +it, she abandons the male to the toils of the enemy camp; to those whose +womanishness partakes, at all events, of the attributes of a sex +complementary and supplementary to his own. + + * * * * * + +Unhappy wights! How Nature has handicapped them--in order to spur them +to their virile part of founding and providing for the family! + + +VI + +As innocent of misappropriating that which is Cæsar's as they are +ignorant of the biological verities, some Women-leaders and Prime-movers +in Feminism exact and exult in the warm young, zealous adulation and +hero-worship of their followers; never suspecting that such tribute is +rendered, in fact, to the _male_ in them. Both they and their votaries +believe themselves loyal and thrall to their finger-tips to Woman and +The Woman-Cause. Whereas they are, in reality, hero-worshipping, on the +one hand, the Male in their Cult, and on the other, the Masculine traits +of its female exponents. Against man himself and the Maleness that is +his by natural right, many are filled with hottest distrust and +aversion. Yet while sex-antagonism is thus strong in them in fealty to +their creed, Nature is strong in them too. And with gentle irony she +exacts their homage for the traits of the foe--masquerading in guise of +a female! + +Heroes to worship, every naturally-constituted woman craves. And it is +the hero--far less than it is the heroine--in the Feminist leaders, +their qualities of fight and masterfulness, of virile brain and concrete +enterprise, which evoke their adherents' devotion and tribute. + +Some Feminist leaders bid, indeed, as strenuously for and claim as +jealously the undivided loyalty and subjection of their flock as ever +Tyrant-Man demanded of the sex. + +In schools and colleges too, the girls make gods and heroes of those of +their sex who excel in manly sports. They have never a suspicion that +their gods and heroes are not goddesses and heroines. Similars being +unattractive to one another, the exposition of woman-traits leaves woman +more or less unmoved. As Nature destined, the woman-heart goes out to +those virtues and valours which are the natural complement of her own. + +This latter-day vogue is not a normal, nor a pretty development. But it +is another of the inevitable consequences of disturbing Nature's +balances. Nature's plan and her methods of administration are so perfect +that when left to herself she preserves her equilibrium and secures her +aims by the safest and, at the same time, by the simplest expedients. +When man destroys the hawks which, normally, reduce the smaller fry of +birds to their allotted quotum in the Scheme of Things, however, the +smaller fry multiply inordinately and devour his cherries and his corn. +And when he destroys the smaller fry, the slugs and grubs and _aphides_ +multiply and devour his lettuces and roses. + +So it is with Human traits and faculties. The balance of The Normal is +the way alone of health and happiness and progress. + + +There is great boast now-a-days of friendship and comradeship between +the sexes. Yet though friendship and comradeship are good allies of +love, they are but sterile, uninspiring substitutes for the profounder, +higher, vital and undying emotions of the true love-passion. + +On the other hand, attachments between men and men, and between women +and women, are strengthening and intensifying; absorbing the emotion and +devotion formerly and normally bestowed on members of the opposite sex. +While attraction between persons of opposite sex becomes ever lighter +and triter in sentiment; serving more and more for brief distraction and +provocative pastime rather than for a living and abiding bond. + +This misplaced affection for members of the same sex arises from the +attraction of traits of the opposite sex unduly developed in them. While +indifference to members of the opposite sex results from lack in these +of the characteristics of their sex, normally accentuated. Thus a woman +is more drawn to one of her own sex possessing virile characteristics, +physical or mental, than she is drawn to a weak-brained, emasculate man. +Masculine women are attracted likewise by the womanly graces and quality +of feminine women. + +While men find in some members of their own sex, feminine traits of +sympathy and sentiment absent in women of male-proclivity. All is an +expression of the law of the Attraction of Opposites, which (normally) +causes persons of opposite sex to be strongly drawn to one another. + +On the other hand, the development in himself, or in herself, of the +characteristics of the opposite sex makes members of either sex +independent of and indifferent to members of the other, by supplying +them with a spurious counterfeit of qualities it is natural to seek in +those others. + + +VII + +Professor Drummond, from whom I quote frequently, as being one of those +biologists on the side of the angels, writes thus beautifully: + + + "Sex is a paradox; it is that which separates in order to unite.... + There is no instance in Nature of Division of Labour being brought + to such extreme specialisation. The two sexes were not only set + apart to perform different halves of the same function, but each so + entirely lost the power of performing the whole function that even + with so great a thing at stake as the continuance of the species + _one_ could not discharge it. + + "It is important to notice this absence of necessity for Sex having + been created--the absence of any known necessity, from the merely + physiological standpoint. + + "Is it inconceivable that Nature should sometimes do things with an + ulterior object, an ethical one, for instance? To no one with any + acquaintance with Nature's ways, will it be possible to conceive of + such a purpose as the sole purpose. + + "Had Sex done nothing more than make an interesting world, the debt + of Evolution to Reproduction had been incalculable.... What exactly + Maleness is, and what Femaleness, has been one of the problems of + the world. At least five hundred theories of their origin are + already in the field, but the solution seems to have baffled every + approach. Sex has remained almost to the present hour an ultimate + mystery of creation.... + + "The contribution of each to the evolution of the human race is + special and unique. To the man has been mainly assigned the + fulfilment of the first great function--the Struggle for Life. + Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet been named, is the + chosen instrument for carrying on the Struggle for the Life of + Others. + + "That task, translated into one great word is Maternity--which is + nothing but the Struggle for the Life of Others transfigured, + transferred to the moral sphere. Focused in a single human being, + this function, as we rise in history, slowly begins to be + accompanied by those heaven-born psychical states which transform + the femaleness of the older order into the Motherhood of the New." + + +Out of the misconception of Sex as having no other purpose or +significance than that of reproduction merely, there has arisen the +further misconception that, lacking other purpose or significance, the +sex-characteristics of Woman may be obliterated in her not only without +injury, but with benefit to her; as being superfluous and hampering +impedimenta merely, when reproductive issues are beside the question. + +Yet since Faculty lapses first in its latest and highest developments, +sex-deterioration manifests most in the higher mental and moral +Sex-characteristics. One result, therefore, of not fostering, by culture +and by avocation, sex-specialisations upon planes of mind and aptitude, +is that, while lapsing in its higher functions, Sex remains operative +still upon the physical plane, and functions crudely--perhaps viciously +thereon. Just as intelligence becomes dense and degraded when its finer +qualities are not exercised, and their development thus raised to finer +issues. Moreover, by denying to Sex and to the rites of love any but +parental issues, the individual, emotional and spiritual issues of the +human union are ignored; a limitation all the more dishonouring, because +of the present-day misconception of parenthood as being a purely +"physical," and, accordingly, an inferior function. + +There is not, of course, in all the complex marvel of human metabolism, +such an anomaly as a purely physical function. Digestion even is far, +indeed, from being such, since by way of this a slice of bread is +transformed into living personality, living thought and impulse, living +action. + +Sex is manifestly a Spiritual and an Eternal Principle. Because, by way +of its essential dual differentiations and intensifying operations, +Matter becomes endued not only with Life and Faculty, but, having become +Living Matter, it becomes endued, by power of reproduction, with the +potential of eternal Life and Faculty. Even more, it becomes endued with +the potential of the eternal unfoldment of ever-further intensifying +Life and Faculty. + +Sex is, in truth, for both genders, such a convergence of every +characteristic--physical, mental and emotional--in a highly specialised +focus, that the whole outlook upon life becomes highly specialised and +intensified thereby; every impression and experience becoming instinct +and charged with intrinsic meanings, vividness and colour. And this +apart wholly from relation to the other sex. Although, of course, the +focus and intensity of the traits of the one sex are _accentuated_ in +vividness and richness, in response to the complementary traits of the +other. + +It is Sex that energises men to be great; great leaders of men, great +writers, great statesmen, great soldiers, great sailors, +explorers--great sinners and great saints. + +Sex it is makes women great also; great mates for great men, great +mothers, writers, ministers to poor Humanity--great saints. + +The mystery of Sex is, surely, Master-key to all the other mysteries of +the Cosmos. + + * * * * * + + +VIII + +In aiming at Hermaphrodism, Feminism is contriving not only at +frustration of all that Evolution has achieved in Life and Faculty, but +it is making for the extinction of Life itself. + +The Hermaphrodite is incapable of parenthood. And in the degree to which +members of either sex lapse toward Neuterdom, in body or in mind, they +become incapable of transmitting to offspring all those higher +developments of form and faculty which are, essentially, +Sex-differentiations. The present-day decline in parental impulse and +affection, which shows, among other signs, in ever-decreasing +Birth-rates, is a symptom of temperamental Neuterdom; evidence alike of +Sex-decline, and, in this, of decline of that vital energy and spiritual +impulse whereof Sex is the manifestation. + +Such trend toward Race-suicide denotes, in the Race, that same +neurasthenia and pusillanimity, which, in the individual, impel him to +personal suicide. + + +Latter-day marriage, greedily grasping all that Life and Love bestow +while grudging any due to Life and Love, is not true Marriage--but is +sacrilege. + +Between this and the mating of true men and women, who, in gratitude for +Love, pay tribute joyfully to Life in lives to follow after them, is all +the vital difference, in impulse and emotion, between the Ship of +Love--with its mysterious freight--immured within a narrow lock whereof +the gate to the Beyond is sealed, and the Ship of Love launched free +upon the open sea of Human Destiny--a Shining sea of Faith and Hope, +which tides beyond the narrow mortal gateway toward a Great Unknown; +Remote, Illimitable, Veiled in Everlasting Silence. + +_This_ ship fares forth upon its voyage of Mystery, beatified by full +surrender of all lesser issues to that sacred one of the Eternal +Human--a surrender which endues true marriage with tenderness and awe +and beauty. + + * * * * * + +_Do we not pitch our songs too low, O sweet--my Singers?_ + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN + + "The Earth never tires.... Nature is rude and incomprehensible at + first; + Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well + envelop'd; + I swear to you there are Divine Things more beautiful than words + can tell." + +_Walt Whitman._ + + +I + +In the long and painful history of man's more or less total failure to +value and to honour woman for her greatest, her most vital and +self-sacrificing part in human affairs, none has approached in obliquity +his recent deplorable blunder of awarding her the suffrage and the right +to sit in Parliament, as recognition of her War-services. + +All the long ages of Mother-surrender, of quiet heroism and attainment, +all the best, beautiful years of women's lives which the burden and +sickness, the weariness, danger and anguish have devoured down the +centuries, while the mothers were giving themselves to be the nation's +bone and blood and brain, to nourish, cherish, and upbring it--All were +passed over without word or sign. + +Not for her long ages of devoted duty to the nation's sick and helpless, +for rearing and safeguarding its priceless infant and child-life, for +administering its homes--fashioning, cleansing, beautifying, contriving, +making the utmost of its means and ends--Not for her inestimable +services as man's good comrade and wise counseller, his love and friend +and faithful help, in sorrow, evil and adversity; not even for her +age-long, arduous labours and achievements in Religion, Charity, Reform. +For none of these, her great intrinsic and eternal ministries to Life +and to Humanity, has man now set her by him in the Van of Things. + +But for filling shells and felling trees, for turning lathes and driving +motors, ploughing fields and lighting street-lamps--all valuable duties, +it is true, in the crisis we have passed through, and indispensable to +carrying on the nation's business. Yet what a drop from the supreme and +tender to the trite and banal, from the vital and essential to the +merely incidental, is seen in this belated recompense. + +Not woman, Generatrix of Humanity and inspiration of all that is fairest +in Humanity, has been now honoured--but woman the bus-conductor, +ticket-clipper, clerk and agricultural labourer, woman in breeches and +workman's overall, woman whom German frightfulness had dislocated for a +space from her high lot and labours; twisting her powers awry to fit a +hideous revulsion of barbarism. + +How, if the gods ever laugh at the fantastic tricks of poor mankind, +they must now have laughed (or wept) over the opportunity that one sex +had--and forfeited--to requite the other's finest merit. + +How deeply-moving and far-reaching in its impulse and its inspiration +would have been the tribute, had it been made in reverent gratitude to +the mothers-of-men who had saved the world by mothering the men who +saved the Empire--For achievement stamped with the high and unique +quality of service that woman alone could have rendered. And not +because, when tested by men's standards, she proved herself a worthy +second-best in doing things that men have always done. + +The gods must long have wept, I think, that men had thought so lightly +of the women living every day beside them, surrendering their lives and +powers, their interests, desires and individuation; toiling over +cooking-pans and wash-tubs, tied for years to children's cots, for life +to some or another person's sick-bed; smothering talents, impulse, +hopes, impatiences, to find the soft and simple word; solacing, +inspiring, making-believe above an aching spirit and a breaking heart +that all was fair and well with the world. And, moreover, in every +generation making these beautiful fictions ever a fraction more truth +and less fiction. For the gods alone know how that kindlier, purer and +more tender Home-environment which women have created in men's +stony-hearted cities involves the most laborious, heart-wearing, complex +and widest exercise of faculty of any human task. + +Women themselves had long been tiring of it; stung to the soul and +mortified by centuries of man's ingratitude--when not contempt. +Nevertheless, where love and duty did not, chains of custom and +tradition bound them faithful to their oars. + +Till German Frightfulness releasing them, the cry is now: + +Since you can do something better and more profitable than merely to row +the old Galley of Life--since you can do men's work, forsooth, come out +into the market-place and help us pay our big War-Bill! + +And yet--Whither will drift the Galley of Life when its rowers put their +strength elsewhere? + + +II + +In the haze of false sentiment exaggerating--not the value of masculine +work done by the sex during War, because this was, of course, invaluable +and indispensable, but exaggerating, absolutely, the values of this work +as compared with the woman's work it had been doing previously, the +decision to admit women to Parliament was a precipitate and an +ill-considered measure, by no means innocent of party motive. + +Threatening, as it does, a drastic sweep of all political, economic and +every other difference between the standards, training, and employment +of the sexes, it was pressed forward, nevertheless, not only with +characteristic masculine failure to recognise the vital significance of +the other sex in Human Things, but in utter blindness to social and +racial consequences, immediate and remote, which make it possibly the +most momentous decision ever arrived at in the history of human +progress. + +Showing how little it was known for the turning-point in our great +destiny, the question was debated with unseemly levity, while less than +half the parliamentary members troubled (or had hardihood) to record +their votes; the abstention of the others proving which way blew the +straws of their faint wills. And of those voting in favour, half, +perhaps, did so (as some confessed) under intimidation of otherwise +losing their seats. (What would be said of the soldier who should turn +his back upon the enemy for fear of losing life even?) + +No more than twenty-five found courage to say their "No's" like honest +gentleman. + + +Yet far from Enfranchisement having been a burning need blazing in the +hearts of women, their newly-awarded vote required to be spurred and +whipped out of all but a small minority. Or coaxed from them by +abandoning appeal on all the wider issues of Imperial and national +policy, and, in so far as their interest was sought, by reducing the +programme to personal and domestic issues--electric lighting in their +parlours, hot-water taps in their kitchens, and so forth. + +And here was seen, at once, the threat of a grave and an increasing +diversion from that purely political outlook of men, which should be +impersonal in issue, broad in enterprise. Not that the human and +domestic side is a whit less momentous than the more abstract and +national. But appealing to a different order of mind, it demands that +different order of mind which characterises the woman-sex, to deal with +it effectively. + +The plea that women will acquire in time the masculine political +view-point threatens, on the other hand, the loss in them of their own +highly-specialised and invaluable interests, morale and qualities; +which, being womanly of impulse and of trend, make for the individual +welfare, happiness and elevation of the nation's members. + + +III + +As with every other human function, there are two departments of +politics. And the House of Commons represents man's. + +It stands for all that is best accomplished politically by his +highly-specialised order of brain; by his concrete energy and +initiative, his justice and rationalism, his power of administration, +and his uncompromising sternness--pitilessness, if need be--to deal with +and to punish crime and aggression, national and international. It +stands, in a word, for that virile outlook and the virile grip in +Statesmanship which are indispensable to materialise a people's +prosperity and to pioneer its progress. These are the functions of +_men_. Just as the Army and Navy, Science and Commerce, are the +functions of men. Because the male bent and intellect are those best +fitted to raise these developments to their highest and most effective +issues, just as the male physique and energy are best fitted to achieve +these issues in material results. + +Had anything been needed to emphasise the values of such virile +characteristics in the administration of a nation's policy, the War +furnished it. And the many blunders and vacillations marring the conduct +of the War emphasised the lack of these invaluable masculine qualities +in the concurrent House of Commons. Army, Navy, and Air-Services proved +their manhood doughtily in their respective provinces. Had they been +supplemented by an equally virile Statesmanship, the War, having begun, +would have been brought to a speedy termination. In point of fact, it +would never have begun. + +If now, our British politics are already so lacking in the manly ability +and grip indispensable to national permanence and progress, the presence +of women in Parliament can but further emasculate these. It may be said +that some women outside the House are more male of mind and mode (not to +speak of muscle) than are some men inside. But this is reason, surely, +for replacing these weak males by stronger ones, rather than for +adulterating British statesmanship with Femaleness. + +The presence of a masculine woman in a house--whether this be writ with +a small or a capital letter--far from stiffening the manly calibre of +weak men in it, only further enervates and paralyses them. To serve on a +committee of mixed sex is to realise this. + +Women should be represented in the counsels of the nation--but not in +the councils of men. They should have a House of their own, wherein to +foster the interests of women and children mainly, as well as to further +The Humanities and The Moralities; which are, at the same time, woman's +true political sphere and her chiefest concern--because she and the +child most suffer from failures thereof. Thus, the House of Men would be +relieved of problems their sex is unqualified to deal with. While more +time and energy would be left them to dispose of affairs they are best +fitted to administer. + +As already pointed out, the all-potent factor of Sex intervening, +members of neither sex are capable of doing their best work while in +association with the other. Sex-rivalries are stirred, or +sex-antagonisms. Either of which range the sexes on opposite sides; thus +precluding amicable co-operation. Or they engender sex-ascendancy. +Which, making one sex dominate or defer to the other, precludes +intelligent co-operation. Through all, moreover, only too often run +threads of intrigue, to entangle and hamper the powers of both. + +British politics have notably declined since woman's incursion therein. +British commerce, once supreme among the nations, has notably declined +since women entered business-houses. Good and thorough work demands, +beyond all things, undivided concentration of the powers upon it. And +for nine persons out of ten, this concentration is impossible while in +the presence of members of the opposite sex. And emphatically this is +true of the male, since woman exercises a hypnotic, and, accordingly, an +enervating influence upon him. Worse still, he poses for her: becoming +meretricious and insincere. It is held by some that women in Parliament +might elevate the codes and modes of latter-day politics, many of our +best men withholding themselves therefrom because of bad odour imparted +by self-seeking and unscrupulous politicians. + +But let us keep our House of Commons a House of men, and make it +representative of the nation's finest manhood. It is the first and +foremost function of the sex, the way of national success and progress. +And just as the presence of women would blunt the pioneering spirit and +cripple the action of a party of Arctic explorers, so women in the House +must blunt the enterprise and hamper the exploits of Statesmanship. + +So far, the good sense alike of women as of men has declared against the +innovation; rejecting, by large majorities, all but one of women +Parliamentary candidates. It remains to be seen, however, whether men +outside the House will later endorse the new departure, by electing +members of the other sex to represent them. A thing impossible for one +sex to do for the other, of course, seeing that not only do men and +women arrive at their different conclusions by wholly different routes, +but all questions bear wholly different values for them. + +It may be argued that the existence of dual departments of politics, and +dual points-of-view is argument for electing representatives of both +sexes to The Commons. Not so, however. Each sex is specialist in its +own domain. And an aurist wastes time, and most likely blunders, when he +applies himself to treat eye-diseases. An oculist wastes time, and +probably blunders, when delicate ear-operations are required of him. + +Since by his dual constitution, moreover, man possesses, by inheritance +from his mother, the quotum of woman-apprehension, foresight, and +altruism required to present the woman-bent and view-point in his +outlook and conduct of political and civic affairs, woman's personal +intervention in these is as superfluous as it would be harmful. + +Further, there are two orders of men: An order strictly male in trend +and talent, and an order whose mentality is tinctured with a higher than +average proportion of womanly conservatism, sympathy and intuition. And +these two orders of male--typified, respectively, by the Conservative +and the Radical parties--perpetually struggling to secure the measures +prompted by their respective orders of mind, and intermittently gaining +ascendancy, sustain a poise, or mean, between the unduly conservative +and traditional, and the unduly radical and transitional in our +political administration. + +These two orders of mentality are found again in Youth and Age. All +healthy and vigorous-minded young men are radical of bias; hot-headed, +precipitate and intolerant of crusted orthodoxy, keen to demolish old +institutions and established methods. While maturity makes for +conservatism. It _knows_. And having learned by experience the values of +institutions which have become institutions because of their values, it +is prudent in its counsels of slow and stable reform, in its distrust of +drastic, precipitate change, and, beyond all, in its wise misdoubtings +of the world in general as being better than it is, and ripe, +accordingly, for the best things. + +For the present, there are numberless problems and questions of women's +industrial employment, of children's employment, of the industrial +supervision of young girls and their moral protection; problems of +female drunkenness and prostitution, crimes of children, crimes against +infants and children; questions of health, of the education and +upbringing of the young, of dress and conduct, and of the general moral +purification and the mental elevation of the Race--with all of which +women are essentially qualified to deal; and the vital national +importance whereof men have proved themselves as incapable of +apprehending as they have shown themselves powerless to administer them. + +The two classes of national problems, or the two departments into which +most of these problems might be advantageously sub-classed, should be +recognised as being the functions, respectively, of the one or of the +other sex, and should be deputed for consideration to the House of Men +or to the House of Women. With the result that in both, every problem of +reform would be dealt with by the sex specialised by nature, by +sympathy, and by training, best to understand and best to legislate for +it. + +As with The Lords, either House should have power to question or to +reject the conclusions of the other. + +We need urgently, indeed, such a House of Women to employ its native +wisdom, its intuitive apprehension, and its moral and emotional impulse, +and, moreover, to bring its experience and tact to bear upon a +hundred-and-one tangled and neglected issues of moral and social reform. +In order to remedy evils that have come, from long neglect, to be a +cancer, slowly and surely sapping and vitiating our national life and +endangering our racial supremacy. + + +IV + +That women may do useful work in male departments of politics and +economics is quite beside the question. Far more valuable work is needed +and is possible from them in their own especial fields of aptitude. In +these latter, moreover, they would be fostering, in place of +sacrificing, that morale and those distinctive talents Nature has +specialised in them. While their withdrawal _in toto_ from male +political and economic functions would put men on their mettle, and +stimulate their efforts and achievement therein. + +Woman's influence, like that of Religion, is most potent when it is +indirect and inspirational. Like the Church, when she exchanges her +indirect and devotional ministrations for direct and material ones, +temporal or militant, she destroys herself or the peoples she dominates. +Or she destroys both. + +It is common fallacy that so long as the world's work is done and its +affairs tolerably well conducted, it is of no significance whatsoever by +which sex these ends are attained. + +Sight is lost of the intrinsic truth that Life exists for Man--not Man +for Life; its purpose being the evolution of the human Species by way of +the evolution of human Faculty. The world's work has no slightest value +save as spur and instrument of human education. And the evolution of the +dual orders of human Faculty having differentiated the human Species +into two sexes, each representing a wholly different order of +Faculty--obviously the perfection of both orders of Faculty and, +accordingly, the further evolution of both sexes wherein these orders +are respectively specialised, can be attained only by the exercise, by +each order, of the rôle and the functions that best evoke its powers. +If, therefore, the male sex repudiates its allotted rôle and functions, +and forfeits, in consequence, the education of its distinctive talents +and moral, by shelving its responsibilities upon the other sex, +howsoever capable a substitute this other sex may prove itself, man acts +as foolishly and fatuously as the schoolboy who shirks his schooling and +the discipline thereof, by enlisting his capable sister to do his +lessons for him. + +It is, at the same time, man's duty and his privilege manfully to +shoulder and ably to perform his own allotted part in Life's affairs. +Evading this, or from a false conception of chivalry allowing woman to +usurp a share therein, he degenerates inevitably; in default of his +natural spur to development. Moreover he obliges--or connives at woman +doing likewise, in respect of her allotted part. + +That he has already grown so slack, his virile pride and enterprise have +so far lapsed, as to reconcile him to woman's usurpation of his +masculine functions and prerogatives should warn him of incipient +dry-rot in him. As too, the portentous fact that had he not declined in +physical and mental calibre, she could never so readily and efficiently +have taken his place as we have seen her doing. So efficiently, indeed, +that he will be hard put to it to regain and to retain his lost +professional and industrial footing, by proving himself appreciably the +better man. + +As Dr. Havelock Ellis says, if they are to cope with the new Feminism, +men must needs look to their laurels and produce a new Masculinism. For +truly these weak-chinned, neurotic young men of the rising generation +are no match at all for the heavy-jawed, sinewy, resolute young women +Feminist aims and methods are giving us. + +On every side, in politics, literature, journalism, oratory, commerce, +even in scientific invention, women are swiftly coming up abreast of +men, and threaten shortly to out-distance them.--And this upon their own +ground. + +On the other hand, the finer and more exquisite womanly qualities and +aptitudes, the emotions and devotions; purity, sweetness, patience, +forbearance, tenderness, lovingness and lovableness, together with the +courtesies and graces, have fallen out of culture and are fast declining +toward extinction. And this, in the measure of the mushroom-growth of +masculine abilities and aims and bent, now substituted for them in the +sex. With which decline of womanly characteristics, the religion and +nobility, virility and chivalry, manly reverence and regard for women, +wherewith the true mother illumines the souls of her sons, and which are +man's response to the appeal of true woman, are waning rapidly also. + +There is, in all men worth the name, an instinctive recognition that the +world's most strenuous labours and the world's administration are their +natural functions, and that upon their sex, accordingly, rests the +responsibility alike of progress or decline in these directions. + +This sense of responsibility is both stimulating and uplifting, in the +degrees of its realisation and fulfilment. The yielding, by man, to the +other sex, of masculine essential rights and obligations is, at the same +time, a symptom in him of declining virility, physical and mental, and a +cause inevitable of his further speedy decadence. The position yielded, +and equality in all things ceded to woman, that pride in his sex, in +himself, and in his work, which were his strongest incentives to +progress, drop to ever lower grades. Until he comes at last to the state +of the decadent savage, who keeps as many wives to work for him as their +work for him enables him to keep. + +The spirit and pride of Sex are normal and inspiring, and are the +expression of that impulse which has directed, in both sexes, the +contrary trend of both. No man of mettle feels ever again the same zest +or spur to achievement in a rôle that has become equally woman's. +Arrogance? Possibly. But wholesome and energising. Defect of that pride +in his man's mission which inspired Drake, Columbus, Nelson, Cæsar, +Shakespeare, Newton, to great conquest. Without it, man ceases to be +man. That it is a factor to be reckoned with, was proved by the recent +election, which was signalised by being woman's first authorised entry +into the political arena--and was characterised by nothing so much as by +man's indifference, even his neglect to record his vote. And that it is +a factor to be reckoned with, is further and seriously proved by the +slackness and diminished zest and output of masculine Labour, since the +other sex has invaded the field. + +Woman, for her part, is characterised by a similar spirit and pride of +her sex. Equally she loses it when men intrude upon her province. And +this Sex-pride and spirit in her would be nobly intensified and uplifted +to ever higher levels of expression and attainment, were she but assured +of the fine quality and issues of those woman-faculties and functions, +by way of which it is her privilege first to create Life, and afterwards +to minister to it. + + +A potent factor in man's impotence to hold his own either in moral or +achievement, when pitted directly against the other sex, is that power +many women exercise of recruiting their vital forces from those of +persons--and of men, particularly--in association with them. The highest +levels of work and inspiration are the product of _reserve_ and surplus +forces. When these are depleted, only languid and lower-grade aims and +capacities are possible. + +The extent to which over-worked women may impair the health and +constitutional vigour of men associated with them in work was strikingly +shown during the changed conditions of War. Surrounded by over-wrought +girls and women, who kept themselves going by stimulus of nervous +excitement, of strong tea or more dangerous drugs, many men, co-workers +or heads of departments, became neurasthenic wrecks. Others lapsed to +the condition of infirm old men. The like was seen in fathers and +husbands of such over-wrought War-workers. And nervous depletion +occasioned by working-wives has doubtless much to do with the inanition +and depression now crippling our industrial output. + + +I may be charged with holding a brief for the Enemy-sex. If so, it is +not only because man's cause is woman's, but, moreover, because his +present disposition to surrender his prerogatives all round shows him +dangerously blind to the truth of woman's power; misdirection whereof +from its natural channels menaces not only him, but woman herself, and +the Race. _Find the woman!_ said the French cynic. Jestingly: because he +no more than other men had gauged the profundity of the saying, in all +its deep and vast biological phenomena and implications. + +Our national survival stands in jeopardy already, indeed, from the +lower-grade males--narrow-brained neurotics or feeble-brained +neurasthenics--whom latter-day women are producing yearly in tens of +thousands. And the deplorable truth of this degeneracy is overlooked, +because no more than a fractional number of our doctors distinguish +between The Normal and The Average. With the result, that comparing an +abnormal with others more abnormal, they declare the less abnormal +satisfactory. Of the fine physique, the vital health and faculty, the +zest and joy of living which characterise true Normality--and which are +the birthright of every human being--only the few have any conception. + + +It is significant that the sole ancient civilisations now surviving, +India and China, have never hazarded their chances of survival by +emancipating their women. On the other hand, because their women are in +bondage, personally and psychologically, and because their women's vital +powers are exhausted by laborious and de-sexing occupations, the moral +and material progress of these peoples is at low ebb. + + +V + +Recruiting statistics have shown us the Damocles-sword of Decadence +suspended by a hair above our heads; have shown us our great people so +riddled with disease, defect and abnormality, that nearly _half our +manhood was declared_ unfitted for man's elementary duty of fighting for +his country (55·9 per cent. only being classed in Grade I.). All that +our centuries of evolutionary progress have achieved for us, all that +the Race has achieved for itself by faculty and enterprise, integrity +and industry, threatens now to be sacrificed to a Feminist fanaticism, +which, denying to woman any more vital or tender human faculties or +offices than those of man, has increasingly repudiated all else for her +than rights to pit her wits and muscles against his. + +England has long been, and has once again proved herself supreme among +the nations. Because England, more than any other land, had freed her +women from the more laborious industrial employments; leaving them, in +consequence, more vital power to put into the making of a splendid Race, +fine of body, stable of character; the men of it charged with virile +energy and enterprise, the women house-proud, home-abiding; faithful +wives and admirable mothers. + +Recruiting statistics have valuably emphasised the truth that in those +localities where women are most employed in labour, there disease and +degeneracy are most rampant. Significantly it was shown that +colliery-districts and the Universities (the latter with about 80 per +cent. of Grade I. men), were conspicuous in providing the greatest +number of men qualified for military service. Why? Because neither the +mothers of men enrolled in Universities, nor, for the most part, those +of colliery-districts, are employed industrially. + +While, on the other hand, the health and physique of cotton-mill +operatives proved so "alarmingly low" that of 184 weavers and spinners +only 57 could even be passed for Army-training. Of 290 examined, only 57 +men of one cotton-spinning town were graded I.; only 64 were graded II., +while 169 were graded III. and IV. + +Again, _Why_? Because, unlike colliery-districts where the standard of +health was notably good, in cotton-towns where physique and health were +"alarmingly low" the vast majority of wives and mothers are employed in +factories. It is important, moreover, to note that in such gradings of +men for military service, even those classed first were by no means +necessarily normal or vigorous. On the contrary, many passed were later +shown defective, by breakdown under stress of military discipline. + +Further, that so many as 20 _per cent._ of the young manhood of our +highest culture were disqualified for Grade I. is a serious +circumstance. + + +Mr. Lloyd George has said regarding this most vital question: "The next +great lesson of the war is that if Britain has to be thoroughly equipped +to meet any emergencies, the State must take a more constant and a more +intelligent interest in the health and fitness of the people. If the +Empire is to be equal to its task, the men and women who make up the +Empire must be equal to it. The number of B2 and C3 men is prodigious. I +asked the Minister of National Service how many more men could we have +put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had been +properly looked after. I staggered at the reply: '_At least a +million_.' A virile race has been wasted by neglect and want of +forethought, and it is a danger to the State and to the Empire. I +solemnly warn my fellow countrymen that you cannot maintain an A1 Empire +with a C3 population." + +This estimate of abnormality, by reason of a million of the nation's +young manhood disqualified by definite disease, defect or degeneracy, is +far below the mark. Because owing to the urgent need for fighting men, +the standard of fitness was compulsorily low. And the estimate takes no +account of the huge number of such low-grade "Fit," who succumbed in +death or incapacitation to the strain of military training, or to the +vicissitudes of active service. + +The _British Medical Journal_ has published figures showing that of +2,080,709 men examined by Medical Boards--the men constituting "a fair +sample of the male population between the ages of 18 and 43, and a +smaller proportion of the more fit between 43 and 51"--_only 1 in 3 +could be classed in Grade I_. That is, out of every 150 members of our +British manhood in its best years of life, _only 50 were up to the mark +in health and normality_. + +The _Journal_ comments on "this mass of physical inefficiency, with all +its concomitant human misery, and direct loss to the country." + +Sir Auckland Geddes, addressing the Federation of British Industries, +stated that "_appalling facts about the health of the nation have been +disclosed in reports of medical examinations carried out by recruiting +authorities_." One of the most startling and disquieting of these +disclosures was that of hundreds of thousands of our men, between the +ages of 18 and 43, dying of tuberculosis. + +Despite all this, however, because our authorities fear to face the +truth and the drastic economic upheaval involved in the prohibition of +all young wives and mothers from the stress of breadwinning, attempt is +being made to shelve the whole blame of this appalling state of national +health upon faulty industrial and hygienic conditions; too long hours of +work, imperfect ventilation, bad housing, inferior cooking, poor wages, +and so forth. All factors, of course, but only contributory to the great +vital one. And in order to placate the public conscience, reforms in +these directions are promised. Excellent and sadly needed reforms, it is +true--in so far as they go; but bound to failure because they will not +go to the root of things. They will be tried, no doubt, in our promised +Reconstruction-scheme. But being palliative merely, further holocausts +of human life and faculty and happiness will be sacrificed in the +experiment. + +Sooner or later--and Heaven send it be sooner lest it come too +late!--the truth must be confronted, and the crisis met. The further the +Feminism now threatening our downfall secures footing, however, and more +and more diverts the nation's life-resources into merely economic +channels, more and more squanders them in abnormal ambitions and output, +the more deeply-rooted and more desperate will have become the cancer of +our national decadence. And incalculably the more difficult and +dangerous will be the task of its eradication. + +The reform should have come while _man_ still held the reins securely in +his grasp--ere Feminism had entrenched itself and its deforming aims and +powers behind an enfranchised woman-sex; to intimidate and out-number +his own. Because women in general, misled by these false standards, and, +moreover, deteriorated by de-sexing training, become every year less and +less disposed toward home and family-life; less and less willing to +burden themselves with the duties and sacrifices indispensable to the +proper fulfilment of wife and motherhood. And now, more than ever, when +they are still further to be pitted against men in the industrial +struggle, woman-instincts and aptitudes will become ever more warped and +enfeebled in them. + +The Danger menacing us is the graver because, while Disease is the +expression of a healthy vital conscience protesting, in terms of pain +and disability, against conditions, environmental or personal, adverse +to normal states of health and development (and to which the healthy +living organism declines therefore to conform), Degeneracy is +characterised by a vital conscience of so low an order that it conforms +and adapts the type, without pain or protest, to conditions perversive +of healthy normality and of further evolutionary advance. + +There comes a stage, accordingly, in Racial decline, when the Racial +vital conscience no longer rebels, in terms of Disease, but conforms, in +terms of Degeneracy, to artificial, abnormal and evil conditions of +living, environmental and personal. And then as happened to those mighty +civilisations snuffed out before us--the major portion of the community +having lapsed from health and normality into decadent states of mind and +body, vice and corruption become its Normal both of mind and body. Evil +and chaos run riot. Till Nature, defied and transgressed at every turn, +opens the vials of her wrath, and pours forth her microbic myriads to +sow death and destruction wholesale. + +Thus she sweeps from the board of Life another great Race--that had +failed. + + +VI + +Already, there are disquieting signs that the physical disease and +abnormality among us have engendered such degrees of mental and of moral +aberration as may lead at any hour to grave disruption. Below the quiet +order of our British constitution are heard, from time to time, the +rumble of chaotic and disintegrating forces. With growing frequency, the +shriek of anarchy shrills. Red flags break. We shall be truly fortunate +if we succeed in bridging over, without more or less serious upheaval, +the critical gap between War and Peace. + + +Woman is Nature's peacemaker and welder. She it is who, in the home, +knits the loose ends of the multiple incongruous and turbulent human +elements into social unities--families, friendly communities, townships +and peoples--by her annealing powers of affection and sympathy, of +charity and intuitive understanding. + +"_Keep the Home-fires burning!_" sang our soldiers. No considerations of +The British Constitution, the London Stock Exchange, or Worshipful Civic +Company, fired them to heroism, spurred them to victory. But for the +Home-fires burning in suburban villas, in four-roomed cottages or +two-room lodgings--as equally in hereditary mansions--it was, our +gallants dared and died, and reaped their glorious triumph. + +My father, an early and an earnest advocate of Female enfranchisement, +used to counsel Lord Beaconsfield that to enfranchise women would be to +establish the Conservative party for a century, at least. Because nine +out of ten women were, in those days, Conservative. + +Since then, Feminism has been active, however. Less by way of direct +propaganda of anarchy or Bolshevism, be it said, than by fostering that +masculine bent and spirit of material unrest and discontent which +destroy in women all the finer, fairer ideals and attributes of their +intrinsic womanhood, and those self-denying ordinances which so sweeten +and dignify the humblest tasks as to content the doers of them with the +inspiring sense that they are worth the while. With the result that +nothing so characterises the great mass of latter-day working women as a +smouldering irrational and intemperate Socialism. And the Socialism of +working-women (as, too, of the majority of working-men) is based on +total ignorance of the impracticability and evil of making for +universal equality in a vast Scheme of Things, the values and the +ultimate successes whereof depend absolutely on preserving those +highly-specialised diversities and inequalities, alike of faculty and +bent, into which Life, with its countless degrees of evolutionary +development, has progressively graded living creatures, brute and human. +The innumerable orders and classes of our sociology are as inevitable as +they are invaluable. Because they serve for stages of faculty and +avocation upon that biological gradient of Ascent by which we climb. + + +As was pointed out earlier in this book, woman, although passive and +reposeful of inherence, is variable and unstable of temperament; her +powers being eternally at ebb and flux, in order that she may be the +medium of those evolutionary mutations which engender human progress. A +nature truly perilous when too great dominance is permitted the sex in +affairs so momentous as those of State-administration, upon the firm +stability and permanence whereof depend so many destinies. Because this +evolutionary impulsiveness of hers is dangerously liable to express +itself in irresponsible, chaotic and anarchical outbreaks. As history +shows, wreckage of many once mighty, but now extinct, civilisations set +in when the males thereof weakly, or basely, surrendered their manhood's +rights of rule to a sex disqualified by its native non-conformability to +rule in national and international policies. + +Should women ever come to exercise political power identical with man's, +they would be liable to subvert the whole national and international +administration of their country on an impulse. Not solely from craving +for novelty, but, too, as result of their inherent bent toward forward +and precipitate movement, and their implicit faith in change as being +necessarily _reform_. + +Nations in which the feminine element is strong betray the native +fickleness thereof in perpetual change of Ministry--even in frequent +revolution. This element of instability is Ireland's curse, the flaw in +her people's splendid Celtic faculty. + + +In view of the stern and strenuous and narrowly-rationalistic creed and +claims of Feminism, as too of the steel-brained, steel-willed fighting +women leading it, men may scoff, with sense of false security, at odds +of danger from feminine weakness and fickleness in Feminist ranks. They +scoffed just so at the menace of Prussianism--whereof Feminism is the +female rendering. + +It must always be remembered, moreover, that the civic and political +privileges ceded to Woman, the Feminist, are ceded alike to that +freakish, irresponsible creature Woman, the Femininist, who, to +counterbalance the decline of woman-quality in those others of her sex, +adds to her number and her freakishness as those others wax in number +and in stern determination. And in a House of Commons of mixed sex, +Feminists would find, to their undoing, that here as elsewhere the +Ultra-Feminines would speedily outnumber and out-power themselves. The +Movement, inaugurated in all the stern and sterile sex-insensibility of +the Feminist code, would soon be dry-rotten and corrupt with the +weaknesses bred of Effeminacy. + +Nor should it be forgotten that the present Feminist leaders it was who, +by their dangerous Bolshevist tactics of Militant Suffragism, proclaimed +the anarchy seething in themselves and their adherents. + + +So long as there survives within the breast of man a spark of that +Chivalry which has been both the inspiring and impelling power of his +virile development, he can neither meet, nor can he treat with woman +upon equal terms. + +Always the aspects of her in capacities of mother, wife or love (or +mistress) must intervene to disarm, and to incapacitate him from +exerting his full strength against her. Whether her appeal to him be +sacred or profane, accordingly--that of woman at her best or at her +worst--always so long as he is man, her highest and most tender (as her +basest) appeal will be by way of those woman-Unfitnesses which in every +age have served as highest incentive of his Fitnesses; that he might +win, safeguard and cherish her. This chivalrous instinct it was, in +part--for behind it lurked the recognition of more than half a nation +suffering from the wrong of Unenfranchisement--which disarmed and +paralysed his action in respect of those same Suffragist outbreaks. And +so long as he is man, will he be similarly disarmed and dangerously +inhibited from meeting and from battling successfully with woman. + +History repeats itself. And if men suppose that they have seen the last +of female Militancy, and overlook the menacing truth that their own +incapacity to cope with this must increase inevitably in direct +proportion to woman's waxing power, they are blind, indeed, to dangerous +breakers ahead. + +Having sown the fickle wind of woman's variability, they are like to +reap the whirlwind in her inherent non-conformability; a difficult and +parlous factor such as they have never previously encountered in +political and industrial administration. Such non-conformability as is +seen at an extreme in the anarchy of revolutions; in which women, having +lost control and balance, plunge deeper and deeper into excesses, +without power, it would seem, of recoil. While men reach a maximum, +recover poise, and then setting about to re-constitute order out of +chaos, more often than not evolve a higher form of order than had +previously obtained. + + +VII + +Secure in their traditional superior strength, however, and with +characteristic complacency in this relation, men have no suspicion of +the sex-antagonism--hatred even--seething against them in Feminism. And +this far from having been annealed or softened, has been, on the +contrary, greatly aggravated by the concessions and new privileges +lately accorded the sex. + +Strange to say, the chief talk of extremist women in their new +War-capacities was bitterest grievance and hostility against the male, +because, although installed in masculine positions, they were denied +rights identical with his; of rank and recognition, of responsibility +and pay. That they held these capacities temporarily merely, and as +novices and amateurs, while men held theirs as experts, for long service +or for superior values by right of masculine abilities, had no weight +whatsoever. Never in all her days of so-called subjection has woman been +so loud and denunciatory of the injustices of The Oppressor, of his +conspiracies and crimes against her, as since she has been yielded a +number of those rights which Feminism claims. + +Feminists will say this is because complete equality in all things has +not yet been granted--has yet to be fought for. The truth is, however, +that the interests and functions of men fail wholly to satisfy the +wholly dissimilar natures of women. But until they have realised +this--the true reason of their discontent--an ever-increasing number of +women will continue to make these their coveted goal, and to chafe with +anger and bitterest resentment against the other sex for denying them +full measure of things--without intrinsic value for them. + + * * * * * + +It needs no saying by me, that, apart from the Feminist extremist +faction, the Woman's Movement includes a number of the sex +characterised by the noblest ideals and impulse, as by the finest +achievements; their creed and aims being pure of self-seeking or +materialist ambitions for themselves or for their kin. And these it is +to whom we owe it, that, amid the clamour and the combat of those +others, the spirit of true Womanhood, devoted, wise and altruistic, is +making itself felt everywhere in modern thought and modern progress. +Such women for the most part discredit Feminism, in many cases directly +oppose both its doctrine and practice. + + +VIII + +The huge numerical preponderance of women must, of itself, presently +swamp all masculine power and initiative in State affairs unless the +political functions of the sexes be separated. Thenceforward, _Vox +populi_ must be the voice of Woman--man's having ceased to be heard. + +And man's chiefest menace lies, be it reiterated to the point of tedium, +in that momentous fact of the biological investment in woman, of the +Racial Trustfund. For this is, at the same time, his sole heritage and +that of the nation. And not only does it constitute her the custodian of +Human Life and Faculty but it makes her arbitress as well of man's and +of the nation's destiny. + +In yielding his House of Parliament, man has surrendered not only his +highest and most characteristic prerogative, but he has yielded the last +exclusive stronghold of his manhood. An entrenchment indispensable to +his difficult task of holding his own against a sex overwhelmingly +superior in number, and chartered, by right of womanhood, with +time-honoured baffling privileges which handicap and defeat him at all +turns. A sex Nature has armoured with charms, moreover, and with +weaknesses for his disarming; by appeal, on the one hand, to his +chivalry, on the other, to his senses. + +Entrenched in his last stronghold, he stood some chance of exerting his +allotted dominance in life's affairs. All his strongholds invaded, he +stands none. + +For the rest, it can only be said that men who should reject their own, +and elect members of the opposite sex to represent them in Parliament, +would by that vote alone of non-confidence in the ability or the good +faith of their kind, proclaim the human male a pitiful failure in +species; an order without specialisation of brain, of character, or of +moral, to give it essential values in Human concerns. + +Woman, on the other hand, would stand acclaimed a Super-Being. One not +only highly-specialised by God and Nature, as creatrix of the Race, and +endowed with gifts to be the Racial nurse and guide and teacher, but, +added to these most vital of human capacities, she would stand +accredited by man with such superior qualifications also for the +administration of the State as to lead him to adjudge her his superior +in this capacity likewise. While her still further pre-eminence is now +to be emphasised by pitting her on equal terms against the male, in all +the Arts and Crafts, the professions and the businesses. + +Truly--poor Super-Being that she is to be--burdened and spent by her +super-tax of faculties and functions, she will need, indeed, to break +into the Racial Trust-Fund, in order to equip herself for these her +multifarious exactions. Because not only will it be her affliction to +produce the Race and mother it, but she must provide for it too; +moreover, must doctor it, play lawyer, parson and accountant to it; +paint its pictures, mould its statuary, plan its architecture, build its +houses, compose its music, blow its trumpets, beat its drums; and, over +and beyond all these, must administer its politics, and serve it +presently, no doubt, as Premier, Primate and Chancellor. + +While it must be merely a matter of brief time, when, to her other +tasks, will be added the manning of its Army, its Navy and Air-Services, +and the serving of its guns. + +Should Feminist aims be realised--and already they are more than +half-won--it will be a case, truly, of _Exit Man!_ + +Rejected on all counts, as possessing no intrinsic sex-values, to offset +woman's vital and pre-eminent one of the creation of Life (for his +biological part in this is so slight and brief as to be unworthy of note +were it not indispensable, and will be insignificant, indeed, when he no +longer serves as highly-specialised agent and artificer of the Racial +faculty); possessing no distinctive qualities and no obligations of +fatherhood, to protect and to provide for offspring, and thereby to +offset woman's vital and important one of nurturing and rearing this; no +more than woman's equal (if that) in the Sciences and Arts, in Politics +and Commerce--Truly no alternative will be left him save to retire, +abased, into the dim background of the Human Pageant; a self-admitted +failure, without place or standing, by virile and exclusive right and +power of body, brain and office. + + +IX + +A more inspiring picture presents itself, however. + +Of a Manhood, worthy of its racial and national traditions, waking +timely to a recognition of its manhood's powers and duties, and, having +emancipated itself from woman's rule in all beside her natural province, +reinstating its supremacy in every virile field and function; and thus +re-shouldering bravely its allotted burdens in Labour, Faculty and +Administration. + +Of a Womanhood re-finding itself also, and finding itself and its +natural lot upon a fairer and a nobler plane--the plane of Life, as +ever, but illumined now by broader outlook, and instinct with higher +understanding. + +And these two working for the common good, of our Anglo-Saxon Race, +recruited by their sympathetic impulse and reciprocal achievement, +having been set, in course of a few generations, upon routes of such a +Human Renaissance as should carry it forward to fulfilment of its +splendid destiny. + + +In this New Human Dispensation would be a House of Women to serve as a +second--a balancing and an uplifting--wing to the House of Men. + +Thus in the national as in the natural life, The Sexes would be most +effectively operating and co-operating; travelling each along its own +inherent and allotted lines, employing each its own intrinsic powers and +fulfilling its intrinsic functions, apart from, but abreast of and in +continual touch with the other; inspiring, fortifying, supplementing and +complementing the attributes, the trend and the achievements, each of +each. + + * * * * * + +Said Mazzini, "_Man and Woman are the two human Wings that lift the soul +toward the Ideal we are destined to attain_." And the value and the +effectiveness of these two human, as of other wings, lie in the degree +to which, although they work in unison, _they move in different areas_; +apart from and independent, each of the other; balancing and +correlating, but, nevertheless, each sustaining its own side of the +body, Vital and Social. + + + + +APPENDIX + + FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL AND MENDELIAN + PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I. + + +I + + _The Male is the impelling force in Physical Development, or + Adaptation to environment_ + +Scientific stock-breeding supplies valuable practical examples of +applied Genetics, or the Science of Heredity. + +Although artificial, in the sense that the creatures of the Stock-yard +are not mated by law of Natural Selection, nor are they bred or reared +under normal environmental conditions, the circumstance that breeders +are breeding for special characteristics, and mate the parents with a +view to the transmission and the accentuation of such, provides +important indications regarding hereditary influence and its determinant +factors. + +Mr. Horace G. Regnart, who has done much to establish Stock-breeding on +a scientific basis, kindly furnishes me with the following interesting +and suggestive data: + +"We Breeders pay more attention to the bull because he can sire fifty +calves yearly; while the cow can produce only one. One can afford to pay +a thousand guineas for a bull, whereas one cannot afford fifty cows at +the same price. And the purchase of a first-class bull is the cheapest +way of getting a good herd. The history of practically every great herd +is the history of some particular bull. As we say, '_a bull is half the +herd_.' It is equally true to say that every great bull is the son of a +great cow. With one highly-prepotent bull we can raise a high-class +herd, even if we start with second-rate females; while a bad bull will +ruin the best herd in the county. It is for this reason that we 'put all +our money' on the bull." + +All of which supports my theory that the male is the impelling agency +in Adaptation to Environment, or evolutionary development on the plane +of physics, and that such progressive development is achieved by way of +the male traits being Dominant upon this plane, and manifesting, +accordingly, in the physical terms of stature and muscle and +force-production. + +The male being the determinant agent in the physical characteristics of +size and flesh and nervous energy--for which breeders of Live-stock are +making--the bull is "half the herd." "With one highly-prepotent bull," a +high-class herd may be raised, even though inaugurated with second-rate +females. Whilst "a bad bull will ruin the best herd in the county." Akin +to which is the circumstance that, in two generations, the improvement +which occurs in the offspring of a New Forest pony-mare when mated with +a horse, lapses; the descendants reverting to the type of the New Forest +pony. + +If, however, the male, being the agent of Adaptation, determines +progressive development in the direction of such physical traits as +further fit species to its material environment, the female it is, that, +being the agency of the Evolution of Life (and of the equipment of +species in terms of Life, accordingly) supplies offspring with the Vital +potential of living cells and vital organs--heart, lungs, digestive and +assimilative organs and functions--which, by engendering the multiple +functions and vital processes of Life, _sustain_ the existence and the +powers of the organism in relation to environment. The female, moreover, +provides it with the Vital potential of reproductive organs for the +transmission of types ever further evolved and adapted, in terms both of +Life and Adaptation. + +The male thus broadly sketches out the lines and supplies the initiative +of structural development. The female supplements the sketch with the +structural potential of living cells, whereby structural development is +achieved; as too with the vital potential of organs whereby living +organisation is sustained and transmitted. + +The great sire, bull or man, generates the great daughter. But since +Life is earlier in origin and precedes Development, the great mother it +must be who first _engenders_ the great son. Because, as I have already +pointed out, Life and Reproductive-Energy must exist in the potential +before they can evolve upon the plane of personal development. In other +words, function precedes structure. The potential of both function and +structure must precede the _development_ of either on the plane of Life. + +Woman, accordingly, is Creatrix of the Race, because in her the Race +becomes potential. Man is Artificer of the Race, however, because from +him the Race receives its powers of concrete development. + +For progressive evolutionary advance, therefore, every new generation of +females must contribute a new complement of Vital potential, equal in +potence to the new complement of Developmental initiative which the new +generation of males contribute, and by way of which the female Vital +potential is differentiated into further concrete powers. Fruitless for +one parent to supply a finer complement than the other is able to render +in terms, respectively, of Life or Development. The female potential +must be adequate to energise the male powers of differentiation. The +male powers must be adequate to differentiate the female potential. + + +II + + _The female supplies the Typal and Vital Potentials of Adaptation_ + +To Mr. Regnart, I am indebted for the following further data, which seem +further to support my view: + +"Ursula Raglan was a Beef-cow that milked heavily. To a Beef-bull, she +produced Gainford Champion--a great bull. While to a Dairy-bull, she +produced the dam of Priceless Princess--about the best Dairy-cow that +ever looked through a halter." + +Here we find the Vital-potential indispensable to the equipment of great +offspring, proved great in the mother, by her Female vital-function of +lactation. While her respective bull-mates appear as the determinant +factors which differentiate this Vital potential in offspring, +respectively, into the Beef-traits (stature and muscle, that is) or the +Milking-traits (Vital function, that is). The very term "Dairy-bull," +signifying a male with power to transmit to female descendants the +purely Female trait of milking, is evidence, in itself, of a female +trait, derived by a male from his mother, passing into the potential, +and lying dormant, or Recessive, for a generation, in his male +organisation, and then emerging again in his daughter. + +The great bull is sire of a great cow--_because he was son of a great +cow_. And he is a great bull because he received from his dam a great +female Vital-potential, for differentiation into greatness of the male +traits that characterise great males. And in his turn, he may sire a cow +greater than his mother, because in passing on to his daughter the great +female Vital-potential of his mother, he passes on a female potential of +greatness to which his own male inherence of greatness has added a +further power of Differentiation. This increased _Male_ power of +differentiation, descending in the female line, however, manifests in +traits of increased _Female_ functioning--the function of milking, that +is. + +The daughter inherits thus from her father the Female potential of her +paternal grandmother, with new power of Male differentiation acquired by +its residence during a generation (so to speak) in a male organisation. +Which new power, when reawakened to function in a female organism, +manifests in a further degree of Femaleness. + + +Male development having progressed along lines of increasing brain- and +nervous power, which the female has ever further inherited, Female +development has progressed along lines of such increasing brain-power as +has enabled her to transform her native simple and undifferentiated +Femaleness into ever further developed and more complex Female _traits_, +or functional and nervous characteristics. + +While, on the other hand, since Female evolution has proceeded along +lines of increasing Life, or Vital Power, which the male has ever +further inherited this increasing Vital power it has been that has +served as _potential_ for the evolution of his Maleness in terms of +higher brain- and nervous power. + +The great cow is mother of a great bull _because she was daughter of a +great sire_. And she was a great cow because she received from her sire +a great male complement of developmental power, which imparted to her +Recessive, and undifferentiated Femaleness, further power of functioning +as female characteristics. And she may mother a son greater even than +her sire because the great male Developmental impetus of her father +becomes in her a greater Vital potential; which, descending in the male +line, engenders further power for the further differentiation of male +characteristics. + + +III + + _Evolution of Species and evolution of the Individual occur on + different planes_ + +The Evolution of Species progresses in every generation by way of each +Sex having derived from the other Sex a new and opposite potential to +engender, in every alternate generation, the further evolution of its +Sex-traits along its own (and contrary) lines. + +It may be considered therefore that Type, or Species, evolves to higher +inherences by way of progressive divergences of Sex-characteristics. +While the Evolution of the individual progresses in every generation in +proportion as parents of both sexes had mated, in the previous +generation, with such members of the opposite sex as were best fitted to +supply, in the gametes contributed to offspring, complements which, by +union with their own, so matched and supplemented their own as to have +quickened and energised the development of offspring to the fullest and +the most efficient issues. In any line, however, a strain of greatness +or of other inherence descends in alternating succession, now in the +female, now in the male line; receding now into the potential, and then +evolving in development. So that while the Individual normally evolves +in every generation, the Type evolves only in alternate generations. + +The evolution of Type, or Species, is the intrinsic function of the +spontaneous Evolution of Life into two orders of Sex. It occurs on a +wholly different plane from that of the evolution of the Individual. But +by way of his, or her, complement to the biological constitution of +offspring, members of both sexes contribute alike to the evolution of +_Species_ and to that of the _Individual_--according as such complement +enhances the power of the traits of the opposite Sex to manifest, and +further to evolve in offspring. + +The intensification in the one sex of its own inherences stimulates a +proportional intensification of the opposite inherences in the other +Sex, both as regards the evolution of the Type and of the Individual. +The phenomenon would seem to be akin to that increase of one electrical +potential evoking a proportional increase of the other electrical +potential, to complement it. When one sex fails to supply its due +potential, or complement, to the other, the evolution both of Type and +Individual receives a check. + +And because the evolution of Type is achieved by the Germ-plasm derived +from a parent of one sex obtaining new increment from being invested in +the organisation of offspring of the opposite sex, it is not until the +new Typal-inherence of this Germ-plasm is revivified again in the +organisation of a member of the Sex from which the plasm was derived, +that such new impulse manifests. Hence the phenomenon of characteristics +being transmitted from parents to offspring of opposite sex. So that +daughters of normal womanly organisation reproduce the Typal +characteristics of their fathers' maternal line; while in sons of normal +male organisation those of their mothers' paternal line emerge. + +Hence too, the reversion of offspring of hybrid plants to the +types,--pure Dominant and pure Recessive--of their grandparents. + + +IV + + _Progressive segregation of Male and Female traits in opposite + sides of body ever further intensifies and differentiates their + intrinsic qualities_ + +The biological constitution of humans and of the other higher organisms +differentiating them into two opposite symmetrical sides, in which, as +development rises higher in the scale, the Dominance, or Maleness, in +them is ever further and more perfectly segregated from the +Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, secures the progressive +intensification, respectively, of Maleness or of Femaleness in them, by +ever further ranging the factors, or traits, of these on opposite sides +of the biological equation; and by thus more effectively centralising +the powers, according to sex, in one or the other side thereof. + +Mendel's peas, not thus differentiated into two sides, are bi-sexual and +self-fertilising. Of the original stock, that order in which Dominant +traits are prepotent is differentiating toward a male _genus_, however. +While the Recessives are differentiating toward a female _genus_. +Although regarded as "pure" Dominants and "pure" Recessives, they are +nevertheless hybrids in respect of Sex. Being self-fertilising, both +Dominants and Recessives are of low power, alike for reproduction and +development. Because the Dominance, or Male developmental power, of the +Recessives being inhibited by the Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, +is of low Vigour. While the Recessiveness, or Female vital power in the +Dominants being unduly expended by the Dominance, or Maleness, in them, +is of low Vitality. The male sex-cells of the self-fertilising Dominants +thus fertilise female sex-cells of low vitality. While the female +sex-cells of the self-fertilising Recessives are fertilised by male +sex-cells of low vigour. + +In cross-breeding, the conditions cease not only to be those of +self-fertilising, but they cease, moreover, to be those of the +close inbreeding of self-fertilisation. In the "hybrids" obtained +by crossing the higher-vigoured male sex-cells of the "pure" +Dominants with the higher-vitalised female sex-cells of the "pure" +Recessives, the Dominants--because Dominance is prepotent for exterior +characteristics--submerge the external traits of the Recessives, which +are prepotent for vital and internal functioning. Such Dominants are a +bi-sexual species in which the male is prepotent. And to be male, means +that they have expended, in terms of structural development, a great +proportion of the female Vital power inherent in them; thus masking the +Recessive female traits in them, as regards exterior characteristics. +But since reproductive power inheres in these Recessive traits, these +traits are preserved in the sex-cells, equally with the Dominant traits. +The plants being not only bi-sexual, but self-fertilising also, the +sex-cells must obviously be bi-sexual too; in order to provide the +organism with factors both of life and development. Every sex-cell is a +hybrid cell, therefore; bearing both Dominant and Recessive traits. But, +like their parents, in some, the Dominant, in others, the Recessive +traits are prepotent. And the Dominant sex-cells mating with Dominants, +the Recessives with Recessives, the original types of so-called "pure" +Dominants and "pure" Recessives reappear in the third generation. + + +V + + _Self-fertilising organism is a female organism with a male + organism differentiated in it_ + +Because the female represents the Life-potential of species and the +Vital potential of organisms, a self-fertilising plant or creature must +be regarded as a female organism, with a male organism of Adaptation, or +Differentiation, developed in it. This male organism energises both its +developmental and its functioning power, and fertilises it; although the +_potential_ of structure, of growth, of function and of reproduction are +engendered in the female organism. The female is the root-stock or +parent-stem of all species, therefore. + +If Dominance is Maleness, and Recessiveness is Femaleness, and if +Dominance energises structural development while Recessiveness engenders +reproduction, a Dominant self-fertilising plant is a female plant, with +a male plant of superior Dominance differentiated in it. While a +Recessive self-fertilising plant is a female plant of superior +Recessiveness, with a male plant of inferior Dominance differentiated in +it. In crossing stock of superior Dominance with stock of superior +Recessiveness, the Dominant prevails over the Recessive in the general +structural traits of the resulting "hybrid," but not in its reproductive +inherence. The new hybrids being male in inherence, nothing is added to +the female reproductive, or Vital, potential in them. The root-stock +transmits to its sex-cells therefore just as its grandmother +did--Recessives of her type, and Dominants of the type of the Dominant +male engrafted on her, of the male grandfather of this third +generation, that is. Hence reversion. + + +VI + + _Sterility of offspring of alien species proves evolution of + Species and of Individual are independent phenomena_ + +The fact that dog and wolf, when mated, breed fertile species, proves +them sprung from the same root-stock. While the hybrid offspring of +different species are sterile. Showing such an intrinsic incompatability +of the alien complements in the zygote as, while operating as no bar to +their immediate union and their development into a complete hybrid +individual, nevertheless bars the incorporation of the alien breed in +the Vital potential of stock. + +Such sterility in the offspring of creatures of different species is +weighty evidence that the Evolution of Type, or Species, and the +Evolution of the Individual are wholly independent phenomena; occurring +upon wholly different planes, and involving wholly different principles +and sets of processes. In the mating of alien species, the two +sex-cells, although of dissimilar species-inherence, unite nevertheless +and develop in the maternal environment into a living entity of mongrel +order. But the Germ-plasm contained in the gamete of one species will +not germinate in the alien environment of an organism of alien species. +No potential, either Vital or of Differentiation, is engendered, +therefore, for production of offspring. Hence sterility results. The +potential of a living individual is seen thus to belong to a wholly +different plane of phenomena from the potential of Stock. Conditions +which do not annul the powers of life and of function in the one, quench +life and function in the other with the seal of sterility. + + +VII + + _Possible explanation of "Sports"_ + +Mr. Regnart says: "We often meet with Sports. Second- and third-rate +parents may produce an exceptionally fine individual, but such animals +are always failures to breed from. The law of Filial Regression comes +into operation. Our aim is to find families that have produced a large +number of fine animals--we know then that we are on safe ground." + +In these cases, it would seem that the "fine individual" results from so +singularly harmonious and successful a complementing and fructifying of +the parental halves in offspring as conduce to develop the best points +of both; doubtless, too, to eliminate or to annul weak or faulty factors +of either parental strain. Neither of such inferior-grade parents +transmitting a fine _lineal_ potential, however, the exceptional +fineness of the individual is not inherent in the Germ-plasm he or she +transmits to offspring. The fine characteristics of such "Sports" are +not transmissible, therefore, to descendants. + +Proof again of two planes of Life and Evolution, that of Species and +that of the Individual. Moral, too, of the importance of fine selection +in mating, since the harmonious mating of second- or third-rate parents +may produce finer offspring than are born of ill-assorted matings of two +finer breeds of parent. + +The case is recorded of a pony about the size of a Shetland pony, which +was the offspring of pedigree Shire-parents on both sides, _both parents +being over 17 hands_. The most striking feature about the animal was +that there was nothing of the _horse_-type about him--he was a perfect +example of _pony_. + +Shire horses are typical examples of Vigour, or developmental power, +expressed in terms of stature, muscle and nervous energy. And for so +long as the breeding for these characteristics was supplemented in terms +of vital organs and vital functioning, by an equivalent maternal +complement of Vital potential, to sustain the constitutional expenditure +involved in stature, muscular equipment, and nervous energy, the breed +improved in these particulars. Pushed beyond this limit, by introducing +into stock further strains of Vigour, or developmental initiative, +without simultaneously providing the indispensable equivalents of these +in increasing Vital potentials, all at once the balance toppled, and +reversion to inferior type resulted. + +An excessive proportion of the Vital power of these two Pedigree Shires +of great stature and great strength had been expended in the +achievement of such great stature and great strength, and in the +equipment of digestive and assimilative organs required to sustain +these. But little had remained, accordingly, for Reproductive +investments. Hence reversion in the de-vitalised stock. + +One conceives of the counterpoise in Stock, of Male and Female +complements, as being akin to that of the opposite and complementary +curves of an arch. So long as equipoise is sustained by the perfect +balance of the contrary curves, so long each re-inforces the other to +support a heavy superstructure of development. Lopsidedness of either +curve leads to collapse. + + +VIII + + _Vigour is Male. Vitability is Female_ + +"Vigour," which breeders regard as a potent factor in heredity, is +commonly confounded with Vital Power, or Vitability; although the two +would seem to be diametrically opposite in cause, in nature and effect. + +An athlete, in so-called "condition," is in the prime of Vigour; his +muscular and nervous powers being at high levels of structure and of +functioning. His Vital powers are proportionally at low ebb, however; as +is proved by his notable lack of recuperative power in illness. He is +bad subject, indeed, in respect of progress and recovery from disease. + +Feeble-minded persons possess but little Vigour of brain or of body, yet +their Vital power, as shown in healthy organic functioning and +vitativeness, is often extraordinary. Vigour is an expression of nervous +energy, and is generated by the brain. Vitability is Life-power, and +results from vital organs efficient both in structure and in processes. +It is engendered in the Reproductive System; which may be regarded as +the power-house of Life and vital function. + +_Vigour_ is the power of Differentiation, or Individuation, of an +organism, structural and functional, physical and mental, in terms of +its relation to environment. _Vitability_ is the intensification of the +individualism and of the functioning of an organism in terms of +Life-power. + +Vigour, being katabolic, a male and a Dominant trait, manifests in man +(as in plants) as Tallness, or the expenditure of vital energy upon the +material plane, in growth and stature; as too in functional initiative +and activity, both physical and mental, on the material plane. + +Vitability, being anabolic, a female and a Recessive trait, manifests as +Dwarfness, or the conservation of vital energy upon the material plane, +in respect of growth and stature; as too in weakness, or inhibition of +vigour and activity, both physical and mental. + +The male trait of Vigour makes men larger, stronger, hardier, and more +resistant to disease than women are. The female trait of Vitability +makes women healthier, more charged with vital power and temperament, +more recuperative from disease, and longer-lived than men. The +complementary inherences of Vigour and Vitability, derived respectively +from the two parents, and supplementing one another in offspring, endow +him or her with fine form and structure, healthy vital organs and +efficient function, power of Life and nervous energy. + +In the normal male, Vigour dominates Vitability; the maternal potential +of Vitability being differentiated in him into its male equivalent. +While in the normal female, Vigour recedes within the Female traits of +vital power and healthy functioning, endurance and womanly faculty. + +The opposite modes of Vigour and Vitality are well shown in disease. In +vigorous men, disease may assume the type known as "sthenic"; +occasioning such violent re-activity, or rebellion, of the system, and +such consequent severity of symptoms as speedily exhaust the resources, +and tend to fatal ending. While Vital power, being anabolic and +conservative, meets the foe passively, and instead of wasting, +economises the forces by moderation of symptoms; bending to the course +and processes of sickness, and making thereby for recovery. Because of +the lesser vitability of their cells, disease in men tends toward +structural, or organic deteriorations. While disease in normal women is +more often functional, merely. + +In masculine women, disease is prone, as in men, to structural +degenerations. Masculine women are very liable to cancer; a liability +they transmit as heritage to offspring of both sexes. Hence the +increasing masculinity of latter-day women has entailed upon the race an +increased liability to cancer and to other structural degeneration. This +liability has assumed such grave proportions as to occur in children +even, showing in the abnormal growths, "adenoids" now so prevalent as to +have become "the normal" of modern childhood. + + +IX + + _The living body is a highly-vitalised Vegetative organism with a + highly-specialised Cerebro-nervous organism differentiated in it_ + +Professor Cuvier said, "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole +animal; the other systems are there only to serve it." + +Professor Bergson amplifies the statement: + +"A higher organism is essentially a sensori-motor system installed on +systems of digestion, respiration, circulation, secretion, etc., whose +function it is to repair, cleanse and protect it, to create an +unvarying, internal environment for it, and above all to produce its +potential energy for conversion into locomotive movement." + +In both statements, is recognition of the Dual differentiation of the +body into an organism of Life which functions in relation to its own +intrinsic being, and an organism of Consciousness which functions in +relation to exterior environment. That in death from starvation, the +brain and the nerves remain almost unimpaired, while all the other +organs and tissues lose weight, their cells undergoing profound +degenerative changes, is further indication of two distinct and separate +departments of development and processes in every animal existence. + +As in its Mendelian phenomena of the Segregation of its Contrasting +Traits, and the Dominance and Recessiveness of these in constitution and +heredity, so, in its living organisation, the human body is +extraordinarily and in a number of ways essentially plant-like. The +brain and the nervous system may be regarded, indeed, as a +highly-differentiated Cerebro-Nervous organism grafted upon a simpler +Vital, and vegetative body, from which, as from a soil, it draws its +life and energy: and from which, as age advances, it gradually withdraws +the power of further sustaining its existence. + +This Cerebro-Nervous graft perishes only because the Vegetative body on +which it is installed has come to the end of its power to sustain the +life of the Nervous organism picketed upon it. + +The close resemblances in structure and in processes between the Cells +of vegetable and animal organisms, when taken in conjunction with a +number of other biological indications, justify the conclusion that +living bodies are actually vegetative organisms to which have been +super-added, by progressive evolutionary differentiations, faculties of +Motion and of Consciousness. + +(Plants are recognised as possessing rudimentary consciousness. While +Growth is a mode of Motion.) + +The trunk, which contains the respiratory, circulatory, nutritive and +reproductive organs represents the Vitative, or Vegetative, system. The +brain with its tributary spinal cord and spinal-nervous system +represents the Sensori-motor organism. While the limbs are +highly-differentiated implements which the Cerebro-Nervous organism has +developed in the Vitative organism; to serve it with means of locomotion +and of action, for the achievement of intelligent purpose. + +The lungs, with their ramifications of tubes and their air-cells, +closely resemble the branches and leaves of a tree, which spread into +and absorb from the atmosphere the oxygen whereby it lives. While the +convoluted intestines are like the roots of a tree, absorbing nurture +for it from environment. + +The Vegetative organism, being the agency of Life, is female in origin +and inherence. + +The Cerebro-spinal organism, being the agency of Adaptation, is male in +origin and inherence. In both, however, the inherences of the other sex +are represented. + +The body resembles thus a bi-sexual plant, its root-stock being female +and Recessive, with a male Dominant and differentiating organism +incorporated in it. + + +X + + _Vegetative body has its own brain and nervous system and its + (involuntary) muscles_ + +This Vegetative body has its own separate (organic) brain, in the Solar +Plexus--or "Abdominal brain"--and its nervous system, in the intricate +"Sympathetic" system of nerves; which, in addition to administering the +nutrition of the body, is intimately and closely associated, in +psychology, with the brain and with the spinal-nervous system of the +Psychical organism. Itself subconscious, this organic brain nevertheless +contributes vital impulse and colour to Consciousness. + +It possesses also its own specialised system of muscles, the +"Involuntary muscles"; which are not under control of the conscious +brain and will, but operate automatically--by so-called reflex action. +The motions they subtend are concerned with vital functions; nutrition, +respiration, circulation, assimilation, elimination, reproduction. + +The Vitative organism, being vegetative of growth and passive of mode, +needs rest and sun and wind and air and water for its nurture and +development. With that rising of the sap in the world of vegetation +which occurs in spring, kindred processes occur within the human +vegetative body. It responds to the re-creative forces of its +mother-earth. + +With every recurring Spring-tide, youth turns again to thoughts of love, +because of this natural renaissance of its vitative resources, for +purposes of re-creation--both of Cells and individuals. + +Old age is a permanent winter of this plant-body. Summer suns revive but +little more than flickerings of its vegetative pulsings. Although the +psychical life, intellectual and nervous, may be still vigorous, the sap +of the plant-body no longer rises, quick and warm and fructifying, to +earth's perennial call. + +This plant-like body with its plant-like fruiting Cells, it is, that +when charged with the graces and magnetic potences of health and high +nurture, supplies the pleasing personality found not seldom in sinners, +while often conspicuously lacking in saints--a seeming anomaly which +has gone far to discredit the virtues. + +By way of it, human personality resembles a mystical flowering plant +that breathes and feels and moves; and a fruiting plant that reproduces. +The Cerebro-Nervous system animates and intelligises this beautiful +vessel of flesh wherein it subsists. + +The vigour of its Vegetative stock, supplementing brain and nervous +system by fine structure, fine stature, organic vigour, native faculty, +and reproductive power, has given the Anglo-Saxon race its world-wide +rule. It is to this that its women have owed their shapely frames, their +healthful constitutions and their loveliness; the warm tints of hair and +skin, the fresh and flower-like complexions, and the fruit-like form and +bloom of cheek for which they once were famed. + +Rich personal charm and sweetness of healthful condition which are all +too swiftly passing from our modern women, hag-ridden by a strenuousness +that is wrecking the flower-body, with its vital joy and warmth, its +grace of being and its bliss of sense, its temperamental thrill and +colour. + + * * * * * + +The doctrine of Evolution is signally incomplete unless we realise it as +a sequence of progressive developments, direct and without intermission, +from the simplest forms of Elemental Matter to the highest, living +orders of Creation--Mineral, Vegetable, Brute and Human being +progressive stages in the evolution of Life and of Consciousness; graded +by links so subtly and infinitesimally constituted as to belong equally +to the kingdom below and to that above them. + +The subject appears full of interest and suggestion, showing all the +planes of Nature, from mineral to man, linked in an unbroken line by way +of this half-vegetable body of flesh, with its roots in earth and its +branches in Consciousness. No more than this briefest of mentions can be +given here, however. + + +XI + + _Mysterious "Internal Secretions"_ + +Biologists tell of Dual planes of operation in the processes of every +organ of the body. Because some of these function on the external plane, +in visible secretions or in other ways calculable by scientific methods, +and they function, too, upon an Inner and occulted, plane; in the form +of mysterious "Internal Secretions," the mode and nature whereof have +long baffled and eluded the most intricate scientific appliances and +intellections. + +What is indicated if not an Inner, and Potential, plane of Life +and vital processes--a _plane of Involution_, or Recession +(centripetal)--whereon factors of environment, air, food, water and so +forth are transformed by vital involutionary processes, into +_potentials_ of living form and function? Which potentials remain +latent, or Recessive, in the cells and glands secreting them, and +available for transformation by evolutionary processes, into actualities +of physical form and function on the Outer (centrifugal) plane of +Life--the _plane of Evolution_. + +And Life and health, together with normality of faculty and function, +depend upon the perfect balance and co-ordination of these two contrary +orders of factors and processes, which, I assume, are engendered, +respectively, in the Male and the Female departments of living organisms +of both sexes. + +All the vital functions--Respiration, Circulation, Digestion, +Reproduction--may be classed as Recessive functions, because they are +characterised by a Recession, or withdrawal, from the Without to the +Within. This is a phenomenon of the _Involution_ of Environment, for +transformation thereof into potential Life, and potential Evolutionary +output. + +_Death_ is a centripetal withdrawal of the soul from the material +Without to an Inner zone of Spiritual, or Potential, Being. And in due +time, analogy assures us, having assimilated and transformed the +resultant of a terrestrial existence into a new potential of Life, Life +issues forth again, by the centrifugal impulse of re-Birth, to +differentiate itself once more in living form upon the Outer plane. +(_Re-incarnation_ is, obviously, the true interpretation of +_Resurrection of the body_, which otherwise is scientifically +impossible.) + +Winter withdrawal, or Involution, of the sap of Vegetation from the +outer plane of functioning to the inner plane of potential Life, whereby +it derives such new increment of Vital potential as, with the outgoing +of sap again in the renaissance of spring, evolves in increased growth +and new foliage, is further example of the principle and processes of +Dominance and Recessiveness--of the female Vital impulse and the male +Developmental impetus, operating in an eternal tidal rhythm of ebb and +flow. + + +XII + + _Dual planes of Mentality: Outer and Material, Inner and Occult_ + +As in the Domain of Life and vital processes, so in the Domain of +Consciousness and nervous processes, there are two planes of function; +an Inner and occulted plane of Mind, or potential Consciousness, and an +Outer plane of material Consciousness; representing respectively +afferent (or centripetal) and efferent (or outgoing) nervous currents. + +Faculty and sense may be regarded as having developed in one direction +along lines of the telescope, with increasing capability to horizon the +Without; while they have developed simultaneously along lines of the +microscope, to reveal an Invisible Within. + +The Senses, which adapt man's Consciousness to environment by the +functions of Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell, have become, with +evolutionary development, so increasingly sensitised in response to The +Without as ever further to have set him in rapport with the world +exterior. While, at the same time, so have they become sensitised in +response to The Within, as ever further to have deepened and quickened +his apprehension of an occulted Interior plane. Faculty has acquired +thus, simultaneously with its increasing power of focusing the Outer and +Objective, an increasing power so to invert its focus as to penetrate +ever more deeply into the Inner and Subjective, alike of man's own +constitution and that of environment. + +These two contrary, but co-operative, modes of mentality are, +respectively, Intellection and Intuition--Male and Female modes of mind. + + +XIII + + _Differentiation of the Zygote, or Mated Sex-cell_ + +I have described, throughout, the right side of the human body as the +male-side--that in which the Male-traits of Humanity are specialised in +the individual; the left as the woman-side, that in which the +Woman-traits of Humanity are centred. + +But the modes of constitution, as of inheritance, are more complex, of +course, than that one parent supplies the potential of one side, the +other parent that of the other side. + +As regards inheritance, the maternal ovum comprises, I believe, the +potential of the whole body, with the exception of the brain, the +spinal-cord and the spinal nerves. But because the mother is descended +from parents of both sex, and possesses, therefore, both Male and Female +elements, the ovum must contain (as must every other cell) both male and +female factors. These, it is conceivable, are grouped, by contrary +polarities, into two areas, or hemispheres; an upper and a lower. Of +these the upper is Male in inherency. It comprises the potentials of +shoulders and spinal column which are fulcra of action, and of lungs and +heart which are the _energising_ organs of Life. The lower hemisphere of +the ovum is Female in inherency. It comprises the potentials of the +pelvis, which is the cradle of Maternity, of the reproductive organs, +which engender Life and the emotions, and of the digestive and +assimilative organs, which engender vital processes. + +So too, because the male parent is likewise descended from parents of +opposite sex, his contribution to offspring must also contain both male +and female factors. But while the mother supplies, in the ovum, the +potential of the whole body--face and head, trunk, limbs and vital +organs, the father contributes the potential of the brain, the spinal +cord and the spinal nerves only, which adapt the organism, by way of +form and Consciousness, to environment. The limbs, which adapt it, by +way of Motion, to environment, may be regarded as differentiations +primarily of the brain and nervous system. + +The ovum is spheroidal; the sperm-cell rectilinear (following the rule +that the line of Maleness is a straight one; that of Femaleness, a +curve). And as in the spheroidal ovum, the factors of the opposite +sexes, grouped into two areas, separate it into hemispheres of opposite +sex-inherency, so in the rectilinear sperm-cell, we may surmise the +factors of the two sexes to be grouped lengthwise, and to separate it +thus into a male side and a female side. Such a sperm-cell penetrating +the ovum, and developing laterally, further differentiates this into +anterior, posterior and lateral areas. The two lateral developments of +this potential brain and spinal cord and nerves eventually constitute +the right and the left brain-hemispheres, and differentiate the body +into right and left sides. + +The left brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and nerves, +is derived from the _male_ side of the sperm-cell; while the right +brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and spinal nerves, is +derived from the _female_ side (by inheritance) of the sperm cell. + + +Weismann describes the Germ-Plasm as being transmitted in the female +line solely, from ovum of mother to that of daughter. + +This supports the above view; namely, that the Germ-Plasm proper is +inherent in the ovum, in which it exists in potential, or +undifferentiated, form, and that it becomes differentiated (in both +sexes) into a right and a left-reproductive gland of contrary +sex-inherence, by differentiative power of the dual-sexed sperm-cell. +The re-polarisation of the fertilised ovum, which is visible beneath the +microscope, would seem to represent this differentiative process. + + +Since the microcosm is as the macrocosm, the Dual constitution must be +repeated in every living cell of the body; the cell-plasma representing +the vegetative system, the cell-nucleus representing the cerebro-nervous +system. Possibly the nucleolus is the Supra- and Subconscious element. + + +XIV + + _Inorganic Matter is Dual and Hermaphrodite. Life breaks up this + Neuter counterpoise, and progressively unlocks and segregates, and + thus reveals and specialises the inherent attributes of Sex_ + +Phenomena of Duality characterise not Living Matter only, but Inorganic +Matter too. The elemental atom is never found manifesting singly, but +always as two atoms coupled together, in the form of "the molecule"; +these mated atoms being of opposite electrical potential. + +And since Living Matter has evolved out of Inorganic Matter--what is to +be inferred but that the duality of the living cell is the evolution, on +the plane of Life, of the duality of the chemical molecule? + +Further, that the duality of living forms in terms of +sex-characteristics is the evolution, on the plane of Living Faculty, of +the duality alike of the living cell and of the chemical molecule; the +two sexes representing, respectively, the contrary inherences of all +these dualities, specialised and ever further intensifying in the +contrary trends of the opposite Sex-traits of Male and Female. + +The elemental molecule is seen thus to be hybrid, or hermaphrodite, in +constitution, precisely as the living cell and the living body are. +While that both living cells and inorganic crystals reproduce, proves +factors of Sex differentiated and functioning in them. + +The inertia of Matter is due to the hermaphrodite state; its contrary +Sex-impulses interlocking and nullifying one another. Life breaks up +this neuter state of equipoise, by increasingly segregating the +dual-sex-inherences and evolving each along its own intrinsic trend; +thereby engendering between their dual factors fructifying +interoperations which result in the motions of Growth and other vital +processes. + +Growth is a phenomenon of Reproduction. Living cells increase their +substance by germination of their bi-sexual elements. Attaining +maturity, a cell divides into two cells, each of which by way of similar +processes develops into a mature cell. + +And since for all Change, two (or more) contrary impulses are +necessary, and since Reproduction is a function of Sex, what is to be +inferred but that Evolution and Growth and all other phenomena of living +cells result from oppositions, co-operations and correlations of the +contrary impetus and processes of two orders of sex-factors present +therein? By way alone of their bi-sexuality, are cells, both animal and +vegetable, able to reproduce the cell-offspring required by living +organisms for processes of growth, of function and repair. + + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY +RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, +BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E.1 +AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + * * * * * + +WOMAN AND LABOUR + +By OLIVE SCHREINER + +Demy 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d. net + +_SEVENTH IMPRESSION_ + + +"At last there has come the book which is destined to be the prophecy +and the gospel of the whole awakening.... Remarkable as this book of +Olive Schreiner's is, merely as an intellectual achievement, its +greatness and its life are in the emotional power which has found its +stimulus and its inspiration in a vision of the future.... A book which +will be read and discussed for many years to come."--_The Nation._ + +"It is a fascinating mingling of keen argument, scientific knowledge, +historical pageantry, rushing emotion, written (need it be said) in that +adorned prose which is Olive Schreiner's characteristic style.... The +book ... is an epic."--Mr. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD in _The Daily Chronicle_. + +"All the qualities which long ago won for Olive Schreiner the gratitude +and admiration of readers all over the globe are here in their old +strength. There is fierce satire; there is deep-souled eloquence. There +is the same quick reasoning, the same tenderness, the same poetic +insight into the puzzle of life.... The feelings which are behind the +various women's movements could not find clearer or more eloquent +expression than they do in this remarkable book."--_The Daily Mail._ + +"It is one of those books which are sunrises, and give us spacious and +natural horizons. Like Mazzini's essays, it is logic touched with +emotion, politics on fire. One may begin to doubt the cause of woman's +rights when the opponents of sex equality produce an equally glowing +earnest and prophetic book."--_The Daily News._ + + +T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C. + + +BABY WELFARE + +A GUIDE TO ITS ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE + +By W. E. ROBINSON, M.D. _Assistant Physician and Pathologist to the +Infants' Hospital, London_ + +Demy 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. net + + +"We congratulate the author on his careful study of the healthy infant, +about whom it has too long been difficult to obtain exact +information."--_The Lancet._ + +"A valuable addition to the literature dealing with the scientific +knowledge of infancy and early childhood.... The book starts with a +brief and easily comprehended exposition of physical characteristics, a +groundwork of great value to intelligent women who desire, from one +reason or another, to be self-reliant as far as possible where their +babies are concerned. A chapter devoted to 'The Healthy Infant' gives in +pleasingly lucid fashion a picture of what a baby should be doing at +each point of its development."--_The Queen._ + +"This book deals fully and clearly with the physiology of the infant; +with dietetics, based on a study of human and cow's milk, as supplied to +it; with the effects of faulty upbringing, more especially of faulty +feeding; the signs, causes and treatment of diseased conditions, and so +on. It should be a valuable aid to the intelligent mother or +nurse."--_Nursing Notes._ + + +T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace London, W.C. + + +WOMAN AND MARRIAGE + +A HANDBOOK + +By MARGARET STEPHENS + +With a Preface by DR. MARY SCHARLIEB, and an Introduction by Mrs. S. A. +BARNETT + +Large crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. net + +_SIXTH IMPRESSION_ + + +The direct purpose of this book is to explain very simply something of +the structure and the use of parenthood, and to show the possibilities +which arise from it--in short, to help women, and men too--in the +understanding of themselves. It endeavours to increase intelligence on +the subject of child-life by letting a clear light shine on those +everyday matters of birth and life which are so often furtively wrapped +in a mysterious and wholly distorting gloom. + + +"'Woman and Marriage' is an outspoken book which should be carefully +read by those for whom it is written. It is not a book for boys and +girls; it is a physiological handbook, thoroughly well written, orderly, +wholesome and practical.... We commend this work to all who want a full +account in simple words of the physical facts of married life. All the +difficulties of the subject are handled fearlessly, gravely and +reverently in this book, and as it must be kept out of the reach of mere +curiosity, so it deserves thoughtful study by those of us whose lives it +touches."--_The Spectator._ + +"If more such books were written, and more such knowledge disseminated, +it would be a good thing for the wives and mothers of the present +day."--_The Times._ + + +T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C. + + * * * * * + +IMPORTANT NOTICE. + + All the works mentioned in this list may be purchased through any + bookseller. They are also obtainable at all Libraries. + + Any book-buyer wishing to see any of the books mentioned before + purchasing them may, on sending to Mr. Unwin the name of his local + bookseller, have the opportunity of so doing. + +T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., 1, ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON, W.C.2. + +CONTENTS + + +HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY pages 1 to 8 +TRAVEL & DESCRIPTION " 8 " 9 +POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY & ECONOMICS " 10 " 13 +BELLES LETTRES " 14 " 16 +POETRY AND DRAMA " 17 +MISCELLANEOUS " 18 +FICTION " 19 to 21 +NEW EDITIONS AND IMPRESSIONS " 22 " 27 + + + Life and Letters of Silvanus Phillips Thompson, F.R.S. By JANE S. + THOMPSON and HELEN G. THOMPSON. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth. + (Spring, 1920). + +21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d. + +This is a straightforward and somewhat intimate account of the career of +a man of great and varied gifts. Born into the family of a simple Quaker +schoolmaster of York his extraordinary energy and devotion to science +carried him into the foremost ranks of physicists, an acknowledged +leader in electro-technology and optics. Both as popular lecturer and as +trainer of technical college students his skill was unrivalled, and +wheresoever he went his enthusiasm for men and things won him +friendships, alike in his own country and abroad. Many of the letters +describe experiences on his journeys, others adventures of the +antiquarian in the pursuit of sixteenth and seventeenth century +scientific literature, and yet others tell of battles for truth in some +field or other. + +The book contains appreciations of his works as original investigator, +teacher, writer, artist, and "prophet," and indirectly testifies to the +warmth of personal regard which the frank geniality of his nature won +for him in many spheres. + + + All and Sundry: More Uncensored Celebrities. By E. T. RAYMOND, + Author of "Uncensored Celebrities." Demy 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Few books this year have attracted more attention or been more widely +read than Mr. E. T. Raymond's "Uncensored Celebrities," a work as +caustic as it was impartial. In his new work Mr. Raymond does not limit +himself to political personalities only, but includes figures in the +Church, such as the Bishop of London and Dean Inge; in literature, Mr. +G. K. Chesterton, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling; in +journalism, Mr. Harold Begbie, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and Mr. Leo Maxse; in +art and music, Mr. Frank Brangwyn and Sir Thomas Beecham. Mr. Raymond +includes also character sketches of President Wilson, M. Georges +Clemenceau, the Duke of Somerset, Viscount Chaplin, Viscount Esher, Sir +Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Ernle, Mr. Speaker, and many other prominent +people. Wider in range than "Uncensored Celebrities" and equally +brilliant, this work may be expected to appeal to even a larger public +than its remarkable predecessor. + + + The Life of John Payne. By THOMAS WRIGHT, Author of "The Life of + William Cowper," etc. With 18 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +28s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Few great authors appeal more to the imagination than John Payne, the +hero of "The John Payne Society," who shrank from the lime-light of +"interviewing." Recognised as a true poet by Swinburne, he was probably +the most skilful translator of the nineteenth century, for we owe to him +a version of Villon's poems which is itself a poetic work of consummate +art, the first complete translation of the "Arabian Nights," the first +complete verse rendering of Omar Khayyam's quatrains, to say nothing of +translations of "The Decameron," etc. Among his friends were Swinburne, +Sir Richard Burton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, French +authors such as Victor Hugo, Banville, and Mallarmé, and the artist who +ventured to depict "God with eyes turned inward upon His own glory." Mr. +Wright by an extraordinary exercise of tact and sympathy was able to +pass the barrier which shut Payne off from anybody who sought to know +the man behind the books. For twelve years before Payne's death in 1916 +he was his most intimate friend, and as, during all that time, he had in +view the writing of Payne's Life he lost next to none of his +opportunities for obtaining at first hand the facts and opinions needed +for his work. Moreover, Payne made him a present of a MS. autobiography +and supplied him with valuable material from his letter-files. Mr. +Wright was, in fact, Payne's Boswell, and no life which may be written +hereafter can have the weight and interest of this vivid book, much of +which gives us the sound of Payne's own voice. + + + A History of Modern Colloquial English. By HENRY CECIL WYLD, B. + Litt. (Oxon.), Baines Professor of English Language and Philology + at the University of Liverpool. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.) + +21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +The book deals more particularly with the changes that have taken place +during the last five hundred years in the spoken forms of English. The +development of English pronunciation and the changes in grammatical +usage are dealt with in considerable detail, and there is a chapter on +idiomatic colloquialisms, modes of greeting, forms of address in +society, conventional and individual methods of beginning and ending +private letters, expletives, etc. The main part of the book is based +almost entirely upon new material collected from the prose and poetical +literature, and also from Letters, Diaries and Wills written during the +five centuries following the death of Chaucer. A sketch is given of the +chief peculiarities of the English dialects from about 1150, to the end +of the 14th century, and special chapters are devoted to a general +account of the languages of the 15th, 16th, and 17th and 18th centuries +respectively. Many questions of general interest are dealt with, such as +the rise of a common literary form of English, and its relation to the +various spoken dialects; the recognition of a standard form of spoken +English, and its variations from age to age, and among different social +classes. The various types of English are illustrated by copious +examples from the writings of all the periods under consideration. This +will be a work of much interest for the intelligent general reader as +well as for the scholar. Professor Wyld is the author of many well-known +and widely read books of which this ought to prove not the least +popular. + + + Zanzibar: Past and Present. By MAJOR FRANCIS B. PEARCE, C.M.G. + (British Resident in Zanzibar), With a Map and 32 pages + Illustrations. Super Royal 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.) + +30s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +This important work deals with the past and present history of Zanzibar. +From the earliest times this island, owing to its commanding position +off the coast of Africa, controlled the great trade-routes which +traversed the Continent from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans, and it +has remained to the present day the Metropolis of the East African +Region. It has known many over-lords, and the author, who is His +Majesty's Representative in Zanzibar, traces the story of this romantic +island-kingdom down the centuries. The close association of this African +island with ancient and mediæval Arabia is demonstrated, and the advent +of the old Persian colonists to its shores explained. Coming to later +times such names as Vasco da Gama and Sir James Lancaster, that famous +Elizabethan sea-captain, are met with; until leaving beaten tracks, the +author introduces the reader to the hoary kingdom of Oman, whence came +those princes of the Arabian desert, who subdued to their sway the rich +spice-island of Zanzibar, and the adjacent territories of Central +Africa. Modern Zanzibar is fully dealt with, and the enlightened Prince +who occupies the throne of Zanzibar to-day is introduced to the reader +in a personal interview. The latter portion of the work is devoted to +descriptions of the ruined Arab and Persian stone-built towns--the very +names of which are now forgotten--which until cleared by the author, lay +mouldering in the forests of Zanzibar and Pemba. The text is elucidated +by a series of beautiful photographs and by specially prepared maps. + +This volume must be regarded as the standard work on the Sultanate of +Zanzibar. + + + The Canadians in France, 1915-1918 By CAPT. HARWOOD STEELE, M.C., + late Headquarters Staff, 2nd Canadian Division. With Maps. Demy + 8vo. (Spring, 1920.) + +21s. 0d. NET. + +Captain Steele, who is already favourably known as the author of the +spirited volume of poems entitled "Cleared for Action," here recounts +the deeds of the famous force sent by Canada to take part in the Great +War. What St. Julien, Ypres, St. Eloi, the Somme, Passchaendaele, Lens, +Vimy, Amiens, Cambrai and Mons, 1918 mean in the glorious record of the +Allies will be fully understood by the reader of this book. + +This is the first complete record of the achievements of the Canadian +divisions to be published. Captain Steele served three years in France, +and participated in most of the important engagements in which the +Canadians took part. + + + Drake, Nelson and Napoleon: Studies. By SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN, Bart., + Author of "The Tragedy of St. Helena," etc. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, + cloth. + +12s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +In this work Sir Walter Runciman deals first with Drake and what he +calls the Fleet Tradition, of which he regards Drake, the greatest +Elizabethan sailor, as the indubitable founder; next the author deals at +considerable length with Nelson, his relations with Lady Hamilton, and +the various heroic achievements which have immortalised his name. From +Nelson the author passes on to Napoleon, and shows how his career and +policy have had a vital relation to the World War. As himself a sailor +of the old wooden-ships period, Sir Walter is able to handle with +special knowledge and intimacy the technique of the seafaring exploits +of Nelson; and Sir Walter's analysis of the character of Nelson, a +combination of vanity, childishness, statesmanlike ability, and +incomparable seamanship and courage, is singularly well conceived. + + + Bolingbroke and Walpole. By the Rt. Hon. J. M. ROBERTSON, Author of + "Shakespeare and Chapman," "The Economics of Progress," etc., etc. + Demy 8vo, cloth. + +12s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +Many years ago, in his "Introduction to English Politics" (recast as +"The Evolution of States"), Mr. Robertson proposed to continue that +survey in a series of studies of the leading English politicians, from +Bolingbroke to Gladstone. Taking up the long suspended plan, he has now +produced a volume on the two leading statesmen of an important period, +approaching its problems through their respective actions. The aim is to +present political history at once in its national and its personal +aspects, treating the personalities of politicians as important forces, +but studying at the same time the whole intellectual environment. A +special feature of the volume intended to be developed in those which +may follow is a long chapter in "The Social Evolution," setting forth +the nation's progress, from generation to generation, in commerce, +industry, morals, education, literature, art, science, and well-being. + + + Seen from a Railway Platform. By WILLIAM VINCENT. Crown 8vo, cloth. + (Spring, 1920.) + +3s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Mr. Vincent must from his early years have cultivated his faculty of +observation, and he has a marvellous memory for what he has seen or +heard. His recollections start from the early 'sixties, when, as a boy, +he got a situation as bookstall clerk, from which position he rose to be +bookstall manager in various parts of the country. His experiences as +bookstall manager on a railway platform, with its continuously shifting +crowds and contacts with various idiosyncracies, are highly interesting, +but he recalls many events that have happened in his time away from the +bookstall, the notorious Heenan fight, the remarkable exhibition of the +"Great Eastern" and others. He gives curious accounts of the early +railway carriages, the treatment of the third-class passenger and much +other lore concerning railway travel in the now distant days. +Altogether, Mr. Vincent has produced a valuable volume of reminiscences. + + + Life of Liza Lehmann. By Herself. With a Coloured Frontispiece and + 16 pp. Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Shortly before her death, Madame Liza Lehmann completed a volume of +Reminiscences. A charming and gifted woman her life was spent in +artistic and literary surroundings. She was the daughter of an artist, +Rudolf Lehmann, the wife of another, Herbert Bedford, one of her sisters +being Mrs. Barry Pain, and her cousins including Muriel Ménie Dowie +("The Girl in the Carpathians") and Mr. R. C. Lehmann, of "Punch." Her +memories include a dinner with Verdi, conversations with Jenny Lind, +anecdotes of Edward VII, Brahms, Mme. Clara Butt, and other celebrities. +As the composer of "A Persian Garden," she became world-renowned, and +her self-revelation is not less interesting than her tit-bits about +other artists. + + + Men and Manner in Parliament. By SIR HENRY LUCY. With a + Biographical Note and about 32 Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo. + +10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage, 6d. + +As "Member for the Chiltern Hundreds" Sir Henry Lucy published an +interesting volume on the Parliament of 1874. The book has been long out +of print, but it again came "on the tapis" as it seemed to the publisher +so thoroughly worth bringing to life again. It is recorded in the +authorised Life of President Wilson that study of the articles on their +original publication in the "Gentleman's Magazine" directed his career +into the field of politics. He wrote to the author apropos this book: "I +shall always think of you as one of my instructors." The book is +essentially a connected series of character-sketches written in the +well-known witty manner of the famous _Punch_ diarist. Gladstone, +"Dizzy," Dilke, Bright, Auberon Herbert, Roebuck, Sir Stafford +Northcote, etc., are some of the leading figures, and lesser-known +M.P.'s resume a vigorous vitality, thanks to Sir Henry's magic pen. + + + Anglo-American Relations, 1861-1865. By BROUGHAM VILLIERS & W. H. + CHESSON. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +This book deals with the causes of friction and misunderstandings +between Great Britain and the United States during the trying years of +the Civil War. The reasons which, for a time, gave prominence to the +Southern sympathies of the British ruling classes, while rendering +almost inarticulate the far deeper feeling for the Cause of Union and +Emancipation among the masses of our people, are examined and explained. +Such dramatic incidents as the Trent affair, the launching of the +"Alabama," and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation are dealt with from +the point of view of their effect upon opinion in this country as +illustrated by contemporary correspondence and literature. Interesting +facts, now almost forgotten, of the movements inaugurated by the English +friends of the North to explain to our people the true issues at stake +in the conflict are reproduced, and an attempt is made to estimate the +influence of the controversies of the time on the subsequent relations +of the English-speaking peoples. + +Mr. W. H. Chesson, grandson of George Thompson, the anti-slavery orator, +who was William Lloyd Garrison's bosom friend, contributes a chapter +which attempts to convey an impression of the influence of Transatlantic +problems upon English oratory and the writings of public men. + + + Woodrow Wilson: An interpretation. By A. MAURICE LOW, Author of + "The American People: A Study in National Psychology," with a + Portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Mr. A. Maurice Low has long been recognised as, next to Lord Bryce, the +most acute, discriminating, and well-informed of the English critics of +America. His long residence in that country and his exhaustive study of +certain phases of American life have given him a background for the +interpretation of their political life. + +Mr. Low has written this interpretation of President Wilson "because the +man to-day who occupies the largest place in the world's thought is +almost as little understood by his own people as he is by the peoples of +other countries, and still remains an enigma," but his point of view as +an interpreter is that of a contemporary foreign observer who, while +having the benefit of long residence in the United States and an +intimate knowledge of its people and politics, may justly claim a +detached point of view and to be uninfluenced by personal or political +considerations. + + + Peace-Making at Paris. By SISLEY HUDDLESTON. Large Crown 8vo, + cloth. + +7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Mr. Huddleston has been one of the most independent commentators of the +proceedings at the Paris Conference, with a keen sense of the realities, +and his despatches have, in the phrase of one of our best-known authors, +made him "easily the best" of the Paris correspondents. This book aims +at giving a broad account of the seven months which followed the +Armistice; but the writer has a point of view and has not told the story +of these memorable days objectively, such as might have been done by any +compiler with the aid of the newspapers. A resident in Paris, he has +lived close to the heart of the Conference, and throws a vivid light on +certain events which it is of the utmost importance to understand. Thus +the famous "moderation interview," which was followed by the telegram of +protest from 370 M.P.'s and the return to Westminster of the Prime +Minister, who made the most sensational speech of his career, came from +his pen. The attitude of Mr. Wilson is specially studied; his apotheosis +and the waning of his star and his apparent lapse from "Wilsonianism" is +explained. There is shown the dramatic clash of ideas. Special attention +is devoted to the strange and changing policy in Russia, and some +extremely curious episodes are revealed. This is not merely a timely +publication, but the volume is likely to preserve for many years its +place as the most illuminating piece of work about the two hundred odd +days in Paris. It is certain to raise many controversies, and it is one +of those books which it is indispensable to read. + + + Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman. Edited with an + Introduction by THOMAS B. HARNED (One of Walt Whitman's Literary + Executors). Cloth. + +8s. 6d. Net. Inland Postage 6d. + +Anne Gilchrist, a charming woman of rare literary culture and +intelligence, who was born in 1828 and died in 1885, was Whitman's first +notable female eulogist in England, her essay on him being a valuable +piece of pioneer-criticism. Admiration in her case became identified +with love; in the 'seventies she wrote Whitman ardent love letters, the +contents of which would have surprised any literary man less acquainted +than he was to heroic candour. Whitman was not insensible to the +affectionate feelings of Mrs. Gilchrist (her husband died in 1861), and +his share of their correspondence is of considerable interest to +students of "Leaves of Grass." + + + Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) + Division. By RAYMOND E. PRIESTLEY, Author of "Antarctic Adventure." + Illustrated. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression.) + +7s. 6d. Net. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Written by a member of the Division for his comrades and their relatives +and friends, the book is first of all intended to place on record for +the North Midland people the deeds of their men during the weeks which +crowned four years of steadfast endeavour during the Great War. + +It has, however, a wider significance, and thus deserves a wider +circulation. The North Midland county regiments were composed mainly of +miners, machinists, operatives and agriculturists: men without military +traditions or militant desires. The last men to take to war without an +all-compelling reason. + + + The Transvaal Surrounded. By W. J. LEYDS, Litt.D., Author of "The + First Annexation of the Transvaal." With Maps. Demy 8vo, cloth. + (Spring, 1920.) + +21s. 0d. Inland Postage, 6d. + +This work is a continuation of "The First Annexation of the Transvaal" +by the same author, and like the previous volume is based chiefly on +British documents, Blue Books, and other official records. References +are given to these, and the reader can form his own opinion from them. +To find his way through the overwhelming mass of documents is only +possible for the man who for long years drew up and signed most of the +papers issued by his Government. For the official records accessible to +the historian are incomplete; they must be supplemented by the archives +of the Republic. Only when this has been done--as it has now by one who +knows--will the history of the relations between England and the Boers +be freed from falsehood and slander. + + + Modern Japan: Its Political, Military and Industrial Development. + By WILLIAM MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN, Ph.D., M.R.A.D., F.R.A.I., M.J.S., + etc. Lecturer on Japanese, School of Oriental Studies (Unv. of + Lond.), Priest of the Nishi, Hongwaryi, Kyoto, Japan, (Spring, + 1920.) + +21s. 0d. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Unlike the book of casual impressions by the tourist or globe-trotter or +a tedious work of reference for the library, Mr. McGovern's book on +"Modern Japan," gives for the average educated man an interesting +description of the evolution of Japan as a modern world Power, and +describes the gradual triumphs over innumerable obstacles which she +accomplished. The book relates how the Restoration of 1867 was carried +out by a small coterie of ex-Samurai, in whose hands, or in that of +their successors, political power has ever since remained. We see +portrayed the perfecting of the Bureaucratic machine, the general, +political and institutional history, the stimulation of militarism and +Imperialism, and centralised industry. It is a vivid account of the real +Japan of to-day, and of the process by which it has become so. Though +comprehensible to the non-technical reader, yet the most careful student +of Far Eastern affairs will find much of value in the acute analysis of +the Japanese nation. The author is one who has resided for years in +Japan, was largely educated there, who was in the Japanese Government +service, and who, by his fluent knowledge of the language, was in +intimate contact with all the leading statesmen of to-day. Furthermore +his position as priest of the great Buddhist temple of Kyoto brought him +in touch with phases of Japanese life most unusual for a European. While +neither pro nor anti-Japanese, he has delineated the extraordinary +efficiency of the machine of State (so largely modelled on Germany), +while, at the same time, he has pointed out certain dangers inherent in +its autocratic bureaucracy. + + +_TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION_ + + + Byways in Southern Tuscany. By KATHERINE HOOKER. With 60 full-page + Illustrations, besides sketches in the text and a removable + Frontispiece, the end papers being a coloured map of Southern + Tuscany by Porter Garnett. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +18s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +In addition to its absorbing historic interest this book has the claim +of recording the impressions of a vivacious and observant lady who +describes what she has seen in modern Tuscany from San Galgano to +Sorano. + +Those who like books which conjure up beautiful historic places and +fascinating romances of real life will be sure to enjoy this handsome +volume. Among the stories related by the author is the harrowing one of +Nello Pannocchieschi told by Dante, the scene of which is the ill-famed +Maremma, mentioned in a proverb as a district where "You grow rich in a +year, but die in six months." + + + The Romantic Roussillon: In the French Pyrenees. By ISABEL SAVORY. + With Illustrations by M. LANDSEER MACKENZIE. Super Royal 8vo. + +25s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +This book is written for a double purpose: to reveal to lovers of +sculpture the beauties of certain Romanesque work hitherto hidden in +remote corners of the Pyrenees, and to suggest to travellers the +attractions of a little country formerly known as the Roussillon, which +now forms part of the Pyrénées Orientales. + +Well off the beaten track, though within easy reach of London, it should +appeal to lovers of fine scenery and to students of Romanesque and +mediæval architecture. + +Miss Isabel Savory, author of "The Tail of the Peacock" and "A +Sportswoman in India," has explored every inch of it. Each chapter is a +witness to the writer's research in the Library at Perpignan, coupled +with a graphic description of the country from an artistic point of +view, and lively portraits of the Catalam as he exists to-day. + +Miss Muriel Landseer MacKenzie, sculptor and great-niece of Sir Edwin +Landseer, gives a series of pencil drawings of which the collotype +process makes faithful reproductions. Apart from their own merit, they +represent subjects of which apparently no records exist, details of +Byzantine and Romanesque architecture discovered in neglected abbeys, +old churches, and ruins in the hills. + +At the end of the book there is a map and a few practical notes for +travellers which indicate that prices are moderate, and that there are +good roads for motorists, though the country is pre-eminently adapted +for those who like the informality of the knapsack and the mountain +path. + + + In the Wilds of South America: Six Years of Exploration in + Colombia, Venezuela, British Guiana, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, + Paraguay, and Brazil. By LEO E. MILLER, of the American Museum of + Natural History. First Lieutenant in the United States Aviation + Corps. With 48 Full-page Illustrations and with maps. Demy 8vo, + cloth. + +21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +This volume represents a series of almost continuous explorations hardly +ever paralleled in the huge areas traversed. The author is a +distinguished field naturalist--one of those who accompanied Colonel +Roosevelt on his famous South American expedition--and his first object +in his wanderings over 150,000 miles of territory was the observation of +wild life; but hardly second was that of exploration. The result is a +wonderfully informative, impressive, and often thrilling narrative in +which savage peoples and all but unknown animals largely figure, which +forms an infinitely readable book and one of rare value for geographers, +naturalists, and other scientific men. + + + Millions from Waste. By Frederick A. TALBOT, Author of "The Oil + Conquest of the World," "All About Inventions and Discoveries," + "Moving Pictures; How they are Made and Worked," "Practical + Cinematography," "The Building of a Great Canadian Railway," etc., + etc., etc. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d. + +In this book, Mr. Frederick A. Talbot, whose many volumes dealing with +invention, science, and industry in a popular manner have achieved such +a successful vogue, introduces us to what may very appropriately be +described as a fairyland of successful endeavour in a little known +field. The present work does not aim at being a treatise upon the whole +subject, because it is far too vast to be covered within the covers of a +single volume. He takes us, as it were, into the less frequented, yet +more readily accessible by-ways, where exceptional opportunities occur +for one and all sections of the community to contribute to one of the +greatest economic issues of the day. + +Every industry, every home, contributes to the waste problem; each +incurs a certain proportion of residue which it cannot use. This +circumstance, combined with the knowledge that it is our duty to +discover a commercial use for such by-products, has been responsible for +many happy stories of success achieved during voyages of discovery which +the author duly records. + +Mr. Talbot does not confine himself to a mere recital of the so-called +waste products. He describes how their recovery and exploitations may be +profitably conducted, so that the present volume is of decided practical +value. He treats of the fertility of thought displayed by the inventor, +chemist, and engineer in the evolution of simple ways and means to turn +despised materials into indispensable articles of commerce. Many of the +appliances are of a striking and highly ingenious character and cannot +fail to excite interest. + + + The Nations and the League. By Various Writers. With an + Introductory Chapter by Sir GEORGE PAISH. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +This important work presents the views of eminent men of different +nationalities upon one of the most burning questions of the day. French +views are supplied by M. Léon Bourgeois, President of the Association +Française pour la Société des Nations, and the famous French barrister, +M. André Mater, whose historical account of experiments already made in +International Leagues, is of high interest. The President of Columbia +University, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, supplies an essay on Patriotism +in which this noble quality is rightly adjusted to a larger idea of +human brotherhood than has formerly been connected with it. Sir Sidney +Low presents a British view, and Messrs. Louis Strauss and A. Heringa +contribute Dutch and Belgian views respectively. Mr. Johan Castberg, +President of the Norwegian Odelsting, and the celebrated explorer, Dr. +Nansen, write for Norway, and the Germans have a spokesman in Professor +Lujo Brentano, of Munich. Sir George Paish brings his long experience +and expert knowledge to bear on the economic questions that confront the +League. + + + Local Development Law: A Survey of the Powers of Local Authorities + in Regard to Housing, Roads, Buildings, Lands and Town Planning. By + H. C. DOWDALL, Barrister-at-Law, Lecturer on Town Planning Law in + the University of Liverpool and Legal Member of the Town Planning + Institute. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +This book, which incorporates the important legislation just passed on +the subject, has been written at the request of architects and surveyors +as well as lawyers, council clerks, and councillors, who have complained +that they have been unable to find the kind of information which it +supplies in a brief, comprehensive, and intelligible form. + +For the law of housing, roads, parks, open spaces, allotments, public +buildings, town planning, private Bill procedure, compensation, and +kindred matters bearing on the public control of land and the use of +land for public purposes is contained in many large volumes through +which even a skilled lawyer finds his way with difficulty. Mr. Dowdall's +work deals with all these subjects systematically and fully, almost in +the form of a code, but it is held together and enlivened by a certain +measure of historical and illustrative matter, and avoids unnecessary +detail by giving references through which the fullest information is +made readily accessible to those who desire it, but perhaps do not know +where to look for it. + +The author is of opinion that local authorities are often imperfectly +aware of the full range and scope of the powers which they enjoy, or of +the manner in which they might be co-ordinated and brought to bear upon +what is, after all, the single and indivisible problem of town planning +and town improvement. + + + My Italian Year. Observations and Reflections in Italy, 1917-18. By + JOSEPH COLLINS. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage. 6d. + +In the latter part of 1917 the author was assigned to military duty in +Italy. The nature of his duties brought him in close contact with +Italians in every walk of life and every part of the kingdom. Italy was +not previously unknown to him, as he had made already frequent visits. +He presents a study of the Italian temperament, describes the different +social classes, gives a study of the governmental machine, describes +various sights and monuments (not at all in the tourist manner), and +altogether writes a very original book. The author has been trained by a +life of observation, examination and deduction, as the work itself +clearly shows. He writes with lucidity and charm, and though, as he +says, he has been since childhood a lover of Italy, he writes with great +impartiality of certain features of the Italian people. Despite the fact +that the war enters the book to a certain extent, its main interest is +by no means the war, but the fascinating study it presents of the +Italian character, ways and manners, and of Italy generally. + + + Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. By W. TROTTER. New Library + Edition. Revised and Enlarged. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. + +8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +PRESS OPINIONS OF THE FIRST EDITION. + +"An exceedingly original essay on individual and social +psychology."--THE NEW STATESMAN. + +"It is a balanced and inspiring study of one of the prime factors of +human advance."--THE TIMES. + +"The main purpose of Mr. Trotter's book, which may be commended both for +its logic and its circumspection, is to suggest that the science of +psychology is not a mass of dreary and indefinite generalities, but if +studied in relation to other branches of biology, a guide in the actual +affairs of life, enabling the human mind to foretell the course of human +action."--DAILY TELEGRAPH. + + + Boy-Work: Exploitation or Training? By the Rev. SPENCER J. GIBB, + Author of "The Problem of Boy-Work," etc. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. + +8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Mr. Spencer Gibb Is well known as a writer on the social and economic +problems which arise from the employment of boys. His new book, is a +systematic consideration of these problems, as the conclusion of the War +has left them, and of the remedies which are being proposed. It seeks to +co-ordinate these reforms so as to lead to a solution of the problem. +But the book is of wider than merely economic and industrial interest. +The problem as Mr. Gibb sees it is not only one of boy-work, but of the +_boy at work_. He therefore examines, with close analysis and +sympathetic knowledge, the psychology and physiology of the boy at the +age of entering upon work and in the succeeding years, and traces the +reaction of working conditions, not only upon his economic future, but +upon his character. + + + The Land and the Soldier. By FREDERICK C. HOWE, Author of "The Only + Possible Peace," etc. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +The author believes that this is the moment for extensive social and +agricultural reconstruction: the large bodies of returning soldiers on +the outlook for work gives an unparalleled opportunity for experiment +toward this; and the war experience of the Government gained in +financing and organising war industries and communities could be applied +with great advantage and effect. The plan is based on the organisation +of farm colonies somewhat after the Danish models, not on reclaimed or +distant land, but upon land never properly cultivated, often near the +large cities, and aims to connect with the communities thus formed the +social advantages of, for instance, the garden villages of England. In +fact, the author advances a broad and thoughtful programme, looking +toward an extensive agricultural and social organisation, and based upon +a long and careful study of experiments in this line in other times and +countries as well as here. + +It is a book that no one concerned with reconstruction can afford to +neglect. + + + The Only Possible Peace. By FREDERICK C. HOWE, Author of "Privilege + and Democracy," "The City," "The Hope of Democracy," etc. Large + Crown 8vo, cloth. + +7s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +Under modern industrial conditions it is conflicts springing from +economic forces that are mainly responsible for war forces that seek for +control of other people's lands, territories, trade resources, or the +land and water ways which control such economic opportunities. Mr. +Howe's work, keeping these essential points in view, is an attempt to +show how to anticipate and avoid war rather than how to provide means +for the arbitration of disputes after they have arisen. Mr. Howe, a +widely known student of economics and international questions, has here +produced a book of the highest importance. + + + Nationalities in Hungary. By ANDRÉ DE HEVESY. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +6s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 4d. + +This is a study of the many and various nationalities of which Hungary +is composed, of their respective characters, and of the problems which +confront these nationalities. The author advocates a sort of United +States of Hungary, giving each nationality the fullest liberty of +internal self-determination. Included in the work is an ethnographical +map of Hungary which is of great assistance to the reader. + + + The New America. By FRANK DILNOT, Author of "Lloyd George: the Man + and His Story," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 4d. + +This volume presents in a series of short, vivacious sketches the +impressions made on a trained observer from England of life in the +United States during 1917 and 1918. Manners, outlook and temperament are +dealt with appreciatively, and there is a good-humored analysis of how +Americans eat, drink and amuse themselves. The chapters include "The +Women of America," "American Hustle and Humour," "President Wilson at +Close Quarters." There is an intimate character-sketch at first-hand of +General Rush C. Hawkins, who raised and commanded the New York Zouaves +in the Civil War, with a narrative of some of his conversations with +Lincoln. + + + Home Rule Through Federal Devolution. By FREDERICK W. PIM. With an + Introduction by FREDERIC HARRISON. Paper covers. + +1s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 2d. + +The author assumes that there is a general consensus that extensive +modifications of our existing legislative and administrative systems are +urgently required, and that all indications seem to show that the +present time offers an exceptional opportunity for dealing with them. He +offers federal devolution as the solution of the Irish question. Mr. +Frederic Harrison makes a valuable contribution to the pamphlet. + + + Bye Paths in Curio Collecting. By ARTHUR HAYDEN, Author of "Chats + on Old Clocks," "Chats on Old Silver," etc. With a Frontispiece and + 72 Full Page Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +The broad way of collecting is crowded with bargain-hunters. Competitors +are keen and prices are high. All real collectors love peregrinations +into the unknown, and have often stumbled upon quaint and long-forgotten +objects which were once in everyday use, but are now relegated to the +attic or the lumber-room. In furniture there are many objects not deemed +desirable by the fashionable collector; in porcelain and earthenware +there is still much that has not reached the noisy mart to be chaffered +over as being rare. There are precious and beautiful things +comparatively unsought and unconsidered. Modernity has forgotten many +by-gone necessities. The tinder-box with its endless varieties has not +escaped studious attention but it has not come into the forefront of +collecting as has the ornate and bejewelled snuff-box with its more +highly attractive appearance. Old Playing-Cards, Old Fans, Silhouettes, +Patch-Boxes, Snuffers, Old Keys, Old Chests and Coffers, Earrings, Brass +Table-Bells, Carved Watch-Stands, Curious Teapots, Tea-Caddies and +Caddy-Spoons, Tobacco-Boxes, Tobacco-Stoppers, have their appeal to +collectors who have specialised and have become experts--that is, have +left the highway of collecting and pursued a delightful search in the +bye-paths. This volume deals with these, among other subjects. + +The author has drawn upon his notebooks for twenty-five years, and has +opened to the reader a wonderful storehouse of miscellaneous information +illuminated with a gallery of photographic reproductions. As a pleasant +guide in the bye-paths of collecting, Mr. Hayden will fascinate those +real collectors who love collecting for its own sake. + + + Shakespeare and the Welsh. By FREDERICK J. HARRIES. Demy 8vo, + cloth. + +15s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +The author has dealt with his highly interesting subject in a manner +both critical and attractive. Not only has he examined Shakespeare's +knowledge of Welsh characteristics through a study of his Welsh +characters, but he has also collected much valuable information +regarding the Celtic sources from which Shakespeare drew his materials. +The opportunities which probably presented themselves to the poet for +studying Welshmen at first hand are suggested, and an endeavour is made +to arrive at an explanation of Shakespeare's singularly sympathetic +attitude toward the Welsh nation. What will strike the general reader +most, perhaps, is the variety of topics which arise around Shakespeare's +Celtic allusions, and a subject of great interest to the Welsh reader +will be the claim that Shakespeare was descended through his paternal +grandmother from the old Welsh kings. The claim is not a mere +speculative one, for a pedigree is given. The work is unique in many +respects, and should find a welcome not merely among Welshmen, but among +all Shakespeare students. + + + My Commonplace Book. J.T. HACKETT. Dem 8vo, Cloth. + +12s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +The title of this bock, it is needless to say, does not mean that the +contents are commonplace. It is a very rich collection of choice +extracts from the verse and prose of famous writers, and writers who +deserve to be famous. Swinburne is particularly well represented, as is +seldom the case in anthologies. The arrangement of the book and the +accuracy of the matter have been the subject of careful consideration. + + + Some Greek Masterpieces in Dramatic and Bucolic Poetry Thought into + English Verse. By WILLIAM STEBBING, M.A., Hon. Fellow of Worcester + College, Oxford, and Fellow of King's College, London. + +7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +The author, who is a scholar, presents in this volume an English verse +anthology of two departments in Greek poetry. Among the passages and +poems which he has rendered are the charge against Olympus by +Prometheus, the "Hymn of the Furies," Iphigenia's appeals to her father +and mother, "Hue and Cry after Cupid," etc. To convey the poet's thought +has been the translator's purpose, and his versions are particularly +intended for the reader who has classical tastes without having had a +thorough classical education. + + + The Legend of Roncevaux. Adapted from "La Chanson de Roland," by + SUSANNA H. ULOTH. With four illustrations by John Littlejohns, + R.B.A. Small 4to, cloth. + +5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d. + +Of all the legends circulating round the name of Charlemagne none is +more famous and popular than that of the Paladins Roland and Oliver. The +poem known as "La Chanson de Roland" is the earliest epic in the French +language, dating in all probability from a period not long after the +conquest of England by William of Normandy and before the first Crusade. +Mrs. Uloth has written a metrical and rhymed version of the most +important part of the "Chanson," namely, the story of the treachery +which led to the battle of Roncevaux, and the thrilling series of +encounters which terminated in the heroic death of Oliver and the lonely +and mystical death of Roland. There are not many rivals in the field, +and her work should, therefore, command a good deal of interest. It may +be added that Mr. John Littlejohns, who illustrates the work, has won a +considerable reputation for originality and charm in drawing and +painting. + + + The Collected Stories of Standish O'Grady. With an Introduction by + Æ. First 3 volumes now issued. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +4s. 6d. NET EACH Inland Postage 6d. + +THE CUCULAIN CYCLE. + +(1) The Coming of Cuculain. +(2) In the Gates of the North. +(3) The Triumph and Passing of Cuculain. + +These three books contain the essential and most beautiful portions of +Mr. Standish O'Grady's "Bardic History of Ireland," the work which +proved to be the starting-point of Ireland's Literary Renaissance. That +work has long been unobtainable, and is now offered for the first time +in a convenient and popular form, which will enable every reader to make +the acquaintance of the most striking figure in contemporary Anglo-Irish +literature. The debt which a generation of brilliant poets and +dramatists owe to the author of these Cuculain stories has well been +described by one of his disciples, who wrote:-- + +"In the 'Bardic History of Ireland' he opened, with a heroic gesture, +the doors which revealed to us in Ireland the giant lord of the Red +Branch Knights and the Fianna. Though a prose writer, he may be called +the last of the bards--a true comrade of Homer." + + +A NEW VOLUME OF THE TALBOT LITERARY STUDIES. + +Irish Books and Irish People. By STEPHEN GWYNN, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth + +4s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Whatever Captain Gwynn writes is worth reading. He has a knowledge of +the literary value of Irish books, and the complex personality of Irish +possessed by few present-day writers, and he imparts his knowledge with +that peculiar detached conviction of the hurler on the ditch. Whether +one accepts or rejects the opinions expressed, they are always worthy of +consideration, while the fine choice of language and beautiful literary +style will well repay a second reading. Capt. Gwynn deals with such +subjects as Novels of Irish Life, A Century of Irish Humour, Literature +Among the Illiterates, Irish Education and Irish Character, Yesterday in +Ireland, etc., etc. + + +To Book Lovers. + +If you would like to receive future issues of this catalogue you are +invited to send a post card to that effect to T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd. 1, +Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.2. + +_Please write your name and full address clearly._ + + + Swords and Flutes. Poems. By WILLIAM KEAN SEYMOUR. Crown 8vo, + cloth. 4s. net. + +4s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 3d. + +WHAT THE CRITICS SAY OF MR. SEYMOUR'S WORK. + +"We recognise not so much audacity of experiment as a sound loyalty to +the best standards of the past, and an almost acute appreciation of +beauty both of vision and form.... Mr. Seymour's poetry is full of rich +and multi-coloured pageantry, a sheer delight to the eye and +imagination."--THE BOOKMAN. + +"Mr. Seymour's verse is full of a haunting, fugitive sense of beauty, +and owes allegiance to a school of lyric craftsmanship which is rapidly +falling out of date. But it is something more than this. Mr. Seymour +believes that poetry should not only beautify, but interpret +life."--DAILY TELEGRAPH. + + + "The Measure" and "Down Stream." Two Plays. By GRAHAM RAWSON, + Author of "Stroke of Marbot," etc. Crown 8vo. Paper Cover. + +4s. 0d. NET. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Feminism and Sex-Extinction</p> +<p>Author: Arabella Kenealy</p> +<p>Release Date: November 9, 2011 [eBook #37964]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Martin Pettit,<br /> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive/American Libraries<br /> + (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td align="left"> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/feminismsexextin00kenerich"> + http://www.archive.org/details/feminismsexextin00kenerich</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold2">FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p> + +<div class="block"> +<p class="bold">OLIVE SCHREINER'S GREAT BOOK</p> + +<p class="bold2">WOMAN & LABOUR</p> + +<p class="center"><i>Large Crown 8vo. Cloth.</i></p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. net</p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p>"The feelings which are behind the various women's movements could not +find clearer or more eloquent expression than they do in this remarkable +book."</p> + +<p class="right"><i>The Daily Mail.</i></p> + +<p>"At last there has come the book which is destined to be the prophecy +and the gospel of the whole awakening."</p> + +<p class="right"><i>The Nation.</i></p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p class="center">T. FISHER UNWIN, <span class="smcap">Ltd., London.</span></p></div> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p> + +<h1><span>FEMINISM AND<br />SEX-EXTINCTION</span><br /><br /> +<span id="id1">BY</span> <span>ARABELLA KENEALY<br /></span></h1> + +<p class="center">L.R.C.P. (<span class="smcap">Dublin</span>)</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p class="center">"<i>A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can<br /> +a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.</i>"<br /> +<br /> +"<i>Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them.</i>"</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p class="center">LONDON<br />T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.<br />1 ADELPHI TERRACE</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center"><i>First published in 1920</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>FOREWORD</span></h2> + +<p>Feminism, the extremist—and of late years the predominant cult of the +Woman's Movement, is Masculinism.</p> + +<p>It makes for such training and development in woman, of male +characteristics, as shall equip her to compete with the male in every +department of life; academic, athletic, professional, political, +industrial. And it neither recognises nor admits in her natural +aptitudes differing from those of men, and fitting her, accordingly, for +different functions in these. It rejects all concessions to her +womanhood; even to her mother-function. It repudiates all privileges for +her. Boldly it demands a fair field only and no favour; equal rights, +political and social, identical education and training, identical +economic opportunities and avocations, an identical morale, personal and public.</p> + +<p>In <i>Woman and Labour</i>, Miss Olive Schreiner sums in a line the Feminist +objective: "<i>We take all labour for our province.</i>" And this is the text +of the Feminist creed; the elimination of sex-differences and the +abolition of sex-distinctions in every department of life and activity.</p> + +<p>Feminists anticipate—the militant faction with zest—fierce economic +encounters between the sexes now that, War ended, our men, having fought +their own and woman's battle in the trenches, are returning to reclaim +their places in the world of work. Secure in that possession which is +"nine-tenths of the law," and armed with their new powers of +enfranchisement, it is further<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> anticipated that the usurpers will be +able triumphantly to stem the masculine reflux, and to retain, on all +hands, their new industrial footing.</p> + +<p>By showing that, contrary to Feminist doctrine, the division of Labour +into two sexes, so to speak, is as natural and is as indispensable to +Human Progress as is the division of Life into two sexes, the purpose of +this book is to dissuade women from exploiting a world's misfortunes for +their own immediate profit, and to reconcile them, in their profounder +and more vital interests and in those of the Race, to surrender freely +all the essentially masculine employments into which mischance has cast them.</p> + +<p>Human evolution and progress have resulted absolutely from an opposite +trend, in inherence and development, of the two sexes, as regards Life +and characteristics, aptitude and avocation. The progressive +differentiations and specialisations of vital processes and living +forms, whereby human character and faculty have been increasingly +advanced to higher powers, reach their most admirable culmination in the +complex division of Humanity into two genders; each of which is enabled, +by way of such complex specialisation, to promote, to intensify and to +dignify its own allotted order of qualities. To oppose and frustrate +this natural dispensation, whereby Human development is achieved by the +two sexes travelling along diametrically opposite lines of Ascent, is to +nullify all that civilisation has secured, and to transform the impulse +of Progress into one of Decadence.</p> + +<p>Nature, marvellously prescient in all her processes, has provided that +the sexes, by being constituted wholly different in body, brain and +bent, do not normally come into rivalry and antagonism in the fulfilment +of their respective life-rôles. Their faculties and functions, being +complementary and supplementary (and obviously best applied, therefore, +in different departments<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> of Life and of Labour), men and women are +naturally dependent upon one another in every human relation; a +dispensation which engenders reciprocal trust, affection and comradeship.</p> + +<p>Feminist doctrine and practice menace these most excellent previsions +and provisions of Nature by thrusting personal rivalries, economic +competition and general conflict of interests between the sexes.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Should any reader find in these pages allusions and passages which, +without biological or medical knowledge, may not be wholly clear to him, +let him remember that these are addressed to such as have dipped more +deeply into the subjects dealt with.</p> + +<p>The main outlines and implications of the new Hypothesis presented here, +of the origin and evolution of Sex, are all that he requires to grasp, +in order to follow the argument of the book in its relation to Feminist methods.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Arabella Kenealy</span>, L.R.C.P.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CONTENTS</span></h2> + +<table summary="CONTENTS"> + <tr> + <td colspan="2" class="left"><span class="smaller">CHAP</span></td> + <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td></td> + <td class="left"> FOREWORD</td> + <td><a href="#Page_v">v</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="3" class="center">BOOK I</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="3" class="center">WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>I.</td> + <td class="left"> IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM</td> + <td><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top">II.</td> + <td class="left"> INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND<br /> + FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONS<br /> + ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE</td> + <td style="vertical-align: bottom"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>III.</td> + <td class="left"> THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION</td> + <td><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>IV.</td> + <td class="left"> ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE</td> + <td><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top">V.</td> + <td class="left"> MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS<br /> + BY MISAPPROPRIATING THE LIFE-POTENTIAL OF<br /> + MALE OFFSPRING</td> + <td style="vertical-align: bottom"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="3" class="center">BOOK II</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="3" class="center">WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top">I.</td> + <td class="left"> DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS<br /> + DUE TO FEMINISM</td> + <td style="vertical-align: bottom"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>II.</td> + <td class="left"> THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE</td> + <td><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>III.</td> + <td class="left"> THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE</td> + <td><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>IV.</td> + <td class="left"> THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES</td> + <td><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top">V.</td> + <td class="left"> MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE<br /> DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT</td> + <td style="vertical-align: bottom"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top">VI.</td> + <td class="left"> FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS<br /> + TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN FACULTY</td> + <td style="vertical-align: bottom"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>VII.</td> + <td class="left"> FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE<br /> + OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE AND PROGRESS</td> + <td style="vertical-align: bottom"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top">VIII.</td> + <td class="left"> DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO<br /> + ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS</td> + <td style="vertical-align: bottom"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>IX.</td> + <td class="left"> THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN</td> + <td><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="3" class="center">APPENDIX</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan="2" class="left">FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF BIOLOGICAL AND<br /> + MENDELIAN PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I</td> + <td><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>BOOK I</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER I</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The sexual love which has its origin in what is external and +accidental may easily be turned to hate, a kind of madness that is +nourished on discord; but that love, on the other hand, is lasting +which has its source in freedom of soul and in the will to bear and +bring up children."—<i>Spinoza.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>There is no subject save that of Religion about which so much +impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written as has been spoken and +written round the Woman Question.</p> + +<p>For more than half a century—since Mill wrote his famous <i>Subjection</i>, +indeed—it has become an increasing vogue to regard Woman as a martyr; +more or less sainted, more or less crushed and effaced beneath the +iron-heeled tyrannies, personal, economic, and political, of the +oppressor, Man. And it has been in the spirit of this conviction and in +fervid endeavours—indignant and chivalrous on the part of the one sex, +and still more indignant and but little less chivalrous on the part of +the other—to liberate unhappy victims from a barbarous oppression, that +most of the impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written, and doughty deeds done.</p> + +<p>At the certain cost, therefore, of being stigmatised as a reactionary +(severely qualified), I propose to unmask some of these which I believe +to be baseless obsessions, and to present a wholly new—and, I hope, a +more veracious and inspiring version of the case between the sexes.</p> + +<p>To begin with, I assert boldly that the so-called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> Subjection of Woman, +very far from having been a cruel injustice merely, on the part of man, +has served, on the contrary, as a blessing and an inestimable benefit +not only to herself but to the Race bound up in her. A blessing often +rough and painful in its methods, during epochs when all other methods +were both rough and painful, attended, too, by wrongs and cruelties; +yet, in the main, operating vastly to her well-being and advancement +and, in hers, to those of the Race.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Looking back upon the hard and bloody routes of Evolution whereby the +human Races have attained to present-day developments, we see our +forbears groping blindly, fighting blindly, advancing blindly; +stumbling, falling, picking up again; making new departures only +hopelessly to lose the road; making new departures, now to find it and +trudge on. In all its painful and laborious phases, a terrible and +sordid climb. Yet, nevertheless, in its great annals of Ascent, a noble +and a wondrous March of Progress.</p> + +<p>And whether we are Religionists or Evolutionists—or are sufficiently +broad-minded to be both—the history of Life is seen to have been a +history of deathless effort, never ceasing, never waning; renewed with +every generation; intensified by every further acquisition of new power, +as, with every further recognition of new goals and problems, the +ever-increasing Purpose and the ever-increasing perplexity and +complexity of The Purpose revealed itself at every step. It becomes +increasingly clear, moreover, that Creation, or Creative Evolution (to +employ Professor Bergson's phrase), has been the resultant of a +progressive aggregation of Atomic Matter about some vast immanent +<i>Idea</i>, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees materialising in the +objective. Very much as bricks are grouped about the pre-conceived plan +of a house, and could not be assembled in the building of the simplest +tool-hut without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>predetermination of the site of every brick, and of +the relation of every brick to every other.</p> + +<p>And in all those past ages of conflict, bringing Order out of Chaos, +Progress out of Order, and an ever-increasing domination of blind Energy +and Inorganic Matter by Mind and Purpose, the fighting male it has been +who, in his conquest of the Earth as in his conquest of other fighting +males, both brute and human, has borne the greater heat and burden of +the day. Women have striven also—toil has been the crux of their +development as of their mates. But men have striven twofold. While women +toiled in the security of homes, the sword, the blunderbuss or +press-gang, or the equivalent of these, according to the epoch, awaited +men and still await them at most street-corners of the arduous male career.</p> + +<p>Women have suffered more, <i>psychically</i>; because this way lay their +nature and their human lot. Men have suffered more, <i>materially</i>; +because here lay theirs. And since advancement comes by suffering, women +are reaping to-day the harvest of past travail of their sex, in the +higher psychical development which now characterises that sex. During +centuries when men were vastly too hard-pressed by the struggle for +barest existence to have been aware that they possessed souls, women +were privileged to be aware of theirs—by the affliction thereof.</p> + +<p>The immediate purpose of this fencing of the women behind the stronger +frames, the stronger wills, and stronger brains of fighting males was +the Racial one, of course. While men battled with environment and with +alien aggressors for their lives and for their food, as for those of the +family, the sheltered women were alike the loom and cradle of the Race. +As well, they made havens, or homes, for the fighters to return to for +sleep and refreshment. They plied a simple, primitive agriculture, +practised a primitive healing art, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>otherwise evolved The +Humanities. But since mortal power is limited, power expended in one +direction is power withdrawn from some other. Power spent in battle is +power lost to progress. The woman who, with the instinct for home and as +shelter for her babes, laid the foundations of Architecture in a hut of +mud, was enabled to do this solely by virtue of masculine protection.</p> + +<p>It is in peace only that Progress arises, in leisure that The Arts +evolve. And woman, walled in by the lives of the males, found leisure of +body and mind to pluck flowers for the adorning of her hut, to shape +platters of clay, and, later, even for embellishment of these with crude +designs. Thus she was the first artist.</p> + +<p>The fighting male was—by necessity—destructive. He invented a club. +The female was—by privilege—constructive. She invented the needle (a +fish-bone, doubtless). And while the male transmitted to offspring his +virile fighting and destructive qualities, woman tempered and humanised +these by incorporating with them her milder traits and artistries of +peace. Lacking the male aggressive and protective faculties, however, +increasing in skill and resource with his ever further Adaptation to +(and of) environment, woman's gentler and humanising aptitudes would +have had neither opportunity for evolution, nor scope for exercise and further sway.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>I have been reading an account, by a naturalist, of some phases in the +life-history of crabs. And it is interesting to find even among +creatures so low in the Life-scale (although Darwin regarded these as +the most intelligent of <i>crustaceæ</i>) that same instinct of protection of +the female which is seen in the higher orders of creation.</p> + +<p>A crab, being encased in an unyielding shell, is able to increase its +growth only by "casting" its shell and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> developing one of larger size +over its increased bulk. During the interval between casting an old +shell and acquiring a new one, the crab in its soft, pulpy condition is +readily injured, or falls prey to its natural enemies. To protect itself +as well as may be, it shelters in rocky crevices or in other available +hiding-places. This shell-casting occurs in both sexes, of course. But +the circumstances under which the change is made differ widely in the +sexes. For while the male-crab has no protector during his defenceless, +shell-less state, his shell is cast a month or more earlier than occurs +in the female; after which he feeds up, in order to be in superior +fighting trim for her protection during her shell-casting phase. +Fishermen describe him as then spreading himself over her as a hen +covers her chicks, and in her defence desperately attacking all comers. +The result of such protection of the female is that, although males are +larger and fiercer, "hen-crabs" are numerous, while males are scarce.</p> + +<p>The like is true of nearly every species. The males protect the females. +Even the gorilla, savage and most terrible of beasts, lies at night on +guard beneath the tree in which his mate and offspring sleep. If need +arise, he fights to the death in their defence.</p> + +<p>With regard to the chivalrous devotion of male-birds, Olive Schreiner +thus comments in <i>Woman and Labour</i> (an example of that I have ventured +to describe as the "impassioned fallacy" hurtling round the Woman +Question): "Along the line of bird-life and among certain of its +species, sex has attained its highest æsthetic, and one might almost say +intellectual, development on earth ... represents the realisation of the +highest sexual ideal which haunts humanity."</p> + +<p>(This however, less, I fear, to accredit the male-sex with chivalry than +to discredit the human male by ornithological comparison!)</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p><p>One does not profess that such protective rôle of males—beast and bird +and crab—is the outcome of sentiment. It is instinctive, subconscious. +Nature's purpose being to preserve and to perpetuate species, she +achieves this by safeguarding the female. The province of the male in +reproduction is but slight and brief. It exacts so little from him as to +interfere not at all with those other masculine activities which are the +function of his sex.</p> + +<p>Whereas, as Professor Lester Ward says, "Woman [and the female of all +species] <i>is</i> the Race." Out of her blood and bone and vital powers she +evolves and fashions it, nurtures and ministers to it.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>For the preservation of species, two rôles are essential: the Male rôle +of Combat, demanding strength and boldness, resource and +fighting-quality, in order to protect and provide for the female and +offspring; and the Female rôle of Devotion and Self-surrender, in order +to nurture offspring ante-natally, and, after birth, to nurture and to +tend its helplessness.</p> + +<p>Now all but biologists, perhaps, take it as matter-of-course that Love +had its origin in Sex.</p> + +<p>Seeing love between the sexes as the strongest and most dominant of the +civilised passions, it is natural to infer that it was born of the +instinctive attraction between male and female, and that this +instinctive attraction, with the growth and expansion of faculty, mental +and temperamental, has evolved to the high and tender issues to be found +in latter-day romantic passion; theme of poets, novelists, artists; +richest and most exquisite of life's emotions; inspiration and motive of +the finest human achievements. A passion which, for a space at least, +transfigures the natures and ennobles the lives of all but the crass and the sordid.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p><p>Nevertheless—Love did not arise out of sex. The sex-relation in primal +men and women held no element of affection; no sympathy, tenderness, +self-sacrifice, or other attribute of Love. On the part of the female, +it was compulsory surrender and the habit of surrender to superior +strength, mitigated, doubtless, by a subconscious instinct to secure +offspring. In the male, it was impulse as tyrannous and selfish as was +the instinct to kill. Like the instinct to kill, a factor in it made for +fitness for survival. There was in it, accordingly, an element of +instinctive selection. But the selection made for survival-fitness +merely in the mate. It owed nothing to sentimental appeal exercised by +one female, and lacking in another. The instinct to mate was implanted +by Nature for the continuation of species. If its observance contained +an element of gratification, it held no more of reciprocity than did the +gratification of that stronger lust, to kill, include a consideration of +the feelings of the prey, or than greed of any other form of possession +extends a grace of reciprocal benefit to the thing acquired.</p> + +<p>Modern savages have no conception of sexual love. There are no +love-songs, no courtship, no affection in their matings. The males marry +mainly in order to secure wives to work for them. And they select strong +women because these are best fitted for work. Or they select women who +have some or another small possession. Biological instinct is a factor, +doubtless, but it is not a factor of sentiment.</p> + +<p>In his fine book, <i>Natural Law in the Spiritual World</i>, Professor Drummond says:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Probably we have all taken for granted that husbands and wives +have always loved one another. Evolution takes nothing for granted +... in the lower reaches of Human Nature, husband and wife do not +love one another ... for the vast mass of mankind during the long +ages which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> preceded historic times, conjugal love was probably all +but unknown....</p> + +<p>"The idea that the existence of sex accounts for the existence of +love is untrue. Marriage among early races has nothing to do with +love. Among savage peoples, the phenomenon everywhere confronts us +of wedded life without a grain of love. Love then is no necessary +ingredient of the sex-relation; it is not an outgrowth of passion. +Love is love and has always been love, and has never been anything lower."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Even to-day, despite the evolution of the higher faculties, despite long +centuries of inherited habit and tradition, and despite the circumstance +that in all the nobler types of men and women the sex-instinct is +spiritualised by affection and understanding—Even in this late day of +civilisation, the male sex-instinct may be seen still in all its native +tyranny and selfishness; seeking gratification in sensuality and +cruelty, with callous disregard alike of the welfare as of the suffering +of its victim. In the violation of women and children that occurs both +in peace and in war, the instinct manifests as an impulse of aggression, +and the sex-function as one of brutality or ruthless lust.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>Respecting the origin of Mind and Emotion, Charles Darwin said:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the +lowest organisms, is as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself first originated."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And Huxley:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I know nothing, and never hope to know anything of the steps by +which the passage from molecular movement to states of +consciousness is effected. The two things are on two utterly +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>different platforms, the physical facts go along by themselves and +the mental facts go along by themselves."</p></blockquote> + +<p>While Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace (the biologist who was working out the +theory of Natural Selection simultaneously with Darwin, both unaware +that the other was working in the same direction) attributes to a +Creative act of God, all the moral and intellectual qualities which have +been super-added in man to those lesser and simpler ones he possesses in +common with the higher animals. Wallace describes this as a "Divine +Influx," and regards it as being wholly distinct and apart from the slow +and gradual processes of Natural Selection.</p> + +<p>But yet, in point of fact, what was it that inspired and energised the +earlier processes, if not this same Divine Influx? The simpler processes +must, from their earliest rudimentary beginnings, have been leading up +to the later and more complex. And the later and more complex were, +surely, continuous with the simpler—since Nature abhors miracles, and +works by slow progressive biological sequences.</p> + +<p>Nothing shows as more impersonal than a crystal; cold, hard, senseless, +motionless. And yet in crystals is the element of Life, even the power +of reproduction, showing factors of sex already operative in them. While +living bodies, charged with warmth, mobility, sentience, intelligence, +have Inorganic Matter for their basis of construction. And that +Inorganic elements are very far from being the impersonal things they +seem, but are linked by subtle correspondences to living Mind and vital +powers, is shown by their effects on living processes and consciousness. +Given as medicines, digestion (which is a species of rapid evolution +from lower to higher forms of energy) develops such vital inherences +within them as prove their apparent impersonality to contain a principle +continuous not only with living processes, but with the highest mentality.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p><p>Professor Leduc observes in his illuminating book, "The Mechanism of +Life," "<i>the ordinary physical forces have, in fact, a power of +organisation infinitely greater than has been hitherto supposed by the +boldest imagination</i>."</p> + +<p>Coralline structures and beautiful shells, fungi, leaves, and plants +bearing coloured, flowerlike blooms spring into growth when a formless +fragment of calcium salt is dropped into a chemical solution. And these +"Osmotic growths," artificially produced, possess far greater complexity +of structure and of function than do the simpler living organisms of Nature.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>The evidences of a Vast Stupendous Plan, which every further scientific +discovery still further emphasises, are slowly forcing from our men of +Science the confession that behind the marvellous phenomena their +findings reveal, and which they are powerless to explain, must lie a +Cause, occult and irresistible, an Impulse, all-pervading, incomprehensible.</p> + +<p>Bergson describes an <i>élan vital</i>—a living impetus—determining such +phenomena.</p> + +<p>In his Presidential address to the British Association at Dublin, in +1908, Professor J. S. Haldane summed up as follows the position of +Physiological Science: "The point now reached is that the conceptions of +Physics and Chemistry are insufficient to enable us to understand +physiological phenomena."</p> + +<p>Weismann says: "Behind the co-operating forces of Nature, we must admit +a Cause ... inconceivable in its nature, of which we can only say one +thing with certainty, that it must be theological."</p> + +<p>Drummond says: "Evolution is Advolution,—better, it is Revelation—the +phenomenal expression of the Divine, the progressive realisation of the +Ideal, the Ascent of Love."</p> + +<p>If, then, we admit Life to be the product of a Divine Influx, whereby +Inorganic Matter has been, by way of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> evolutionary processes, +increasingly empowered to fructify in living form and faculty, Human +Attributes are seen to be the flower of Spiritual seed, which, sown in +Life, has germinated; has struck roots of biological function into +living flesh and put forth leaves in living traits; has developed in +physiological processes and blossomed in powers of Mind and of body. And +as the stronger and deeper the grip of its roots in the earth, the +taller and nobler the oak towers heavenward, so it must be with human +characteristics. The deeper and more firmly the seedling faculties +strike roots in living function, the fuller and more potent springs the +impulse toward that evolutionary perfection which is the goal of Human Being.</p> + +<p>If, however, living processes are the resultant of a Divine Influx, they +are Spiritual processes. Life is then a manifestation in Matter, of +Spirit. All the developments of Life are Spiritual phenomena, therefore. +The imperfection and evil found in living creatures are not attributes +of Life. They are crudities of rudimentary organisation, or are failures +in or aberrations from the normal development of Life.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>In the Evolution of Faculty, living traits are seen to have been all the +while attaining to higher power by the differentiation and development +of special organs to subserve their fuller function, their finer +conscious apprehension, and their more complex manifestation on the material plane.</p> + +<p>The brain has been specialised thus to serve as the organ of +Consciousness; the eye, of Vision; the ear, of Hearing; the hand, of +Touch and of manipulation. The lowest organisms possess no such +specialised organs of sense or of consciousness. Nor are they equipped +with special reproductive organs. They reproduce by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> cleavage; by +budding a small portion of themselves, which, when separated, grows to a mature organism.</p> + +<p>With other differentiations and specialisations of Function and Faculty, +there has developed—for the all-important racial purpose of creating +ever higher and more potent living species—the highly-complex human +reproductive system, which, by its close and subtle nervous alliance +with the brain, has become the medium and the instrument of a new and +irresistible emotion. So that it serves not only for the perpetuation of +a complex species, but, moreover, for the attraction, by natural +affinity, of the mates best suited to one another.</p> + +<p>And in course of evolutionary progress, the emotion of Love has been all +the while more and more so leavening and inspiring sex-attraction with +its purer and more tender attributes, that human passion has come to +combine—in those of higher nature—the flame and energy of physical +attraction with the tenderness and devotion of altruistic affection. +With the result that human parenthood, thus quickened and spiritualised, +has become ever further empowered to evolve more highly intelligised, +more beautiful and more efficient types of offspring.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>That Passion, pure and simple, has evolved out of the Male sex-instinct +is certain. Even in its chivalrous development of romantic passion, are +found, in transfigured form, that flame and urgence for possession which +manifest crudely and cruelly in the primal male-instinct. Without this +virile ardour, indeed, the sex-relation is but a poor and tepid, or a +cold and sensual thing.</p> + +<p>Yet Passion is not Love.</p> + +<p>That meekness and forbearance, humility and self-surrender have been +reared in the Female sex-instinct of submission to passion (primarily in +aversion and fear more often than in acquiescence) is equally certain. +And without these chastening factors to temper, soften<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> and anneal, the +sex-relation is a fierce and tyrannous concern. But no more than +passion, is submission Love. Neither in passion nor in submission, pure +and simple, is there joy of surrender or welding communion.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, since every human faculty must have its roots in living +function, and every living function must possess some physical organ in +which its processes occur, from what human function sprang the Love that +is selfless, altruistic and pitiful; soul and inspiration of the most +sacred emotions—self-sacrifice, charity, mercy, devotion, tenderness? +In what nursery of Human Consciousness was this fair and gentle blossom +sown; to spring, to develop, and to make for gracious growth?</p> + +<p>Since, although it has come to lend its purity and sweetness to the +Sex-passion, it neither sprang from nor has been reared in sex-instinct, +is it a product of Parental Affection? Is it an evolution of the +self-negation and the tenderness of parents for their children?</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>Throughout Nature, the parental instinct is seen as a unique +development, detached from and high above all other developments. +Demanding, as it does, the complete surrender and self-denying labours +of one individual in the interests of another, it differs from and +traverses all other dictates. It impels a creature whose every instinct +it had been—whose religion of biological survival it had been, +indeed—to be wholly self-centred in its every aim and action, all at +once to make another creature the focus of its interests and efforts. +Where for a scratch, for a glance, the fierce female would have fallen +tooth and nail upon another, now she surrenders meekly to the pangs of +bringing offspring into life—and straightway licks and suckles the +frail being that has riven her. Where she would furiously have driven +off, or would have killed, another creature that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>approached her food, +now she gives herself as food for this. Where lesser Fitness for +survival on another's part had been signal for making such her prey, now +Unfitness in the extremest degree claims her devotion and care.</p> + +<p>Superfluous to cite cases of maternal altruism. The mildest and most +timid among creatures becomes fierce and courageous in defence of her +young. Style it "merely instinct," if you will. It is none the less +heroic on the part of every individual that obeys it, and does not obey +it blindly and mechanically merely, but employs all her poor wit and +resource to suit her heroism to the special circumstance.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Without care and attention from the moment of its birth, the life of an +infant would be reckoned in hours. The higher the organism, the more and +for the longer period its infancy exacts unceasing devotion and nurture.</p> + +<p>Fish and moth and other species of low order are cast off in the egg. +Chicks scramble out of the shell.</p> + +<p>The higher their grade in the scale of organisation and intelligence, +the more helpless and incapable young creatures are to feed and to fend +for themselves. Kittens are born blind and helpless, but after a few +days they see and crawl about. The elephant-mother suckles and +safeguards her baby-elephant for two whole years.</p> + +<p>Now, were there no purpose in all this—Were it not that such devotion +to offspring serves as impulse and spur to the evolution and development +of faculty in parents, Nature, in planning the complex human species, +would, surely, have endowed the human infant and child with fuller +powers of self-preservation.</p> + +<p>Were there other functions and aptitudes the exercise whereof would +better stimulate and foster human progress, it is inconceivable that +children would be, and would be for so long, the helpless, feckless, +dependent mortals that they are.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p><p>For ten long lunar months, the human babe is part of its mother; homed +in the nest of her body, warmed by her warmth, fed by her blood. She +breathes for it, digests for it, assimilates for it, exercises for it. +For ten further lunar months, it is dependent upon her for the food by +which it lives. For nearly a year, save for an inept power of creeping, +with but small sense of direction, it requires to be moved and carried +everywhere. For years it must be washed, dressed, combed, laid down to +sleep at night, got up in the morning, taken for rides or for walks, +played with, bidden, chidden; comforted, warmed, cooled; defended, +cherished, instructed—in a hundred ways to be gently and progressively +adapted to life, by way of a more or less highly-specialised +environment. Even when no longer helpless, it must be provided for in +the matters of housing, food, clothing, education. It must be instructed +in a means of livelihood, and started on its young career.</p> + +<p>Among the poorer classes the child depends upon its hard-worked parents +for a period varying between twelve and sixteen years. In the +professional classes, the young son and daughter are not fully qualified +for independent existence before the ages of twenty-three or +twenty-five. In ill-health, in brain defect, and in other incapacities, +parents must provide for their offspring for life.</p> + +<p>And seeing how the demands of the young, and the response and exactions +of the parents multiply and amplify proportionally with the higher +evolution of both, we are forced to believe that the small +survival-value of the child, owing to its native unadaptedness to +environment, is part of The Plan, and that it subserves some high and +complex purpose in human development.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>An essential obligation of Parenthood is, that, in order to fulfil this +duly, the parents require to undergo a wholly new and intrinsic +adjustment of faculty. Having arrived already at a complex adaptation to +a complex civilised environment, in physique and character, in mentality +and habit, now, by a revolutionary reversal of their human progress, +they must re-adapt to the simplest of all creatures and conditions—a +helpless, puling infant in a cradle.</p> + +<p>Where they had had a whole world, perhaps, of intellectual interests and +social pursuits to engage them, now they forgather beside a cot +and—according as they are human or are not—lose themselves, brain and +heart and soul, in the puling, impotent thing. They make themselves eyes +and ears, arms and legs for it; carriage, chair and bed. They gaze, +entranced, upon the marvel of the opening and shutting of its eyes. It +yawns; they tremble lest it dislocate a jaw. It sneezes; now they +shudder lest it may have taken cold. It gurgles, and they are +transported to a seventh heaven.</p> + +<p>Never has either been equally fluttered at their recognition by an +exalted personage as both exult when flattered by the flicker of an +eyelash that it distinguishes its father from its mother; or either from +its nurse. Both perhaps are self-contained and philosophic beings, yet +its cry distracts them; scatters their composure to the winds. The inept +thing cannot even tell them what it wants. Its cry for food is much the +same as is its cry when it requires to be laid down, or lifted up. When +its milk is not sweet enough, its inarticulate fury is expressed in +notes identical—so far as they can judge—with those of its impotent +wrath when a pin-point pricks it.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p><p>But whatsoever the cause, to the winds the parental composure is +scattered, as hither and thither they scurry, distraught, seeking a +reason and a remedy. And this, of course, had been their tyrant's +purpose. He had meant to strike panic in his parents' hearts. He was +vexed or empty, or was otherwise uneasy. And behold the penalties of +those who suffer him to be vexed or empty, or otherwise uneasy!</p> + +<p>And whether they are rough, hard-working persons who have neither time +nor taste for fuss and nonsense; whether they are the Archbishop of +Canterbury and Mrs. Archbishop, Sir Isaac and Lady Newton, or the +Emperor and Empress of Japan, it is all the same to Baby. No other uses +have they in his absurd judgment than to obey his slightest gurgle.</p> + +<p>And the wonder of the business is that they too—provided they be +normal, wholesome-minded, natural-hearted persons—are of similar +opinion. Even a Professor of Archæology must feel a twinge of some +emotion when his first baby cuts its first tooth. King Lion himself +suffers it with patience when his cub scratches his royal countenance, +or gets its milk-teeth into his prize-bone.</p> + +<p>The whole face of the earth is transformed by the Baby, indeed. And how +much it is transformed for the better! It is not too much to say that it +is humanised, redeemed. The most grudging of curmudgeons murmurs only a +little to surrender his place at the fire to The Baby. The thirsty thief +forbears to drink his infant's milk.</p> + +<p>In his great story, <i>The Luck of Roaring Camp</i>, Bret Harte has shown, +and has shown as probable, the uplifting and regenerating influence that +"The Luck"—its mother a sinner, its father, Heaven alone knew +who!—exercised upon a rough community of vicious men.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p><p>"It wrastled wi' my finger," says one in an awed whisper. To cover +sentiment he adds, "the durn'd little cuss!" But carefully he segregates +the member sanctified by the tiny, satin touch, from the other fingers of his wicked hand.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER II</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND +FUNCTIONS ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The most beautiful witness to the Evolution of Man is the Mind of +a little child.... It was ages before Darwin or Lamarck or +Lucretius, that Maternity, bending over the hollowed cradle in the +forest for a first smile of recognition from her babe, expressed +the earliest trust in the doctrine of development. Every mother +since then is an unconscious Evolutionist, and every little child a +living witness to Ascent."—<i>Professor Drummond.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>Tracing the attribute of Love to its source in the parental function, it +becomes clear that this function cannot be dismissed thus in a phrase.</p> + +<p>There are two parents. And the parts played by these, respectively, not +only differ widely in their nature, but they are signally +disproportionate in their share of the labours involved. For while the +male bears the brunt of the struggle with environment, for his own and +for survival of his mate and offspring, upon the female falls the +biological stress of pregnancy and lactation, and the material cares of upbringing.</p> + +<p>The reproductive function of the male is but slight and cursory. With +the female lies the tax of havening the embryo before birth, of +nurturing it with her blood and substance, of suffering the drain it +makes upon her vital energy, the burden of its weight; with, finally, +the anguish and the dangers of delivery. And having come through all +this, the subconscious and involuntary sacrifice is replaced by +further—but now voluntary sacrifices. She not only continues to feed it +with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> living substance, but she employs brain and wit and bodily +effort in tending, safeguarding and rearing it.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the sire—among the lower creatures, at all events—detaches +himself with lordly indifference from any portion in these later, as he +went free of the earlier obligations. He shares his prey with her and +with their young. He defends them from the natural enemies of all. +Sometimes he condescends to play for minutes with his cubs. But +excepting among birds, the male parent takes little or no part in the +upbringing of his family.</p> + +<p>As with Love, so with Fatherhood, we take it as matter-of-course that +this sprang and has evolved to present developments directly out of +natural instinct. But as Love did not evolve out of the sex-instinct, +neither did father-love evolve from a paternal instinct inherent in the +lower animals and in primal man.</p> + +<p>Of this, Professor Drummond says:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers, but there were +no Fathers, ... while Nature has succeeded in moulding a human +Mother and a human child, he still wanders in the forest, a savage and unblessed soul.</p> + +<p>"This time for him is not lost. In his own way he also is at +school, and learning lessons which will one day be equally needed +by humanity. The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary to +human character as the virtues which gather their sweetness by the +cradle; and these robuster elements—strength, courage, manliness, +endurance, self-reliance—could only have been secured away from +domestic cares.... The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful a +process as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was almost as +formidable a problem to attack.... If Maternity was at a feeble +level in the lower reaches of Nature, Paternity was +non-existent.... When we leave the Birds and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> pass on to the +Mammals, the Fathers are nearly all backsliders. Many are not only +indifferent to their young, but hostile; and among the Carnivora +the Mothers have frequently to hide their little ones in case the father eats them."</p></blockquote> + +<p>In place of saying, therefore, that Love sprang in, and has developed +from the exercise of the parental function, we must say that Love—in +all its higher aspects—sprang and has developed in the <i>maternal</i> function.</p> + +<p>But since every attribute, in order to be conscious and realised, is not +only rooted but is reared in living function—out of what living +function did Mother-love evolve? In the exercise of what vital processes +has it been fostered and furthered?</p> + +<p>In so far as these involve sacrifice of self in the interests of the +child, the maternal ante-natal processes are processes of +self-surrender. But these, when once incurred, are subconscious and +involuntary. The prospective mother has no choice but to submit to +physiological exactions.</p> + +<p>And only a few women—those in whom maternal love is deep beyond the +average—feel affection for their infants before birth.</p> + +<p>Since love must have an object upon which to exercise its faculties and +lavish its devotion, it is not, therefore, until the babe is in the +mother's arms that the Love-attribute begins to function. And then the +primal fount of all conscious and voluntary human selflessness and +sacrifice springs afresh in the individual when, in yearning toward the +helpless being in her arms, she wells with tenderness and gives herself +to be its life.</p> + +<p>In the altruistic tender yearning of the mother to her babe, whereat her +blood transforms itself to milk, Human Love first sprang and functioned consciously.</p> + +<p><i>This is my Body which is given for you.... This is my Blood ... which +is shed for you.</i></p> + +<p>Says Goethe, "There is no outward sign of courtesy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> that does not rest +on a deep moral foundation." He might have added "and on a great +biological function." Every act of voluntary sacrifice, every impulse of +compassion, mercy, tenderness, devotion, has had its inspiration and its +source in this which is discredited by some as being a merely physical, +and is despised, accordingly, as being an inferior process; this +mystical transmutation of the mother's blood to milk, and the +self-forgetting yearning wherein she yields herself as food for +offspring. By the evolution, upon ever higher planes of consciousness, +of this primarily instinctive sacrifice, not only Motherhood but +Fatherhood too, and the Love-passion between the sexes have been +fructified and purified, and uplifted down the ages. Other acts of +devotion arise out of maternal ministry. But this is the intrinsic source of all.</p> + +<p>Travelling up through all the rudimentary phases of development, +simultaneously and side by side with the male fierce methods for the +Survival of <i>Fitness</i>, there was evolving in the female, subconsciously +and secretly, this sacramental impulse which was to inaugurate a new +era—an era wherein charity and ruth were to be born as response to the +claims of <i>Unfitness</i>.</p> + +<p>The first woman who, of her free-will, gave her breast to her babe was +the Mother of all the Humanities. She it was who prepared the way for +the coming of Christ. By her, Love entered first into human consciousness.</p> + +<p>And by countless generations of such willing tender sacrifice upon the +part of mothers, human love has climbed out of the darkness of blind +subconscious instinct into the Light of a great transfiguration.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It is weighty evidence of the evolutionary impulse inherent in the +function of Lactation, that the development of this maternal trait +engenders species so far higher in organisation and morale than those of +creatures unequipped to suckle offspring, as to set the Mammalia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> in a +class by themselves in the van of progressive advance. The higher +organisation and morale of such result not only from the +self-surrendering instinct in the mothers of species, but doubtless also +from the superior nutrition promoted in the developing tissues of the +young of species, by the highly-individualised food elements which are +secreted by the maternal living cells.</p> + +<p>The vital significance of this new potence in blood to transform itself +to milk for sustenance of offspring is emphasised by the fact that the +Mammalia are warm-blooded creatures. While that this new quickening of +Life by the altruistic parental instinct originates in the female shows +her as medium of that Divine Influx inspiring Creative Evolution, and +evolving faculty by way of living function.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>The question now arises: If Love and the higher affections had their +origin in the maternal function, how happens it that man, in whom this +capacity is absent, and who is devoid, moreover, of an inherent paternal +instinct, has come, notwithstanding, to possess these higher affections?</p> + +<p>One may answer off-hand, with the lightness of the tyro, that these have +been transmitted to him by maternal inheritance.</p> + +<p>But complex biological problems are not thus easily explained. Nature +works by processes, not by implications. And the physical functions and +the mental attributes of the sexes are so dissimilar, and have, with +evolution, so diverged by ever further accentuation, that we must seek +for definite biological processes by way of which the male has become +endowed with, and whereby his primal characteristics have been +transformed by the evolution in him of the maternal instinct—under +guise of the wholly new and alien trait of Fatherhood.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p><p>A study of Evolution shows the differentiation and intensification of +Sex-characteristics to have been the main feature in Human advance, and +to have been progressively achieved by incalculable centuries of +increasing differentiation and intensification of two opposite orders of +impulse and faculty.</p> + +<p>In savages and in all the less civilised races, the personal and +temperamental differences between the sexes are but slight, and last for +no longer than a few years of life. As with other faculties, +Sex-differentiations become ever further intensified and more complexly +defined as development rises in the scale. Man becomes more man. Woman, +more woman. Most notable during the period over which the human +organisation sustains its maximum of condition, these +Sex-characteristics take longer to arrive at their perfection, and are +longer and more fully sustained in the higher races and organisms than +is the case with the lower. Then, with that degeneration of tissue which +sets in with on-coming age, the old man becomes womanish, the old woman mannish.</p> + +<p>It cannot be doubted that human perfection reaches its climax in the +accentuation of the differences between the Sex-characteristics, +physical and mental, of the one sex from those of the other. The best +types of men differ far more from the best types of women than inferior +men and women differ from one another. In body and in attribute, the +sexes are complementary and supplementary. And their dissimilarities are +the measure of their complementary and supplementary values.</p> + +<p>Their attraction to one another, their interest and happiness in one +anothers' company, are proportional to the degree in which members of +one sex supply for members of the other, sentiment and qualities lacking +in their own. Mannish women and womanish men are alike incapable of +experiencing and inspiring the love-passion, which charms and +transfigures life for true man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> and true woman. These unfortunate, +imperfect neuter-persons, because of the deficiency in them of normal +sex attributes and impulse, are shut out from the richest and sweetest, +most sacred emotions of Humanity—precisely as persons of defective +brain are debarred from the richer and fuller appreciations and joys of consciousness.</p> + +<p>And yet, apart and distinct from, although at the root of this abnormal +neuterdom, wherein the traits of one sex are so antagonised by those of +the other that the finest powers of both are nullified—normally, all +men possess latent in them the qualities of Woman; all women have latent +in them the qualities of Man. Otherwise, this third +Neuter-gender—mannish women and womanish men—could not have come into +being.</p> + +<p>In crises of life and under other abnormal conditions, the dormant +characteristics of the one sex are seen to emerge in members of the +other, and to become dominant. A woman, in the face of danger, develops +the strength, the courage and the material resource of a man. A man, +when put to it, reveals the gentleness, patience and psychical resource +of a woman. And in neither is this substitution of alien traits +imitative, merely. That it is vital and intrinsic is shown by the fact +that not only mental characteristics, but the body itself becomes +transformed. If the circumstances—exposure to danger, to hard and rough +physical labours or to mental exactions which are the normal of the +male—continue for long, woman's physique, equally with her attributes, +becomes increasingly virile of mode.</p> + +<p>A kindred metamorphosis occurs in men. When called upon to exercise for +any length of time the functions of a woman, beside a sick bed, for +example—or, to state it otherwise, when the male in him no longer +receives the stimulus of the natural male rôle and activities—man's +virile qualities decline. He becomes emasculate.</p> + +<p>So too in disease. With the vital powers at low ebb,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> man's virility +ebbs low. He grows soft and sensitive, uncontrolled and emotional, loses +energy and initiative; lapses in outlook and temperament from the +masculine normal. In abnormal states of physical development, men are +puerile or womanish.</p> + +<p>Women, as result of like abnormal undevelopment, or after operative +removal of reproductive organs (<i>propter quos est mulier</i>) become +mannish of type. In extreme cases the figure changes to a strong and +sturdy maleness, the voice drops to gruffness; manners and speech become +terse and abrupt, the jaw squares; even moustache or beard may develop. +Such women lose, perhaps, every womanly characteristic; refinement of +form, mental delicacy and sensitiveness, emotion, subtlety. They lapse +to the biological grade, not of cultured, but of rough working men. In +lesser degrees of sex-extinction, such as are seen in many of our modern +girls, de-sexed by masculine training, the subjects are boyish merely; +lean, active, restless, hipless, breastless, lacking all those fair, +delicate artistries of face and form, as likewise the complex +sensibility and emotionalism which are the higher characteristics of their sex.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>These and other singularities of the phenomenon indicate that man has, +so to speak, a woman concealed in him; woman has a man submerged in her. +The case suggests the little Noah and his wife of the toy weatherglass. +Under some conditions the man in woman emerges temporarily. Under some +conditions the woman in man reveals herself. But the emergence in the +one sex of the characteristics of the other, when appreciable and +permanent, is abnormal and unpleasing, and is obviously degenerative.</p> + +<p>Man is at his best when the woman in him is dominated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> by his natural +virile traits. Woman is at her best when the man in her is sheathed +within her native womanliness. This way, each is a highly evolved and a +finely-specialised creation.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, such possession, in latency, of the qualities of the +other, not only enhances for members of both sexes the potence of their +own, inspiring and enriching these, but it engenders more perfect +sympathy and understanding between them. The woman in man endues him +with intuitive apprehension of the Woman-nature; of its needs and modes, +its disabilities, its sufferings and aspirations. The man in woman +informs her of the intrinsic values of his sterner calibre, and thus +lends her patience with his impatiences, moves her tenderness and care +for him in his rougher, more arduous lot, wins her admiration of his +enterprises and ambitions. Moreover, the man in her strengthens and +intelligises her mental fibre, stiffens and renders more stable and +effective her more pliant will and softer, more delicate aptitudes.</p> + +<p>While she, in her turn, endows him with her intrinsic mentalities.</p> + +<p>Masculine intellection, pure and simple, is initiative, vigorous, +enterprising; analytical, logical, critical; its outlook rational and +concrete, its disposition just and honest. Capable in the degree of its +virility, of strenuous and sustained endeavour, of keen concentration +and close application; taking nothing for granted, but questioning and +demanding proof of all things, it is an admirable executive agent of +Mind. <i>Per se</i>, however, it is rational and deductive, judicial and +judicious, rather than inspirational and creative. The blending with it +of the Woman-faculty in him quickens his male brain by contributing the +emotional element; endues it with intuitive sensibility, fructifies it +with female creativeness.</p> + +<p>Thus it blossoms in Imagination—a new talent, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> his natural +intellectual energy and executive ability enable him to raise to highest +issues in Inductive Science and the creative Arts.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Sex, with its phenomena of the characteristics of both sexes blended +but, nevertheless, distinctive in the totally dissimilar constitution of +members of both, presents an enigma which all the thinkers of all the +ages have left unsolved.</p> + +<p>What is its significance—what its explanation? How has it been +possible—without miracle, but by way of biological sequences of form +and process, of function and faculty—for the divergent characteristics, +physical and mental, of the two sexes to have developed in both, not +only without either order of characteristics (normally) neutralising +those of the other, but, on the contrary, with both orders ever further +intensifying their differences in the sex to which they belong?</p> + +<p>By hereditary transmission. True! But by what precise means? Because +Nature achieves her results always by the continuous operation of +unerring Law and intensifying processes, not by eccentricities or +deviations. When she seems to us to skip at random, it means that we +have missed some intermediate footprints linking her progressive +sequences in a long unbroken train.</p> + +<p>This problem of human duality, physical and psychical, has baffled not +biologists only, but philosophers, religionists and seers. It fills both +life and literature with puzzles, paradoxes, incongruities. It has been +the source of perpetual misapprehension, misconception, +maladministration, personal and ethical.</p> + +<p>It lies at the root of the whole Woman question. It has supplied the +motive—and has made the mischief of the Feminist propaganda and practice.</p> + +<p>Because, in view of the masculine qualities latent in women, allied with +the circumstance that masculine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> powers are those most profitable and +effective on the plane alike of physics and of economics, it has seemed +an inevitable conclusion that these dormant male potentialities were +<i>powers lying idle</i>; virgin soil which, tilled and cultivated, would +yield fruitful harvest. And this for the benefit not of woman solely, +but of Humanity at large. Strangely enough, the converse proposition has +not presented itself. A pity! For it might have brought enlightenment. +Because it presents itself outright in the form of a patent absurdity.</p> + +<p>Suppose a Man's Movement which should have had for aim the cult in males +of their potential woman-qualities! Not for an instant could the project +have found footing as being rational, its ends desirable, or as +improving upon Nature. Everywhere is pity or contempt for the effeminate +man. He is regarded as a poor creature, neither one thing nor the other; +as little the peer of true man as he is notably an unworthy counterfeit of woman.</p> + +<p>Yet how is this? Is it that we admit the male-sex to be so vastly and +intrinsically superior to the female that we are not satisfied for half +only, but demand that the whole human species shall be male? +Nevertheless, since masculine qualities, although undeniably present, +are normally latent in women, they must be inferior in power and calibre +to these same qualities in men. Otherwise, in place of remaining in +latency, they would assert themselves like men. Woman's inferior +masculine powers, even when developed to the full, can equip her, +therefore, to be no more than inferior male; "lesser man" merely, in +place of being "diverse"—the highly-differentiated, finely-specialised +being for which Nature would seem to have been shaping in her, during +untold æons of progressive differentiation.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>The prevailing notion is that these masculine potentialities dormant in +women are powers common to both sexes, which have been blighted in the +one by long generations of educational and vocational disabilities +precluding exercise and outlet for them. Or that they are powers which +have been dwarfed by long "subjection" of the sex in maternal and +domestic functions mainly.</p> + +<p>Consulting Biology, we find that such artificial repression of Faculty +in the mother (even were artificially-repressed faculty transmissible as +such) could in no way have limited itself, in succeeding generations, to +inheritance by daughters. On the contrary, the more we learn of the laws +of Heredity, the more it is seen that Faculty descends from mother to +son, rather than from mother to daughter. And yet, despite the +sex-disabilities, personal and social, which are now condemned as having +precluded the mothers of earlier eras from developing their masculine +abilities, such mothers transmitted masculine characteristics in +ever-increasing degree to successive generations of male offspring.</p> + +<p>Whereupon another seeming paradox confronts us. Namely, that the sons of +those earlier women, in whom masculine inherences were permitted to +remain dormant, were notably more virile of body and mind than are the +sons of latter-day emancipated mothers who have sedulously cultivated +and have fully exercised their male proclivities.</p> + +<p>And now upsprings a further momentous consideration: Is this cause and +effect? Were the sons of women in whom the potential male had remained +abeyant, more virile of body and brain than are the sons of women who +have cultivated masculine characteristics, solely and absolutely because +the mothers in the latter case had misappropriated to their own uses +powers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> that belonged by right of heredity to sons? While those other +mothers, by retaining such in latency, preserved them as a rich +inheritance for male heirs. Is it similar, indeed, to the cases of a +mother who realises and expends for her own purposes her sons' financial +patrimony, and of a mother who, expending the interest alone thereof, +retains the capital intact; and is enabled thus to pass it on as +heritage? Is the power held latent in one generation the potential of +the generation following?</p> + +<p>It may be asked: Why should woman forgo possession and exercise of +faculties available to her, in order to transmit these to sons? One +might answer as in respect of that other patrimony. If it be true that +she holds these powers in trust merely, they are not hers to spend. To +expend them is to despoil her sons; to make paupers and bankrupts of +them, humanly speaking. Further, since daughters inherit from the +father, the male entail woman forbears to realise and to exploit for her +own uses returns to her sex in the person of her grand-daughter—by +paternal inheritance. For the able father is the parent of the able daughter.</p> + +<p>Thus Nature works with the eternal justice of eternal reciprocity +between the sexes; making them all the while more complexly diverse, but +nevertheless more closely interdependent. So that one sex can neither +progress nor can it regress by itself; but draws the other onward with +it, or drags it back. Thus, the bread of human heritage consigned to the +stream of posterity by one sex, for equipment and furtherance of the +other, returns to the hand of the sex that consigned it.</p> + +<p>If this be so—and I hope to prove it so—the woman who develops the +potential male in her defrauds of its lawful racial and personal entail +not only the opposite sex, in the person of her son, but she defrauds of +its dower her own sex too, in the person of her grand-daughter.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>Of the interesting and important biological processes underlying the +mystery of the Dual-Sex constitution and its manifold phenomena, I am +about to present a wholly new and—I venture to believe—a wholly true +and convincing elucidation.</p> + +<p><i>Natura simplex est</i>, said Newton, <i>et sibi semper consonans</i>. (Nature +is simple and always agrees with herself.) Bewilderingly multiple in her +phenomena, she is superbly simple in her principles. By the operation of +her one great Law of Gravitation, she sustains the mighty Solar +systems—and brings the apple to the ground. By the extension, +counterpoise and co-operation of one Primal Cosmic Energy—with its dual +impulses, Centripetal and Centrifugal—she has generated all the diverse +marvels of a Universe. And in view of her simplicity of Principle, it is +conceivable that the Duality of Sex may be an extension into Life of +that same principle of Duality which characterises the vaster Cosmic phenomena.</p> + +<p>If this be true, Man and Woman are the complex resultant of infinitely +many and varied evolutionary differentiations and associations of the +two modes of Primal Energy. If so, the principle of Sex must have +existed before Matter; must have been inherent in Creation before +Creation began to evolve. And if so, Evolution would seem to have had +for its purpose the ever further and fuller manifestation of these dual +and contrary inherences in terms of Life and Sex. While, to judge by +effects, it has had for its means such ever more intimate and intricate +co-operations of these as have resulted in the progressively diverse and +complex developments found to-day in Human Life and Human Sex-Characteristics.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER III</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The idea that the female is naturally and really the superior sex +seems incredible, and only the most liberal and emancipated minds, +possessed of a large store of biological information, are capable +of realising it."—<i>Professor Lester Ward.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>Those happy persons who do not perplex themselves concerning the +intrinsic causes behind all physical phenomena see it as only "natural" +that two parents of opposite sex should produce offspring of both sexes.</p> + +<p>And yet it is not only a great mystery, but, on the face of it, it is an +anomaly that a child who may possess an admixture of all the physical +and mental characteristics of its two parents, bears, nevertheless, the +sex and the sex-characteristics of one only. Sex, male or female, breeds +true in nearly every case; the rare exceptions merely emphasising the +rule. The mystery deepens when we realise that every individual is a +product of countless such admixtures of the qualities, throughout +countless generations, of countless forefathers and foremothers. And +although such a man or woman may hark back to any one, or more, of the +traits of his or her innumerable forbears, he or she, nevertheless, +"breeds true" in the factors of sex and sex-characteristics.</p> + +<p>Long and closely biologists have pondered these many and involved +problems. How is it, they inquire, that an embryo bred of two parents of +opposite sex develops the sex of one only of these? How is it that the +mother, who belongs to one sex only, produces—and produces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> in about +equal number—offspring of both? The phenomenon is expressed, +biologically, in the term, "sex-limited factor"—an incalculable +something in the embryo which limits its sex to the sex of one only of +its parents. But the "something," and the method of this sex-limitation +have remained enigmas.</p> + +<p>Sex is regarded by the new Mendelian school of biologists as that which +is known as a "Mendelian factor." And to follow the argument to its +conclusions, a few simple words about the Mendelian theory of Heredity +are essential to those unacquainted therewith.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>About forty years ago, a German monk, Mendel by name, was struck by the +facts that in his bed of edible peas certain plants grew tall, while +others remained dwarf; that the blossoms of certain plants were white +always, while those of others were always coloured. He made a number of +experiments in crossing the plants, with a view to discovering the law +of inheritance by way of its operation in hybrid varieties. Briefly, the +results of his experiments—which have since been repeated and confirmed +by many later observers—were as follows:</p> + +<p>There are plants that are tall and can transmit only Tallness to +offspring. There are plants that are dwarf and can transmit only +Dwarfness to offspring. So too, there are plants of white blossom or of +coloured blossom that can transmit, respectively, only White or Coloured +blossoming to offspring.</p> + +<p>When a Tall is crossed with a Dwarf plant, however, or a Coloured with a +White plant, strange to say, the hybrid offspring of this cross shows +<i>one</i> only of these opposite traits, to the exclusion of the other. No +intermediate, or mixed, forms are produced.</p> + +<p>Thus, a Tall crossed with a Dwarf produces only Talls. Plants of +Coloured flower crossed with those of White flower give only Coloured +flowering varieties. A yellow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> and a green-seeded cross produce only +yellow-seeded plants.</p> + +<p>In the cross between plants of opposite traits, <i>one</i> set of traits +appears thus, exclusively, in the hybrid offspring. These +traits—because they <i>dominate</i> growth and development—Mendel styled +"Dominant." While those traits which are dominated by the other and +opposite traits and do not appear in offspring, he styled "Recessive."</p> + +<p>On further breeding, a new and stranger thing happens, however. Because +when such hybrids—plants bred of parents that had borne, respectively, +"Dominant" and "Recessive" characteristics, but with the parental +Dominant traits so overpowering the Recessive traits of the other parent +that these latter are submerged and concealed—When these hybrids are +crossed with other hybrids like themselves, both the Dominant and the +Recessive traits of the original parents reappear in offspring. The tall +hybrids resulting from the cross between Tall and Dwarf plants, when +crossed with other tall hybrids of similar origin, produce both Tall and +Dwarf plants. So with Colour, and with the other so-called "Contrasted Traits."</p> + +<p>It becomes evident, therefore, that although the Dominant traits of +Tallness and Colour overpower in the growth and development of the +second generation of plants, the Recessive traits of Dwarfness and +Whiteness, these latter traits are <i>submerged</i> only, and are neither +impaired in their values, nor destroyed. In the third generation, under +different conditions of mating, the original Recessive, and submerged, +traits re-appear, and reveal themselves in offspring-plants as the +Dwarfness or the Whiteness that had characterised their grandparents.</p> + +<p>Mendel assumed that such hybrid plants—offspring of a Dominant and of a +Recessive parent—produce two varieties of sex-cells, or gametes, and +that one order of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> cells contain the Dominant traits of the Dominant +parent, while the other order contain the Recessive traits of the Recessive parent.</p> + +<p>But any individual sex-cell, or gamete, cannot (according to his view) +bear both Dominant and Recessive traits. The Dominant traits and the +Recessive traits of the respective parents he regarded as being +segregated, absolutely, in one or in the other set of sex-cells produced +by hybrid varieties. And of these, the cells bearing Dominant traits are +able to transmit Dominant traits only to offspring; while the cells +bearing Recessive traits transmit Recessive traits only to offspring.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>Now, Biology shows that plants and living creatures develop from a +single microscopic cell, formed by the union of two half-cells, of which +each half was contributed by one of the two parents.</p> + +<p>Clearly then, a hybrid plant is one that has sprung from the union of +two half-cells, one of which bore the Dominant traits of one parent, +while the other bore the Recessive traits of the other parent. But +because Dominant traits overpower Recessive traits in development, the +cross between a tall plant and a dwarf plant produces tall offspring +only—Tallness being a Dominant trait which overpowers the Recessive +trait of Dwarfness. So too, the cross between a plant bearing coloured +and a plant bearing white flowers produces offspring bearing coloured +flowers only—Colour being Dominant over the Recessive Trait of Whiteness.</p> + +<p>But because the Recessive traits of Dwarfness and of Whiteness were only +<i>overpowered</i> in the plant-development, by the Dominant traits of +Tallness and Colour, but were neither lost nor impaired in stock, hybrid +plants that had shown only Dominant traits in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> growth and constitution, +produce, nevertheless, two sorts of sex-cells for plant-reproduction: +cells that bear the Recessive traits of the one parent, and cells that +bear the Dominant traits of the other parent. So that in the +fertilisation of one another by such hybrids, cells bearing Dominant +traits mate with other cells bearing Dominant traits, and produce plants +of pure Dominant type—Tall or Coloured, like one of the grandparents. +While cells bearing Recessive traits mate with other cells bearing +Recessive traits, and produce plants of pure Recessive type—Dwarf or +White, like the other grandparent.</p> + +<p>It is seen, therefore, that in plants, when a cell bearing Dominant +traits mates with one bearing Recessive traits, the Dominant +characteristics so overpower the Recessive that these latter lie latent, +and concealed, in the resulting plant. But when a cell bearing Recessive +traits mates with another cell bearing Recessive traits, the resulting +plant (its growth and development not over-ridden now by the more +assertive Dominant traits) is able to develop its Recessive characteristics.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>These interesting and significant laws of plant-heredity and +constitution, discovered by Mendel in peas, have since been found by +many expert observers to hold true as regards other species of plants; +as too in poultry, in mice, and in rabbits, and moreover, in the +hereditary transmission of human characteristics.</p> + +<p>In <i>Heredity and Variation</i>, Dr. Saleeby points out that in the mating +of a black with a white rabbit, some of the offspring will be black like +one parent, some white like the other, and some grey—a blend of the +colours of both parents.</p> + +<p>In the last case, the <i>Dominant</i> trait of Blackness, derived from one +rabbit-parent, blends in the fur of the rabbit-offspring with the +<i>Recessive</i> trait of Whiteness, derived from the other rabbit-parent; a +grey rabbit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> resulting. But that the Contrasted Traits come to no more +than a temporary and partial compromise during the life of such a +rabbit-individual, without either of the traits losing its intrinsic +characteristic—Blackness and Whiteness, respectively—is proved by the +fact that these grey rabbit-offspring, on further breeding, produce not +<i>grey</i> rabbits, but black rabbits and white rabbits; proving that the +Black trait and the White trait in them remained distinct and +segregated, neither altering its character in the least degree.</p> + +<p>It is as though one should take a spoonful of black pepper and a +spoonful of white salt, and thoroughly mix them. A drab +"pepper-and-salt" mixture will result. But neither pepper nor salt will +have changed its colour or its properties one iota. Could they be +separated out again, each would be precisely as it had been before +mixing. So it is with the Dominant and the Recessive traits in living +organisms. They commingle intimately, but each retains its original and +intrinsic quality.</p> + +<p>All the diverse and beautiful varieties of vegetation and the loveliness +of flowers, in form and colour, result from multiple associations in +hybrid-plants, of those which are known as the "Contrasted Traits" of parent-stock.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>The lay reader need not perplex himself with the problems and phenomena of Mendelism.</p> + +<p>All he requires to remember are its three leading principles. Firstly, +that in the world of Life, plant and animal, living attributes are +divided into two contrasting orders. Secondly, that of these two orders +of so-called "Contrasted Traits" ("Contrasting Traits" would be a fitter +phrase), the two groups are as absolute and opposite in character and in +significance as are the <i>plus</i> and the <i>minus</i> signs of Algebra, the +Positive and the Negative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> potentials of Electricity, the conditions of +Light and Darkness, of Blackness and Whiteness, of Heat and Cold. +Thirdly, that the Dominant order of traits are paramount over and +extinguish the Recessive order of traits.</p> + +<p>To sustain her equilibrium by a counterpoise of dual and contrary +factors, physical and vital, Nature must preserve these factors absolute +and unchangeable as the constitution and the opposite attraction of The +Poles. But in order to produce her countless progressive variations of +form and attribute, physical and vital, she assembles these contrary +factors in countless progressively complex combinations, co-operations +and correlations.</p> + +<p>It is conceivable, therefore, that the infinite gradations and +variations of form and attribute found in the world of living creatures +are, as in the world of plants, phenomena of the ever further +differentiation and more complex combination, in the hybrid offspring of +two parents, of two orders of Contrasting Traits, transmitted by the respective parents.</p> + +<p>In all their multiple associations and diverse developments, however, +the two Sets of Traits remain unchanged, precisely as do the individual +elements of chemical combinations. Variations in species result, +accordingly, not from change in the essential traits, but from changes +in the modes and the degrees of the commingling of these in organisms; +and in the modes and degrees of their ever more complex associations in such.</p> + +<p>Tallness, being an impulse toward extension, can never be Dwarfness, +which is an impulse toward contraction. Black can never be White. Square +can never be Round. Yet two opposite traits, both influencing +development, may come to a mean, or poise, in an individual organism; as +is seen in the grey offspring of a black rabbit mated with a white +rabbit. But it is a <i>counterpoise</i> merely of contrary factors. The +traits of Blackness and Whiteness remain absolute and unalterable.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p><p>If now, the reader has grasped these leading principles of +Plant-biology, he is in a position to follow the new application of them +to Human Biology which I now venture to present.</p> + +<p>Without going into details of physiology, it may be stated that the +principles of reproduction are so identical in plants and living +creatures as wholly to justify argument from one to the other. The only +differences are in degrees of structural complexity as organisms rise +higher in the scale of development, and demand, accordingly, more +complex organs and functions for the more perfect manifestation of their +characteristics; as also for the transmission of these to offspring. It +may be repeated, however, that Mendelian law is found to hold good in +humans, both in the hereditary transmission of normal characteristics +and in the hereditary transmission of the abnormal traits of disease and degeneracy.</p> + +<p>Increasing complexities, structural and functional, are indispensable to +the presentment of the attributes of the higher species, Man. But such +complexities are, nevertheless, continuous with and have sprung out of +the simplicities of lower and rudimentary organisms, precisely as the +branches and leaves and flowers of a plant are continuous with and have +sprung out of its roots. A vital and important biological detail (to be +considered later) is that plants are not, as living creatures are, +differentiated into a right and a left-side, identical in construction. +Another is that plants are self-fertilising.</p> + +<p>With the lower animals, plural births are the rule. And in these, the +still crude and imperfect differentiations of the Contrasting Traits +allow of piebald and other modes of chequered colour and amorphous construction.</p> + +<p>The higher the organism, the more complex are the biological +requirements for its pre-natal development, as for its post-natal +nurture. The functions of Parenthood, both physiological and +psychological, are always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> evolving to higher and more complex issues, +therefore, as the species to be reproduced and nurtured becomes more +complex. In human births, single offspring is the normal. Twin births +are comparatively rare. And that these are abnormal is shown by twins +being below the average always in health or in faculty; usually in both.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>As already mentioned, Sex is regarded by the large and ever-increasing +order of the adherents of Mendel as a "Mendelian factor." But in +applying Mendelian truth to humans, I venture to think the applications +have not been carried to their ultimate and most momentous conclusions.</p> + +<p>Because, given the keynote to the Principle of Duality in the phenomenon +of the Contrasting Traits found manifesting in plant-heredity and +constitution, the duality of the Human Sexes, with their respective +orders of Contrasting characteristics, suggests itself as being analogous.</p> + +<p>Human attributes, physical and mental, are seen, like those of plants, +to group themselves into two distinct categories, the Male and the +Female sex-characteristics, primary and secondary. And these, though +wholly contrary in nature and in trend, are found—precisely as occurs +in plants—linked together in the hybrid offspring of the two parents +from whom they were, respectively, derived; blending in a temporal +unity, but remaining, nevertheless, unchanged in their essential +differences; coming to means and counterpoises in individual +organisations, yet nevertheless preserved distinct and unalloyed in +these, as is shown by their emergence, unaltered, in offspring of opposite sexes.</p> + +<p>As a hybrid plant is the product of two parents<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> characterised by +opposite traits—Tallness and Dwarfness, for example—so, I submit, a +human creature is the hybrid offspring of two parents characterised by +opposite traits—Maleness and Femaleness, with the Sex-traits +differentiating one sex from the other.</p> + +<p>And at once a solution of the many baffling presentments and problems of +Sex presents itself—of the enigma of man with Woman potential in him, +of woman with Man potential in her; a key to the mysterious Duality of +human biology and psychology, with its conflict of battling impulses, +its harmonies of blending attributes, its innumerable and diverse +developments in proportions, in means, in extremes; in normalities, +eccentricities, deviations and reversions. And the analogy between the +two orders of Traits—in Plant-life at the lower end of the scale of +species, and in Human life and psychology at the higher end—suggests +that the ever-increasing complexity of organisation and faculty which +has characterised Evolutionary Progress, has had for aim, as it has had +for method, the ever further differentiation and more perfect +segregation, but, nevertheless, the ever closer and more intricate +association of the contrary factors of Maleness and Femaleness.</p> + +<p>In the lower organisms—plant and animal—the two groups of Traits are +but crudely differentiated as characteristics distinguishing one sex +from the other. In such lower organisms, Sex-development is merely +rudimentary; the first foreshadowings in Life of two intrinsic orders of +Essential Attribute, the progressive evolution whereof reveals two +contrary trends in physiological and psychical inherences.</p> + +<p>Like Light and Darkness, Heat and Cold, Sex is a phenomenon of Dual +states which manifest by way of relativity. Without Maleness, Femaleness +has no significance—no existence, in fact. And the converse. And in the +lower and rudimentary forms of existence, in proportion to their degrees +of undevelopment, the dual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> states of Sex are but faintly defined. The +very lowly forms are bi-sexual and self-fertilising. While the first and +simplest mode of reproduction is by cell-division merely; the principle +of Sex, with its dual factors, functioning, but not yet differentiated +into dual forms.</p> + +<p>The evolution of Species and the evolution of Sex have been so +absolutely co-incident in biological progress, indeed, that we are +forced to perceive them as cause and effect; or, rather, as one and the +same thing. And the evolution of Sex has meant, of course, the ever +further divergence and the more complex specialisation, in form and in +function, of the characteristics of the one sex from those of the other.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>On still closer consideration, it appears, moreover, that the evolution +of Sex has meant pre-eminently the evolution of the <i>female</i> sex—the +slow and gradual emergence and development, in species, of female +characteristics, as, in course of Evolution, these have freed themselves +and have risen ever further into evidence from long subjection by the +stronger, fiercer, more assertive—in a word, the Dominant—traits of +the male.</p> + +<p>(A conclusion as singularly interesting, I think, as it is instructive, +in view of modern Feminist doctrine and aims, which make, not for the +culture and the ever further evolutionary development of the +Woman-traits in woman, but, on the contrary, for a reversion to earlier +cruder states of the subjection in her of her Woman-traits by those male +Dominant ones, which, as the hybrid offspring of a male and of a female +parent, every female creature inherits from her father, together with +the Woman-traits she inherits from her mother. There is seen here the +irony that woman has, by long ages of biological development, released +herself from sociological<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> subjection by the male, only voluntarily to +set the Woman in herself in far worse psychological subjection to the +male in herself.)</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>In the new and profoundly interesting light thrown by Mendel on some +previously unsolved problems of heredity, the reason for the long +subjection of woman, biological and sociological, becomes clear.</p> + +<p>Because, given the key-notes of Tallness and Colour as Dominant traits, +one identifies these, at once, as traits of Maleness; the greater +stature of male creatures and the richer colour of their fur and plumage +in the lower species pointing unmistakably thereto. Dwarfness (or lesser +stature) and Whiteness (or lesser colour) are Recessive, and are +obviously Female traits. The plant of Dominant type, though still +bi-sexual, is making for a male <i>genus</i>; the Recessive type is making +for a Female <i>genus</i>. White creatures are so feminine in general effect +that it seems an anomaly when they are males. The converse is true of +black creatures. The black horse is stubborn and restive; the white, +gentle and submissive.</p> + +<p>White poultry are prolific in egg-production; white cattle are good +milkers—a female characteristic. Jersey cows are both small in size and +pale of colour.</p> + +<p>The male sex stands presumably for Dominance. And his positive, or +objective, traits overpowering the negative, or subjective, traits of +Recessiveness, prevail accordingly in early biological development.</p> + +<p>The female sex stands for Recessiveness. Her less assertive traits yield +and recede into the background before those of the Dominant male. In +stature, in strength, and in colour, and in the allied mental +attributes, he holds the foreground in form and in function. The reason +being that his rôle in Life is adaptation to environment.</p> + +<p>The male, therefore, in his masculine rôle of Adaptation, with his +Dominant traits making fiercely for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> survival and for the ever +further development of physical fitness—until physical fitness, or +Adaptation, had attained due degrees of ascendancy—was long lord of +Creation; the female, his vassal. And this not only in life and in +action, but too in the personal characteristics of both sexes. During +æons before the Recessive female-traits were able to come into evidence +as definite traits, they functioned as negations, merely; submerged and +over-ridden in all female creatures by the Dominant male-traits they had +inherited from their sires.</p> + +<p>Primal physical development may be said, thus, to have derived its first +impulse from those fierce and fighting male-proclivities which +characterised it in the epoch of that early savage struggle with +environment whence Species emerged. Only with further evolutionary +progress, do the female traits manifest as personal characteristics, +secure survival, and find increasing exercise and sway.</p> + +<p>The tigress is only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the +tiger. Primal woman was only less fierce, less strong, and less savage +than the male. It is only, indeed, in the maternal function and relation +that the female traits of both tigress and primal woman awake, and find +justification, impulse, and scope for development. And while the +material progress which has led to modern Civilisation resulted from +Adaptation to, and of, environment, and derived its impulse from the +male proclivities of strength, assertiveness and intelligence, the moral +progress thereof may be said to have derived its impulse from the +evolution of the female sex-characteristics. Because the evolution of +Woman-traits has meant the ever further tempering and counterpoising of +the fiercely active and aggressive male propensities, by the more +passive and self-surrendering qualities of the female.</p> + +<p>Judging the respective characteristics of the sexes by their +widely-differing rôles in the most important of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> their co-operative +living functions, the parental one—the sole function wherein the sexes +of lower organisation co-operate, indeed—the respective attributes of +Dominance and Recessiveness manifest clearly in these. The province of +the male being to fight for mate and young, providing food, defending +life—in order to fit him for this struggle for racial survival, his +traits of strength and stature remain long paramount, alike in +development and function, over those of the female, as regards his own +organisation and that of his offspring, both male and female. The +province of the female being to surrender her powers to the nurture of +offspring before birth, and, after birth, mildly to suckle and to tend +its helplessness, Nature equips her to these ends; inhibiting, or +negativing, strength and fierceness in her by the traits of Recessiveness.</p> + +<p>Tigress or savage woman, her struggle with the rough conditions of +primal existence is only less fierce and less strenuous than her mate's. +It demands the positive male-qualities (which manifest first in stature, +strength and pugnacity) only less in degree than does his, therefore. +The negative female qualities which, manifesting first in passivity and +surrender, detract from her fierceness and activity, would have made for +extinction of species had they not been defended by those of her +fighting mate, as too by the male-traits she herself had inherited from +her fighting father. They could only evolve, accordingly, precisely in +proportion as they were sheltered behind the male dominant powers. The +tiger shelters his tigress only during her maternal phases, however. Her +cubs brought forth, suckled, reared, and thrust into the jungle to fend +for themselves, she must fight her own battles for food and existence. +And her brief maternal phases being all too short for more than the +scantest development of female traits—which derive their fullest +impulse in their exercise as mother-traits—she remains a tigress +merely, and produces tiger offspring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> merely, because only tigerishness +secures survival in her domain of life and attribute.</p> + +<p>With the further advance of progressing species, savage woman has +evolved from savage brute to savage woman by way of such increasing +shelter and protection by her Dominant mate as have permitted the slow +and gradual evolution of the Recessive Woman-traits in her; and thereby +the evolution of the Woman-sex. Her maternal phases and the unfitnesses +of these become ever more prolonged and incapacitating; her offspring +demands ever longer periods of suckling, devotion and care, as both she +and it rise higher in the scale of organisation. Thus, Sex has evolved +in the male by response to the ever-increasing claims upon him, by the +female and by offspring, of his traits of protective chivalry and +intelligent effort. And Sex has evolved in the female by response to the +ever-increasing claims by offspring upon her, of her traits of devotion and ministry.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>The evolution of the Woman-attributes has been rendered possible only by +that protection accorded by the male to the female as the due of her +maternal unfitnesses; securing thus for her and for offspring a more +privileged and kindlier environment. Environment which, evoking less of +fight and physical stress, enabled her inherent milder, +self-surrendering Recessive traits to emerge, to unfold, and to function +increasingly in life and heredity.</p> + +<p>And in the degree of her advancing evolution, the male evolved. Because, +just as in her earlier hybrid constitution, the Dominant male-traits she +had inherited from her father, submerging the Recessive female-traits +she had inherited from her mother, made her, for long æons, more male +than she was female, so now, with their progressive evolution, the +Recessive female-traits not only made <i>her</i> ever more woman, but, +transmitted in ever fuller measure to her sons, increasingly tempered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> +modified and humanised, the masculine fierceness and combativeness of +these. Whereby were substituted arts of peace and civilisation for those of war.</p> + +<p>Thus, with advancing Evolution, the female sex-characteristics have +engendered, in both sexes, qualities of quietism and subordination, to +temper those of force and aggression; amenities of gentleness, +forbearance and affection, to soften assertiveness, turn the edge of +strife, and fructify intelligence. Thus, human civilisation has been +fostered and furthered.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>In the hybrid creature that every man and woman is, are grouped two sets +of Contrasting Traits, or Sex-characteristics: traits Dominant, or male, +and traits Recessive, or female. And in the complex human hybrid, these +traits, ever increasing in complexity of constitution and further +diverging in trend, are associated in ever more close and complex poise +and counterpoise as both become more intensified and intelligised.</p> + +<p>Man is a hybrid in whom the male Dominant traits derived from his father +prevail in impulse and development over the female Recessive traits +derived from his mother. Woman is a hybrid in whom the maternal +Recessive traits prevail in impulse and development over the male +Dominant traits she has inherited from her father.</p> + +<p>The Woman-traits (which, as said, reach their highest culmination in +<i>mother</i>-traits), become in man <i>paternal</i> traits; modified +mother-instincts which move him not only to love, in addition to +providing for and protecting offspring, but, transfiguring all his other +characteristics, move him to philanthropy, amity, tolerance and altruism +in his dealings with his fellow-creatures.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER IV</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE</p> + +<div class="block"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>"Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,</div> +<div class="i1">Your heart anticipate my heart,</div> +<div>You must be just before, in fine,</div> +<div class="i1">See and make me see, for your part,</div> +<div>New depths of the Divine!"</div> +<div class="right"><i>Robert Browning.</i></div> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>On further applying the Principle of Duality, as operating in +organisation and heredity, strangely interesting and significant +developments appear.</p> + +<p>Because, with the ever further evolution of Form and Faculty as +organisms have risen higher in the scale of life, the bodies of living +creatures are seen to have become further differentiated into two sides; +a right and a left. Anatomically, these two sides appear identical in +structure and in function, although contrary in incidence to one +another. Each is incomplete and impotent without the other. +Nevertheless, paralysis and other diseases show that each is, as it +were, an entity totally distinct from the other. One side may be wholly +helpless and insensitive while its fellow remains sound and efficient.</p> + +<p>Complementary and supplementary each to the other, both are, in a sense, +complete. Further and closer comparison of function shows, however, that +although they co-operate in action, they are by no means identical in +power or aptitude.</p> + +<p>The right half of the body is, for both sexes, the active and executive +half; quicker and stronger, and in all ways more efficient on the plane of physics.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>The left half is, relatively, passive and inert, is <i>responsive</i>, +mainly, to the initiative and requirements of the right half, by which +its powers are overshadowed in every form of direct activity.</p> + +<p>As with the two sides of the body, so it is with the two halves of the +brain, which are at the same time the agencies of mentality and the +centres for recording the sensations and for directing the movements of +the two sides of the body. The brain-half which controls the right side +is known as "the Leading half." It is the agent in concrete +intellection, as in physical activity.</p> + +<p>While, so far as biologists and psychologists have been able to +discover, the other half of the brain is negative in function—a blank, +as regards concrete intelligence and nervous or muscular initiative. In +disease, it has sometimes been found to undertake, and to perform feebly +and imperfectly, sundry of the duties of its active "Leading" partner. +But inert and inadequate in muscular action, it is negative in +intellection. It has been observed, however, that patients in whom this +brain-half is diseased show signs of moral deterioration. Yet whatsoever +its functions—and the fact that it does not atrophy nor degenerate in +the marvellous structure and complexity which characterise +brain-constitution shows that it functions duly—its operations are +totally dissimilar to, and are, moreover, wholly overshadowed by those +of its active, intelligent partner.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Here again, as in the two sides of the body, appear, surely, the factors +of Dominance and Recessiveness—in other words of Maleness and +Femaleness; of strength and activity upon material planes, and of +inhibition upon these.</p> + +<p>Developments which, being in full agreement with one another and with +others, suggest that the two orders of Sex-characteristics (derived from +parents of opposite sex) are centred, respectively, in the two sides of +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> body, and in the two brain-hemispheres allied, respectively, with +these. One side of the body, with its allied brain-half, represents the +paternal inherences of the individual; the other, the maternal. If so, +the right side of the body, with its allied Leading, or Dominant, +brain-half is, clearly, of male inherence. While the left side, with its +allied Recessive, or Dormant, brain-half is of female inherence.</p> + +<p>The inference is further supported by the fact that the stronger right +side is rather larger and more masculine in form; while left-side limbs +are in normal right-handed persons, more slender and shapely and +delicate—in a word more womanly—than are those of the right.</p> + +<p>As regards the face, from one aspect both sides are complete, from +another aspect both are incomplete, without the other. And in +configuration and expression, the two sides of the face differ +appreciably; the left side being more psychical, emotional and +subtle—in a word again more womanly.</p> + +<p>In most persons, the hands and ears and eyes of one side differ from +those of the other, both in form and in function. In some persons the +differences are considerable. It happens occasionally, indeed, that the +eye of one side resembles in colour the eyes of one parent, while the +opposite eye bears the colour of those of the other parent.</p> + +<p>Strange to say, there are, moreover, in the human male, organs concerned +with the strictly female function of lactation.</p> + +<p>Indication of primæval human hermaphrodites formed one of Darwin's +greatest puzzles, indeed. In his <i>Descent of Man</i>, the following passage occurs:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"It has been known that in the vertebrate Kingdom one sex bears +rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the +reproductive system, which properly belong to the other sex.... +Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> kingdom appears to +have been hermaphrodite, or androgynous."</p></blockquote> + +<p>It escaped him as it has escaped later biologists that Man, the highest +of the vertebrates, <i>is still androgynous</i>. And this inevitably so, +since, being of bi-sexual parentage, the sex-characteristics of both +parents must be present in him.</p> + +<p>In <i>The Evolution of Sex</i>, Professors Geddes and Thomson state:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Sometimes a fish is male on one side, female on the other, or male +anteriorly and female posteriorly.... Among invertebrates the same +has been occasionally observed, especially among butterflies, where +striking differences in the colouring of the wings on the two sides +have in some cases been found to correspond to an internal +co-existence of ovary and testes.... The prettiest cases of +superficial hermaphrodism occur among insects, especially among +moths and butterflies, where it often happens that the wings on one +side are those of the male, on the other, those of the female."</p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>Despite the fact that Nature has evolved the complex human races from +the single-celled microscopic <i>amœba</i> ("Protoplasmic father of Man," +as science has styled this), there are those who regard it as another of +numerous blunders on the part of the Great Mother that the left side of +the body is a more or less passive and powerless member. Accordingly, +the doctrine of Ambidextry has arisen. With the result that its wiser +exponents have abandoned it. Because it has been found that children +trained on Ambidextrous lines develop neurotic symptoms. This occurs +even in cases in which children naturally left-handed are taught to use +the right hand, as is normal.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p><p>In a lecture given before The Child-Study Society in London, Mr. P. B. +Ballard, London County-Council Inspector of Schools, stated that +left-handed bowlers send down the ugliest balls, left-handed boxers deal +the most unexpected blows—blows that hurt terribly. To be left-handed, +it seemed, was to be not merely awkward, but to be wicked, moreover. Yet +any attempt to interfere with a child's natural habit is liable to make +him stammer. (The evil bent of left-handed persons has a special +significance in view of my hypothesis of the dissimilar mental functions +of the two brain-hemispheres. The term "sinister" expresses this bent. +The inference is that in such transposition of the normal functions of +the brain-halves, the tempering and humanising influence of the +Woman-half is counteracted.)</p> + +<p>Of a group of 545 left-handed children, 1 per cent. of pure left-handers +stammered, against 4·3 per cent, of 399, in course of being taught to +use the right hand, Mr. Ballard further stated. In another group of 207, +the figures were 4·2 per cent, and 21·8 per cent. respectively. Six out +of ten left-handed children who had been taught to use the right hand +were practically cured of stammering after having been allowed to use +the left hand exclusively for eighteen months. There are twice as many +left-handed boys as left-handed girls; and stammering is twice as +prevalent among boys.</p> + +<p>All of which indicates normal differences in function of the two sides +of the body—differences suggesting that, as I have surmised, each is +the site and the agency of a principle totally unlike that of the other.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>Upon referring to Biology—on the processes whereof every development, +both physical and psychical, of living creatures rests—this curious +dual constitution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of the body, together with the problems of dual +sex-transmission and inherency, become explicable.</p> + +<p>And the solutions are at the same time so simple and inevitable as to be +the strongest possible confirmation of my thesis.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>As already stated, living organisms, offspring of two parents, derive +half the source of their structure from one parent, half from the other.</p> + +<p>All plants and living creatures evolve their organisation from a single +microscopic cell, precisely as Life itself evolved primarily, and has +developed out of the single-celled, microscopic <i>amœba</i>. The +microscopic cell which develops into a living creature is composed thus +of two halves, or "gametes," to employ the scientific term. One half was +contributed by the father: the other, by the mother. The two have united +to form a whole cell. From such a cell (zygote), half male, half female, +the body of every living organism has sprung.</p> + +<p>Now, although these two half-cells unite to form a whole cell, exchange +constituents, and appear to lose their identity each in the other, it +is, in the face of the strange dual constitution of the body, difficult +to doubt that each half actually retains its identity and +sex-inherences, and develops along its own lines (albeit in close +correlation with the other), throughout all the marvellous, intricate, +and complex processes of embryological existence, during which the +zygote is evolving into a living creature, capable of separate and +individual life. And the inherences of these two halves are represented, +at birth, in the respective sides of the body; each being, as it were, a +complete and perfect entity, although inseparably knit in one flesh to +its twin. And throughout all the further intricate and complex processes +whereby the creature comes to maturity, lives, reproduces its species, +and dies, each half preserves its individual inherence alike in +constitution and in function.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> And yet in the mystical unity of their +commingling duality, they are one flesh.</p> + +<p>Each of the parental half-cells contained, marvellously, the potential +moiety of a living personality. But either, alone, would have been but +an incomplete and valueless thing, had it not become united with the +complementary half-cell required to complete it structurally, and to +engender and energise its potentialities. Nevertheless, throughout all +the immature and the mature phases of life, from conception to birth, +and from birth onward to death, the opposite sides of the body represent +normally the opposite sex-inherences of their respective parents. They +are, in humans, the Man and the Woman—two in one—that exist in every +living man and woman. They represent contrary principles; they perform +different functions; they engender and energise dissimilar processes. +One is the centre of the Male characteristics, Dominant upon the +material plane; the other, of the Female characteristics, Recessive thereon.</p> + +<p>Normality and health are the mean and balance, in the individual, of the +complementary and supplementary functions and processes of the opposite +sex-inherences of his, or her, body. Precisely as in the social economy +the complementary and supplementary rôles of men and women counterpoise +the aptitudes and determine the effectiveness of human life and action.</p> + +<p>The left, Female-half of the body, with its allied half-brain,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> is +inhibitive, and engenders the evolution and the preservation, physical +and mental, of The Type; sustaining health and vital power by way of the +female attributes of rest and conservation.</p> + +<p>The right, Male half, with its allied half-brain, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> executive, and +energises the development (Adaptation) of The Type in its relation to +Environment, and, disbursing and applying the vital resources, generates +and differentiates potential faculty in terms of living function.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>This hypothesis of the dual constitution and of dual functions of the +two-sided body supplies an explanation, equally simple and inevitable, +of the parental transmission of Sex. <i>Natura simplex est</i>, said Newton. +And Du Prel, "Nature is much more simple than we have any conception of."</p> + +<p>Because, as Biology shows, not only does each of the two parents +contribute to offspring, but there being both a right and a left +reproductive gland in members of both sexes, the contribution either +parent supplies must have been derived from one or other of these glands +in them. And if the two sides of the body are of different +sex-inherence, it is only logical to conclude that the contribution the +gland of one side makes will be of different sex-inherence from that of the other.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Since all forms of Energy have two modes, potential (or latent) and +kinetic (or active), on the plane of physics, this must be true, of +course, of Vital Energy.</p> + +<p>Life-energy must be present in all living bodies in the forms, +respectively, of <i>latent</i> Vital Energy and <i>functioning</i> Vital +Energy—energy conserved and available for functioning, and energy +expending itself in the living processes of mentality and action.</p> + +<p>An individual is able to move his limbs by power of the <i>potential</i> +motion stored, or latent, in the muscle-cells of his limbs. Just as a +locomotive-engine is enabled to travel by power of the <i>potential</i> +motion stored in the steam generated in its boiler. And as in the +living<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> organism, so in the engine, the mechanism and the processes that +engender in it the <i>potential motion</i> of steam are wholly distinct from +those which convert this potential motion into <i>actual motion</i>.</p> + +<p>One is able to think, by power of the <i>potential</i> mentality stored, or +latent, in his brain-cells. For not only the vital processes which +sustain the life of the organism, as those too which enable it to +function in terms of living personality and action, but brain-power also +must exist in the dual forms, respectively, of <i>potential</i> Faculty and +<i>functioning</i> Faculty. So too, Reproductive power. In all of these +appear again the modes of Dominance and Recessiveness, of powers +<i>positive</i> and <i>manifesting</i>, and of powers <i>negative</i> and <i>latent</i>. And +since the female sex is characterised by traits of repose and +conservation, and the male sex by traits of action, the dual modes of +vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy <i>in potential</i>, and of +vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy <i>in course of +generating function</i>, range themselves inevitably on the two sides of +the living equation as Sex-characteristics differentiating the male +organisation from that of the female. Thus ranged, they characterise the +two sides of the body as representing, respectively, a right, male side +which is the central agency in function, and a left, female side, which +is the reservoir of the <i>potential</i> of function.</p> + +<p>If then the female mode of functioning is the Potential, or Recessive, a +mode of latency, it is to be inferred that the male traits every female +creature inherits from her father will, when incorporated in a body of +female prepotence, pass into the potential, or Recessive, mode; and will +thus become inhibited from developing as male-characteristics. +Nevertheless, this male potential will be preserved in that reproductive +gland which represents the paternal inherences in her, and will be +transmitted, as her contribution to male offspring, in the sex-cells +generated by this gland.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p><p>While the female inherences every male derives from his mother will, in +the presence of the Dominant male-characteristics he derives from his +father, retain their latent, or Recessive, mode; and will thus not +emerge as female characteristics. The female inherences will be +preserved, however, in that reproductive gland which represents the +maternal inherences in him; and will be transmitted as his contribution +to female offspring.</p> + +<p>It will be seen thus that, as in hybrid plants, so in hybrid creatures +of both sexes, cells of two sexes are generated: in the male, cells +Dominant for maleness and cells Recessive for maleness—female that is; +in the female, Recessive cells, prepotent for femaleness, and Dominant, or male, cells.</p> + +<p>And of these, the Dominant male sex-cells contributed by the male +parent, mating with the Dominant, or male, sex-cells contributed by the +female parent, male offspring results. While the Recessive female +sex-cells contributed by the female parent, mating with the Recessive, +or female, sex-cells contributed by the male parent, female offspring results.</p> + +<p>Furthermore, Dominance being paramount in development, it must be from +the Dominant inherence imparted by residence in a male organisation to +the potential, or Recessive, female Germ-Plasm that the latter derives +the new developmental impulse it transmits to sex-cells. While +Recessiveness being Life and Faculty in the potential mode, it must be +from the Recessive inherence engendered in the Dominant male Germ-Plasm, +by residence in a female organisation, that its Dominance, passing into +latency, derives a new potential of further evolutionary impetus.</p> + +<p>The differentiation of living creatures into two sexes, therefore, of +bodies into two sides, of brains into two halves, and of Germ-Plasm into +two reproductive glands, would seem to have had for object the ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> +further specialisation and segregation in the individual, for purposes +alike of constitutional organisation and of the evolution of Faculty and +Reproduction, of the two Orders of Contrasting Traits, which I have +assumed to be Maleness and Femaleness, respectively.</p> + +<p>From this view-point, the female Sex and Sex-traits are Recessive, or +Potential, always, on the material plane, and manifest increasingly +thereon only by way of ever more complex alliances with male-traits; +which, being positive on the concrete plane, equip the female inherences +for function thereon. Femaleness, or Recessiveness, on its side, +however—being Life-Energy in the potential—is all the while +engendering new potence for Dominance to transform into active, or +functioning, power. While although negative, it is equally potent, on +<i>its</i> side of the equation, to alter the values and manifestations of +Dominance. Just as negative electricity inhibits the positive and +destructive forces of positive electricity, although it does not, of +itself, <i>manifest directly</i>.</p> + +<p>The Dominant traits of Tallness and Strength, for example, are direct +and <i>positive</i> factors in physical development. Dwarfness and Weakness +are indirect and <i>negative</i> factors therein. Nevertheless, degrees of +Dwarfness or of Weakness must proportionally reduce and modify the +tallness of Tallness or the power of Strength.</p> + +<p>But that Recessiveness is not a <i>minus</i> sign merely, as algebraically +understood—but is an essential potence on another, and a psychical +plane, is shown by the lesser height of woman rendering itself as a +Grace; her lesser strength appearing in the new virtue of Gentleness.</p> + +<p>That the female provides, for fertilisation, only a single sex-cell, +from the reproductive gland of one or other side, while the male +provides multiple and commingled cells from both sides, supports the +view that sex-cells derived from one side are of opposite sex-inherence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> +to those from the other side. Otherwise, why two reproductive glands?</p> + +<p>The author of <i>The Causation of Sex</i> adduces evidence showing not only +that the two glands are of opposite sex-inherence, but, moreover, that +normally they function alternately; so that now a cell of one, now, of +the other sex, is produced. It is likely, however, that function is +seldom so mechanical, but that personal constitution or nurture modifies its operations.</p> + +<p>That the male cells are multiple in number points to such a struggle of +survival-fitness as ever characterises the more strenuous male destiny. +Not, perhaps, the fittest as regards intrinsic superiority, but that +most compatible with the requirements of the Queen-cell is selected for +mate. Should the Queen-cell be of inferior standard, therefore, then (as +happens in life) not the noblest of type, but that most adapted to +environment secures racial survival.</p> + +<p>So that here again, evolutionary racial advance may derive its impulse +from the Female factor.</p> + +<p>A singular phenomenon, recorded by the biologist, Rörig, and one which +materially supports my argument, is that disease of the ovaries of a +female deer will cause <i>male</i> antlers to develop in her. Proving a male +organism concealed, or held Recessive, in her, by power of her female +sex-organs normally to inhibit the development of her inherited +male-traits. A strange feature of this abnormal occurrence is that +disease of <i>one</i> ovary only causes antlers to develop on <i>one</i> side +only—and this on the side opposite to that of the diseased gland.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, castration of male sheep of the Merino breed (only +the males of which are horned) occasions hornlessness.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>Male traits being paramount on the plane of concrete function, although +they exist (normally) in Recessive form in the female, it is from the +male inherence of her active right side and its allied brain-half that +she derives her concrete powers alike of body and of brain.</p> + +<p>It is obvious, therefore, that when abnormally stimulated by undue +exercise, such male-traits may develop into abnormal dominance.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>The left arm of woman is essentially the woman-member. In its +half-passive action of supporting her infant for hours together, it is +stronger for this maternal ministration than is the more active and +doughty right arm of the male. Her left hand is more delicate of form, +gentler and more soothing of motion than her right hand is. It is the +hand she caresses with. While for direct, strong action—masculine +action, that is—the paternal right half of her is dominant, as in the +male. And although in our present-day stages of Evolution, the Recessive +Woman-traits have emerged as definite characteristics, emancipating +themselves from subjection by the Dominant male-traits, it must be +remembered that their impulse and their powers are yet but rudimentary. +Woman is still more male than she is female; her methods being more +masculine still than they are womanly. And this in the degree of her +cruder racial stock, or of the harder conditions (natural or artificial) +of the environment in which she finds herself, demanding more of +masculine proclivity in her—of physical activity and mental +assertiveness—than of her intrinsic Woman-qualities of emotion and ministry.</p> + +<p>Civilisation, foreshadowing evolutionary ideals, discountenances, the +fighting female. Nevertheless, the cruder female <i>fights</i> still with her +male right arm, and the more cultured female, with tongue and tactics.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p><p>The intrinsic Woman-qualities, whereof Christianity is the gospel, are +yet in their infancy of development; are yet more ideals for which we +are shaping and waiting than they are realised and abiding facts.</p> + +<p>Even their own babes are not secure from the instinct of blows inherent +in the male-muscles of their mothers' right arms, when these are +restrained neither by a woman's tenderness nor by a man's chivalry. +Girl-babies, save those of the rarer higher types, beat their mothers +and nurses only rather less frequently and less fiercely than boy-babies do.</p> + +<p>Later in their life-history, that new impulse to the evolution of the +Woman-traits which characterises their development to womanhood, +normally negatives and further tempers in girls the male instincts of +fight and of sport. But many of our modern amazons, brought up like +boys, are more male than are their brothers. The male fighting-instinct +which moved man to invent a club (destructive) has become so tempered by +the increasingly potent Woman-traits in him that, save when angry or at +war, he is content to turn his club into a golf-stick, a cricket bat, or +tennis racquet; his sword into a plough-share. Whereas, on the contrary, +the Woman-traits which moved woman to invent the needle (constructive) +are becoming so over-ridden by the male in her that modern woman, +artificially masculinised, abhors the needle, and is almost as much +dominated as the other sex is by the male instinct for a weapon in the hand.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>The class, Vertebrates, would seem to represent an adaptation to +environment typically Male; earlier than and contrary in trend to that +of the Mammalia, whereof the impulse was obviously Female.</p> + +<p>Increasing vertebration was characterised by such a progressive +differentiation of Male from Female traits as progressively segregated +these in opposite sides of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> body; with spinal column and spinal cord +for, respectively, physical and nervous central lines of demarcation. +Thus the Male traits were enabled more and more to detach themselves at +will from Female inhibition, and thereby increasingly to specialise and +exercise those powers of force and fierceness and activity by way of +which species became ever more individuated; aggressive, intelligent, +efficient, in terms of <i>Fitness</i> for the struggle for survival.</p> + +<p>Until that later evolution of female adaptation to <i>Unfitness</i>, in the +sacrificial function of Lactation, inhibiting and tempering the earlier +male trend, engendered the yet higher order of Mammalia.</p> + +<p>(With that intuitive illumination inspiring speech, men and races +lacking in virility are contemptuously described as being "invertebrate.")</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>According to this hypothesis, the paternal (and male) inherences of any +mother may be said to be transmitted to the grandson in the direct male +line of her heredity—an unbroken line of Maleness reaching back to its +amœbic origin. While the maternal (and female) inherences of any +father are transmitted, in the direct female line, to the +grand-daughter—a similar line of continuity. The Woman-sex and traits +of the grandmother remain thus for a generation dormant, or Recessive, +in the father; "skipping a generation," as the phrase is. Then, in the +third generation, they re-appear in the grand-daughter; by power of a +maternal contribution in which the female inherence is prepotent. While +the male-sex and traits of the grandfather remain dormant, or potential, +in the mother; likewise "skipping a generation." Then they emerge in the +grandson, by power of a male gamete evoking the inherent male in them.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>The attributes of the one sex invested thus in the other, although +normally submerged, form nevertheless a valuable endowment; supplying +supplementary and complementary factors to counterpoise, to energise, +and fructify the powers proper to the sex of the individual.</p> + +<p>Man bears throughout life the Woman-potential his mother transmitted to +him. But it is not his to realise. He bears it in trust for his +daughters. He transmits it to his daughters, and in them this potential, +recovering its woman-impulse, evolves to a further degree of +woman-power. The like with mothers and sons.</p> + +<p>All of which is supported by the Mendelian doctrine that the mother +transmits "Femaleness" as a Dominant factor to her daughters and as a +Recessive factor to her sons.</p> + +<p>But the method whereby this is achieved has remained a mystery.</p> + +<p>Professor Punnett says with regard to the phenomenon:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The mother transmits to her daughter the dominant faculty of +femaleness, but to balance this, as it were, she transmits to her +sons another quality which her daughters do not receive ... among +human families, in respect to particular qualities, the sons tend +to resemble their mothers more than their daughters do."</p></blockquote> + +<p>A striking illustration of such transmission by mother to son of a +paternally-derived abnormal inherence <i>which she herself does not +develop</i>, is found in so-called "bleeders"; persons who suffer from the +disease, hæmophilia. The daughters of a "bleeder" father show no symptom +at all of the affliction, but they,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> nevertheless, pass on to their sons +this male heritage of the grandfather.</p> + +<p>There are numerous other examples of traits and diseases thus "skipping +a generation"—in other words, of lying dormant, or potential, merely; +overshadowed in the constitution and psychology of the sex to which they +do not rightly belong, but developing in a succeeding generation in +offspring of that sex whereof they are a natural trait, or (so to speak) a natural defect.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Since the woman-half she contributes to their hybrid constitution +engenders the potential of their living processes, the mother may be +regarded as still mothering her children throughout development and +maturity, and to the end of their natural term. Accounting for that +mystical sympathy between mother and child which intuitively informs her +of fatalities occurring to absent sons and daughters—but to sons +pre-eminently. Marvellously, they remain one living flesh so long as life persists.</p> + +<p>During the War, mothers at a distance have known by an intuitive flash, +and have told of the death of sons cut down in battle. One mother +described the sensation she experienced as being precisely <i>as though +one side of her body had been suddenly torn away</i>. So too, mothers whose +infants have died during childbirth or shortly after, describe as +persisting for months subsequently a sense as though part of them were dead.</p> + +<p>The father too must function in the hybrid living constitution. With the +immense difference, however, that his part therein is a factor of the +development of traits, not of the mystical functioning of Life. A +notable feature of this paternal heritage is that in women at middle-age +(when the wane of reproductive power releases vital potential from +maternal investments) not only may masculine physical traits emerge, but +there may develop in them notable brain-capacities inherited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> from the +father. Capacities inherent in them previously, but long inhibited in +action by the normal female brain-Recessiveness.</p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>Every higher evolutionary differentiation results inevitably not only in +progressive mutations in the traits of species, but, as well, in +variations of the reproductive processes of such. When <i>defects</i>, +physical or mental, are not reproduced in later generations true to +Mendelian law, however, this is not abnormal, but is beautifully normal. +Normality requires that defect—which is a deviation from The +Normal—shall not be transmitted in any ratio whatsoever, but shall be +corrected in a succeeding generation.</p> + +<p>Moreover, when we realise the number and the complexities of human +traits, all struggling to keep The Law, it is only to be expected that +any single characteristic owing to its sex-inherence, may pass into the +potential or Recessive, mode, and may thus vanish for a generation. +Further, by the law of compensation, any trait or determinant, although +itself Dominant, may be dwarfed and submerged by some other Dominant +trait more assertive than itself.</p> + +<p>Suppose a father normally larger and stronger than the normally shorter +and weaker mother: Stature and strength being both Dominant and +masculine traits, the traits of such a father, dominating the +development of his sons, should so over-ride the traits of lesser +strength and stature of the mother (in whom strength and stature are +normally Recessive) that his sons will be tall and broad and strong, and +mentally virile. On the other hand, the mother's traits, prepotent in +the development of daughters, will inhibit in these and diminish the +strength and stature of their paternal inherences. Thus, the woman of +pure Recessive (the essential<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> woman) type is smaller, more delicately +organised, and weaker than the male.</p> + +<p>By such means, the normal of the relative strength, stature, and mental +qualifications of the sexes is preserved; the specialised +characteristics of both ever further diverging in trend, while at the +same time intensifying their intrinsic attributes.</p> + +<p>Suppose, however, a mother who deviates from the normal in having +developed along masculine lines, and who is, accordingly, tall or strong +or mentally virile: Far from supplementing, in her sons, the father's +traits of strength and stature, her sons will be more or less emasculate +in mind or body, or in both. Strength and stature and virile mentality +not being normal to her, these can only have emerged in her and can only +have been exercised by her at cost of the masculine potential she bore +in trust for male offspring. A woman who wins golf or hockey-matches may +be said therefore to energise her muscles with the potential manhood of +possible sons. With their potential existence indeed, since +over-strenuous pursuits may sterilise women absolutely as regards male offspring.</p> + +<p>Thus it is that muscular and otherwise masculine women produce weakling +males. (Giant women—female-Dominants—are incapable of reproduction.) +Tall mothers may produce tall sons, by transmitting to them the single +trait of tallness of the maternal grandfather. But since tallness in +woman is development along masculine lines, and detracts from her +maternal power, the tall son in such case is likely to be defective in +other manly traits. Men are of greater height than women, mainly in +consequence of greater length of leg. The power expended in the male in +length of limb is absorbed in the female into complex pelvic +developments, wherein it is stored as Reproductive potential.</p> + +<p>The power thus stored in latency reveals itself in the amazing +evolution, as regards capacity and muscular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> equipment, by way of which +the maternal <i>uterus</i> so develops during pregnancy as to enable it to +cradle an infant of 9 or 10 lbs. weight, and to deliver this by output +of immense energy—a marvel of biological function and mechanism.</p> + +<p>Since the male trait of Tallness may be transmitted by woman from her +father to her son, without manifesting in herself, it is obviously waste +of power for her to develop a characteristic she needs neither for +personal nor for hereditary purposes. Whereas, by further evolving her +own woman-traits of suppleness and grace, she contributes new factors to +those of the male. And so with all the other sex-characteristics.</p> + +<p>Mr. Horace G. Regnart, M.A., the well-known breeder of pedigree stock, +states that a bull of marked <i>masculine</i> characteristics sires daughters +of marked <i>feminine</i> characteristics. While the <i>feminine</i> cow bears +sons of strongly <i>masculine</i> type. On the other hand, the daughters of a +"steery" bull (a bull of de-sexed type) are themselves defective in +female characteristics, and bear sons defective in male characteristics.</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p>Clearly and fully defined, accordingly, as Sex-characteristics are in +proportion as the individual is of high and normal organisation, +obtrusions in the one sex of the traits of the other are as much +stigmata of abnormality as are cleft-palate, webbed feet, or other +deviations from the normal. Because they are reversions to lower types +of organisation in which sex was less highly differentiated than is the +normal of to-day.</p> + +<p>Although, with progressive evolution, the Sex-traits are spun ever finer +and finer, and are ever more subtly and inextricably interwoven with +those of the other, normally the threads run true and distinct as do the +threads of warp and woof in textile fabric.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p><p>The ever finer spinning of the threads secures an ever closer, subtler +interweaving. Whereby the fabric of human organisation, of character and +Faculty, becomes ever firmer yet more supple, ever stronger yet more +delicate, ever more intense and rich of colour, but nevertheless more +beautifully harmonised and subtilised by half-tones and complex gradations.</p> + +<p>This is the reason why the strongest and most virile men are the most +humane; the sternest are most tender; the greatest are most subtle. So +inextricably interwoven with their virile characteristics are the finer +spun Woman-potencies, as strangely and exquisitely to temper and +sensitise their Manhood's powers.</p> + +<p>And it is why the tenderest, most womanly women are the noblest; the +gentlest are the most enduring; the wisest are the sweetest.</p> + +<p>But no more than Black can be White, Acid, Alkaline, or the Straight +line a Circle, can Repose be Action, Sternness be Sweetness, Firmness be +Softness, Fierceness be Gentleness; Assertiveness, Selflessness; +Boldness, Modesty. Nevertheless, in the hybrid unfoldment of Contrasting +traits, Softness tempering Fierceness transforms it to Strength; +Sweetness tempering Sternness melts it to Mercy; Assertiveness +reinforcing Selflessness nerves it to Devotion; Firmness preserves +Softness from lapsing to Weakness; Altruism, inspiring Chivalry, +transfigures it to Heroism. But that Fierceness and Strength, Sweetness +and Selflessness, have only intensified as, with further evolution, they +have extended further into Life and Consciousness, is shown when they +tear themselves asunder from their counterpoising attributes. Fierceness +is seen then to be more fierce in complex man—because fierce in so many +more and deeper issues of Life and Consciousness—than is the fierceness +of the gorilla, which manifests largely in muscular savagery; champing +of jaws, and beating on its breast as on a drum.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p><p>So too, the emotion of complex woman is more deeply rooted in her, and +is more intense, than is the instinctive emotionalism of the savage +woman which expresses itself mainly in reflex movements and hysterical outcries.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Thus down the ages, man, by way of Fatherhood, has endowed woman ever +further with his developing traits of strength and intelligence. Woman, +by way of Motherhood, has endowed man with an ever fuller heritage of +her attributes of selflessness and intuition.</p> + +<p>So these poor souls—the Man and the Woman in all men and women—have +climbed the steep ascent together, hand in hand, toward the Light. +Without the other, neither could have come. So tragically drear and +solitary would have been the pilgrimage, save for the spiritual converse +of that mystical comrade.</p> + +<p>Only by way of this psychical comradeship, which solaces the one sex by +the inspiration of the other, do men and women win through the +terrestrial travail of the human destiny.</p> + +<p>The mystical Man (who is her father in her) when woman would falter and +fail in the fight, whispers, "Courage, dear Girl, go on!"</p> + +<p>The mystical Woman (who is his mother in him) goes with her son into the +murk and struggle of temptation, holding her lamp of The Good and The +True and The Beautiful before his blinding eyes.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Owing to an interchange of nervous strands, the right half +of the brain controls the left half of the body; and the converse. +Structural details which need not be considered here, but which have +clearly for purpose the closer and more complex association and +co-ordination of the Contrasting Traits of the two sides of the body.</p></div></div> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER V</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS BY MISAPPROPRIATING THE +LIFE-POTENTIAL OF MALE OFFSPRING</p> + +<p class="center">"<i>The truth, when it is discovered, is what every one has known.</i>"</p> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>Mendel found that the hybrid plants resulting from his cross-breedings +of Dominants with Recessives produced, when mated with similar hybrids, +sex-cells of pure Dominant and sex-cells of pure Recessive types, and, +moreover, a proportion of sex-cells of mixed type, corresponding to the +grey rabbit-offspring of a black rabbit that has mated with a white.</p> + +<p>So too, are found among humans, four types of men and women such as +might be expected under my application of Mendelian doctrine: +<i>Homozygotes</i> for Traits, or pure typical men and women—Dominant males +and Recessive females, respectively; and <i>Heterozygotes</i> for Traits, or +mixed types—Dominant females and Recessive males.</p> + +<p>Of the pure Masculine type, are men who are wholly male in body, mind +and bent; active, energetic, enterprising; pioneers of material +progress; State-builders, city-builders, trade-builders, financiers, +explorers, soldiers, men of affairs. Of the Mixed type, are men who, +while being virile of body and mind, possess nevertheless a greater +admixture of womanly quality than is strictly normal. These are the +artists, poets, writers, doctors, priests, philanthropists.</p> + +<p>Among women also, are two kindred orders; the wholly womanly—pure +unalloyed types of natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> woman, wife and mother, sister, friend; and +women who, while being wholly womanly too in attribute and trend, +possess, nevertheless, underlying manly faculties which give broader +scope and effectiveness to abstract and impersonal issues of their own +sex-characteristics. These are the artists and poets and writers who +present the Woman point of view. They are the Florence Nightingales, the +Charlotte Brontës, Mary Somervilles; the philanthropists, reformers, +born physicians, teachers, nurses, and so forth; whose part it is to +mother, befriend and inspire humanity at large rather than to minister +to individuals. Whose part it is, as well, to extend the tender, +purifying ethics of Woman and The Home ever further and more deeply into +public life, public work, and public administration.</p> + +<p>Such men and women possess the characteristics of their own sex fully +differentiated, but tinctured and fructified by more than a normal +quotum of the characteristics of the other. They are quite normal, +however, and are wholly invaluable in their contribution to the world's +affairs. Admirably manly or womanly, they bear but little likeness to +the hereditarily-defective or to the artificially-manufactured +species—mannish women and womanish men. They deviate from the essential +Man and Woman types by degrees of overlapping in the higher mental +attributes. In all the main characteristics of Sex, physical, mental and +functional, they are completely men and women. The abnormal mixed types +are, on the contrary, more or less degenerate, structurally, +functionally and mentally. These persons of natural Mixed Types are +Nature's workers rather than the parents of her Races. The daily round +is too restricted for them. Their abilities and bent claim wider fields. +The home cannot contain them. It is too round to fit their angles. They +are hampered by its reciprocities, stifled by its personal atmosphere, +restive beneath its obligations. And not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> seldom they succeed in making +homes as uncomfortable for others as they themselves find such.</p> + +<p>These Heterodox—of which mould Genius is—are indispensable to spur and +quicken human progress, while adding nothing to the personal evolution +of the Human Type. They advance the standards and the ethics of Humanity +by creating ideals in Art, in Literature, in Politics, in Reform and +Philanthropy. But only too often they fall short, in their own lives, of +the standards and ideals they establish for the world at large.</p> + +<p>The Advance-guard of Faculty, they break new ground of Mind and Morale +for others to cultivate. Although they themselves frequently quarrel +with life, they make life in general greater and happier for their +fellows. If women, they possess much of the initiative and energy, the +intellect and chivalry of men. But they apply these to womanly ends. If +men, they possess much of the insight and sympathy, the altruism and +creativeness of women. But they devote these to manly achievements.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Herbert Spencer held that Genesis (or reproductive power) and +Individuation (or Self-development) exist in inverse ratio. Which is +because individuation <i>beyond the normal</i> can only be achieved by +drawing upon the vital potential of offspring. Hence, these strong +individualities of Mixed Type—because reproductive power is diminished +in them—but seldom transmit their abilities to offspring. Genius is +frequently sterile. Otherwise, its children are of inferior calibre.</p> + +<p>It is in imitation, doubtless, of the natural Mixed Types—which may be +described as a normal deviation from The Normal—that the cult of the +mannish woman is being cruelly and disastrously forced upon our +latter-day girls and women; resulting in wholly deplorable developments.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p><p>The woman of natural Mixed-type is essentially womanly in aim and bent. +She does womanly work with virile energy and masculine mental grip. But +she never (or seldom) assumes male proclivities or adopts male habits; +crazes to wear trousers, to ride astraddle, to smoke, spit, swear, +stride, talk slang, or shoot living sentient creatures. Nor does she +otherwise exchange the more highly-evolved and delicate morale and +manners of woman for those of the male. In Art, in Literature, in +Science; in Industry and Reform, her aims and work preserve the womanly mode and outlook.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>In consequence of doctrine which, for several generations, has trained +women to develop for their own uses the masculine potential belonging to +sons, many of our present-day boys and girls are seen actually to have +exchanged their natural sex-characteristics. Boys are born now, puny, +neurotic, and effeminate; while girls are strong and male and masterful. +And it is precisely in the families whereof the girls are strong and +male and masterful, that the boys are weakly and effeminate; the +degenerative lapse from The Normal expressing itself, in both sexes, in +terms of abnormal characteristics of the other sex.</p> + +<p>That at thirteen, girls now-a-days are taller and heavier than boys of +the same age has been established by the Anthropometrical Committee of +the British Association.</p> + +<p>Dr. J. J. Heslop, after carefully observing the health and the physical +growth of children in fourteen elementary schools belonging to the +Stretford (Lancashire) Education Authority, has published a striking +return of his investigations. The following table shows the average +height and weight at this age:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> + +<table border="1" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" summary="height and weight"> + <tr> + <td></td> + <td class="center">Height.</td> + <td class="center">Weight.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="left">St. Matthew's<br /> <br /> +Cornbrook Park<br /> <br />St. Anne's<br /> <br /> +Trafford Park<br /> <br />Gorse Hill<br /> <br />Seymour Park<br /> </td> + <td class="left">Boys 4ft. 7¾in.<br />Girls 4ft. 9in.<br /> +Boys 4ft. 8½in.<br />Girls 4ft. 10-1/3in.<br /> +Boys 4ft. 7in.<br />Girls 4ft. 9in.<br /> +Boys 4ft. 7¾in.<br />Girls 4ft. 9½in.<br /> +Boys 4ft. 8½in.<br />Girls 4ft. 10in.<br /> +Boys 4ft. 8-2/3in.<br />Girls 4ft. 10in.</td> + <td class="left">5st. 7¾lb.<br />5st. 10¾lb.<br /> +6st. 0lb.<br />6st. 5½lb.<br /> +5st. 3¾lb.<br />5st. 10½lb.<br /> +5st. 4lb.<br />5st. 8½lb.<br /> +5st. 10lb.<br />5st. 11lb.<br /> +5st. 0lb.<br />5st. 11lb.</td> + </tr> +</table> + +<p>The most notable development among girls takes place between the +eleventh and thirteenth years.</p> + +<p>The opposite bias in this abnormal substitution of alien sex-traits is +due presumably, in both sexes, to an antagonising and neutralising of +the qualities normal to the one sex by emergence of those of the other. +Thus, the boy is puny and emasculate because his impoverished maleness +is too feeble to dominate the Female traits inherent in him, as is +normal to males. The girl is big and crude and masterful because her +impoverished Womanliness is inadequate to inhibit and refine her +inherent Male traits.</p> + +<p>The aims of Feminism are being realised in unforeseen developments. +Because in addition to extinguishing the most beautiful and inspiring +order of human qualities, this masculinising of women is burdening the +Race and deteriorating type by producing an ever-increasing number of +neurotic, emasculate men and boys.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>The present-day Mortality-rate of boy-babies has become increasingly and +alarmingly high.</p> + +<p>The mortality-rate of males is higher always than is that of females, +because of the greater hardships and dangers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> of men's pursuits. This is +one of the reasons why, although, normally, boys are born in greater +number (about 1050 to every 1000 girls) the female (pre-war) population +of England and Wales exceeded the male population by the huge majority of 1,205,311.</p> + +<p>But the excess of male over female infant-mortality has greatly +increased of late years. In 1860 it was only 9 per cent. In 1913 it had +leapt to the high figure of 23 per cent. And this diminishing vital +power of males begins before birth even, 180 boys being born prematurely +as compared with 145 girls. Of boys born, 7 die from inborn physical +defects, as compared with 6 girls. While, before the age of three +months, 4 boys die to every 3 girls. Among 1000 infants dying before +they are a year old, only 96 are girls, as compared with 120 boys. +Recent statistics show that in rural Westmoreland, 48 boys under a year +old died, while only 21 girls of the same age succumbed. In Wiltshire, +the ratio was <i>135 boys to 78 girls</i>.</p> + +<p>To quote from a writer on these startling statistics of the Registrar-General:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Tuberculous diseases, convulsions, intestinal troubles, bronchitis +and pneumonia, and other maladies, all kill more boy than +girl-infants in their first year. The figures are surprising. +Omitting fractions, we find that among 1000 infants of each sex 21 +boys die of intestinal troubles to 17 girls; 10 boys die of +convulsions to 8 girls; 21 boys die from bronchitis and pneumonia +to 17 girls; and 14 boys from other causes to 11 girls. +Whooping-cough stands alone, carrying off 3·15 girls to 2·65 boys. +Even when chloroform or ether is given for the purposes of an +operation it kills more boys than girls."</p></blockquote> + +<p>It may be objected that, according to my view, the mortality of girls, +bred of constitutionally impoverished males, should likewise have +increased. But this high mortality among boy-infants and children must +so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> weed out the weakliest males that many of these do not live to +become fathers. Moreover, by developing into abnormal dominance the +<i>male</i> potential in her, the mother de-vitalises sons more than she +de-vitalises daughters.</p> + +<p>Further, these crude hoyden-sisters of the weakly boys fail rather in +the higher attributes of Sex than in mere survival-power. They survive, +but they are marred in type by the stigmata of sex-immaturity or abnormality.</p> + +<p>Increasing sex-impoverishment is bringing into vogue—almost as a matter +of routine—the performance on male infants of an unnatural (and a degenerative) Jewish rite.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>Of the many theories advanced to explain the determination of Sex in +offspring, the true one is, undoubtedly, the relative parental power of +the respective parents.</p> + +<p>Normally, this being well-balanced, the ratio of the sexes is about +equal; the preponderance being on the male side, however, owing to the +maternal parental potential being normally greater, because conserved by +reason of her less onerous rôle in life. When parental potential is +relatively greater in the father, female offspring is born. When greater +in the mother, male offspring results. In the families of men notably +virile, daughters preponderate. In those of women notably womanly, sons +are in the majority. (Presuming in such case the parent of the other sex +to be of average potence.)</p> + +<p>The preponderance of male-births during War-conditions is due to the +fact that by far the greater stress of these conditions, with consequent +depletion of vital reserves, falls upon the males. Hence the women—who +although depleted likewise by the increased demands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> upon them, are less +vitally exhausted than the men are—become relatively prepotent in +parental potential. The more virile men being absent on military duty, +moreover, the less virile members of the sex it is who preponderate in +the paternal rôle.</p> + +<p>Other parental factors, as of age, health and circumstance, which affect +the sex of offspring, do so <i>indirectly</i> by their effects upon the +relative vital and parental potential of mother and father.</p> + +<p>In corroboration of the view that power conserved in the mother +engenders Maleness and masculine vigour in offspring, I have received +the following letter from the Head-mistress of the village-school of Corley:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I was much interested in your article <i>re Boy-babies</i>. I think my +school here is unique, there being 86 children on the roll, of whom +57 are boys and 29, girls. And of the children in the village who +will be of age for admission this year, 7 are boys and 3, girls.</p> + +<p>"In the village there are several families composed of boys only.</p> + +<p>One family has 7 boys and 2 girls.</p> + +<p>One family has 6 boys and 0 girls.</p> + +<p>Two families have 5 boys and 1 girl each.</p> + +<p>Two families have 4 boys and 1 girl each.</p> + +<p>"Of one family reckoning 6 boys (1 dead; making 7 in all) the +mother has but one leg—the other having been amputated when she +was fourteen.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> <i>None of the mothers here (so for as I can learn) +do</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> <i>work outside their homes</i>; except in odd cases, an odd day's +washing or cleaning.</p> + +<p>"<i>None do regular work on farms, or otherwise.</i></p> + +<p>"All the children are well-fed, clean and well clothed. Our Medical +Nurse says she finds the finest babies here—of the whole of her +district. For 57 years the yearly returns in School have shown a +great preponderance of boys over girls."</p></blockquote> + +<p>The writer contrasts this Utopian order of things with her experience of +the rickety and otherwise diseased and defective states of +school-children whose mothers were employed in factories.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>It would seem that the embryological development of the male brain and +nervous system, it is which demands more of vital expenditure on the +part of the mother than does that of the female brain; less elaborately +differentiated as is this in respect of concrete intellection and +physical adaptation.</p> + +<p>For this reason, not only is more constitutional vitality on the +mother's part required for the production of sons—and more particularly +of virile sons—but the production of male offspring entails more +stress, and exacts a greater toll, physical and psychical, than does the +ante-natal nurture of the female embryo. Mothers who have borne female +children with but little constitutional strain or suffering may be +greatly debilitated, even invalided, during pregnancy with male +offspring. One finds women permanently weakened in constitution and +function, indeed, from the strain of producing a male. In such cases, +the male may be exceptional of type. Or the mother may be of +exceptionally low vitality.</p> + +<p>It has been argued that defect and degeneracy, as hare-lip, +cleft-palate, clubbed or webbed-foot, are more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> common in the male +because he is normally less highly-developed than the female is. The +contrary is obviously the case. In creating a difficult and a simpler +thing, there will necessarily be more failures in the difficult than in +the simpler product. Being nearer to Nature, the female is usually more +true to the normal type of species. But the type is not so fully +differentiated, or specialised in relation to environment, as is the male.</p> + +<p>It is significant that the female <i>aphis</i>, when its vital potential is +stimulated by summer heat, is able to breed without co-operation of the +male, but breeds <i>females</i> only. Supporting not only the view that the +female is the rootstock of species, while the male is, so to speak, an +alien grafted upon it, but indicating too, that the production of +females represents less output of reproductive energy, since one sex +alone is able to accomplish this.</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>Absence both of womanly emotion and of spiritual attribute disqualifies +the faces of the greater number of our modern "beauties" from being +truly beautiful. They lack those last exquisite touches which psychical +qualities bestow; sweetness, tenderness, gaiety, pensiveness, mystery, +mockery, witchery, wistfulness, surrender, resistance, maidenhood, +motherhood—the celestial and the terrestrial melting into one another +like the colours of the rainbow.</p> + +<p>Since evolution is advancing in some stock, modern beauty is, no doubt, +of higher calibre than has been attained in any previous epoch. But for +the most part, the faces of our handsome women are pre-eminently +pagan—bold, sophisticated, clever; without sweetness, softness, +imagination, sensitiveness—in a word, without Soul. The outlines, +howsoever fine, are hard and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>antipathetic in their uncompromising +firmness. The eyes are cold and critical and challenging, so that their +relentless gaze is sometimes rather of the nature of a blow than it is a sympathy.</p> + +<p>Owing to that setting of the jaw which attends strong muscular action, +the shaping bones of the faces of developing girls thicken and coarsen, +and the naturally delicate, beautiful contours of chin and of cheek +deteriorate to the crude and heavy lower jaws characteristic of a very +large order of the sex to-day.</p> + +<p>The weak receding, or the sharply-pointed chin of the over-feminised +type—both early-Victorian and modern—errs in the other direction. To +give fine balance to the face and form—as to the mind—the Male traits +must be duly represented. These broaden and strengthen the curves, and +preserve them from lapsing to narrowness and feebleness; lending touches +of straightness and firmness which nobly enhance the graces. In excess, +they mar and deface, however; as is exemplified in the strong and +slovenly features, without drawing or delicacy, which characterise the +new type of girl being turned out by our schools and colleges, most of +which make now-a-days a speciality of sports. Similar heavy jaws and +blunt, amorphous features are replacing in our working-girls, de-sexed +by masculine employments, the classic, nobly-modelled lineaments which +made our Anglo-Saxon Race once the most beautiful, as it was the most +vigorous and enterprising, of the nations. Such faces may be deplorably +senseless for the sense—and lack of sensibility—in them.</p> + +<p>The facial type of the opposite extreme is ultra-feminine—a cameo-like +reversion to an earlier Victorian physiognomy, to which several +generations of mothers have failed to add any new quality. But, unlike +its Victorian prototype, the modern ultra-feminine face lacks blood and +emotion, and shows like a faded attenuation thereof. The cold, delicate +features, with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> pinched nostrils which, owing to adenoid +obstruction, have never expanded to a full, inspiring breath of Life, +suggest further cameo-comparison; as being the daintily-carven shell of +an extinct creature.</p> + +<p>So devitalised and neurasthenic are many of our pretty young girls, that +their flowerlike faces, topping over-tall and undeveloped bodies, +suggest delicate blossoms crowning long attenuated, sapless stems. +Neither faces nor bodies are vitalised and athrill with powers rooted in +healthful organs; vivified by healthful functions, and instinct with +warm, iron-rich, magnetic blood. They show that making for beauty which +is inherent in the Woman-traits, but which, in latter-day girls, owing +to defective constitutional vigour or to educational, social or +industrial exhaustion, has been able to realise itself only in sickly +and weed-like development.</p> + +<p>Life manifests in these neurotics in the form of vivacities merely; not as vitalities.</p> + +<p>Severed from their natural roots in Life and vital function, they +resemble nothing more than charming cut-blossoms gracefully fading on +drawing-room shelves.</p> + +<p>The truth is that girls brought up on modern strenuous methods skip the +years between 16 and 26. If young and fresh at 16, all at once we find +them 26 in constitution and in temperament—a little lean, a little +lined, a little wan, a little shrill, a little chill, and only too often +more than a little disillusioned and cynical—in a word already +<i>passées</i>. Some are, of course, an interesting and attractive 26, but +the fresh, warm, vital and beautiful years from 17 to 27, the years of a +natural woman's most charming bloom of mind and body, have dropped from +their lives, like petals from roses. So that our girls in their 'teens +require to hide the ravages of time by every sort of artifice. And at 26 +in years, they are approaching the forties in constitution and +temperament; are even keen on politics,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> cards, finance—resorts, +pre-eminently, of materialistic middle-age.</p> + +<p>This blighting of young womanhood, with loss of youthful bloom and +responsiveness, it is that has led to the decadent and demoralising +vogue of the Flapper. Since, beyond all things, men seek vital youth and +freshness in the other sex, to find it now-a-days, they must seek it in children.</p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>Deplorable are the degenerative processes by way of which those noble +natural characteristics of the Woman-sex which Nature has achieved by +ages of evolutionary advance may be observed to lapse, and are presently +all but obliterated from the woman form and face.</p> + +<p>Increasingly the curves straighten; the conflict between straight lines +and curves occasioning wrinkles. The jaw squares. The lips lose womanly +fullness, sweetness, and their natural colour and texture of +rose-leaves; becoming thin and pale and stern. Shadows gather round +them, foreshadowing, it may be, a masculine growth of hair. Hair loses +lustre and grows sparse, particularly above the brows. The chin loses +its feminine softness; rigidity and grimness being substituted. Eyes +lose fullness, tenderness, brilliance, and woman's normal melting +expression. The glance grows chill, hard, shrewd, direct. Crowsfeet mar +the modelled lids. The serene, inspiring woman-brows are furrowed by the +permanent frown of eye-strain or of nervous tension. The voice falls +flat and metallic, or drops into gruffness and harshness; losing its +delicate tuneful inflections, its sympathetic timbre, its joyous +quality. The cheeks hollow; the white temples are wrecked.</p> + +<p>In the faces of women whose systems are functioning healthfully, a +number of exquisite artistries in cellular texture of skin and in +tinting appear; the skin beneath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> the eyes differing from that of the +cheeks, that of the brows differing from that of the chin, that above +the mouth from that below, and so forth. In women subjected to +constitutional strain, all these exquisite artistic +differentiations—product of incalculable evolutionary developments—are +obliterated; the skin over the whole face becoming of the same grain and +hue, as is normal to the male. The body becomes spare and sinewy, or set +and spread; its movements heavy and abrupt. And more and more the hidden +male emerges from the wreckage. The male right arm, swinging like a +pendulum, suggests itself as being the motive-power of the ungraceful mechanism.</p> + +<p>With the increasing maleness of physique, male mental proclivities +develop; obsessions to wear trousers, to smoke, to stride, to kill, and +otherwise to indulge the masculine bent.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>It may be objected that Beauty takes too high a place in the counsels of +this book. <i>Beauty is Normality</i>, however. Nature, in her every aim and +handiwork, makes beyond every other thing for grace. Weed and moth, +shell and beetle, humming-bird and dragon-fly—all are lovely in +technique and artistry. Plainness and uncouthness in humans only too +often belie noble mind or disposition. This results, however, from such +failure of vital resources that the individual had fine material only to +equip his mind, and none left over to adorn his body.</p> + +<p>One sees the converse too, where all the available potential of beauty +has been lavished on handsome exteriors.</p> + +<p>Plainness is a mark of abnormality. The victim may be normal in other +respects. But in this, he or she is abnormal. And more particularly +<i>she</i>—since Woman is both medium and Creatrix of living harmony and +grace. So is comeliness declining, however, that one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> of the +specifications of a recent Baby-Competition was that beauty would not be +a necessary qualification.</p> + +<p>Yet Beauty is the natural birthright and The Normal of all babes and children.</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p>The Male cult is impressed now at the earliest age. Some of our hapless +little girls, in consequence of having been subjected early to strain of +masculine drill, hockey, cricket and other rough and strenuous +exertions, are more like colts or smaller-sized bullocks in their crude +conformation and ungainly movements, as also in their crude mentality +and manners, than they are like charming human maids.</p> + +<p>Few developments in life are prettier or more engaging than is a natural +little girl. The sex of her, with its fair Woman-attributes, reveals +itself early in children of high organisation. Crowned by her curls, in +her simple white frock, she is as fresh and dainty, as winsome and +elusive as a fairy. Her little Woman-soul begins to make for beauty ere +ever she can walk. Ere ever she can walk, she moves her limbs in rhythm +of the dance. She tries to sing. She stretches out a tiny finger and +reverently touches a bright colour—a blue ribbon, a gold button, a pink +flower on a chintz. Set her in a field, she runs to cram her hands with +daisies. She fills, within the House of Life, an exquisite small niche +that nothing else can fill.</p> + +<p>Yet now they are cropping her fair curls, are exchanging her white frock +for masculine knickers. They are training her soft limbs and exquisite +elastic movements to the hard and rigid action of the soldiers' drill +and march; are teaching her to stride her pony that once she sat as +prettily and lightly as a bird; are making a hard, boisterous tom-boy of +her, with lusty, hairy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> limbs and uncouth manners; perverting all her +natural highly-differentiated delicate attributes and graces to clumsy +lower-grade form and activities.</p> + +<p>They have robbed her of her Doll, whose helplessness and wax perfection +fostered sentiments of worship, tenderness and ministry in her. They +have given her a whipping-top, which—unlike the boy, who pleasures in +the skill and mechanism of its handling—she lashes with contorted +features and neurotic spitefulness.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>With characteristic scorn of physical disability, Feminism contemns old +age as disease or degeneracy—a weakness to be combated with latter-day +strenuousness, cloaked by a counterfeit youthfulness, forced exertions +(even games!) simulated youthful zests and gaieties.</p> + +<p>Beyond all things, women are exhorted not to allow themselves to "grow +old" as their grandmothers did, sitting, comely and tranquil and wise, +at their quiet firesides.</p> + +<p>Yet the truth is, Age is a natural beautiful phase; in its way, as +natural, as healthful and as beautiful as are any of the younger +seasons. Calm and stately as the snows of Nature's winter, as Nature's +winter shows us, old age does not presage death—because there is no +Death. That we call Death is but a temporary Recession from the Outer +and Terrestrial to the Inner and Celestial zone of Being. And with the +vital quietude and longer-sightedness of eyes, come spiritual quickening +and longer-sightedness of mental view. So that both eyes and mind +perceive The Outer more and more obscurely, focusing more and more on +The Remote. The stream of life runs stilly for the reason that it runs +more deep; centring again to that Within and Spiritual, whence it issued +in Birth, and will issue again in re-Birth.</p> + +<p>Compare such serene-faced, dignified age, cause to all of reverence and +tenderness, for the mystery and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> pathos of its wise and tranquil +resignation—Compare such with the restless, harried, malcontent old age +of modern counsels!</p> + +<p class="bold">IX</p> + +<p>Before the advent of that admirable institution, the Eugenics Education +Society, for the establishment of a new Science of Heredity, as, too, of +a new propaganda of Race-Culture, vital and illuminating data, not only +of supreme scientific interest but, moreover, of the greatest practical +significance, passed, for the most part, unnoted.</p> + +<p>I venture to believe, however, that Eugenic propaganda has been too much +in the direction of eliminating defect from the Race by prohibiting +marriage to the so-called "Unfit." Whereas the true way of Racial +health, of normality and excellence, is, surely, to eliminate from life +the many conditions, material, economic, and personal, which make for +Unfitness—which preclude, indeed, the survival of little save Unfitness.</p> + +<p>For since we are not in the secret of Nature's aims, and are wholly in +the dark as to the human type for which she is aiming, to prohibit +parenthood to any but the flagrantly abnormal, the insane and imbecile, +the epileptic and the hopelessly-diseased, might be to quench the +evolution of such higher Fitness as we are not qualified to foresee. +That which shows like disability in one age may be the incipient ability +of a later. In cruder, primitive days, when standards of Fitness were +physical strength, rapacity and cunning, honesty and mercy, and more +delicate organisation of body—the starting-points of new routes of +evolutionary development—would have been condemned as worthy only of extermination.</p> + +<p>In sickly and declining stock there may exist, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>moreover, an ebbing vein +of rare faculty, which, re-vitalised by a due potential of maternal +re-creative power, might come to throb with genius.</p> + +<p>Realising all the factors—the innumerable lives, the incalculable +personal traits, endeavours and experiences, that have gone to make the +Individualism of any strain of stock, and realising that just these +factors of Individualism can have occurred in one line only of human +ascent and can never be repeated, it becomes clear that summarily to +extinguish any human strain, by arbitrary prohibition, would be to +exterminate a unique branch of the great Life-tree, and thereby to +deprive the Race of a specialised route of further ascent; a route which +no other stock could supply.</p> + +<p>The fact that great families, with great histories and talents behind +them, fall into decadence shows that even in decadent stock are +inherences of greatness which might be recruited to greatness again. +While apart from all this, the right of Parenthood, with the +evolutionary impulse to character and faculty consequent upon the +exercise of parental functions, is the birthright of every individual +capable of fulfilling such. The counsel of Selective Parenthood is +dangerous doctrine, indeed. Given Life, Nature by her methods of Disease +is able to eliminate stock too deteriorate for, or beside her purpose. +But she alone knows her purpose. And she alone can judge as to what is +intrinsic Fitness for Survival.</p> + +<p>Selective Parenthood makes, moreover, for the elimination of those +valuable object-lessons of inherited defect and disease, whereby Nature +points her inestimable morals of healthy and disciplined living. For +evasion, too, of those penalties and burdens in the care and maintenance +of the Unfit, which a nation justly incurs by such social wrongs and +maladministrations as are largely responsible for disease and defect.</p> + +<p>The doctrine of operative sterilisation is not only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> humanly repugnant +but, in view of the psychological import of every physical function, it is essentially evil.</p> + +<p class="bold">X</p> + +<p>Some momentous morals of the Feminist trend are pointed by the +Insect-world, which may be regarded as a devolutionary back-water, +wherein Life is slowly ebbing toward extinction by fluctuating out in +ever smaller, meaner, drabber, ineffective, pulseless and spectral +existences—chill and teeming myriads unwarmed by the throb of emotion, +unillumined by the light of Mind. Dust which, raised from dust by power +of Life, has caught the trick of living, and goes on living and +perpetuating, without cause or impulse other than age-old, time-worn +mechanistic habit imparted by the state of living.</p> + +<p>And in this phantom under-world of Decadence, cast by the shadow of Life +and peopled with distorted images thereof, the females are +Dominant—larger in size, stronger, more active, more enterprising and +ferocious than the males. As in the world of Vegetation, by way whereof +Matter first quickened into Life, so in this realm of <i>Insectivoræ</i> by +way of which Life is gravitating back to the inertia of Inorganic +Matter, in ever shallower, denser and more sluggish strata, the male is +seen as appanage and victim of the female.</p> + +<p>In the beehive, he appears as ineffective drone amid a throng of +strenuous neuter female-workers. And a female is his Queen.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Significant again is it that insect-females are seen increasingly to +have emancipated themselves from mother-instincts and maternal +functions, as regards nurture or affection for their young. The single +process wherein the warring males and snarling females of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> finer fierce, +evolving species sheathe their claws and mute their hates in a +co-operative, self-effacing instinct—Reproduction, here in this +disintegrating world of Devolution, functions without welding spark, or +lighting gleam of parent-altruism. At best, it is as chill, as +colourless and meticulously mechanical as the interminable tickings of a +world of clockwork. At worst, it is a repulsive rapacity on the part of +females to secure perpetuation. And this secured, they straightway sting +the craven male to death, or tear him limb from limb and ghoulishly devour him.</p> + +<p>Queen Bee leads her vassal suitors so strenuous and dizzying an +ante-nuptial dance, for privilege of mating with her, that only one +survives to claim the prize; the others dropping, dead and dying, in the +wake of her murderous supremacy. And, as with other masculine and +muscular females, her progeny are neuter working-females (sterile) and +emasculate males (drones).</p> + +<p>As Feminists demand for human babes, the Bee-mother hands over her +offspring to be brought up by the State. While some other +insect-mothers, having reposited their eggs (to serve as bombs that +explode and devastate their living hosts) straightway abandon them, and +return to the more strenuous and repulsive female-pursuits of this +Phantasmagoria-world—a clockwork kingdom fabricated of Life's debris, +and drably mimicking the throb and motion of its mechanism in ghoulish +mockeries and vacuous reiterations; the while it runs down slowly, +ticking back to the molecular vibration of mineral inertia.</p> + +<p class="center">END OF BOOK I</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—<i>Mendelian and other readers interested in the more scientific +aspects of the subject are referred to an Appendix at the end of this +volume, in which these issues are further considered and some important +evidences adduced.</i></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> I have observed that lameness in women, by restricting +physical activities and thus conserving vital energy, conduces to male +offspring. The fact may well have been the origin of the Chinese custom +of crippling the feet of female children. In my own professional +practice, by prohibiting all strenuous and exhausting pursuits, +intellectual, social or athletic, before and after marriage, I have +succeeded in securing male offspring in patients whose stock had for +generations given birth to girls only. In those <i>organically</i> de-sexed +by male pursuits, rest will not avail, of course.—<i>Author.</i></p></div></div> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>BOOK II</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER I</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS DUE TO FEMINISM</p> + +<blockquote><p>"This is the function of our and every age, to grasp the knowledge +already existing, to make it our own, and in so doing to develop it +further and raise it to a higher level. In thus taking it to +ourselves we make it different from what it was."—<i>Hegel.</i></p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>Ancient history is depressing study.</p> + +<p>It shows us peoples rising slowly and laboriously out of states of +barbarism to high degrees of culture and enlightenment, and then, more +or less suddenly, falling upon decline; lapsing to total extinction, +even. One after another, we may watch them climb the Evolutionary Hill, +then slacken pace and struggle on spasmodically. Till presently we find +them steadily losing ground; slowly at first, but, gathering momentum, +regressing more and more rapidly, until finally they are seen racing +headlong to destruction.</p> + +<p>Of some among the proudest and the greatest Civilisations, so absolute +has been their ultimate extinction that nothing more than ruined temples +and some statuary remain to mark their quondam glory.</p> + +<p>Biologists tell us this is natural. Races, they say—like +individuals—have only a certain life-tenure. They are born, develop, +attain maturity, lapse to old age and then die; just as men do.</p> + +<p>The analogy is not sound, however. Because although individual men die, +the stock they leave behind, if duly preserved and replenished by fresh +blood, may live indefinitely. Moreover, such records as remain show<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> +that these past civilisations died, obviously, not of natural old +age—but of disease. Natural old age is sane and wise, and +self-controlled; healthful in mind and in body. Whereas the main +features characterising the decline of these great powers, were +viciousness and licentiousness; physical, mental and moral corruption. +Theirs was no passing in gradual waning of strength and quiet +dissolution; not even in senility. They may be described, on the +contrary, as having rushed helter-skelter upon death in full vigour of +their prime. We see in them, indeed, all the vehemence and +self-destructive forces of "sthenic" disease—disease as it occurs in +strong men struck down in full health. They died in riot, venality, and +lust, and every other form of vice and evil. Clearly, they died +unnaturally—of disease, not naturally of old age.</p> + +<p>How and why then did this happen? How and why should disease thus have +stricken these in mid-career? Since history shows the political +institutions, the laws and the administration of many of such mighty +decadents to have reached high levels of excellence, in respect of +justice and intelligence, while Culture, Art and Industry were likewise +notable among them, the causes of their downfall must be looked for +elsewhere than in their sociology.</p> + +<p>And since all human processes, sociological as well as natural, have +their roots in Biology, we are led to examine such records as remain, +for evidences of biological failure. Healthy and vigorous races do not +decline in consequence of unjust laws or maladministration. If they are +healthy and vigorous, they reform these.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>Investigation shows one striking feature as having been common to most +of these great decadences. In nearly every case, the dominance and +licence of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> women were conspicuous. And realising Woman's +portentous rôle in Racial advance, it is difficult to believe anything +but that her rôle must be equally potent in Racial decline.</p> + +<p>A nation becomes decadent because the individuals composing it have +become decadent. The individuals composing it can only have become +progressively decadent by progressive hereditary decadences. And since +Woman is the racial reservoir and the Agency of Evolution, hereditary +decline of individuals and nations must have its source in a decline of mother-power.</p> + +<p>History confirms this view. It shows the progress and waxing supremacy +of these great powers to have been concurrent with rising levels of +womanly character and virtue, with high regard for woman by man, with +high estimation and observance by woman of the functions of motherhood +and of The Home. While neglect of the home, contempt for and evasion of +the duties of motherhood, immorality and general licence among their +women characterised their downfall.</p> + +<p>And comparing some modern developments with these records of Ruin, one +can but be struck by notable resemblances between these latter and the +present-day trend of all our greater civilisations.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>In the decline of Rome, the Roman women went to two extremes. A tendency +that shows increasingly among our modern womanhood. They separated into +two main orders. "Blue-stocking" and "Rake," they were then designated. +"Mannish" and "Womanish," or "Feminist" and "Ultra-Feminine," better +characterise their latter-day presentments.</p> + +<p>In America, these two orders of women are known as the "College" and the +"Society" types, respectively. The "College" type makes a cult of +masculinity of body and of brain. The "Society" type makes a cult of +feminine graces and social accomplishments.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p><p>In the poorer, as in the superior classes of all nations, similar +extremes are found. One order is virile and hard-working; and for the +most part plain and moral. The other is womanish and pretty; and for the most part frail.</p> + +<p>With us—as with those earlier peoples—the demand for liberty and +unrestricted economic opportunities for women is occasioning contempt +for and evasion of the functions of wife and of mother, emancipation +from the home, increasing absorption in public affairs, fever for +pleasure, lapse of womanly traditions and morale. All of which +developments passed rapidly, in those others, into general laxity, +licence and corruption; culminating finally in total ruin. With them, +the claims of Home and of The Family became, as they are becoming more +and more with us, secondary merely and subsidiary to other pursuits; to +personal ambitions, public careers, to pleasures, excitements, crazes +for notoriety. Woman's inherent erraticism—defect of her intrinsic +spontaneity, her bent for novelty and strong sensation—degenerated, +under the licence accorded her in ancient Rome, into the appalling +orgies of The Bacchanalia; which were instituted by the sex.</p> + +<p>Women attended the displays of gladiators. They watched the wild beasts +tear their victims. They themselves dressed as gladiators, and held +mimic combats. By cult of muscle, they grew taller than the men.</p> + +<p>Sallust writes thus of a notorious Roman matron:</p> + +<p>"Sempronia had committed many crimes of a boldness <i>worthy of a man</i>. +Blest alike in family and beauty, in husband and children, she was +well-read in Greek and Roman literature; could sing, play and dance more +gracefully than any honest woman need; had many of the other +accomplishments of a riotous life. She cared for nothing less than for +decency and modesty."</p> + +<p>Fifty years later, Seneca takes up the story of a rapid decadence: "The +ladies do not reckon the years by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> number of the Consuls, but by the +number of their husbands."</p> + +<p>Much the same licence, extravagance and viciousness of the sex +characterised the greater number of those other old-world wreckages.</p> + +<p>The higher Woman-attributes ceased to evolve; ceased to be exercised; +ceased to inspire. Women cultivated solely, or pre-eminently, the +male-side of their natures; muscle, intellect, ambition, concrete +activities, indulgence of sex-instincts. By power of which masculine and +alien proclivities, they increasingly dominated the men, in whom the +virile traits had proportionally declined. Thus, more and more, the +purifying, uplifting and inspiring potence of true Womanhood, together +with the softening refinements of The Home, became ever further +withdrawn from the national life. Thus corruption undermined; and chaos finally engulfed.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>Things were different in Ancient Greece.</p> + +<p>It has been said that Greece fell because she did not give her women +liberty. For a time comes, in the development of every nation, when its +women must be freed. Or decadence sets in inevitably. And some of those +old civilisations declined, undoubtedly, from lack of progress in this respect.</p> + +<p>It would seem that the first sips of liberty require to be administered +to the sex with caution, however; the effects observed carefully, the +doses increased warily. Otherwise, impulsive and impressionable as they +are, women lose their heads; become intoxicated, and get out of hand. +And once women get out of hand, it is next to impossible to bring them +again under control (as was seen in the outbreaks of Feminist +militancy). Civilisation forbids that men shall deal with them as with +masculine rebels. And fenced thus behind the privileges of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> their own +sex, when armed with the prerogatives of the other, they may prove +dangerously difficult customers.</p> + +<p>In ancient Greece, the wives and mothers and the other reputable women +had but little or no freedom. They lived, for the most part, in +seclusion; dull and unintelligent and uneventful lives. There was no +pure, wholesome, and inspiring social life. The only women who were free +were the <i>hetairai</i>, those famous ladies who shed a lurid brilliance +over the corruption and decline of this great State—a decline wherewith +they had, most certainly, much to do. A faction apart from the wives and +mothers—although many among them were courtesans, they stood apart too +from the courtesan class. Women who had found in the unfreed state of +the wife and mother of their epoch, inadequate scope for their impulses +and talents, they broke away from domestic conditions, to form a coterie +of free lances—a cultured, brilliant and alluring band of renegades, +sought and esteemed for their beauty and intelligence by all men; +aristocrat, philosopher, and pleasure-seeker.</p> + +<p>More likely than that Greece fell because she did not emancipate her +women, it is that she fell because the women who emancipated themselves +abandoned the rôles of wife, of mother, and other reputable functions. +For these Grecian <i>hetairai</i> comprised, in the main, the flower of their +generation. One sees them, indeed, as brilliant Racial poison-blossoms, +greedily appropriating and exploiting to their own purposes the nation's +beauty and the nation's talent, its aspirations, potence, +passion—without transmitting any of these racial attainments to a later +generation. In place of endowing their kind with such nobler light and +faculty, inspiration and sweetness, as supply a people's evolutionary +impulse, they abandoned the home and the sacred and spiritualising +functions of true wifehood, and of the motherhood of such higher living +types as are indispensable to lead a nation's progress.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p><p>A kindred movement—modified, for the present, by the more enlightened +traditions of our Century—is foreshadowing itself across the higher +civilisations of our day. More and more, our better types of women (the +misinterpretations of the Feminist Movement having imparted a distorted +bias and direction to their powers) are similarly abandoning the Home, +or are withdrawing their best interests and talents from it; are evading +wholly, or are gravely restricting their maternal obligations to the +Race; regarding children as bye-products, merely, of life—vastly less +important than some hobby or career. In place of realising the new +generation as the Vanguard of Life and Evolution; that which beyond +every other human achievement counts in the Universe.</p> + +<p>Worse than this even, more and more, everywhere, women are failing in +the maternal power of transmitting to offspring the health, the beauty, +the abilities and aspirations which are the model and ideals of our age.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>A menace to the Race more alarming than that of the hard and mannish +woman (who, because of her lack of womanly attractiveness, is debarred, +in considerable degree, from marriage) is another and less ungraciously +obvious deviation from The Normal—an order of the sex, modern and +artificial, and rapidly increasing in number, over-civilised and +highly-feminised both of physique and of temperament, which may be +described as an Ultra-Feminine, or, in contradistinction to the +Feminist, as a Feminist order.</p> + +<p>Their womanhood but lightly rooted in neurotic systems, the women of +this sect are unstable and erratic, seeking distraction for their +restless, ill-balanced forces, in cards, crazes, drugs; fads and freaks. +Unfitted for wifehood and motherhood—some by faulty heredity, but a far +greater number by educational strain and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>consequent warp—some of these +ultra-feminised and frequently interesting creatures absorb themselves +feverishly in public movements; religious, social or political. Some are +persons of irreproachable morale and ideals; devoted, gifted, wholly +admirable. And being wives not seldom of men as talented, it is +deplorable that warp of culture, unfitting them for motherhood, should +have left such to waste their powers and aspirations in beating the thin +air merely of Utopian propaganda. When, otherwise, they might have led +the true and only way of Progress by endowing the Race with living +presentments and evolving treasuries of the parental ideals and endowments.</p> + +<p>The greater her charm, the nobler her character and talent, the more the +pity is when woman is defective in the power to transmit her high +qualities, or has power to transmit these in inferior degree only; thus +sealing up for ever, or gravely impoverishing a vital spring of living +faculty and individualism—a unique line of Human Ascent which no other +stock can supply, and one which may have been leading up to the +production of genius such as the world has not yet known.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Another—and quite different—sub-order of this neurotic (and +partially-sterilised) type, in losing its higher potential of motherhood +has lost the racial instinct wherein personal virtue is rooted. The +lives of these are free and irregular. Not measures, but men, are their +vogue; to serve as admirers of their charm and talents, as spectators of +their temperamental extravagances. Incapable of the emotions of love, +they seek, are discontented, and seek further when they do not find in +its excitements, the joys and contentment that reside alone in deep and +abiding emotions. The poise and repose, the charm, the refreshment and +the inspiration of true Womanhood are lacking in them. They demand +increasing novelty and change of venue for their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>ill-ballasted powers +and capricious sensibilities. And this precisely in proportion as they +are deficient in those womanly emotions and illusions which endue the +least and simplest things with glamour and with beauty.</p> + +<p>This type, which can scarcely be said to <i>live</i>, but merely to frolic +through life, is pre-eminently dangerous to progress. Because, while +possessing the psychology, the appeal and influence of women, some of +these have cast off, utterly, the traditions, the nobler aspirations and +the functions of the best womanhood.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>It is universally admitted that a bad woman is far more wicked than a +bad man is. She is more callous, ruthless, wanton and debased. The +irresponsibility regarding concrete affairs (innate in a sex whereof The +Concrete is only secondarily the province) makes her a dangerous and a +demoralising factor when her acquired male brain and activities (for the +clever, bad woman is always of masculine bent) over-ride her own natural +aptitudes. Because the powers she has artificially acquired—in +substitution for her native ones—do not alter her inherent constitution +of a creature builded upon instincts; instincts which her native higher +qualities are alone adequate to guide and inspire. One may acquire some +of the characteristics of an opposite sex, <i>but never the morale</i>; which +is inborn and inherent to the natural sex-characteristics.</p> + +<p>Faculty declines in the inverse order of its development. The bloom and +beauty of the peach and of the flower are the last things to come—and +the first to go. So, in forfeiting her womanly qualities, woman forfeits +earliest the best of these. Love and purity and spiritual aspiration +perish first; with the result that the lower-grade female Subconscious +emotionalism, instinct and palpitant with animal impulse, comes into play.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p><p>Man requires to degenerate to far inferior levels than is the case with +woman, before he so loses his normal rationalism as to forfeit his sense +of proportion and of his responsibility with regard to material affairs, +and that stern obligation to conform to environmental conditions which +has been the impelling force of male development. Irresponsibility is in +him an acquired—and a feminine—defect; not an inherent failing of his +sex. The very basis of the manly character is a recognition of the male +responsibility in life's affairs. It was the impulse of man's primal +struggle. It is the mark of his civilised manhood.</p> + +<p>Irresponsibility is, on the contrary, innate in woman. It is part of +that spontaneity, plasticity, and versatility which have engendered the +racial evolutionary mutations; and by way of these have engendered the +progressive transitions to ever higher forms. And indispensable as her +native mutability is in making her the agency of evolutionary change, it +is an insecure and a dangerous basis for too heavy a super-structure of +male characteristics, physical or mental; as also for too heavy a burden +of male responsibilities. It disqualifies her for liberty and scope of +action identical with man's, in material affairs.</p> + +<p>The further we fit her, moreover (beyond her normal capacity), for such +affairs, by artificially equipping her with masculine aptitudes, the +more we unfit her for her evolutionary rôle of spontaneous advance. Her +chiefest values lie in the spring and the plasticity which enable her to +adapt her nature to the evolutionary impulses of life inherent in her; +and thereby to engender further human evolution. For this, it is +important that she shall not be moulded on those firmer and more +definitely prescribed lines of masculine development which are +indispensable to the pioneering of material progress. Nor should her +powers be equally differentiated, or similarly expended. They must be +left, in far greater degree, conserved, unformulate and unadapted.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>Normally, she is the child of Nature, in whom (because she is the +mother of the human child, who shapes to the maternal model) Nature is +unfolding the type of our Perfecting Humanity. She should remain, +therefore, more or less in the native and spontaneously fructifying +state conducive to evolutionary unfoldment. When she adapts as closely +to concrete conditions as it is imperative for man to do, not only does +she exhaust the potential fertility indispensable to the further +evolution and growth of racial faculty, but her powers lose that mode of +flux which enables them to tide to higher levels.</p> + +<p>While man stands for Civilisation, woman stands for Nature. Generatrix +of Life, she is instinct with vital impulses. And when these are not +expended, as is normal, in the creation of and ministration to living +and beloved beings, they generate warped, erratic and chaotic +aberrations. Because, no matter to what degree she may acquire masculine +characteristics and aptitudes, she remains, at core, a creature of +instinct; not of reason. As a creature of instinct she is invaluable to +life—because Life is moulded upon instinct. But instinct and +rationalism function on different planes of mentality. To over-develop +rationalism in her is to quench emotionalism in her, and the higher +illumination of her Supra-conscious faculties; thus rendering her the +prey of smouldering subconscious impulses which burst fitfully and +mischievously into flame.</p> + +<p>For Progress, man must be always the leading half and controller in +politics and civic affairs. These are his province. His sex stands for +permanence and conformity—and, accordingly, for uniformity. And +uniformity is the model for Civilisation, making as it does for justice +and the common good.</p> + +<p>Woman's non-conformability adapts her admirably to the personal +relations of life, but not to the political. Man builds institutions and +administers them by more or less rigid impersonal rule. Woman transforms +them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> into homes, and humanises them by individual concessions and +exceptions.</p> + +<p>So the two are supplement and complement in the public as in the natural +sphere. But their respective rôles are contrary in every mode and issue. +Man's conformity, political and civic, is continually leavened by the +element of non-conformity and change he inherits from his mother, with +her other Woman-traits. But in him, her spontaneity and impulse are so +intelligised and stabilised by his masculine rationalism and bent for +order that, in place of operating emotionally and spasmodically, they +become tempered and restrained. Under his administration, material +advance proceeds slowly, but surely and securely. His masculine +intelligence and sense of responsibility cause him to adjust the +maternal evolutionary impulses,—which he inherits as reformatory and +revolutionary impulses—to the exigencies of practicability, and the +requirements of circumstance.</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>There is no more difficult, or possibly mischievous, person than a +strong and clever woman whose over-developed masculine energies and +abilities are controlled neither by a man's reason and sense of +responsibility, nor by a woman's natural disabilities, affections and +restraints. She is sometimes prodigiously clever; adding to her male +talents a woman's fertility, versatility, adaptability, complexity and +intuitiveness. And yet with all their gifts, such women accomplish +little but harm—alike to themselves and others.</p> + +<p>Erratic, fickle, irrepressible, they are perpetually flying off at +tangents. Now they are one thing too much. Now they are the opposite—in +an equal extreme.</p> + +<p>Medleys of contradictions and perversities, they are no sooner repressed +in one direction, or become fatigued by the monotony of any single line +of action, than they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> burst forth in some other. Their abnormal +mentality and energy, allied to their innate impulsiveness and craving +for change, impel them to break loose from those bonds of affection, of +tradition and of aspiration, which are woman's safeguards. There is in +the nature of most women, this dangerous quicksand of irresponsibility, +which may, in crises, topple and submerge the soundest structure of +education and of habit builded over it. This is seen in the abandon and +anarchy of the sex in riots and in revolutions.</p> + +<p>Such women rebels become increasingly a law unto themselves, and see no +reason why all others should not do likewise. They lack the masculine +grip of concrete principles to recognise that general lawlessness and +individual liberty cannot co-exist. Because where every man is free to +do as he pleases, no man is free to do as he pleases, owing to some +other man's abuse of his liberty encroaching on that of his neighbours.</p> + +<p>Women of this order are the Cleopatras, Agrippinas, Messalinas and the +Catharines of Russia; the de Pompadours, de Staëls, Georges Sands, and +the innumerable other self-centred, unconscionable female-egotists whose +extravagances shriek discordant down the ages.</p> + +<p>Lacking both a woman's morals and a man's ethics, they are freaks of +Nature; or are Frankensteins of abnormal culture. When they are not +Empresses, to indulge in shameful licence—their male abilities +exaggerating their woman-instincts to the dimensions of +megalomanias—their inordinate ambitions make them mistresses of crowned +heads, or of others whose rank or wealth supplies their mistresses with +means and scope for their unbridled prodigalities. Privileged by their +sex and by masculine favour, their lawlessness protected from its +merited penalties by the law-abiding of their fellows, they become +intoxicated—frequently insane—as result of their successes and +excesses. The famous courtesans have been (and are still) for the most +part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> women of this ilk; persons of steel brain and will, without a +woman's aspirations or emotions to soften their self-centredness; nor a +man's code to discipline their wantonness. They make men the instruments +and the victims of their feminine defects, which are all—or nearly +all—of woman they possess; self-consciousness distorted to a monstrous +vanity, emotions dwarfed to greeds and lusts.</p> + +<p>One after another, they exploit their victims, by exercise, precisely, +of the same masculine business-abilities and ruthlessness which make men +fraudulent company-promoters, profiteers, or sweaters of the poor. When +one has served their purpose, they cast him off for another. +Cold-blooded, clever, and emotionless, although sometimes sensual in a +fashion purely male (in keeping with their other male proclivities) they +are adventuresses, spies, poisoners, adultresses, monsters; abiding +reproach to a noble sex; terrible example of the fate awaiting that sex, +as penalty for abnormal development of masculine characteristics beyond +the capacity of its Woman-traits to counterpoise and guide.</p> + +<p>Power, which strengthens and steadies all but weak men, only too often +drives women to destruction. A factor in this is that those privileges +of their sex which have become, more or less, their civilised +prerogative, preserve them from the salutary harsh and stern rebuffs +which men in like circumstance inevitably encounter.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>If women are to have scope and authority identical with men's, then they +must forgo all privileges; must come out from their fence behind strong +arms and chivalry to meet masculine blows in the face, economic and +ethical—if not actual, indeed, as Prévost has predicted.</p> + +<p>And then, Heaven help them—and men—and the Race!</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER II</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE</p> + +<div class="block2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>"I am for you and you are for me,</div> +<div>Not only for your own sake, but for others' sakes,</div> +<div>Envelop'd in you, sleep great heroes and bards,</div> +<div>They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me."</div> +<div class="right"><i>Walt Whitman.</i></div> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>A French biologist has discovered that when a female oyster is starved, +and its constitution thus deteriorated, it becomes transformed into a male.</p> + +<p>The male oyster must be inferior, therefore, in organisation to the +female. Its constitutional potential is less, since the constitutional +potential of the female contains both its own, and the potential of the +male. And the lesser, it is admitted, cannot contain the greater; +although higher evolutionary forms, when subjected to conditions which +preclude them from sustaining these their higher forms, may lapse to +modes less complex.</p> + +<p>Further and more striking examples of such Sex-transformation are +afforded by so-called "mules," or "neuters," which occur in other +species. A well-known case is that of a pea-hen belonging to Lady Tynte. +Having laid eggs from which chicks were raised, this pea-hen, after +moulting, developed feathers proper to the other sex; appearing like a +pied peacock. In the third year the same phenomenon occurred in her; she +developed spurs, moreover, resembling those of the cock. <i>She never bred +after this change in her plumage.</i></p> + +<p>As already mentioned, kindred phenomena of sex-metamorphosis are +observed in women after operations involving removal of reproductive glands.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p><p>That the female is, indeed, a more complex order of organisation than +the male, is not to be doubted, since masculine characteristics emerge +from it when it lapses from its normal of condition.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Adolescence as it occurs in the boy and in the girl emphasises this conclusion.</p> + +<p>To the age of twelve or thereabouts, the normal boy- and girl-child are +like enough to one another; smooth-skinned, active, simple creatures. +The boy is, normally, larger, sturdier, stronger and rougher than the +girl. But, save for the cut of their hair and of their clothes, the two are very similar.</p> + +<p>With the transition to manhood and womanhood, respectively, notable +differences accrue, however.</p> + +<p>From having been a strong, young, active, boy-like creature, +now—provided her development be allowed to take the normal course—the +girl loses physical activity and strength. A phase of invalidation sets +in. Instinctively, she no longer runs and romps. New languors invest her +in mind and in body. She is indisposed to brain-work or to much +exertion. She lounges and muses. Her mind is clouded with the mists of +awakening sensibilities. She suffers from lassitudes.</p> + +<p>She becomes a complex of disabilities, indeed; disabilities which in +delicate, sickly or over-taxed girls, show in chlorosis, anæmia, +hysteria and other ills. Obviously, profound changes, with +re-adjustments of her constitutional resources, are taking place in her. +And most significant of these is that which shows like an <i>arrest</i> of +development, physical and intellectual. Because, normally, she develops +but little further along direct lines of intellect and muscle. Yet that +she is still developing, and this upon wholly new—subtler, higher and +more complex lines, is manifest at the end of this transition-period +whence she emerges, a woman.</p> + +<p>Her developmental arrest and her disabilities <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>(resulting from an +intensification of Recessive processes in her) are seen now to have +subserved a phase of higher evolution. Nature suddenly locked the door +upon her differentiating and escaping energies, in order that these +might be conserved and knit into organisation. The active muscularity +she has lost reappears in the new factors of symmetry and delicate +modelling of limb; in repose and grace of movement. The straight, slim, +boy-like lines of the hoyden girl have evolved into the curves and +rounded suppleness and beauties of a woman. The girlish, agile and +abrupt movements have passed into a woman's poise and grace. The +unformed features of the child have become now delicately modelled; the +curveless, emotionless lips have bloomed into the flower-like, rosy +fullness of a woman's mouth; passionate and tender. New mystery and +brilliance light her eyes. Eyes and brows are charged with potencies; +with seriousness, with modesty, serenity, elusiveness. Hair and hands, +voice and expression, have become transfigured by the magic of a +re-creative impulse which has regenerated her whole being.</p> + +<p>So too her brain development, arrested along lines of concrete +intellection, is seen to have evolved to higher, subtler forms of +mentality; to be instinct with delicacy, sympathy, tact, and with that +incalculable mode of supra-conscious cerebration which is intuition. In +so far as she is of high, womanly type, she is now warm and emotional, +sympathetic, intuitive; consciously pure, yet delicately passionate. +From a crude and sexless hoyden, she has evolved into an exquisite +complexity; invested all round with higher values, human and psychical.</p> + +<p>As in their earliest beginnings, however, so now again the Woman-traits +manifest as Unfitnesses. Her new departure has actually undone in her +much that had been achieved in physical adaptation.</p> + +<p>Biologists, observing this arrest of development in the female, have +interpreted it as sign of an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>organisation inferior to that of the male. +In point of fact, the contrary is the case. Her arrest of development +along lines of masculine inherence no more proves her inferior to the +male than does the human developmental arrest along lines of that tail +our ape-progenitor possessed, prove the human inferior to the ape-species.</p> + +<p>This arrest of tail-development occurred first in the female, doubtless; +being one of those evolutionary mutations in the direction of advance of +Type which are engendered in her sex; and which are characterised by a +conversion to higher potential, of differentiations in respect of +adaptation to environment that have been achieved in the male. +Conversion of male Fitness to female Unfitness, therefore.</p> + +<p>Seeing that the ape is vastly more adapted than is man to natural +environment, it is obvious that the trend of adaptation to environment, +far from having been along lines of evolving ape to man, must have been +always, on the contrary, impelling reversion of the human to the +ape-type. Darwin relates how he and Huxley, watching some boys bathing, +"marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no +longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all +other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on earth."</p> + +<p>Hugo de Vries says: "Natural Selection (whereof Adaptation is <i>modus +operandi</i>) ... does not single out the best variations, but simply +destroys the larger number of those which are, from some cause or other, +unfit for their present environment. In this way it keeps the strains up +to the required standard."</p> + +<p>While Hoffding states explicitly: "Adaptation and Progress are not the same."</p> + +<p>Clearly there are Dual Principles operating in progressive development; +one adapting the organism to environment, the other adapting it to the +Typal model inherent in species.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>In the male of stock impoverished by artificial conditions of +civilisation, the transition to manhood is attended likewise by some +languors, physical and mental. New powers are being developed and +occasion more or less strain upon the constitution—a strain wherewith +our present-day masters and pastors, in their zeal of intensive culture, +reckon far too little. In healthy boys this is in no way comparable, +however, with the constitutional stress which adolescence causes in +healthy girls. The youth continues to wax in strength of brain and body. +The arrest, or involution, normal to the girl, does not occur in him.</p> + +<p>While she becomes gentler and more tranquil, by reason of a new poise in +her of mind and body, he becomes forceful and restless by reason of a +new release in him of energy. Yet though he gains in strength of brain +and body by this further differentiation of his resources into concrete +faculty and virile energy, he lapses notably in organisation. From the +supple, fine-skinned boy—clear-eyed, sweet-voiced, womanly almost in +refinement and comeliness—he grows large and hard and muscular; more or +less sinewy and rough-hewn, according as he is, or is not, manly of +type. His skin loses its fine grain and smoothness, becoming coarser and +hirsute; thus reverting, in degree, to the inferior, animal grade of +skin. His voice falls nearly an octave, lapsing from sweetness and +purity to gruffness and volume. Obviously—although all this being +normal, the male has a virile charm and handsomeness of his own—man's +is notably a less highly and subtly-evolved organisation than is woman's.</p> + +<p>In the boy, is seen a progressive adaptation of body and brain to +environment, in order to fit him for his man's task of coping with and +advancing the conditions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> of life, material and ethical. And for this, +the more delicate and sensitive woman-physique, demanding more of vital +conservation for its upkeep, would be a handicap.</p> + +<p>Biological adaptation for his part in reproduction occurs too. But the +male development at this epoch is pre-eminently one of adaptation to +environment; equipping him with bone and muscle, brain and enterprise, +aggressiveness, initiative and energy. Racially indispensable as the +reproductive function is in him, it is obviously incidental and +subordinate to his general development.</p> + +<p>The girl's transition to womanhood is seen, on the contrary, to be one +almost entirely of adaptation, physiological and psychical, to the +functions of wifehood and child-bearing. Her growth ceases. She loses, +in place of gaining, nerve and muscle-power. While, in becoming +emotional, her changed mentality unfits far more than it fits her to +cope with life at first hand; with life unadapted, that is, and herself +unshielded by the male. Her intelligence at eighteen is normally less +keen and active—although of higher and more subtle quality and +trend—than it had been at twelve.</p> + +<p>Indications of Nature which point unmistakably to diametrically +different modes of culture and of training for the sexes, and, in +consequence, to wholly different applications of their respective powers +and aptitudes in every department of life.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>In the boy, the Male-traits receive, with adolescence, a great influx of +energy; wholly dominating the Woman-traits which had made him more or +less a feminine creature.</p> + +<p>More and more each day, the potential virile in his every cell asserts +itself in structure and in function; dominating the Woman-traits +inherent in him. He waxes big and strong of body; restless and active of +mentality. And the less, within normal limits, virility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> has been +prematurely forced in him by too hard strain of mind or body, the better +for the evolution of his manhood. Unless the Woman-traits have been +unduly drilled and hardened out of him, they will now refine, inspire +and fructify his awakening masculine powers. The too hard struggle for +existence put, by necessity, on boys of the poorer classes, and, in the +higher classes, forced on sensitive boys called upon, too young, to +fight for survival in the semi-savage communities that public schools +are, hardens them too soon and too summarily, and thus frustrates their best development.</p> + +<p>It is said that there is no atrocity a boy-community will not commit.</p> + +<p>In this stage of development, the moral consciousness of the <i>genus</i> is +at low ebb. The accentuation of Male-traits now occurring occasions a +recrudescence of primal instincts. And the collective atmosphere such +recrudescence engenders in a boy-community, marooned in school-life +apart from the refining, softening influences of home and womenkind, is +only too often an evil and a demoralising one. Boarding-schools should +be abolished; good day-schools substituted.</p> + +<p>More than at any other phase of his existence, the masculine needs now +the Woman-influences from <i>without</i>; because the Woman-traits <i>within</i> +are, for a period, submerged beneath a surge of Maleness.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding these obvious truths, however, during the years when +body and mind should be adapting gradually, consciously and +subconsciously, to the social environment wherein their lives are to be +passed; when the mental horizon should be expanding simultaneously with +the expanding intelligence, when the moral should be rising to the new +demands upon it, boys are imprisoned in scholastic institutions, where +they are hemmed in by routine and restrictions, in an atmosphere of +puerile conceptions, puerile traditions, puerile conventions and +associations; their chief outlet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> and respite the narrow rules and the +narrowing absorptions of so-called "Games," supervised by martinet Games-masters.</p> + +<p>And then, when we bring them to the field of life, we are surprised to +find many of them unintelligent, unadapted, unadaptable; resourceless, +inept and incompetent. Cooped during those impressionable years in a +wholly artificial environment, when confronted by the world of living +actualities, which is not ruled by similar narrow restrictions, nor +shaped upon the artificial forms and puerile misconceptions in which +their young ductile natures have been run and have set—they show +themselves wholly unfitted for life, with its varied, difficult and +complex conditions and adjustments. They have become, in point of fact, +mentally and temperamentally "provincial."</p> + +<p>The good form which some of them acquire is derived less from +school-ethics or training than from an aristocratic strain of boys with +whom they have been associated. And being acquired, when it is not the +form of their own social order, it appears only too frequently as a +counterfeit; engendering insincerity and snobbishness, and marring individuality.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It has seemed to me that, in both sexes, the first seven years of +life—during which native faculty and attribute are evolving at great +pace—are a phase in which the Recessive, or anabolic, mode, +conservative of the resources and vitalising of the tissues, is in the +ascendant. The true child of both sexes is normally, during these years, +a typification of the Woman-traits; receptive, plastic, gentle, +affectionate, trustful, intuitive, emotional; quickly fatigued, quickly +recuperative; more or less lovely and angelic. In this phase, native +intuitive faculty makes children sometimes phenomenal; lightning +calculators, musical prodigies, precocious poets, artists. So too, their +marvellously rapid apprehension of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> complex meanings and +implications of life betokens Supra-conscious mentality.</p> + +<p>At seven years old and thence onward to fourteen, a male, and katabolic, +phase sets in. Phenomenal faculty vanishes. Concrete development of +body, brain and energy proceeds apace. The child becomes active, +intelligent, enterprising, inquiring. The boy becomes appreciably male; +the girl more or less of a hoyden, more male, indeed, than she is +normally at any other period of her existence. Unless, that is, this +hoyden phase is rendered permanent in her by masculine training.</p> + +<p>At fourteen, with the evolution of sex, the sex of boy and girl, with +its respective opposite modes of constitution and of function, makes for +marked development, each along its characteristic lines.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>The French have a saying: <i>La femme est une malade</i>. Woman is not, of +course, an invalid. Nature does not fashion invalids. Woman's +organisation is normally delicate and sensitive and highly strung, +because of its special and complex sex-differentiation. She resembles +the child, in that howsoever healthful (in proportion, indeed, as she is +normal and healthfully organised) her cells of brain and body re-act +resiliently and vitally to all the agencies, physical and psychical, about her.</p> + +<p>This sensitive re-activity is not only a sign, it is, as well, a +<i>source</i> of health. Because the greater delicacy and sensitiveness of +organisation which characterise women and children, resulting in their +quick re-activity to deleterious conditions, secure a permanently more +highly-vitalised condition of body than is the case with man, whose +cells are less sensitive, more tolerant of fatigue, of cold, and of +other injurious agents. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>Immunity against injurious factors is the +parent of degeneracy. Life being re-activity, in terms of living +processes, to the factors of environment, such immunity entails loss of +vital re-activity to <i>vivifying</i> as much as against deteriorative factors.</p> + +<p>We complain that Nature, in place of making our bodies of cast iron, so +to speak, makes them, on the contrary, vulnerable at every point. The +reason is, surely, that the less we are constituted like cast iron—the +more vital and complex, intelligent and responsive, our tissues are, +accordingly—the more conducive to change and advance (because the more +sensitively re-active to subtler and psychical stimuli) they are +likewise. We cannot be, at the same time, hardy and obtuse, yet +exquisitely sensitive. Living tissue-cells are characterised, beyond all +other developments, by a range of contrasting abilities. An arm serves +as softest cushion for a child's head, or, by stiffening of its muscles, +becomes rigid as steel. An eye that sees for miles will focus to a +pin-point. But being, as we are, still in the making, our tissues +necessarily have limitations—and the defects, accordingly, of both +their sets of qualities. High sensitiveness of function is necessarily +attended by corresponding complexity and delicacy of structure. Such +structural delicacy obliges us to adapt environment to its complexities. +It is thus an incentive to progress.</p> + +<p>It obliges us, as well, to moderate our activities, and, by thus +restricting the output of our cruder powers, our resources are husbanded +and directed into higher channels.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>The purpose of the complex differentiations which handicap the +adolescent girl is obvious. The curving bones, the expanding pelvis, the +rounded contours, the inhibited muscles, the languors and recurring +disabilities, are designed to restrict activity, physical and mental.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p><p>Physicists tell us that the Conservation of Motion and the Conservation +of Energy are one and the same thing. This must be true, as well, of +<i>Vital</i> Energy. The conservation of Vital Activity subtends the +Conservation of Vital resources. The new developments are by no means +incidental merely to the new processes; they are an integral part of The +Plan. In half-closing the doors on avenues of active output, Nature +conserves the Woman-powers for more intrinsic use. Every brain and +body-cell is raised thereby to higher levels both of constitution and of function.</p> + +<p>As stored <i>mechanical</i> energy becomes transformed into the higher form +of <i>electrical</i> energy, so the power stored in Woman's anabolic cells is +raised to higher evolutionary forms. Thus she becomes fitted to be +mother of the Child—the blossom of the Race. Her part in the child will +contain the inherence of these new higher evolutionary values, as the +father's part in it will contain the inherence of the concrete powers he +has developed. And while her body spontaneously raises all its issues in +order to fit her to be a Mother, so it develops powers and functions +adapting her to serve as soft environment, physical and attributal, for +the rearing of her child.</p> + +<p>All this complex differentiation and evolution are designed, as well, to +adapt woman for the love-passion, and to draw and bind her mate to her. +And Nature has so cunningly interwoven the two plans and the two +developments that, for the most part, those physical traits and +emotional attributes which best qualify for motherhood most potently +attract and closely attach the woman's mate to her.</p> + +<p>Woman is "<i>une malade</i>," because, throughout the more than thirty years +of her potential maternity, she suffers periodically those which, +biologically speaking, are <i>minor childbirths</i>; each entailing a cycle +of complex physiological processes, with more or less considerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +constitutional and nervous stress, debility and incapacitation. Nature +exacts from her this recurring toll to Life and to the Race, not only to +preserve in her, in healthful and efficient function, the power and +mechanism of actual child-bearing, but (only second in importance) +perpetually to recruit her emotional womanhood and wifehood.</p> + +<p>When girls in course of developing the maternal function, with all its +attendant psychical implications, are strained by athletics, by +over-culture or industrial exhaustion, the vital resources are so +diverted from the evolution of this function as to cause incapacitation +in them, partial or complete, for wifehood, and for the bearing of sound +and fine offspring. Sterilisation, absolute or partial, is induced; with +dwarfed structure, blighted emotions and warped instincts. Even in women +who have developed normally, disease or atrophy of reproductive organs +may follow constitutional strain or undue effort.</p> + +<p>Toll to Life, in genesis of potential lives, is exacted likewise from +the male. It is a reflex in him of the vital maternal function, inherent +in his Woman-side. And this perpetual Life-tax upon his energies so +reduces these as to temper his physical and nervous activities and his +bent for individuation, and thus inhibits him from squandering his whole +potential of Life-power in volitional output. Thus is preserved in him +that normal proportion between Individuation and Perpetuation which +Herbert Spencer describes as existing in inverse ratio to one another.</p> + +<p>Thus also is preserved in him the normal mental balance between the Male +and the Female departments of his dual brain. Men muscularly or +intellectually overactive become lopsided and ineffective; restless and +wasteful of their forces, chill and sterile of temperament; having lost +that fine fructifying calm wherein creative potential is engendered for +concrete achievement;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> having lost also that equipoise of faculty +whereon mental and moral stability depend.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>The Life-tax levied on the male is incomparably less, however, than that +exacted of the female.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>It is because of their <i>anabolic</i> mode of tissue-cells, less wasteful +upon the material plane, that girls and women normally require less food +than boys and men do. Notwithstanding that their bodies are more highly +nourished than are those of males. Healthy young women continue to be +plump and pretty, healthful and active on bread-and-butter, fruits and +sweetmeats. While mannish women, whose physiology has deteriorated to +the <i>katabolic</i>, disruptive and forceful, male mode, possess frequently +the hungry appetites of men; not only for food but for drink. And yet +withal, they are lean and for the most part plain, and poorly nourished.</p> + +<p>With the wane in her of the <i>anabolic</i> mode of cellular conservation, +and the release thereby of vital resources which, sealed up in her +tissue-cells at adolescence, remain invested in organisation during her +years of possible motherhood, woman in whom sex is not highly developed +reverts more or less (as does the constitutionally-deteriorated oyster) +to the masculine type. She lapses to a <i>katabolic</i> metabolism.</p> + +<p>At middle-age, accordingly, provided she be still healthy, she derives a +considerable accession of energy, physical and intellectual. Now for the +first time relieved of the Life-tax upon her resources, her powers are +released from bond, and become more fully available for individuation +and personal activity.</p> + +<p>At the same time, with this conversion of constitutional investment to +the form of current and available energy, there occurs a +proportional—sometimes a very signal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>—impoverishment of organisation; +and, after a phase of recrudescent emotionalism, a cooling and thinning +of passional feeling. Because such realisation of invested vital capital +is inevitably the precursor of decline. Thenceforward her cells, no +longer sustaining their high evolutionary states, generate more of +concrete energy, and endow her with increased powers of action. But +their conditional deterioration is manifest in general deterioration of +physique, of looks, and frequently of health.</p> + +<p>Not seldom, indeed, when her constitutional reserves had been previously +depleted by over-expenditure, physical or mental, the cell-deterioration +of this epoch lapses to serious disease or disability; to rheumatism, +gout, cancer or other perverted forms.</p> + +<p>With the constitutional and biological changes come psychical changes +too. In women in whom sex is not highly-specialised, middle-age entails, +with its quasi-masculine physical phase, quasi-masculine mental traits. +They may become strenuous and combative, sometimes difficult and +domineering. Perhaps they attach themselves to political and ethical +"anti"-movements, as arena for their new combativeness, their augmented +intellection, and increased physical activity.</p> + +<p>In the most womanly of women also (as in men at a later epoch) there +occurs at this period a natural transposition of the parental traits of +Altruism and Chivalry to the impersonal plane; moving them to mother and +father the world in general, by way of Charity, Philanthropy, Reform.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>Is it not waste of power and faculty, is asked, for able and cultured +women to permit their development, physical and mental, to adapt to the +simple requirements of a nursery?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p><p>Uncultured and more or less brainless women of an inferior class, it is +said, should be adequate, surely, to cope with the minds and the needs +of these immature beings.</p> + +<p>Immature they are, in truth. But they are nevertheless strangely +complex; exquisitely sensitive. And they are men and women in the +making—or the marring. Behind the eyes of any child that looks at you +in dumb and wistful impotence to express itself, to defend itself, to +provide and to care for itself, may lie the mind, in bud, of a +Shakespeare, of a Newton, of a Shelley; of a Florence Nightingale, a +Mrs. Somerville, a Charlotte Brontë.</p> + +<p>How the most ordinary child, indeed, of cultured parents suffers acutely +in feeling, and deteriorates in mind and character under the regime of +blundering rebuffs, scoldings and misapprehensions, he meets at every +turn in the nursery ruled by a crude, hard woman of the labouring classes!</p> + +<p>How, when they have grown older in years but are still only young in +understanding, all youth suffers from the shallow motherhood that was +kind, maybe, and helpful to it in its childhood, but fails it utterly in +the stress and difficulties of its teens!</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>True motherhood is the greatest of the Creative Arts; Mother-craft, the +most vital and complex of the Sciences. Life has never received more +than a tithe of that which Nature destined for it, owing to lack of +mother-nurture. Genius has never fruited to full bloom and potence, +because the mothers have so seldom realised the greatness of their task.</p> + +<p>Nearly all the records of childhood that writers have given us are +annals of bewildered mental suffering and of moral torture, which have +left their evil mark in injured health or warped mentality—not seldom in both.</p> + +<p>The home, with all the intuitive wisdoms, the powers and sympathies and +the maternal ministry of a true mother,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> is indispensable to the nurture +of Individualism, and thereby to the evolution of human character and faculty.</p> + +<p>The true home is the temple of the soul. Souls are exquisitely +sensitive, infinitely shy. And only in the warm and fostering atmosphere +of kindred beings do they find courage to unfold in living attribute. +Every home should be a unique environment, pre-eminently specialised and +adapted to the evolution of the young and tender +nursling-individualities shaping in it. To uproot these prematurely from +their native soil and transplant them in an alien one, is to blight +nascent talent and to warp character. For the reason that it +necessitates too early individuation, with precocious development of +self-protective and other qualities of worldly expedience.</p> + +<p>To plant out the shivering, exquisitely sensitive seedling, the human +Babe, in the chill, communal atmosphere of a Crèche or other +institution, is as inhuman a social crime as it is an inhuman social +crime to defraud its mother of her highest evolutionary impulse and +function in the nurture of her little one—a responsibility she has +incurred, a privilege she has earned by right of her maternity.</p> + +<p>In her nursery, the mind of woman opens new windows of illumination, +glimpses new vistas of thought and emotion, higher and lovelier +apprehensions of the profounder meanings of Life. In her nursery, her +eyes learn tenderness, her voice sweet modulation, her speech new purity and fondness.</p> + +<p>In good and happy homes where young persons, in place of being banished +to schools, grow up in the natural bracing and inspiring atmosphere of +parental influence and affection, Sex evolves new issues, in those +attractions and sympathies of its Contrasting Traits which are evoked by +the relations of mother and son, of father and daughter, of brother and sister.</p> + +<p>Under modern conditions, in which children and young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> persons renew +intermittent acquaintance merely with parents and brothers and sisters +during brief holiday visits—returning home, with every added term of +absence, more and more strangers to their kin, their personalities and +interests increasingly detached from those of the home circle—such +potent and inspiring developments of sex are vanishing.</p> + +<p>A wide gulf, truly, separates from their fathers these modern +self-centred, self-opinionated young sportswomen and over-academised +girls. The charming filial relation, engendering new and tender +sex-amenities in the daughter's hero-worship and reliance on the manhood +of her sire, in the father's protective chivalry and recruital of his +youth in the company and interests of his young daughter, is waning +toward extinction. The vast majority of fathers feel dismally +constrained, indeed, and out of countenance in the presence of their +girls—so smart and sophisticated, so superior, critical and +self-sufficing are our latter-day school and college-maidens. For the +most part, their own daughters are the last among womenkind to whom men +turn, to reap something of the freshness and fairness of the younger +generation they have sown and laboured for.</p> + +<p>While the up-to-date mother aspires to no higher or more beautiful place +in her boy's life and affections than that of "good chum!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER III</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE</p> + +<div class="block"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i10">"We may outrun,</div> +<div>By violent swiftness, that which we run at,</div> +<div>And lose by over-running."</div> +<div class="right"><i>Shakespeare.</i></div> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>How now, in detail, does the Feminist creed lend itself to the +biological developments and indications of Nature described in the last chapter?</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, as already intimated, it ignores, violently combats at +every turn, and only too frequently wholly frustrates them.</p> + +<p>Feminist leaders have shown themselves deplorably indifferent alike to +biological and to sociological law. Losing sight of the truth that the +intrinsic and eternal function of Humanity is Parenthood—and more +particularly Motherhood—they have made, all along the line, not for the +true emancipation of woman but for her commercialisation, merely.</p> + +<p>The economic viewpoint has obsessed them wholly. Not to free woman from +disabilities under which her womanhood, her wifehood, and her motherhood +were suffering, but to convert her powers into industrial and marketable +commodities has been the aim. That higher ideals are bound up with +economics, is true. The rights of honest self-support and adequate wage, +leading to kindlier, healthier and happier life-conditions, are, by +improving constitution and character, important assets on the side of +Evolution. But by far the most urgent and important consideration in +economics, as these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> affect women, is the fundamental biological +principle that, because their greatest of all values lie in their +evolutionary and racial endowments, rather than in their concrete and +commercial efficiencies, the sex requires and is entitled to such more +lenient and privileged social and industrial adjustments as admit of due +quota of its vital resources, physical and mental, remaining conserved +in the potential. In place of these being differentiated and expended to +the degree natural to man, and exacted of him by his prescribed rôle in progress.</p> + +<p>In direct and violent opposition to Nature, the Feminist system does +everything possible, however, to frustrate that normal phase of arrest +along lines of concrete development whereon the higher evolution of +woman—and in woman, of the Race—depends. Just at the age when Nature +locks the door upon her constitutional resources, for the purpose of +evolving these to higher organisation, the schools and industries do a +strenuous best to keep the door forcibly open, and to wrest the +resources from the storehouse of potential. With a view to fitting woman +to compete with the male, in whom such arrest of individuation, in the +racial interests, is occurring to vastly less degree.</p> + +<p>In all ways, the natural languors and disabilities of the girl's +adolescent phase are vigorously combated. The unfortunate young +developing creature is exhorted, spurred—compelled by rigid rule, +indeed (whatsoever her physiological disabilities), to take her part in +strenuous exertions; hard drill, cricket, hockey, football; with the aim +of developing masculine muscles where feminine muscles should be. At the +same time, her brain is forced, crammed and exploited by perpetual +mental tasks; by competitive examinations, or by some or another strain +of specialism, intellectual or industrial. The result is that she is +forcibly precluded from evolving to those higher, subtler modes of body +and of mind,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> which are the essence, the charm and the inspiration of +the sex; and the model of the Race to be.</p> + +<p>Our school-girls and work-girls, in whose already impoverished, or +degenerate, bodies this battle for their resources between Nature and +Culture (or Industrialism) is waged—the one to make them normal, the +other to make them abnormal—are all more or less in states of disease; +are chlorotic, anæmic, neurotic, dyspeptic, hysterical; or suffer from +ailments special to their sex. While some are sturdy and florid and +buxom (prematurely middle-aged), more are neurasthenic and attenuated, +ill-nourished, spectacled, breastless, hipless, pale or pimply; are +restless, emotionless, joyless, cynical, discontented. In but few are +found the thrill and joy, the pulse and spring and natural enthusiasms +of healthy, happy young creatures in the dawn and grace of maidenhood. +Such as are charming and pretty possess these natural +woman-characteristics only too often in fragile and weed-like form. The +constitutional degeneracy of some shows in precocious +sex-development—all precocity being degeneracy, development too rapid +and exhaustive, and entailing therefore flimsy and unstable +tissue-cells, faulty functioning and premature decline.</p> + +<p>A proportion, one is thankful to say, are normal and healthful and +charming, endowed with the attributes and graces, personal and mental, +for which Nature is shaping in the sex. Others are, biologically +speaking, mere lamentable "spoiled copies"; amazons of the hockey, +football, tennis or hunting-fields, only just distinguishable in general +characteristics from the male, and lacking more or less wholly in +womanly psychology and aptitude, and in all the fairer and nobler +attributes of their sex. Still others, although handsome and finely +female of physique, are "splendidly null" in respect of the emotions, +and of the other subtler and psychical developments of natural womanhood.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p><p>The Greeks, with their intuitive apprehension, pourtrayed both Athene, +goddess of Intellect, and Artemis, goddess of Sports, as sexless, +passionless, unwedded and childless; scorners of men, devoid of all +womanly impulse and sentiment. (Strangely enough, as though anticipating +the argument of this book, Athene is described as having sprung, in full +life, from her father's brain. While Scripture tells of Eve derived from Adam's side.)</p> + +<p>In <i>The New System of Gynæcology</i>, the latest and most authoritative +treatise by eminent specialists in women's diseases, the following +passage occurs, under heading, "Derangement of the Sex-Characteristics":</p> + +<p>"It is our belief that the more truly feminine a woman is, psychically +and physically, in instinct and in performance, so much the more +complete and normal will be the functions of her mind and body. We have +already alluded to inverted instincts. And in the perversion of +functions and characteristics (physical phenomena) we may observe all +grades from almost complete masculinity in appearance, <i>with the +disappearance of the feminine functions</i>, to the lesser degrees of +disordered function and characteristics."</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>Nature is so complex, yet so subtly consistent in her workings, that the +neuter-state shows in the faces of many of our women as the typical look +of the mule—cross between horse and ass, a creature incapable of +reproduction. In the eyes of young women of strenuous +pursuits—academic, industrial, or athletic, this characteristic sterile +glint, part boldness, part antagonism, is common.</p> + +<p>The normal condition of woman is attended by the normal expression of +woman. The womanly biology entails the womanly psychology. And modesty +is one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> of the natural female secondary Sex-characteristics, attendant +upon healthy structural development and function. The hard, bold +glance—the "mule"-look—of some masculine girls and women by no means +necessarily implies conscious immodesty. It is mainly biological and +subconscious; sign of an attribute missing, as result of deterioration +of the function in which the attribute is normally rooted.</p> + +<p>With reduced values of that Reproductive function it is modesty's +province to defend, the attribute of modesty declines.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>The girls and women of old Sparta, as ignorant of biology as women are +to-day, made a cult of athletics—good and zealous, but mistaken +patriots!—for the express purpose of mothering a fine, athletic race. +These high and praiseworthy aims failed signally. For Sparta, with all +her zeal of racial improvement (so drastic in its methods that she +killed her weakly girl-infants) fell upon decline and degeneracy. Noble +civilisation that she had been, she died in decadent corruption.</p> + +<p>And showing the relation between athletic pursuits and extinction of +womanly qualities, the Spartan cult of Maleness led to such decay of +modesty that it became the custom for women to run with the men in The +Games, naked as they. A custom that sprang less from actual immodesty +than from lapse of that normal Sex-specialisation, whence arises the +normal sex-consciousness which engenders wholesome reserve between the +sexes. Modern developments of a similar extinction of womanly modesty +are seen in the conduct of latter-day girls and women in public parks +and elsewhere; in the unseemly familiarities of mixed bathing; in the +decadent, unduly-familiar or frankly indecent dances, and the frankly +indecent modes of dress just now in vogue. As too in that so-called +"candour" which permits women of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> culture to talk openly of the most +intimate physiological functions, and, without sense of shame, to +discuss across the dinner-table prurient scandals and other unsavoury +topics.</p> + +<p>The mystery of the creative powers of Life occulted in her has ever +invested woman, for man, with glamour and reverence, enhancing a +thousandfold her charm and appeal to his chivalry and tenderness. In +stripping herself of womanly reserve and dignity, alike in demeanour and +dress, she shatters her mystery for him and forfeits her supremest claim +upon his manhood; while robbing him of his fairest illusions and most +inspiring incentives.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>In cases of sex-transformation in the lower creatures, the lapse to a +masculine type is found to be accompanied by atrophy of reproductive +glands. As recorded in a previous chapter, investigations by Rörig show +that when the ovaries of female deer atrophy from any cause, male +antlers develop.</p> + +<p>Mannish sex-characteristics in women are as abnormal and as unnatural, +and arise from a similar cause as do male antlers in female deer.</p> + +<p>With the wane of parental power, normal to middle-age, there occurs a +like—but in such case a natural—atrophy of glands. And this it is that +causes some women to acquire masculine traits at this epoch.</p> + +<p>Degrees, greater or less, of such a decline (natural to middle-aged +women) are being artificially, and prematurely, induced in our girls and +young women. Some of them become actually sterilised, and are wholly +incapable of reproduction. The greater number are only partially +sterilised. They are capable still of being mothers. But the function, +in place of being the crown and the fulfilment of their natures, is a +disability; is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> more or less of a morbid process, indeed. And their +offspring are more or less deteriorate. Not a few, after +marriage—called upon to fulfil functions the resources whereof have +been sapped by other and abnormal activities—become invalids; a number +require surgical treatment.</p> + +<p>Non-development, similar atrophy, or other deterioration of the mammary +glands precludes the vast majority of our young mothers from nourishing +their babes—a deplorable injury to these as well as to the mothers +themselves; physical and psychical function being closely and subtly allied.</p> + +<p>Women who fence or play hockey and other rough games during girlhood, +become, owing to such degenerative atrophy, incapacitated for lactation.</p> + +<p>The following is an interesting example of the manner in which cruder +and lower-grade power may be increased at the cost of higher faculties. +A patient told me that, having been naturally a poor walker—two miles +having been her limit—she had determined to train herself out of this +which she regarded as an infirmity. Accordingly, by persistent practice, +she succeeded in raising her walking-power to ten miles daily. She +mentioned incidentally—seeing no relation of cause and effect—that, +for several years (the years during which her walking-powers had been +increasing) <i>she had become progressively deaf</i>.</p> + +<p>That she had been, in point of fact, sapping the potential of the +complex, invaluable faculty of hearing, in order to equip her +leg-muscles, was confirmed for me a few weeks later, when I read of a +number of cyclists, who, after one of those deplorable +pacing-exhibitions common to-day, came in, one and all, stone deaf: a +consequence of nervous strain. The deafness in these cases passed off +with rest. But it is easy to understand that from such temporary +functional depletions frequently recurring, permanent structural +deterioration must result<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> inevitably. Thus it is that over-use, in +sports and games, of the muscles of shoulder and chest, occasions +atrophy of mammary glands.</p> + +<p>By no other way than by artificially inducing in them a premature +(partial) climacteric, by perverting their young organisations to the +quasi-masculine type of the middle-aged woman, and thereby releasing, +for available output, power which should have remained conserved for +many years in organisation, can women be fitted for masculine pursuits. +And such sterilisation, where it is not producing actually diseased and +degenerate offspring, is producing a pitiful race of pallid and +enfeebled babes and children; dyspeptic and spectacled, +adenoid-afflicted, unchildlike and generally deteriorate.</p> + +<p>That other factors contribute to the wave of Racial decline now menacing +our modern civilisations, great and small, is true. Yet mothers of fine +vital potential are able to counteract and to minimise the effects of +constitutional disease in the other parent to degrees but little +realised. Because such mothers are so lamentably rare.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>It is the natural release of vital forces, consequent upon the normal +wane of mother-power at middle-age, that has been mainly responsible for +the errors of the Woman's Movement.</p> + +<p>In all its aims and methods it has been essentially a Middle-aged +Woman's movement. There are no young ideals in it; no concessions to +youth, to love, to graciousness or sentiment; none to wifehood or to +motherhood. It has been, for the most part, a grim, dour striving after +neuter standards, neuter models, neuter efficiencies, neuter lives and neuter recompenses.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p><p>Identity of brain and muscle, of aims and claims, of games and +avocations; equal rights and equal work and equal pay have been the +watchwords of its propaganda. "Fair play and no privileges!" its +promoters rigorously demand for these poor weedy girl-neurotics who, +beyond all else, require industrial concessions and the human clemency +of adequate rest and leisure, to allow of normal and healthful +development of their growing brains and bodies.</p> + +<p>Pioneered by strenuous, middle-aged women—with the best intentions, be +it said—Feminists have adopted the fatal policy of sternly impressing +the model of their own quasi-masculine middle-age as the standard of +youthful development. Without, for a moment, suspecting that such +wresting of male energies and efficiencies from its young women-victims +has inevitably entailed upon them degrees of that climacteric of +womanhood which is the herald of decline. On the contrary, this +middle-aged, quasi-masculine state, because of its release of power for +sterner purposes, has been hailed as a triumph of Emancipation and of +higher education; proof positive that woman is not man—only because she +has lacked opportunity to become so.</p> + +<p>In point of fact, these unfortunate young creatures have been, and are +being all the while ever further despoiled of their youth, of their sex, +and their fair heritage of life and happiness, of function and of +faculty. And the Race has been robbed of priceless living wealth in +human health and capability.</p> + +<p>The breasts of these despoiled have shrunk, in place of blossoming. +There are no founts of altruistic life in them. Never will they be +capable of nurturing babes, or of contributing their mysterious due to +psychical attribute. The pelvis remains narrow and puerile. Never can it +serve as hostel for a babe of normal, healthful type.</p> + +<p>In the vast majority of modern girls and women, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> reproductive organs +are structurally immature or functionally defective.</p> + +<p>Dr. Gaillard Thomas, an eminent American gynæcologist, estimated, some +years since, that only about 4 per cent. of American women proper were +physiologically fitted to become wives and mothers.</p> + +<p>The United States have been and are all the while deriving fresh influx +of vigour and vitality in stock, from the continuous immigration of +simpler and more vitalised peoples. But American women proper have never +recovered from the strain and hardships of adaptation to a new +environment, which settlers in alien and undeveloped countries +necessarily encounter; the deteriorative influences whereof are shown in +constitutional impoverishment of the parent-stock. This is true, as +well, of our Colonial kin. Not only the strain of acclimatisation, but +too the hard and rough life-conditions women have to cope with in +undeveloped lands are responsible for the constitutionally-debilitated, +or, on the other hand, for the rawer and less highly-organised racial +types found in new settlements.</p> + +<p>In the United States, moreover, the standards of culture and of training +are pre-eminently artificial. Democratic sentiment and material +prosperity induce persons of working-class biological organisation to +over-tax their children's brains and constitutions by forcing these to +the educational standards and culture of stock that has evolved, by +generations of higher nurture, to higher evolutionary grades. The +"newly-rich," eager for their families to profit (as they regard it) by +opportunities denied themselves, invariably commit this radical error of +over-estimating academic education and social accomplishment. They fail +to realise that one can no more attain culture than one can acquire +breeding in a single generation. It takes <i>three</i> generations of +culture—of comparative ease and freedom from the strain of industrial +labour and living—to evolve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> the crude muscular arm of a working woman +into the shapely, refined arm of a gentlewoman. And so it must be with +brains. In nineteen cases out of twenty, a 'Varsity education serves as +irreparable injury rather than as benefit to a working-class youth, +depleting health or warping character as it inevitably does.</p> + +<p>The strain of living above the evolutionary level is exhaustive and +harmful, physically and mentally, both to individuals and to stock. The +prudence of apportioning education to the grade of evolutionary +development is strikingly shown in the cases of negroes, who, when +over-taxed by the education normal to white races, not seldom become +blind or consumptive. And always the morale deteriorates. The forcing +upon our own labouring-classes of an education above that suited to +their natural powers has contributed largely to the constitutional +deterioration and the neurasthenia common among them to-day.</p> + +<p>One of the factors of modern Labour-unrest, indeed, is the physical +unfitness of debilitated and neurotic working-men to cope capably and +cheerfully with the tasks of earlier and sturdier generations.</p> + +<p>The urgent need of all our over-civilised races is not more education +but more <i>native faculty</i>.</p> + +<p>Every form of disease and degeneracy, physical and mental, is rampant. A +well-known authority on brain-diseases warns us that if mental +defectiveness continues to increase at its present rapid pace, soon we +shall be unable to support the asylums required to accommodate and +segregate the unfortunate victims thereof. They must remain at large—to +perpetuate and multiply indefinitely their terrible afflictions.</p> + +<p>Yet how is it possible that such weedy, half-sterilised creatures as are +so many of our modern mothers, should bear sound and sane and vigorous offspring?</p> + +<p>Inherited debilitation and defect are further aggravated by present-day +educational methods.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p><p>Our modern rendering of the training of the young is the <i>straining</i> of +the young.</p> + +<p>Developing creatures should never be allowed to over-use function or +faculty. Because to over-tire an immature faculty is to deplete its +vital resources of development. Nor should young developing creatures be +permitted to do anything too strenuously or for too long a time. +Narrowness and mental warp result inevitably from too early and too long +periods of concentration in one direction, of the ductile shaping brain.</p> + +<p>In defiance, nevertheless, of this first principle of rearing, boys and +girls, after the morning's brain-work, are kept at strenuous games for hours in succession.</p> + +<p>Body and mind, after having been cramped between the covers of +text-books, now are cramped within the narrow rules and rigid form of +such miscalled "games," supervised by over-keen experts—the whole +business exacting sustained muscular tension, temperamental excitement +and competitive nervous strain. The powers are stretched to win some +goal, in place of being unbent in leisure and in pleasure. True play is +spontaneous enjoyment of the moment, not fierce concentration upon +goals. This latter induces excitement, which may be pleasurable, but it +entails its tax in reactionary exhaustion. Because of the spur of +competition in them, sports and games, as now rendered, act as powerful +nerve-stimulants that deplete and waste the vital powers.</p> + +<p>School-boys and school-girls live, for the most part, in alternating +states of high tension in sports and reactionary languors from the heart +and nervous strain resulting therefrom.</p> + +<p>Since sports and athletics became a cult, heart-diseases have increased +by 50 <i>per cent.</i> We complain that our young men are limp and +unintelligent, lacking in initiative and enterprise. Apart from the +serious circumstance that, mentally, they have been trained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> for +cricket, not for life, most of them (to employ their own phrase) have +"gone stale" in heart and brain, in consequence of forced athletics, +long before they come to the momentous business of living. Even their +muscles have wasted, in place of developing. With the result that +instead of being finely-built and graceful, numbers of our youths are +stiff, stoop-shouldered and abnormally attenuated.</p> + +<p>Education should aim at keeping young persons fresh and unstrained; +charged with vital energies for growth of mind and body, filled with +zest and enthusiasm for the career before them.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Everywhere, mothers deplore bitterly that they can obtain neither duty, +obedience, nor affection from their girls. Many will not mend their +clothes even; refuse so slight a domestic concession as to arrange +flowers for the home. Lacking the morbid excitement of competitive rough +games, an abnormal craving for which has been artificially created, and +home-tastes extinguished, at school, modern girls are bored and +disaffected save when indulging in sports or in other excitements. The +more delicate, sympathetic, and humanising amenities have no appeal for them.</p> + +<p>All the subtler, vital and inspiring impulses of natural womanhood have +been rudely smothered in tussles of big muscles, in sensational crazes +for making hockey-goals, and similar crude aims, quite alien to natural +girlhood. The recurring stimulus of such, in addition to over-developing +male muscles and proclivities in them, creates both the habit and the +craving for excitement; effects pernicious and demoralising as are those +of all habitual strong nerve-excitants.</p> + +<p>It is impossible to exaggerate the cumulative effect of habit upon +disposition—and this particularly upon the plastic, shaping +dispositions of young girls.</p> + +<p>Youth is at the mercy of its pastors and its masters,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> to spoil or to +foster its best growth. We feed the bodies and cram the brains of our +young people, while, in sending them away from the home which is their +natural environment, we starve and dwarf their emotions and affections; +giving these nothing to evoke, nothing to nurture them. The abnormal +cold-heartedness and self-absorption latter-day mothers bewail in their +girls are the inevitable outcome of their unnatural upbringing.</p> + +<p>The spectacle of young women, with set jaws, eyes strained tensely on a +ball, a fierce battle-look gripping their features, their hands +clutching some or other implement, their arms engaged in striking and +beating, their legs disposed in coarse ungainly attitudes, is an +object-lesson in all that is ugly in action and unwomanly in mode. The +so-called "tennis-grin," which on many women's faces does duty for +smile, shows how the muscular tension of forceful effort permanently +mars higher attribute. So too, the proverbial quarrelsomeness of +tennis-playing women results from the combative habit of mind. Light and +exhilarating, in place of strenuous competitive exercises, enable girls +to develop their womanhood in healthy structure, efficient function, and +beauty of body and mind. Dancing—the poetry of motion—particularly +conduces to health and to grace. True dancing, that is, not the +acrobatics of the professional dancer, which result in coarsened ugly +limbs and stilted action.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>There is a well-known Girls college which makes pre-eminently for the +cult of Mannishness.</p> + +<p>And here are seen, absorbed in fierce contest during the exhausting heat +of summer afternoons, grim-visaged maidens of sinewy build, hard and +tough and set as working-women in the forties; some with brawny throats, +square shoulders and stern loins that would do credit to a prize-ring. +All of which masculine developments are stigmata of abnormal +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>Sex-transformation precisely similar in origin to male antlers in +female-deer; namely, deterioration of important sex-glands, with +consequent obliteration of the secondary Sex-characteristics arising +normally out of the functional efficiency of these.</p> + +<p>It has been said that the "hardening" process for children succeeds in +rearing sturdy families, by killing off those of more delicate (and +higher) organisation. And this and other such latter-day schools earn a +reputation for rearing amazons, by so breaking the health and +constitution of their more delicately-constituted members that these are +compelled to withdraw. Following the rule that healthy bodies rebel in +terms of illness against deteriorative conditions, it is the normal and +healthfully-constituted girls who fail beneath such injurious strain. +While organisations less sound of constitutional morale, in place of +sustaining their typal ideals, conform to these deteriorative methods, +and degenerate from higher to lower-grade standards of structure and +function. Precisely as happens to minds when exposed to demoralising influences.</p> + +<p>And to what end is it all? The training of modern young persons should +fit them for Twentieth-Century existence in all its varied, complex and +psychical developments. Yet now-a-days we train our girls as though +their destiny were carpet-beating or the forge, rather than the higher +human amenities. It is not surprising, therefore, that they frequently +play hockey with the higher amenities. So impressionable and mimetic the +sex is, and such its bent toward extremes, that women trained to Sports +comport themselves in after-life as though playing a competitive game. A +mental warp which has been one of the sources of latter-day +strenuousness, as too of that fierce social rivalry which is wrecking +older and fairer ideals and methods of friendship and hospitality.</p> + +<p>Over-development of the large and cruder muscles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> dwarfs those smaller +and more delicate ones which adapt to the softer and subtler departments +of faculty. And while despoiling these smaller muscles which subtend +gentle and delicate artistries, the crude larger ones, hypertrophied by +athletic activities, become alike a burden and a curse to their +possessor. Because not only is their upkeep a continual and a +superfluous tax upon her vital powers, but their hunger for continued +function in further such crude activities afflicts her with turbulent +impulses, for which the more civilised vocations supply no scope. The +militant Feminist movement was as much an explosion of suppressed +muscularity in young women deprived of other outlet for accumulated +muscle-steam, as it was an ebullition of masculine mentality on the part of its leaders.</p> + +<p>Hysteria and other neuroses, obsessing hobbies and crazes, are, more +often than not, morbid and distressing consequences of habits acquired +at school and college, of developing abnormal high-pressures of muscular +and nervous energy. Masculine war-occupations have similarly evoked male +muscularity and mentality in women. So that—War over—they find it +well-nigh unendurable to return to the more refined and humanising +womanly employments of their pre-war days. While on the other hand, +employers are bewailing the rough and coarsened manners, personality and +speech, as too the clumsy movements and ineptitudes of domestic +servants, nurses and others, de-sexed by War-work in respect of the +higher qualities and efficiencies of their sex. Many of these sturdy +motor-drivers, lusty W.A.A.Cs. and strapping Land-girls have lost all +taste as well as aptitude for the finer arts of life and of the home. +Efficient in the handling of plough or gun or lorry, woe to the hapless +babe or invalid subjected to their hard, forceful touch!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>Language is scarcely emphatic enough to characterise the painful (and +insane) exhibitions of Public-school and College "Sports," in which boys +and young men, whose vital forces are needed beyond all things for +development, may be seen with faces whereon is neither joy of action nor +pride of achievement, but only the pained rigidity of supreme heart and +nervous strain, as they strive for goals that are no test of true +physical fitness, but, on the contrary, prove physical lopsidedness.</p> + +<p>In confirmation whereof is the fact that many such athletes die young, +and die suddenly. Or they live the years when men should be still in +their prime—valetudinarian and hypochondriac. The secret of health and +nervous power is the constitutional capacity to <i>store reserves</i> of +vital energy, for expenditure as required. Exhausting sports in youth +engender habits of <i>over-expenditure</i> thereof.</p> + +<p>Trials of skill and of strength are admirable spurs to development and +self-discipline. But these should make for excellence in that fine poise +of Mind and Muscle which is the hall-mark of human achievement, not for +extremes of crude brute-force (muscle being the lowest grade of human +powers) which strain the living mechanism; and, straining, leave +inevitably weak and warped links, when not actually snapped ones +therein. The human body is a marvellous and delicate psychological +instrument, not a mere muscular implement. When the hearts of boys are +"sounded" after competitive sports, "murmurs" are heard; showing +valvular incompetency. Temporary in the majority of cases, but none the +less indicative of gravely-weakened states which can but permanently +injure the fine-spun valvular apparatus. "Dilated hearts" caused numbers +of our "fine young athletes" to be rejected as unfit for military duty.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p><p>Young men "in training" suffer from albuminuria, showing serious +derangement of the kidney-function; derangement which inevitably entails +such permanent structural deterioration as lapses readily, in after +years, to grave disease.</p> + +<p>The fallacy that the excitement of games distracts the attention of +youth from the processes of sex-development has been disproved. While +all athletic boys are not vicious, it is now recognised that the most +vicious are the athletic. The languors of body and mind reactionary upon +the exciting strain of games are unwholesome languors; and breed +unwholesome self-absorptions. A fresh and active imagination, to keep +the mind interested at every turn, is the best of all safeguards. It is +in the imagination, moreover, that higher moral and ideals arise.</p> + +<p>It has been said that "the battle of Waterloo was won on the +playing-fields of Eton." It was far more likely won in the pages of +<i>Jack the Giant Killer</i>! Because in war, as in most other things, moral +is more potent than muscle. There is, it is true, a moral of Games. But +its outlook and its application are both contracted of range and +artificial of form. Games are useful in forming habits and in exercising +faculties of co-operation in concerted action. But being played in +company with others, and played in obedience to rule and regulation, +they allow no scope for the development of individualism in mind or +character, initiative or resource—outside the narrow boundaries of +cricket-pitch or football field.</p> + +<p>By perpetual absorption of the powers in the movements of a ball, the +mind becomes contracted and set in puerile mould, during years when it +should be germinating and expanding in response to the countless varied +and inspiring stimuli and factors of natural environment. Over-keenness +in sports destroys the sense of beauty, love of art and love of Nature.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p><p>The grey matter of the brain—the medium of Mind—wherein arise +imagination, inspiration and those noble talents and the noble dreams of +enterprise which make for noble lives—this highest and most complex of +the human tissue-cells becomes starved and atrophied from continued +waste of brain-resources by those lower-grade cerebral motor-tracts +which control and energise the muscles.</p> + +<p>The popular impression, both lay and medical, that muscular exertion +supplies rest to the brain and recuperation to the nervous system, is a +sad delusion. One cannot raise a finger without expending brain and +nervous force, the muscles being implements by way of which the brain +transforms purpose into action—being <i>brain</i>-implements therefore. So +that brains—and particularly young brains—unduly taxed by muscular +activities are robbed of power to develop or to function in their +intellectual and other higher departments.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>If my hypothesis be true, and the right side of the body with its allied +brain-hemisphere is the executive and expenditure side, while the left +is the Life and asset side, it is obvious that excessive brain-work, or +Sports, for which the executive power is supplied by this right side and +its allied brain half, must necessarily deplete and exhaust the left +side, which is the power-house and reservoir of Life and Mind whence the +executive half derives its mental, nervous and vital potential.</p> + +<p>It goes without saying that such careful economy of the powers is +superfluous in truly healthful and normally vigorous males. But +latter-day stock has been, for the most part, so far depleted by +generations of neglect of natural law as to require the strictest +husbandry of its vital expenditure, in order to apportion its means to +the best all-round advantage.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Object-lessons in such extremes of athleticism as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> destroy the normal +balance of the counter-poising Sex-traits have been supplied by War.</p> + +<p>The faces—as the natures—of some of our soldiers have become crude, +coarse and deteriorate in intelligence, others abnormally harsh and +fierce; the softer human qualities having been trampled out of them by +stress of militarism, some to degrees of brutalisation and criminality, +even. While a very great number show lined and haggard from heart or nervous strain.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER IV</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES</p> + +<div class="block2"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>"<i>My state is like the lightning's light—</i></div> +<div><i>Now it shines forth, and now 'tis gone from sight.</i></div> +<div><i>At times, amid the heavens I find my seat;</i></div> +<div><i>At others, I am lower than my feet.</i>"</div> +<div class="right">Sa'di (Persian poet).</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>Of what order is this Woman-half of Mind which Feminism seeks to extinguish?</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>The cerebral processes appreciable upon the Outer plane, and calculable +by Science, represent no more than a tithe of brain-activities. They are +but a single highly-specialised focus of brain-functioning.</p> + +<p>Behind concrete Volition, Intellection, and Action, are the silent, +ceaseless, inner and incalculable workings of innumerable brain-cells +concerned with the mysterious constitution and metabolism of Life, and +its strange, potent relation and correlation with Mind and with +environment; concerned with character and attribute and impulse; with +ancestral vestiges and personal experience; with memories and instincts; +with an infinitude of occulted and imperishable records of previous +terrestrial existences, perhaps; concerned, in a word, with all the +secret springs and complex potences of Individuality; which +differentiates every thought, emotion and action of any human person +from those of every other.</p> + +<p>And in these recondite mysteries fructifying in a hundred million +bi-sexual brain-cells, it may be that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> subtle counter and +inter-operations of the Man and Woman-traits find their highest +activities, and make for their supremest issues.</p> + +<p>Every man and woman is to every other a Sealed Book, whereof no more +than a few pages have been glimpsed—even by those nearest and dearest. +We are Sealed Books to ourselves, indeed, because we do not know the +language we are written in. For of all the muted mysteries spinning +ceaselessly within the silent-functioning cells of twin +brain-hemispheres, Science affords us but the scantest and most sketchy +information. That the grey matter coating the brain-convolutions is the +site of mentality; that the higher the intelligence, the deeper and more +intricate these convolutions are; that disease of a certain area +destroys the power of speech; while disease of some other occasions +paralysis of this or that group of muscles, loss of sensation in this or +that tract of skin. Baldly it states that a portion of a certain +convolution controls a certain movement of a hand. But the thousand and +one emotions and incentives prompting such movement, and differentiating +the resulting action across the extensive range between the noblest +benefaction and the blackest murder, baffle every scientific method.</p> + +<p>The processes of Mind and Impulse occur on planes we have no means of +penetrating, possess no appliances whereby to estimate the ethereal undulations thereof.</p> + +<p>What are we? Who are we? Whence are we? Whither do we go?</p> + +<p>All is locked within the occulted silence of our hundred million +brain-cells; each of which holds and keeps its own intrinsic secret; +each the mysterious record, it may be, of one of those countless +experiences, forms and phases, ancestral or individual, whereof every +living person is the last resultant. But the Twin-hemispheres, face to +face within the skull, like opposite pages of a book, are key to one +another; one page written in the mystical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> language of The Past and +Future, the other in the concrete language of The Present.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>Is that which I surmise to be the <i>Woman</i>—and emotional half of brain, +the site of the mysterious province known as The Subconsciousness, into +the strange powers and phenomena whereof scientists are now beginning to inquire?</p> + +<p>Is it the seat of that which Myers designated "The Subliminal +Consciousness," but which might well be called the Supra-Consciousness, +because, in the regions of its higher functioning, it cognises things +beyond power of Concrete Consciousness to apprehend; intuitions, +premonitions, apparitions, telepathic messages?</p> + +<p>Is it medium of those inherences and that sub-intelligent emotionalism +known as <i>Instinct</i>; which may be regarded as the implanted religion of +rudimentary organisms, leading them upward in blind subconscious +obedience, at sacrifice of their self-interests and disposition?</p> + +<p>Respecting the regeneration of the crystalline lens of the eye of a +Triton, Bergson says:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing +principle in order to account for this convergence of effects.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>May it not be that this brain-half—seemingly functionless, albeit as +marvellously constructed and constituted as its fellow-half—is, in its +merely organic departments, the agency of such an "inner principle," +engendering the vital potentials of Life and Evolution, of health, of +nervous recuperation and of biological repair? While in its departments +of Mind, it functions as instinct, as intuition, as inspiration, +aspiration; serves as the subtly receptive medium by way of which The +Divine Influx wells in human attribute; whereby Divine Revelation is +communicated to the concrete brain-half, for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>interpretation in speech +and in writing. Bergson says also: "The consciousness of a living being +may be defined as an arithmetical difference between <i>potential</i> and +<i>realised</i> activity. It measures the interval between representation and +action." (Duality is indicated.)</p> + +<p>The trait essentially distinguishing the human from the brute-mind, is +Intelligent Purpose. And Purpose is the product of Impulse (or Instinct) +and Reason, (or Concrete Intelligence). (Duality again.) Impulse is an +emotion and is feminine. Reason is masculine. Intelligent Purpose may +well be, therefore, a resultant of the co-operation of the feminine half +of the brain, which supplies Impulse, with the masculine half, which supplies Reason.</p> + +<p>Instinct, Professor James, the American psychologist, has pointed out, +exists independently of any recognition of its purpose. While Reason +exists apart from instinct—apart therefore from the emotional impulse +which gives it the personal motive-power to become purpose. Thus, either +mode of brain without the other to supplement it would be incapable of function.</p> + +<p><i>Self</i>-consciousness requires two departments of Consciousness—each of +which is aware of the other. So that a man may judge and restrain +impulses in himself that are contrary to reason and expedience, or, on +the other hand, may choose to sacrifice both reason and self-interest to +emotional impulse, noble and uplifting, or ignoble and debasing.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Describing Intellect as characterised by a natural inability to +comprehend Life, Professor Bergson further says: "Instinct, on the +contrary, is moulded on the very form of Life.... If the consciousness +that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge +instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could +reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of Life."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p><p>Again Duality of mental processes is inferred. As too in the following +passage:</p> + +<p>"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also +reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations—just +as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into Matter.... +Intelligence, by means of science ... brings us, and moreover only +claims to bring us, a translation of Life in terms of inertia.... But it +is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us—by Intuition +I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable +of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely."</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>The phenomena of Hypnotism seem to set the Duality of cerebral processes +beyond dispute.</p> + +<p>Dr. George H. Savage, Consulting Physician and late Lecturer on Mental +diseases at Guy's Hospital, in his Harveian Oration, October 1909, +testified as follows to the strangeness and authenticity of hypnotic evidences:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Wishing to follow our great master in not accepting anything +without personal investigation, I took advantage of the opportunity +offered by Dr. Wright, to test some of the points of most +importance to which I have referred.</p> + +<p>"A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by +Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various +stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down +and talk quietly about his relationship to hypnotism. Then he was +told to go to sleep. A few passes being made over his head, he +slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping +placidly. By the gentle stroking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> of his left arm this was rendered +inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal, +but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was +slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly). +After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of +fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done +during the period of hypnosis.</p> + +<p>"He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then +suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power +and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a +cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of +the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had +been roused, <i>his right arm fell useless by his side, he passing at +the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis</i>. <i>This is common +when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of +the right side, including the face, was insensitive</i>; the pupils +were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed +smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of +anything which had been said or done. He was later again +hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done +formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts.</p> + +<p>"It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts +performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are +fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side +by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he +heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While +unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark +upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a +cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong +smell of violets came.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p><p>"I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it +seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory +existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting +was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he +had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when +once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just +dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is +in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during +sleep."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Be it observed that when at the end of seven minutes (as had been +"suggested" to him should happen) the subject lost all power and +sensibility in his right side and "<i>his right arm fell useless by his +side</i>," he passed "<i>at the same time into a partial state of hypnosis</i>. +<i>This is common</i>," Dr. Savage adds, "<i>when a post-hypnotic suggestion is +being carried out</i>."</p> + +<p>Here is strong corroboration of my argument that the right side of the +body, with its allied half-brain, is the agent of Material +Consciousness, of muscular action and of physical sensation, and that it +operates normally in fencing in the higher faculties of Mind from the +outer plane of concrete happenings, as also of interpreting them upon this plane.</p> + +<p>Hypnosis is induced by devices occasioning muscular exhaustion, and thus +temporarily paralysing "voluntary muscles"—muscles, that is, which are +under conscious control. It is induced as well (as in the case cited) by +stroking, and thus putting to sleep the sensory nerves—nerves which +define the patient's consciousness of his material personality. It would +seem that by such inhibition, or paralysis, of the perceptions of the +outer consciousness, faculties of Subconsciousness—even of +Supra-consciousness—are exposed, so that Mind itself may be dealt with direct.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p><p>Every form of insensibility is closely allied with muscular relaxation +or paralysis.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>Examples of the operation of the Supra-conscious faculties upon the +concrete plane are supplied by the marvellous feats of "lightning calculators."</p> + +<p>The most intricate mathematical problems—calculations that would call +for lengthy and complicated intellectual processes on the part of expert +mathematicians to work out by ordinary methods—are solved +instantaneously by the genius of such natural "calculators." You cannot +puzzle them; you cannot baffle them. Scarcely have you stated your +problem than they have calmly presented you with the solution. As +Maeterlinck records in his interesting book, <i>The Unknown Guest</i>, this +genius for figures developed in Colbourn and Safford at the age of six, +in Mangiamele at ten, in Gauss and Whateley at three. All that and more +than expert mathematicians laboriously acquire by decades of study and +practice, these boy-prodigies achieved by way of native faculty. Such +have not the slightest notion how they arrive at their results. These +are obtained automatically—are products of unconscious cerebration.</p> + +<p>Maeterlinck observes of this, that the resultant "appears to rise, +infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and cosmic reservoir +wherein the answer to every question lies dormant."</p> + +<p>What is this "eternal and cosmic reservoir" if it be not Mind, or +Supra-consciousness, as distinguished from conscious intellection—a +native intuitive, but undifferentiate, or potential, consciousness which +holds the answer, "infallible and ready-done," to every question.</p> + +<p>Truth <i>Is</i>. There is but one solution—the true one—of a mathematical +or any other problem of exact science.</p> + +<p>A significant fact is that such prodigy boys generally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> lose their +mysterious faculty "<i>at the moment when the possessor begins to go to +school</i>." So soon, that is, as he develops the power of conscious +brain-processes—the power to work out his problems by concrete +methods—his native supra-conscious gift of solving them spontaneously fails.</p> + +<p>Intuition, the woman-mode of arriving at conclusions, lightning quick +and true without reason or reflection, is a kindred potency of Mind. +"When a man," says a French writer, "has laboriously climbed a +staircase, he is sure to find a woman at the top—although she will be +unable to say how she came there!"</p> + +<p>He did not add the further truth, that—as with the prodigy boys—the +more you educate her to come at her conclusions by processes of +intellection, the more you rob her of her native woman-gift of divination.</p> + +<p>With the rising level of Faculty engendered by progressive evolution, +woman's powers of intellection have developed too.</p> + +<p>While her own mental attributes are themselves of a very high order, and +give to her mentality an inductive subtlety and illumination lacking in +that of the male. And this high quality of brain it is that is now being +extinguished in her by straining her to masculine standards.</p> + +<p>Progress awaits, indeed, the new and quickening impulse Life and Faculty +should derive from the Woman-mind fostered along its own inherent +lines—to supplement the mind of man. For as Bergson says, "it is to the +very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us."</p> + +<p>And Intuition is the woman-mode of Mind.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>The women intellectuals who have done great work have been women who +inherited talents so far above the average, as spontaneously to have +reached high mental levels, without need to have sacrificed those +womanly traits which gave the noblest values to such work.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p><p>The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards +of the man of average brain only at cost of her health, of her emotions, or of her morale.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>Herbert Spencer said profoundly, "<i>Mind is as deep as the viscera</i>." +Indicating it as being vital and intrinsic, at one with the occulted +sources of Life.</p> + +<p>Mind is of an order of mentality wholly different from that of +Intelligence or Intellect. Mind is of the nature of Emotion. It is +personal, is sympathy, is divination. It is the cerebration of the Soul.</p> + +<p>The Soul, or essential Individuality, must abide amid infinitely +delicate and delicately infinite brain-cells attuned to those spiritual +vibrations whereof Mind is the reflex. And if Mind is Emotion, the Woman +brain-half, which is the department of human emotion, must be the +mainspring of the human mind.</p> + +<p>Great intellect, pure and simple, may exist in man or woman without or +with only a fractional leaven of Mind. This is seen in the abstractions +of scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, astronomers, +financiers, and others. Such brains are special organs of a high order +of Intellection, clear, calculating and precise of observation and +reflection; rational, deductive; admirable in their unswerving +rectitude, pitiless in their impregnable emotionlessness; rejecting all +but incontestable evidences, scrupulously aggregating and faithfully +interpreting their dry bones of numbers and data and vestiges—skeletons +of Life long since extinct, or scaffoldings of Life that lives and moves +and laughs and weeps, and bears no more semblance to their bloodless +tabulations of its modes and processes than warm, creative Mother-Earth +resembles the geological strata they describe in her; or than a +beautiful flower-garden blooms in botanical treatises; or than living +men and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> women are pourtrayed in text-books of Anatomy and Physiology.</p> + +<p>Many men of Science—and all the great ones—have been men of Mind as +well as of Intellect. But the intellectual processes of Abstract Science +are no more operations of Mind than the paths by which we climb to +sun-illumined peaks are the Light upon those peaks. Mind is Spiritual +Illumination—a glimmering of The Infinite, reflected in the highest and +most subtle order of the brain-cells. Rays from it are deflected toward +the concrete, to function as Intellection. But these rays enter the +brain at a different angle from that of Mind-rays.</p> + +<p>Like woman its medium, Mind is inspirational, wayward and elusive. It +comes we know not whence. It goes we know not whither. Receptive, +intuitive, creative, colourful, it may be unwitting of Astronomy, yet it +roams amid the stars. Ignorant of Geology, in it Immortal, the dry-bones +of The Past become immortal—arise eternally in everlasting re-creation. +Its Biology is in the lives and loves, the hopes and fears, the throes +and tears of human souls and stories. It inspires the poet, priest, +historian, romancist, artist; the seer and statesman; the philosopher +and wondering child. It exalts the humble and meek. It may be lacking in +the cleverest and most learned of men. It is found in the most ignorant +and simple women; in whom it is dumb, however, failing the intellectual talent of expression.</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>The Woman brain-half being medium, in its higher region, of that +<i>Supra</i>-conscious emotionalism which engenders Mind, and in its lower +region, of that <i>Sub</i>conscious emotionalism which engenders vital +impulse in the body, woman's range of mentality is wider than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> is that +of man; extending both higher and lower in its opposite reaches.</p> + +<p>But because her Intelligent Consciousness is not inherent in her own +brain-half, but is supplied by her borrowed masculine brain-half, her +intelligence is more superficial, is weaker and less deep and strong of +grip than is his. And when the gap between her upper and her lower +registers is not duly bridged and stabilised by an efficient +middle-register of male-intelligence, she tends toward two extremes of +mentality, both of which are emotional. Thus she lives on the plane of +her highest emotional impulses. Or she lives on the plane of her senses. +Some women act and re-act perpetually between these two extremes.</p> + +<p>In her highest <i>Supra</i>-reaches, she is athrill with Supra-faculties. In +her lowest <i>Sub</i>-register, she is instinct and palpitant with the +colour, the magnetic vibrations and the blind forces of Matter, which +her vital processes are evolving into Life.</p> + +<p>Extremes which are shown, at the one end, in the reasonless animal +emotionalism of hysteria, with its abandon of control, its +inco-ordinated muscular movements, its senseless weepings, cries and +laughter; at the other end, in catalepsy, in which she exists detached +from earth and its material needs and consciousness, subsisting, it may +be for weeks together, without food or drink, withdrawn into the Inner, +and potential, zones of Life and Mind. So that, no longer subject to +limitations of Matter, she perceives without aid of the senses, +apprehends without aid of intelligence, discerns without help of the +eyes, hears without instrumentality of ears. And Time and Space no +longer circumscribing her essential faculties, she visions happenings at +the Antipodes, overhears whispers across a Continent, recalls The Past, +foretells The Future.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It is because of the potence of the Subconscious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> medium in her, +instinct with the magnetic forces of Evolving Matter, that, in her +intelligence, she shows as more materialistic than man is, although +warmer and more quickened in her feelings.</p> + +<p>Living personalities and issues mean to her more than intellectual +abstractions do. She is more materialistic because she cares more for +the things that matter! The puddings which in her children's young +bodies will be transmuted into living flesh and function, are to her of +more significance than the Isosceles Triangle is.</p> + +<p>(All that is true of the Woman brain-half must be true of the Woman +brain-half in man. In him, however, his own hemisphere dominates the +bent and faculty of its female counterpart.)</p> + +<p>It is in the emotional impressionability of the Subconsciousness that +habit, good and bad, is formed. Hence woman's native susceptibility to +her environment—a susceptibility which renders indispensable due +protection of her mind and nature during years when habits of thought +and of conduct are shaping in her. Normal man, whose emotionalism is +(like woman's intelligence) a borrowed faculty, differs essentially from +her in this. His intelligence is inherent and more stably rooted. He is +far less mimetic, far less a creature of circumstance. His firmer will +and stronger intellect enable him to rise superior to environmental +conditions, to shake himself free alike of habit and of circumstance; +his pioneering spirit disposing him to new departures.</p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>Dual Personality, Catalepsy, Epilepsy, Shock, Insanity, Chorea are +explicable as effects of abnormal dissociations or inherent discrepant +relations between the two brain-hemispheres, which represent, +respectively, Conscious (or objective) Intelligence, and +Subconsciousness (which is subjective).</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p><p>Such discrepancy occasioning confusion between the two planes of +mentality, perception becomes so blurred that, as in insanity, +<i>subjective</i> impressions are perceived as <i>objective fact</i>. And some +idea or spectre of his own mind becoming thus objective, and being seen +out of all perspective with the facts and conditions of everyday life, +the patient may be so haunted and dominated thereby that not only his +mentality, but his actions too may take distorted shape.</p> + +<p>While the Conscious Brain-half is a lens that focuses the Concrete, the +<i>Sub</i>conscious Brain-half is a highly-sensitised mirror (or retina) that +reflects and retains, in terms of potential Memory, all impressions and +experiences. It becomes charged thus with a medley of strange and +incongruous imprints, which, so long as the lens keeps these submerged +and subconscious—because unfocused on the plane of consciousness—do +not obtrude upon mentality. Flaws or failures in the lens of reason +allowing certain imprints to emerge, these become fixed ideas and obsessions.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It is by way of the Subconsciousness, that the hypnotist impresses "suggestion."</p> + +<p>Clairvoyants and other "mediums" employ crystal-gazing and other devices +in order to fatigue, and thus to paralyse or inhibit the visual function +on the outer plane of Sight. By such means, the Subconscious visual +faculty comes into operation, and sets them <i>en rapport</i> with their +client's subconscious mentality. This becoming <i>objective</i> to them, +those endowed with the gift of "Second-Sight" (a faculty not to be +denied) are able to visualise in it misty impressions of the subjects' +character, thoughts and circumstances. Those rare clairvoyants who are +able to establish rapport with their client's Supra-consciousness may +catch glimmerings of future events, even. Because Supra-conscious Mind, +being Supra-Natural, is not bounded by the limitations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> of The Natural, +in respect of Time and Space. In it, that which Was still Is, and that +which Is-to-be already Has Been.</p> + +<p>"Spiritists" who see or hear phenomena they attribute to "spirits" are +(when such are genuine) for the most part visualising or overhearing +phenomena of their own (or of some other's) Subconsciousness, which, +owing to errors of refraction in the lens of Consciousness, have become +<i>objective</i> to them.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It may well be by way of magnetic vibrations communicated to Ether by +the <i>Supra</i> or the <i>Sub</i>consciousness, that apparitions and telepathic +impressions are transmitted from the brain of one person to that of +another. So too, apparitions seen of persons lately dead, and so-called +spiritist "communications" with these, may be (when genuine) phenomena +of such etheric vibrations communicated to the Supra or the +Subconsciousness of a living person, and apprehended by him in the +objective forms of "ghosts" or "voices."</p> + +<p>Kindred vital and powerful electric vibrations emanating, at the moment +of death, from the Subconsciousness of victims murdered, may so charge +the etheric element of houses and localities as to be communicable, for +long periods afterwards, to the Subconscious mentality of "sensitives," +which serves thus as "wireless receiver." Such sensitives derive the +impression that the scene of the tragedy is haunted by the actual +"spirit" of the murdered.</p> + +<p>It is as incredible, of course, that an immortal soul should be chained +to the scene of the violent death of a mortal body as it is incredible +that a "spirit" should be at the call of a "medium," who—perhaps, for a +fee—should be able, at will, to summon it back to the plane of concrete +conditions, in order that it might talk (for the most part) irrelevant nonsense.</p> + +<p>On the other hand it is to be believed that, for a brief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> period after +death, a spiritual entity may remain sufficiently in touch with the +material plane as to be able, by way of those Etheric undulations +continuous through all the planes of Being, to manifest its existence to +one in close sympathy with it.</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p>In an article by me, "<i>Is Man an Electrical Organism?</i>" which appeared +in <i>The Nineteenth Century</i>, July, 1914, I showed—on the evidence of +careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert—that the two +sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different +electrical potential. The active, right side is <i>positively</i> +electrified, while the passive, left side is <i>negatively</i> electrified.</p> + +<p>Mental Telepathy and Telæsthesia prove, surely, that brain and +nerve-currents are electrical—one brain-hemisphere operating as +transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employs <i>one</i> Law only +to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an +apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employ <i>two</i> laws +for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively?</p> + +<p>The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles +of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or +potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night.</p> + +<p>Is Sleep a recession merely from the state of Consciousness to the +potential states of Sub- and Supra-consciousness? And do these two +states alternate normally in the opposite halves of the brain, +concurrently with the alternation of Day and Night? Night-blindness +suggests such an alternation in the dual factors of Vision—which +comprises the intrinsic <i>faculty</i> of Vision and the concrete <i>function</i> +of visualising the external. Every concrete function normally wanes with +the waning of Day.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p><p>Hence increasing drowsiness, passing into Sleep.</p> + +<p>Morning and evening mentality differ greatly. Intellect, reason and +physical activity are paramount during the day. Emotion and imagination +intensify with the approach of night.</p> + +<p>Is this an alternation in function of the Male and Female +brain-hemispheres, coincident with the alternation of the dual +luminaries of our earth—the positive, unchanging Dominant Sun; the +changeful Moon, with her Recessive phases and her mystical influences +upon Life and Mind? The ante-natal life of the embryo is set in terms of +lunar months. The word "lunatic" expresses the effects of lunar phases +on persons of unstable mentality.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Whence do we derive our daily influx of Life? Though we have sunk to +rest with dissolution in our bones, we awake re-charged with powers of +living—a phenomenon for which Science has no explanation.</p> + +<p>Life does not originate in vital processes; vital processes originate in +Life. Do we, in sleep, when processes have exhausted our daily influx of +Life-power, recruit this again from a psychical source? Are living +processes the wick of a lamp which is filled with the Spirit of Life at +each recurring dawn, spent by the day's endeavour, and re-filled again +with the following dawn?</p> + +<p>Failure of sleep kills more swiftly than starvation. And +drug-insensibility will not preserve life unless natural sleep supervene.</p> + +<p>If nervous energy is a complex form of electrical energy, then the brain +in which this is stored is an electrical dynamo. Is this dynamo +re-charged during sleep from some Occult Power-station?</p> + +<p>Since, in every equation of Science, an unknown factor reveals itself, +why not candidly confess this to be a Spiritual factor?</p> + +<p>Spirit is no more a hypothetical medium than Ether is. And Science has +been forced to assume the existence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> of Ether, as a basis for its +calculations. Ether and Spirit are conceivably the same medium +manifesting on different planes—the one of Physics, the other of Mind.</p> + +<p class="bold">IX</p> + +<p>According to Professor Clarapède:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The intellect appears only as a makeshift, an instrument which +betrays that the organism is not adapted to its environment, a mode +of expression which reveals a state of impotence."</p></blockquote> + +<p>A saying which supports three clauses of my hypothesis: First, that the +brain, with its tributary spinal-nervous system, is an instrument of +Consciousness wholly differentiated from, and supplementary to the +organism of Life. Secondly, that it is an instrument designed for the +adaptation of the organism to environment (the rôle I have assigned, +throughout, to the male). Thirdly, that the organism of Life is not +itself adapted to its environment, and that, accordingly, Adaptation to +Environment cannot be regarded as the impulse of Evolutionary +development, since the living organism has so far failed to adapt itself +to environment that it requires a highly specialised instrument to serve +as medium between itself and its surroundings.</p> + +<p>That Intellect—being an instrument by way of which Life is adapted to +environment, as also, on the other hand, by way of which environment is +adapted to Life—is a makeshift that "reveals a state of impotence" is +not to be admitted, however, in view of the fact that it is an +instrument which preserves Life from developing along the lines of its +environment; an adaptation which would necessarily involve lapse from typal ideals.</p> + +<p>Intelligence taught man, in place of so adapting to environment as to +have developed the fist of a gorilla (which at a blow can crack a human +skull), to arm <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>himself with a club. And by thus adapting environment to +his evolutionary requirements, he conserved his resources and applied +them to development along higher lines. Such impotence as may be, arises +out of the undevelopment of a rudimentary organism. Of an organism in +course of development, however. In the meanwhile, both man and woman are +provided, in their hybrid constitution, with the "makeshift" of an +instrument of opposite sex, which supplies both with the powers neither +has yet developed in himself or herself; but without which neither is +able to exist or to function.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Hybrid Humanity is still amphibious; a creature living between two +planes, the Without and the Within, the Material and the Spiritual. And +like all amphibious creatures, the human species is, in a measure, +clumsy and imperfect. Because while fitted still with organs and +faculties that have adapted to a lower plane, it possesses likewise +organs and faculties that are adapting to a higher. Its powers thus +handicapped by requiring to engender the vital potential and the +developmental power to equip it with two orders of implement, neither +order has attained perfection of construction or of function. And both +ministering to the requirements of the other, necessarily hamper the +operations and mask the characteristics of the other.</p> + +<p>The two sexes are making all the while for higher development, each +along routes of its contrary trend. Man develops human faculty in the +direction of the Outer and material plane of Being. Woman develops it in +the direction of the Inner and psychical plane.</p> + +<p>Man transmits to woman a brain-hemisphere and powers ever further +increased and intensified in their relation to the concrete. Woman +transmits to man a brain-hemisphere ever further indrawn and illumined +in respect of the emotional and intrinsic. Woman's brain-hemisphere, +adapting to its concrete fellow, becomes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> increasingly empowered to +manifest, upon the outer plane, its own essential Woman-traits in Life +and Consciousness. Man's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its diviner +fellow, becomes increasingly illumined and inspired thereby to leaven +and exalt its concrete outlook and activities.</p> + +<p>Man's brain, by way of its responsive adaptation to the brain of woman +interior to it in the zone of Mind, becomes thus ever more +sympathetically intelligent, or intuitive, in respect of human life and +conditions, of Science and the Arts; while losing nothing of its +Dominance and concrete power, but interpreting its operations in terms +of a profounder and a nobler Chivalry. Woman's brain becomes ever more +intelligently sympathetic and practically helpful; losing nothing of its +Recessiveness, or emotional impulse, but, on the contrary, intensifying +all its Woman-attributes by extending the range and the operations of +these in terms of a profounder and a nobler Altruism.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Because of their hybrid constitution, there is necessarily a borderland, +alike of faculty and function, wherein the organisation and the +characteristics of the sexes merge and approximate one another's trend +and traits. This borderland represents, however, the crudest and least +differentiated department of the personal and mental powers of both. It +is a zone of Neuterdom, and marks a grade of rudimentary organisation in +which the Sex-characteristics have not yet sufficiently diverged in +development, as clearly and finely to differentiate themselves as traits +of pure and unalloyed type.</p> + +<p>The cruder the species or the evolutionary stage of species, the less +Sex is specialised in it.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER V</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>In conjunction with any other beings but men, women would have +been angels; but with men they are just women, which when all is +said and done, is much the same thing.</i>"—De Livry.</p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>Among many other misconceptions with regard to Sex-characteristics, is +the modern teaching that the sex-instinct is identical in men and women.</p> + +<p>Ignoring the truth that a higher moral code is the mark of psychical +superiority, and moreover that the exaction of it from women, under +social penalty, has done more than any other thing to purify and to +exalt the woman-character, impassioned fallacy now sees this higher +standard demanded of the sex as a stigma of inferiority, and as an +injustice. Accordingly it preaches equal liberty in this as in other +respects. The trend toward equalisation is unfortunately (but +inevitably) in the direction of lowering the woman-code rather than of raising man's.</p> + +<p>No falser or more disastrous doctrine could be promulgated. As in all +its other attributes and functions, so in this, the woman-nature differs +wholly from that of the male. The primal male sex-instinct was one of +tyranny and subjugation. There was no element of affection in it, and +its bent was toward promiscuity. In the primal female, the instinct as +an initiative impulse was non-existent. The surrender was to fear, and +to habit engendered by fear. Fondness for her mate came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> to woman by way +of her love for his child, a source essentially monogamous in trend.</p> + +<p>Physical passion in woman is derived from the Male-traits in her. It is, +accordingly, a borrowed, not an inherent instinct. And in all natural +women, passion is secondary to love; love belonging to her own intrinsic +nature. Because of its heritage, there is, in a true woman's love, +always a maternal altruistic element: unselfish, ministering, devoted. +Love has come to be intensified in her by fire of passion and by force +of personal attraction. It is no longer a mere meek surrender, with fear +for spur and maternity for solace. In proportion as she is of high +organisation, it has become a complex of mind and emotion and sense; +intense and vital. But always, in proportion as she is womanly, her own +way of loving—the way of devotion and tenderness—is ascendant over passion.</p> + +<p>In man, howsoever it be leavened by the higher love, passion dominates. +When in woman passion dominates love, she is loving with the Male-traits +in her—not as woman. And in the measure wherein she falls short of the +womanly monogamous ideal, she is less woman than she is male.</p> + +<p>Mr. Justice Hannen, for long President of the Divorce Court—and a +subtle expert in women—observed that it was not the passionate, +warm-eyed women who figured most before him, but, in far greater number, +the cold-blooded, greedy and emotionless. Because for one woman who +succumbs to love or passion, twenty transgress from motives of vanity or +gain; or from mere frivolous craving for excitement.</p> + +<p>It is the sexless women who are most immoral, for the same reason that +some dyspeptics are always hungry. Persons of healthy digestion eat, and +are satisfied. The healthfully-sexed love, and are content. The +emotionless woman is for ever seeking in novelty, emotions she lacks the +emotion to feel. Such women exploit passion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> for vanity, for +distraction, or for the primal male-instinct of subjugation. Their +desire for a lover is less a sentiment than it is of the nature of that +craving for drink, or for drugs, or for dress, which many of this order +also indulge. All are megalomanias—natural instincts distorted to vices +by warp of abnormal self-centredness.</p> + +<p>With its foundations laid in instinct, its organic emotionalism, its +streak of mental irresponsibility, and its hunger for approbation, the +Woman-nature, when lacking in the higher Woman-traits of affection and +selflessness, or when these are not duly absorbed in the natural +interests and functions of the sex, may degenerate to a very ugly thing.</p> + +<p>Some of our latter-day "smart" young married women, childless or with +one or two children consigned to hirelings, their passions excited by +marriage and not duly assuaged by maternity, their impulses unchastened +and their powers unexpended in affection and care for the family, seek +outlet and distraction in promiscuous philanderings, in intrigue or in vice.</p> + +<p>Human faculty and impulse diverted from their normal channels readily +find crooked and dangerous courses.</p> + +<p>In the fourth year of War, the Prussian Protestant State-Church declared +that "immorality among German women has attained such a degree that the +very foundations of Society are threatened." This and kindred +developments in other War-ridden countries are not due to women having +changed their natures, but are the outcome of conditions so altered as +to have released them from the wholesome disciplinary exercise of their +accustomed duties, relaxing thus the salutary curbs of habit and +convention. Child of Nature that she is, woman is a born rebel; for ever +in revolt against the law and order and restraints which man has imposed +as indispensable to Progress. Whereas men abhor,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> women exult in crises +and upheavals. Because these serve for outlet to their restive +emotionalism and supply scope for exotic sensation, while at the same +time giving them temporary mastery over the male—who is always at a +disadvantage in exhibitions of feeling.</p> + +<p>And this temperamental erraticism is valuably disciplined by the +masculine bent for rule and method, and normally finds admirable +safety-valves in wifely, housewifely, and motherly functions.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>To advocate a moral standard higher for women than for men is regarded +now as reactionary and regressive.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, it is certain that beyond all the other virtues, personal +purity is essentially the highest, and is racially the most valuable of +all the Woman-qualities. Lapses in the other sex are in no way +comparable, as regards moral, biological, or sociological significance, +with kindred lapses in woman. Because of her native non-conformability, +once she has deviated from the monogamous code, she is dangerously +likely never after to conform to it. (It is a truism that <i>The woman who +has one, has many lovers</i>.) Her non-conformity requires, accordingly, to +be protected by a social ordinance more rigid than is that of man. Man +being less complex of psychology, moreover, that which in him is merely +biological is vice in woman. The fact alone that the male is able to +employ the sex-function as a weapon of brutality (as in violation) +proves him totally dissimilar to woman in this relation.</p> + +<p>Man disperses; Woman absorbs. And the consistency of Nature is such that +these two diametrically-opposite biological modes in reproduction are +reflected on the planes of mind and impulse. The diametrical difference +of the modes disposes outright of the Feminist demand for identical +moral codes for the sexes; the sex-functions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> of the two being so +intrinsically contrary in method and inherence, with correspondingly +signal differences in moral impulse and significance.</p> + +<p>Biologically, the masculine function concludes with its fulfilment. +Whereas the feminine function <i>begins</i> mainly therewith, and continues +thence onward to operate in an ever-deepening, broadening, and +intensifying tide of issues; biological and psychological. And so potent +and subtle is Nature's consistency with regard to this primary and vital +function of woman in Life, that whether or not biological issue results, +psychological issues do inevitably. Woman's mode and mood of +<i>receptiveness</i> in this mysterious union so operate that, in her +surrender, she admits to the inmost sanctuary of her being an alien +presence—which remains with her till death. Fade as it may from her +consciousness, it remains, nevertheless, impressed for ever after on the +vibrant records of her sensitive Subconsciousness, as vitally as in the +hour of her surrender. And underlying mind and character and conduct +ever after, it for ever after contributes its quota to these.</p> + +<p>Because of the vivifying potence of her creative womanhood—the function +whereof is to engender Life—the stranger admitted to her citadel +becomes endued with Life, and takes up his abode with her to the end of +her natural term. For this reason, the adulterous woman is adulterous in +a sense impossible to man—adulterous in both a vital and an intrinsic +psychical sense that is revolting.</p> + +<p>With the increasing intensification in the male, with advancing +evolution, of his inherited Woman-traits, he has become ever further +endowed with Woman's Sub- and Supra-conscious faculties. So that the +function which was, in its primal moral, but brief and cursory, ending +summarily with its biological fulfilment, has become increasingly endued +in him with the vital emotionalism, and accordingly with the moral +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>significance inherent to the Woman-nature. If his experiences fade more +quickly from his consciousness than hers do, they remain nevertheless +(in the degree of his psychical development) potent still in his +Subconsciousness—as possibly adulterating and debasing factors. But +since his Subconscious emotionalism is an acquired and not an inherent +part of his male mentality, it is a medium vastly less sensitised and +operative in him than it is in her; of whom it is the very basis of her being.</p> + +<p>This is no apology, of course, for masculine aberration, but a counsel +of feminine virtue—a counsel making indirectly, therefore, but none the +less surely for masculine virtue also. The reasons for chastity in the +one sex differ diametrically from those which should be the motive +thereof in the other, however.</p> + +<p>Chivalry and Prostitution are incompatible.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It must be confessed, however, that deterioration of the +woman-organisation and temperament conduces greatly to masculine +promiscuity. Not only because this entails loss of power to charm and +bind the mate, but because with the sex-immaturity, on the one hand of +the over-Feminised type, on the other, of the Mannish woman, women lose, +in greater or less degree, the natural power of one sex to assuage +passion in the other.</p> + +<p>Man is deteriorated, moreover, by moral and psychical deterioration in +that sex whence moral impulse springs, because, in such case, the appeal +of woman ceases to be, as is normal, to the emotional and chivalrous in +him, but evokes, on the contrary, biological instinct mainly, or merely.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It is well-established truth that her first lover (or her husband, +supposing she had loved him) retains a unique hold upon a woman's mind +throughout her after-life—his personality or memory dominating her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> +imagination as no later-comer is able to do. This is because that first +enters into possession of both Consciousness and Subconsciousness while +the tablets of these are still virgin and unblotted. This first +impresses himself, therefore, clearly and strongly defined upon her +exquisitely-sensitised tablets of remembrance.</p> + +<p>Latter-day young girls, permitted the injurious licence of free and +unchaperoned association with the other sex, even when they come to +marriage, inviolate, have, many of them, passed through experiences +which so have blurred and sullied their young highly-impressionable +temperament and senses as to have despoiled these of that fair purity +and freshness indispensable alike to potent impressions and to deep +attachments. In natural woman who has arrived at womanhood without +premature arousing of the senses, soul and sense are at fine poise, and +respond in vital unison to love. In girls whose innocence and conduct +have not been duly safeguarded, the prematurely-excited senses have +become detached from the soul—from the higher emotions, that is. With +the result that this fine poise of mind and body, which is the Hall-mark +of Woman-development, and whence romantic passion issues, has been irretrievably lost.</p> + +<p>The same is true, in degree, of young men. They too deteriorate when +biological instinct is dissociated in them from the higher impulses of +passion. But in men, the poise, being less delicate, is not only less +readily lost, but it is more readily recovered. In this, as in other +things, the normal male makes for means; while woman's bent is toward +extremes. Further, physical passion being normally far stronger in him, +and <i>initiative</i> in impulse—whereas in her it is mainly +<i>responsive</i>—the senses assert sway over him spontaneously. While in +natural girls these lie more or less dormant, unless artificially +roused, or until aroused in natural response to love.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p><p>Early philanderings (more serious than boy-and-girl comradeship and +innocent flirtation) prevent women not only from ever attaining their +highest levels of organisation and temperament, but they destroy +effectually their power to love profoundly and whole-heartedly. They rob +them, accordingly, of the greatest transfiguring potence and happiness of life.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>Odious and startling evidence that because of woman's vital emotionalism +and sensitive psychology, her nature retains ineffaceable vestiges of +all that has happened to her, is the fact that a woman's children by a +second husband may resemble her first husband far more than they +resemble their father. A significant and repulsive adulteration of type, +and one so intrinsic that a woman who had been previously wife to a +negro or a Chinaman will present her second husband, typically European, +with offspring of negroid or of Mongolian type. That husbands and wives +come to resemble one another in physiognomy and characteristics, is +further indication of the subtle and potent temperamental fusion and +implications of the mysterious sex-union.</p> + +<p>The adulteration of type which may thus repulsively mar the offspring of +women twice-mated is seen, at first hand, in that adulteration of +personality which results from sex-promiscuity. Not only is the +individuality both of mind and character obliterated, but the +individuality both of form and feature is obliterated too. The features +of persons of irregular life become blurred and more or less mongrel; +character and expression so degenerating as to produce eventually that +which has been styled a "composite face"—the face resulting when a +number of portraits of different persons are printed one over another on +the same photographic plate.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p><p>The degree to which in the sex-union—howsoever lightly entered +on—they twain become intrinsically and remain irrevocably one, in the +vital records of individualism and character, is wholly unsuspected. But +in this—which is a complex phenomenon of Hypnosis—indelible undying +images, such as are impressed upon the Subconscious mind in every other +form of Hypnosis, remain impressed thereon; to inspire and fructify, or +to weaken and vitiate nature and faculty.</p> + +<p>That vigilant supervision of her young daughters for which the early +Victorian mother is now decried, secured a purity of racial type, in +fine physique and constitution, in notable talent and enterprise, in +rare womanly beauty and virile handsomeness, which proves the unique +potentialities inherent in our Anglo-Saxon stock. No merely material +service a woman can render to the State approaches in value the +all-potent one of safeguarding the virtue of its young daughters.</p> + +<p>Each sex has its own morale to sustain. And personal virtue is woman's. +The desire for equal liberty in this respect is added proof of the +ascendancy, in modern women, of Male over their own natural +Woman-traits. It springs not from an intensification of passion, but, on +the contrary, from a waning of that power to love which holds a woman +true to one mate.</p> + +<p>Last and most cogent of reasons: In view of those long centuries of +suffering and aspiration, by way of which the evolution of the +Woman-traits of love and purity has been achieved in blood and +tears—albeit the monogamous ideal is far yet from attainment—beyond +all else, the sex should strive toward this, both personally and socially.</p> + +<p>It is the soul of Love and Life, the impulse of Human advance. With +decline of this ideal, the emotions cease to centre in the Home and +Family, and civilisation relapses to barbarism.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>Ellen Key, in <i>Love and Marriage</i>, observes: "Few propositions are so +lacking in proof as that monogamy is the form of sexual life which is +indispensable to the vitality and culture of nations." And further: "all +the progress that is ascribed to Christian civilisation has taken place +while monogamy was indeed the law, but polygamy the custom."</p> + +<p>She overlooks the portentous truth that a law is the expression of a +general aspiration toward an ideal for which a people is striving. That +a law is broken proves that the higher in man moves him to set a +standard beyond his power—or beside his inclination—to sustain +undeviatingly. Yet although he may not act up to it undeviatingly, it +stands, nevertheless, for the ideal he realises that he should reach.</p> + +<p>Abolition of a good and elevating law proves, therefore, not only the +serious lapse of a community from an established standard of conduct, +but it inevitably lowers the level of conduct by removing +barriers—self-respect and self-restraint, public opinion and so +forth—standing in the way of laxity. Despite the death-penalty, murders +are committed. But were the death-penalty to be abolished, murder would +increase by leaps and bounds. The human mind is strangely susceptible. +And the power of habits acquired under fear of penalties is an +invaluable force for good. The higher minds of a community evolve and +establish codes for lesser minds to shape by. And undoubtedly the +subconscious as well as the conscious shaping toward such standards +furthers development in the directions thereof. To make honesty a matter +of personal choice, with no penalties attaching to theft, would be in +itself an incentive to theft.</p> + +<p>Comparison with polygamous countries, of countries in which monogamy is +the law, refutes straightway Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> Key's discredit of monogamy; showing +the polygamous uncivilised, unenlightened, unprogressive, subject to +monogamous races, and in every sense, both materially and morally +decadent. And if, with a notion of establishing equality in all things +between the sexes by emancipating woman from the higher moral code, +leasehold marriage or other forms of wedded laxity should be +substituted—not only would national purity, but personal character and +happiness too would suffer grievously.</p> + +<p>If men have not kept the monogamous law, the instinct of jealousy, +reinforced by repugnance to supporting alien offspring, has seen to it +that wives should trespass as seldom, at all events, as was possible to +be guarded against. Custom and public opinion, furthered by personal +fear and fear of divorce, have all contributed toward advancing ideals +of womanly honour and conduct. And from monogamous mothers—whether +voluntarily or involuntarily so—progress has derived immense impulse. +Apart from biological considerations, the benefit to the family of the +mother's influence centred in her home and kept from straying thence, +either by her own aspirations, by public opinion, or by fear of the +husband, has been incalculable.</p> + +<p>During and since the War, crime among children has increased by 50 per +cent., largely owing to absence of mothers from their homes, working or +drinking, or otherwise dissipating, while their children have been left +to run wild in the streets.</p> + +<p>Our reformatories are full to overflowing with these neglected +unfortunates; deprived thus of the haven of homes and maternal control. +As a man is responsible to the State for the support of his family, so a +woman should be held responsible to the State for the proper care and +supervision of its future citizens, who, without due care and +disciplinary influence, become a burden and scourge to the community.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p><p>In all these vitally-momentous issues, let us free our minds alike of +sex-bias and false sentiment, in order that we may see clearly, and may +act honestly and wisely in the interests not only of women themselves, +but in those of the Race.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>The sex-instinct in woman having had its origin in surrender, retains +much still of this primal element. And both middle-class men of lower +evolutionary grade, and men of the working classes, exercise still, to +considerable degree, the brute-trait of terrorism over women—moral +rather than physical terrorism.</p> + +<p>In rescuing young girls from molestation in the streets, one may see in +them the panic of such intimidation. They are pale and trembling, with +pupils widely dilated. In full daylight, it may be in a crowded +thoroughfare, with police at hand, primal instinctive emotionalism +paralyses reason, resource and will-power. Weak-minded women, who lack +their due share of masculine combativeness to stiffen resistance in +them, frequently marry, or otherwise yield to such men, far more because +they are afraid than because they are fond of them. And the terrorism +husbands have exercised over wives has nerved wives against the +terrorism exercised over them by other men; and has thus served to +protect them from their own weaknesses.</p> + +<p>The Woman-traits, always at a disadvantage in concrete affairs against +superior strength, have been buttressed thus and coerced—often cruelly +and tyrannously, 'tis true. But they have nevertheless been greatly +furthered in development by a mate who, if he did not recognise the +higher calibre of woman's nature, nor himself aspired to the code he +exacted from her, recognised, at all events, that this higher code he +exacted of her was that best adapted to progress. Thus has poor +mortality been beaten and shapen on the anvils<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> of compulsion and +exigency. And always the woman has most suffered—to be beautiful of nature.</p> + +<p>Were it not that an advance-guard of higher and chivalrous men stand, by +force of the laws they have made, between women and the lower and +coarser masculine orders, no woman's life would be worth the living +because of perpetual affront. With existing laws, indeed, which protect +even the most degraded of the sex, the women of the poorer classes are +everywhere subject to insult and unseemly jest, open or covert. Because +to many men of crude order, the eternal mystery of Sex shows mainly as +subject for levity. The crass and unimaginative frequently deride thus +things too high for their dense understanding.</p> + +<p>Women have come to take their chivalrous protection by law as mere +matter-of-course, precisely as they take it as matter-of-course that men +should labour, and should endow them with the benefits of their +industry. These things are by no means matter-of-course, however, but +are matter of chivalry—chivalry so innate as to have become convention.</p> + +<p>It would be occasion for laughter, were it not cause for profoundest +regret, that the hypertrophy of male-traits in woman has engendered +to-day a sex-antagonism which has set her in open revolt against man, +from whom, if she has suffered and suffers, and will continue to suffer +at the hands of his defects, she nevertheless derives, and has always +derived from his chivalries her most gracious human privileges.</p> + +<p>That the obligations and the recompenses of the sexes are reciprocal, is +true. It is equally true, however, that the choice has lain with men to +have ignored the nobler issues of the compact. As the +seraglio-imprisoned women of the less manly and progressive peoples prove.</p> + +<p>All our civilisation, with its complex sociological, intellectual, and +moral developments, rests on a basis of Force. Men must still prove +their right to each and all of their laboriously-won achievements by +arms and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> valours of war. In peace, the laws—which alone make life +tolerable—rest equally upon the powers of masculine will and strength +to inflict due punishment for violation thereof.</p> + +<p>And laws having been made by men, it was clearly optional with them to +have left women unprotected, or far less protected than the other sex; +in place of having extended special protection to their more delicate attributes.</p> + +<p>In safeguarding women in general, men safeguard their own individual +women, of course. Human motive is involved; is the product of a number +of factors. That this is so is reason for eliminating no single one of +these factors, lest the resultant undergo a wholly unexpected and +disastrous transformation.</p> + +<p>The Plan sets most women at the mercy of most men, by reason of the +greater physical strength of males, and by temptation of their more +urgent sex-instinct. In view of her inherent disabilities, it would have +seemed, <i>a priori</i>, that no woman could in ruder days have attained to +womanhood, inviolate.</p> + +<p>And yet that her very disabilities have served for her increasing +protection is shown by the fact of her increasing protection as, with +the evolution of her higher organisation, her disabilities have intensified.</p> + +<p>Civilised woman, with her more delicate organisation, is far more +defenceless than was savage woman. But in response to the claims of her +increasing defencelessness, the instinctive chivalry of the stronger +male, her natural protector, has become progressively the intelligent +and moral chivalry of higher man. No strength or capability of woman's +own to defend herself could so have served her; nor could so have served +the other sex for fine incentive.</p> + +<p>To free woman of her highly specialised and inspiring disabilities by +substituting in her, powers, muscular and mental, that would fit her to +meet the male on equal terms, would be to frustrate the method of the +male<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> evolutionary ascent, by eliminating the humanising and uplifting +appeal to his manhood of these her inspiring unfitnesses.</p> + +<p>The deplorable decadence in masculine regard for and bearing toward +women, which has resulted in direct proportion as the sex has +substituted male efficiencies for womanly ineptitudes, serves for one of +many other valuable object-lessons of the War.</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>Among other Feminist fallacies, the <i>demi-mondaine</i> has come to be +regarded as victim merely, on the one hand, of an unjust, +man-administered economic system, on the other, of masculine +libertinism. The truth is that the vast majority of immoral women are +under no compulsion, but voluntarily adopt this mode of life either to +escape work, or because of a natural vicious proclivity. A number are +mental defectives; some actually feeble-minded, others only morally deficient.</p> + +<p>It must always be remembered, moreover, that, biologically speaking, the +separation of the <i>genus</i> woman into the folds, respectively, of sheep +and goats is of signal racial and social service. That some goats are in +the sheep-fold, some lambs among the goats, is not to be denied. +Fatalities, injustices, and incongruities are inevitable to all broad +human classifications. In the main, however, the women who resist +temptation and remain virtuous are obviously better fitted to be the +wives and mothers of the Race than are they who fall.</p> + +<p>And although this is not, of course, the calculated purpose of this +lamentable under-world, the rough division of the sex thereby into two +main classes has been of service, by supplying a sociological backwater +wherein the worst of our racial derelicts—mental and moral +defectives—are segregated; and are precluded, for the most part, from +perpetuating their mental and moral defectiveness.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>Women, like men, must uphold and battle for their standards in the +teeth of circumstance. The most notable types of parasite-women, +selfish, slothful, worthless, venal, vicious, whose standards are jewels +and clothes, their goals luxury and pleasure and the evasion of all that +is difficult and distasteful in life, are found among the aristocratic +and the plutocratic orders; safely secured against economic necessity or +lack of scope and outlet for their powers.</p> + +<p>The Feminist fallacy that prostitution is almost entirely a product of +male economics has been strikingly refuted, too, by War-conditions, +which opened numerous well-remunerated employments for the sex. Yet, +coincident with a sad deficit of women to fill these, prostitution has waxed rampant.</p> + +<p>Wise and discreet were those early Victorians, with their uncompromising +ostracism of loose women. Apart altogether from such salutary expression +of their condemnation of impure living, they were vastly too clever and +far-seeing to admit persons of notoriously evil habit, peeress or +actress, to association with their clean young girls, as modern mothers +do; to meet and to mix freely with them socially or at Charity Bazaars, +on Flag-Days, and so forth. With the result that girls all the world +over have become increasingly lax and decadent in tone and manner, in +dress and morale, from confusion of their young standards by social +tolerance and recognition of such persons, as also from corruption by +demoralising contact with and observation of such.</p> + +<p>Intolerance? Pharisaism? By no means!</p> + +<p>The strong and straight, uncompromising moral standards of its women +serve as landmarks of, and impulse to a nation's progress. Clear and +definite lines of demarcation between good and evil, between possible +and impossible modes of conduct, point the moral of advance, and turn +the scale in the upward direction for the weak, the hesitating, and the imitative.</p> + +<p>Dread of consequences went far, in less sophisticated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> days, to +safeguard and foster womanly virtue. Modern expedients have, +unfortunately, removed all cause for fear in this relation; permitting +an impunity of action demoralising to the weak in will or principle, who +require every possible aid and check to guide them aright. In simpler +days, girls who had lapsed were steadied and strengthened in character +and self-restraint by the compulsion to support, as too by their natural +fondness for the unwanted child. Now the first step—having cost them +nothing—predisposes to further backslidings. And both character and +self-control degenerate increasingly.</p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>To weaken the marriage-bond by setting it for a term of years only, or +by making it terminable by consent, would virtually destroy marriage and +family-life. The fact that the bond would not be binding would make +persons more careless even than they are at present in selection of the +mate, and would thus multiply the number of mis-matings. Which would be +still further to deteriorate species, since the finer types of children +are born only of well-mated parents.</p> + +<p>The finality of the bond, if it does not always prevent one or both from +meeting some other they prefer, prevents the scrupulous, at all events, +from seeking such. Or having found, it keeps many from fostering and +from yielding to temptation. Were marriage terminable, or, as is +sometimes proposed, were it abolished wholly, and love the only bond +between the sexes, there would be no confidence, no sense of security +between the partners, no stability of family life; no centring of +interests in this, and but small endeavour to retain affections which +for the many could be easily replaced—and replaced, moreover, with the +zest of novelty. On the contrary, a curse of unrest would afflict the +vast majority of married folk with the unsettling—mayhap with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> +alluring—prospect of meeting their further "Fate"; perhaps their +second, possibly their third, it might be, their seventh "Fate."</p> + +<p>Only the few are strong enough of heart or stable enough of character to +remain steadfast for a lifetime in any undertaking, unless bound +stringently thereto by authorised obligations, incentives, and +penalties. Only the few are deep enough of nature to love for a +lifetime; or are deep enough of nature to love so intensely as to +justify altering the marriage-code in order to spare these few +suffering. The wane of nine out of ten honeymoons impresses the value of +an inflexible decree that declines to reckon with disillusion, but +sternly bids the disillusioned take up their burden and make the best of +it. And having no choice, many do this and make a success of it—on new, +and, it may be, on far higher lines than those they had set out upon.</p> + +<p>That but few love so deeply as to love for life by no means implies that +marriage for less than a lifetime should be substituted. It shows, on +the contrary, that the majority of persons would prove as incapable of +loving No. Two for long as they had been incapable of loving No. One; or +as they would be incapable of loving No. Three, or No. Ten. A bond that +rivets them for life to No. One therefore, and entails loss or suffering +when they fail to abide by it, is safeguard for them against such a +succession of loves as would be as demoralising to the individual as it +must be destructive of society.</p> + +<p>Examples of this tendency to amorous licence have been furnished by the +complications of War-"widows," who, on report of the death of +soldier-husbands, remarried in unseemly haste—only to find the husband +return. So too, by the widespread infidelity of wives to absent +soldier-husbands. If the grave and moving circumstance of a husband +facing death or mutilation in the trenches, for his country's defence, +was not grave nor moving enough to keep his wife faithful to him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> then +we should congratulate ourselves upon a marriage-law which, by exacting +penalties whereby such a wife suffers material damage, supplies the only +argument likely to stiffen the morale of so light-minded and callous a creature.</p> + +<p>Nothing less binding than a lifelong contract is coercive enough or is +sufficiently chastening to bridle woman's native changefulness and curb +her instinctive emotionalism. The realisation that there is no way out +of a situation is her finest incentive to nobility. She bruises her +impulses against the iron of circumstance, and the essences of her +intrinsic Woman-soul distil in patience and in sweetness. Under the +harrow of sacrifice, she feels herself martyred. And yet without the +sense of martyrdom, as may be also without the conditions thereof, no +true woman is ever wholly content that she is fulfilling her destiny.</p> + +<p>Ellen Key writes of "<i>all the impurity that the sexual life shuts up +within the whited sepulchre of legal marriage</i>." She falls here into the +common error of assuming such evil to be restricted solely to the state +of marriage. Whereas the higher interests, the duties and affections of +the family life—purifying and inspiring influences lacking in +unsanctioned unions—make inevitably for the uplifting of the relation. +That some husbands and wives fall short of the pure intensity of passion +possible to some others between whom love is the sole bond, is true, of +course. But as are most other human developments, this is a matter of +the character of individuals rather than of the terms of the bond +uniting them. Certainly, high and tender passion is scarcely to be +expected in a union for no better reason than that this is illicit.</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p>Were life designed for happiness and pleasure merely, the case would be +different. Were one life our sole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> portion, it might be different too. +Having one life only, we might be justified in claiming for it the joy +of the best love available. An unhappy or a less than happy marriage is +only one, however, of the many expedients for the evolution of faculty.</p> + +<p>If the evolution of the individual progresses by way of countless +earth-existences strung upon a thread of spiritual continuity, one life +is but a brief and single page of everybody's great Life-serial. That +is, doubtless, why all feel their lot to be an episode +merely—unexplained, and incomplete, rather than a finished story. And +in our innumerable pages and innumerable episodes, we must resign +ourselves to sundry matrimonial vicissitudes.</p> + +<p>Says the author of <i>The World-Soul</i>, "The more function is specialised +in either sex the less able either is to stand alone." This is argument +for further and fuller specialisation of their respective functions, in +both sexes, because so great is the happiness of fulfilling for that +other his or her great need of us, and of being blessed by that other in +our own need. But too, it raises the voluntary surrender of such +happiness for honour's sake, for holiness' sake, for God's sake, or for +children's sake, to the height of a renunciation which transfigures +human life and character, and proportionally ennobles both.</p> + +<p>That both man and woman should be entitled to divorce for infidelity, +for incorrigible drunkenness, criminality or insanity on the part of the +mate, would be just and reasonable clauses in the marriage-code. +Because, apart from the unmerited cruelty and shame of such bondages, is +the risk of entailing degenerate offspring. Otherwise, it appears that +relaxation of the Divorce-Law would result in evils far worse than any +it would remedy. And these evils would re-act inevitably far more +cruelly—both temperamentally and materially—upon women and children +than upon men.</p> + +<p>The conjugal and the paternal instincts being traits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> the sex has +acquired by long ages of developmental progress, for men to lose these +would be as easy as the loss would be degenerative to themselves and to +those others. Folly to suppose that having reached a certain stage of +human character-building, we can, with impunity, kick away the +foundations whereon our house of evolution has been raised; and on which +it must rest for all time.</p> + +<p>The irrevocability of the marriage-contract is woman's greatest +security. Realisation of that sex-lawlessness which is an innate +Male-trait—relic of the promiscuous and cursory nature of the primal +male-instinct—should set us on guard against weakening, in the least +degree, this covenant, which is the best among those privileges whereby +man, in the teeth of his inherent instincts, has chivalrously protected +woman and the family. In the teeth of these, he has applied his natural +intelligent bent for Conformity in concrete affairs to the repression +and regulation of his impulses by the institution of Marriage. And +this—the apotheosis of masculine conformity to the exactions of +Progress—is now menaced by the native Non-conformity of woman, +exploited by Feminism.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It is notable that men are but seldom truly fond of, nor are they +faithful to the wife who works outside the home. In France, where the +clever, industrious wife of the middle and lower classes is more a +business-partner than she is a wife, conjugal fidelity is not expected.</p> + +<p>Not only is a house without a woman in it to devote her best interests +and powers to the arts of home-making, not a home, but the bond of that +fraction of interest and affection left over to her from her work +outside it is a thing too slight to bind her husband to her. He finds no +difficulty in substituting—should he seek this—a haven with more +atmosphere of home and sentiment in it, companionship with more of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>temperament in it, more resiliency and freshness, than that of the +industrious and wage-earning, but fatigued and jaded working-wife.</p> + +<p>The children of such a union—if such there be—supply no bond either to +draw together and unite their parents. Children reared by servants, +without understanding or affection, are but seldom affectionate or +charming. Moreover, the children of hard-working mothers are but seldom +true children. They bring to the home nothing of the freshness, the +vitality or charm of natural childhood.</p> + +<p>If father and mother possess æsthetic sensibilities, these are offended +probably by the plainness and the lack of graces in their +offspring—bye-products merely of their economic assiduities. Perhaps +the big spectacles through which the young eyes gaze forth like doleful +prisoners from behind bars, make them feel strangely uncomfortable; as +in the presence of weird and reproachful intelligences.</p> + +<p>Neither derives interest or joy enough from the family circle to repay +them for their parental obligations and responsibilities.</p> + +<p class="bold">IX</p> + +<p>Love between the sexes, being a need alike of souls and biogenesis, is +regarded by some as reason enough in itself for relaxing the +Marriage-law—even for the abolition of Marriage; making affection the +sole bond between the lovers.</p> + +<p>We cannot, logically, abolish the legal contract uniting two persons in +marriage, however, without at the same time abolishing every other form +of legal contract, and the legal liabilities thereof. Logically, we +cannot make conjugal duty and family responsibility mere matters of +personal conscience, unless we are assured that the human species has +reached such a phase of moral integrity as to need no other incentive +than its own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> integrity to secure fulfilment of its obligations, moral +and material. If we abolish the legal factor in marriage, to be +consistent we must abolish the legal factor in business partnerships and +in all other sociological compacts. We must make the payment of rent, of +rates and taxes, of tradesmen's bills and so forth, debts of conscience +and of honour merely; for the discharge whereof conscience and honour +must alone suffice.</p> + +<p>It may be objected that these are purely material obligations, while the +bond between the sexes is an emotional one. And yet—Have we reached +such a stage of development that emotional considerations are more +binding on us than material ones are?</p> + +<p>Moreover, if we are to make love the sole bond—clearly the waning of +love must release from the bondage. Further, when we sift out the purely +emotional element in the vast majority of unions, we shall find it but a +very slender factor among other more binding reciprocities. Certainly a +far more slender thread to trust to in the safeguarding of a contract +than is, for example, the factor of commercial honesty. Commercial +honesty is not, perhaps, a conspicuous virtue of the times. +Nevertheless, the sense of honesty in business is a good deal stronger +in most men than is their sense of honour with regard to love. And their +sense of honour in love has developed mainly as a direct consequence of +those legal compulsions and responsibilities of love which have been +exacted and fostered by the legality of marriage.</p> + +<p>How many men are there, for example, who, having come to care for some +other, hold themselves bound in the least by an illicit tie; howsoever +much they may have cared at one time for the woman in the case? Lightly +come—lightly go! And if the terms, marriage and love, are by no means +necessarily synonymous, it has been, nevertheless, greatly by way of the +obstacles and compulsions and the social penalties attaching to +violation of the marriage vows that the love-passion has been purified +and uplifted out of the barbarism of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> mere instinct and promiscuity, +into the graces of emotion and the virtues of monogamy.</p> + +<p>Had any man and woman, reciprocally attracted at their first meeting, +been free always to have carried this attraction straightway to its +biological conclusion, the sex-relation would be still the merely +physiological incident it was in primal forests. The circumstance that +such attraction has been debarred from ready consummation by the +obligations and the obstacles engendered by a recognised and legalised +bond between the sexes, has been debarred, moreover, in innumerable +cases, by one of the attracted couple being subject to this bond—all of +this has preserved the nascent emotion from straightway relapsing to the +basic level whence it sprang, and has fostered the evolution of love in +the higher reaches of emotion; of imagination, of controlled and chastened passion.</p> + +<p>It may be said that modern men and women, loving one another with the +more highly-evolved passion of our enlightened epoch, would love as +devotedly and would remain as constant in an illicit as in a legalised +union. If so, such constancy would be an echo mainly of the +long-dignified state of wedded constancy; and the greatest of all +tributes to the values of this. Nevertheless—For how long after the +clarion-note of aspiration sounded by Marriage should have ceased to +vibrate, would the echo of it last?</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Should woman, in her short-sighted efforts to "emancipate" herself still +further, release herself wholly (as she now inclines to do) from the +marriage-bond, she will have thrown back in man's face the very +tenderest guerdon of his worth and of his high regard for her. And she +will have destroyed, at a blow, his most vital incentive to further +advance, her own and her children's most powerful safeguard, and the +main buttress not alone of national but, as well, of Natural human progress.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VI</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN +FACULTY</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to +make a home.</i>"—Chinese Proverb.</p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>The paths alike of progress and of happiness lie, obviously, in the ever +further dignifying and enhancement of the functions of home and of +wifehood, by way of every further interest and charm that higher, fairer +Womanhood confers.</p> + +<p>The chief cause of latter-day conjugal unrest and disaffection is to be +found—not in the natural state of marriage, but in a decline of those +personal traits which make for happiness therein. Girls brought up as +now, without home-interests or training, but, on the contrary, with +mainly self-realising and self-absorbing aims and pursuits, are +deficient not only in domestic aptitudes but lamentably also in +emotional qualities. And the home-life without the emotions to give +values to it, is like a fine air played on the keyboard of a piano from +which have been removed the strings that transform the movements of the +fingers into melody.</p> + +<p>So keenly self-centred the majority of women have become, so bent upon +their hobbies and careers, as to have lost nearly all of that +sympathetic adaptiveness natural to woman, which enables her to +forget—and to forget with pleasure—her own in the personality and +interests of others.</p> + +<p>How eagerly latter-day girls seek refuge from their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> boredom in the +tennis-court, the Bridge-table, the dance, or in some other mode of +direct action which entails but little temperamental tax or output!</p> + +<p>To such degree the sexes are now drilled to the same standards, +interests, and points-of-view, that neither brings to the other any new +thing, of freshness, of colour, or of inspiration. The interchange is +only too often a competitive struggle, indeed, as to which shall know +(or shall appear to know) more than the other knows (or appears to know) +of topics equally trite to both. There is little or nothing of the zest +and glamour of a delightful picnic of two; whereat each keeps producing +some new and unexpected thing to supplement the new and unexpected of +the other. Modern woman has no novelty in language even for her mate, +but deals him back his own slang—a vernacular which among women of the +working-classes not seldom takes the forms of blasphemy and obscenity, +wholly disqualifying for the rearing of children. As, indeed, do the +coarse and vulgar phrases in vogue now among the cultured of the sex. In +view of woman's native faculty of music and her subtle aptitude for +naming (as for nick-naming), one cannot doubt that she it was who +mothered Language. Yet now-a-days, adopting virile lingo, her "rotten," +"stick-it," and the like are murdering the infant of her quondam genius. +And what genius it was, that gave birth to our surpassing mother-tongue!</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>In case of engagement between a young man and his bored one—whom, by +the way, although he may suspect that the relation is not all that it +might be, he never suspects of being bored—manlike, he trusts to +marriage "to put everything right." Yet although the newly-wedded more +and more relieve themselves of the strain of a honeymoon, with its +unmitigated (or inimitable) company of two, a month or six weeks of +wedlock find most young modern couples wofully at cross-purposes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> +Possession has freed the man of the obligation to woo. And when the +wooing—which had engendered for the woman a flattering and intoxicating +sense of being a coveted prize—comes to a more or less abrupt ending, +she feels herself defrauded.</p> + +<p>He too! Because while Courtship is man's affair, Marriage is woman's. +And where love is not, to recruit and quicken passion and to take the +place of novelty, the wane of honeymoons is sad indeed.</p> + +<p>(There are faults and failings on the bridegroom's part, 'tis true. That +belongs to another story, however. Sufficient for these pages is the +unpleasing task of holding a mirror to the faults of a single sex.)</p> + +<p>It should be remembered that men, for the most part, are not eager to +marry. Considering the nature of the bond, with its lifelong +obligations, responsibilities and sacrifices, this is little to be +wondered at. A week after marriage a wife may be crippled by an +accident, may become insane; or may otherwise be thrown, more or less a +burden, on her husband's hands. Or she may develop disagreeable and +wholly uncongenial traits. In spite of which, even though they wreck his +happiness, he will have bound himself to her—and will have bound +himself to maintain her—till death them parts.</p> + +<p>He too, of course, may turn out wholly unsatisfactory. That belongs +likewise to the other story. But from the material standpoint, the onus +of support which falls on him, and which, in the case of an invalided or +of an obnoxious wife, may prove nothing but a carking care, makes the +liabilities unequal.</p> + +<p>It is, doubtless, because of these his greater material obligations and +responsibilities, that passion has been planned to beset man more +urgently than woman. And had Church and State not taken advantage of his +inherent, chivalrous instinct, and so turned it to account, both for his +own moral uplifting and for the founding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> and maintenance of the family, +woman and society—and man, accordingly—would have remained at very low +grades of development.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>Among other "wrongs" resented by women is that his obligation and his +economic means to support a wife have endowed the male, in the majority +of cases, with the lordly prerogative of selecting his mate. On her +side, while having much to gain materially by marriage, unless she is +unusually attractive she has but little range of choice.</p> + +<p>And yet this masculine prerogative of selection has served as the +strongest incentive to the culture both of higher attribute and charm in +woman. Failing that economic struggle which has been man's spur to +development, this incentive has operated vastly to her benefit; inducing +her parents to educate and to enhance her gifts, and influencing her to +do the like for herself. A proportion of women have always been +self-supporting, of course. But their work has been mainly in fields of +unskilled labour, and has lacked, accordingly, the stimulus of +competition. The goal of marriage has not only supplied thus the element +of emulation, but it has turned Woman-culture in the direction of +developing personal traits and morale, rather than industrial or +professional specialisations. And this has been the right direction, +seeing that the rôle of the sex is one demanding personal qualities and +virtues rather than economic technicalities.</p> + +<p>As regards human values, it is a higher privilege to be a charming +personality than to be a successful stockbroker. So that in this, as in +other things, woman has been privileged by her disabilities.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>An ever-increasing number of working-class girls, on leaving school, +enter a work-shop, a factory, or an office, and spend their time and +powers in minor mechanical tasks; gumming labels on jam-pots, making +match-boxes or tags for boot-laces, addressing envelopes, and other such +employments, deadening to female intelligence, impulse and temperament. +Their minds and natures become too warped and narrowed to adapt later, +with ease and interest, to the many and varied intelligent functions of +the home. They escape thence, accordingly, after a few months or years +of marriage (supposing them to have given up their industrial tasks for +a space even), and abandoning home and children, return to the old +narrow, mechanical routine, to which alone their poor stultified brains +have been shaped. In the education of girls, the Subconscious mimetic +element in their impressionable natures should be borne in mind. It may +be turned to excellent, as to disastrous account.</p> + +<p>M. Vologotsky, head of the Omsk Government, has called attention to a +significant phenomenon of modern Russian life—namely, that the women +take no interest in their homes. This he attributes to their low states +of culture. Could they but be persuaded to become "house-proud"—with +all that this means and entails—he considers that the task of the +Regeneration of this vast unhappy, although singularly gifted, people +would be greatly furthered.</p> + +<p>Constitutional deterioration, inherited or acquired, entailing defective +sex-development, causes many young working-women to be deficient in the +maternal instinct, whence spring fondness for and interest in children. +The same defective sex-development, disqualifying them for wifehood, +results in the vast majority of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>working-class wives lapsing, after a +few years of marriage with normal, virile young men, into haggard, +neurasthenic wrecks.</p> + +<p>The whole of this vital and important department of the +woman-organisation is not only ignored in so far as scope for normal +development is concerned, but, despised as subserving inferior and +"merely physical" functions, every other capacity and aptitude is +fostered or forced at the expense of constitutional reserves and +resources which belong, by rights of Life and Love, to this. With the +result that the vast majority of modern women are physically unfitted +for, as an increasing number are temperamentally averse to the +sex-relation—<i>fons et origo</i> of Life.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>To such degree the doctrine of Expedience and Self-for-Self-solely has +spread that there are women who seek now to escape wholly the natural +pangs of childbirth. Such persuade their doctors to induce labour a +month or more before term; in order that the smaller-sized infant may be +born with less discomfort to themselves. Others restrict their diet or +abstain from certain foods, in order that the babe, starved thus and +ill-nourished before birth, shall be soft and frail and easier of +delivery. Dread of pain at whatsoever cost to the future of a human +being—and that being their own child—actuates these unnatural and +pusillanimous practices.</p> + +<p>It is becoming a vogue for expectant mothers of the wealthier classes to +enter Maternity-Homes, where, in luxurious surroundings, they are +enabled, under spinal anæsthesia (Twilight Sleep), to conclude their +mother-function without suffering or inconvenience; lying in a torpor of +crass insensibility while the greatest of Human Events is taking place +in them. Meantime, the sensitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> infant-body is dosed with the powerful +drug circulating in the maternal blood.</p> + +<p>But—whither is all this trending? Can we believe that true intelligence +and progress consist in grasping greedily all the pleasures and the +privileges to be had from life, and basely shirking all the hardships? +Can we believe that—suffering and effort being the laws alike of Life +and Progress, and the rungs whereby we have climbed the Evolutionary +ladder—we can continue to climb when, with short-sighted selfishness, +we shall have stripped the ladder of its rungs? The humane use of +chloroform duly assuages the worst pangs. While the fine courage, +fortitude and sweetness wherewith the soul of woman fares forth +naturally upon her Great Adventure, to meet this the Apotheosis of human +pain, prove and still further enhance her nobility. Even weak and flimsy +women rise to greatness at this crisis. Powers they had never glimmered +in themselves emerge and armour them, and—be it remembered—leave +eternal records upon mind and character; striking spiritual roots still +deeper into living function.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>With characteristic Feminist materialism, Olive Schreiner lightly +dismisses Maternity as a merely "passive" form of labour.</p> + +<p>Heaven save the mark! Is it passive so to equip a microscopic cell with +living human powers and aspirations that, within the space of months, it +makes that miraculous pilgrimage of the pre-natal evolutionary ascent +whereby it becomes Man? Passive—so to serve for living environment to +this developing organism as to supply it with the multiple, complex and +diverse elements, material and vital, biological and psychical, required +for the manifold needs and adjustments of its evolving life and faculties?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p><p>During the ante-natal months of this miraculous Ascent, the embryo +"climbs its genealogical tree," as biologists style it. That is to say, +it passes, in turn, through all the countless evolutionary phases of all +the countless evolutionary ages whereof Humanity is the culminating +product. Fashioning out of formlessness, slowly it attains to form. +Shaping, shaping, ever marvellously shaping, it evolves, in succession, +through fish, amphibian and other rudimentary life-grades. Climbing, +climbing, ever marvellously climbing, day by day, to nobler heights, it +is transformed at last to human shape; lower human first, then higher +human, and finally to the highest human possible to its stock, its +parentage, and the resources, physical and psychical, available to it.</p> + +<p>It is the most stupendous miracle in Nature; a miracle so sacred and so +tender that every man in passing an expectant mother should mentally bow +the knee. Individually, socially, morally—she may be a person of but +small significance. But because of the mystery of Life enshrined within +her, she is a living Testament of Evolution. The pregnant woman is, +moreover, pregnant with the destiny of Races.</p> + +<p>During those ten lunar months there is enacted in the tender darkness of +the mother's womb the whole wonderful drama of the Human +transfiguration. With lightning swiftness, the evolving babe climbs in +the footsteps that its countless ancestors had trod, in forms +innumerable, along the route interminable of the Human Advent. In +flashes of progressive, infinitesimal transitions, through incalculable +phases and mutations, the single cell of double parentage unfolds the +marvel occulted in it. Until at last, the living product stands +triumphant on the topmost branch of its genealogical tree, a perfect +human babe awaiting birth; the last achievement of its Race, the latest +and most perfect bud of its hereditary stock.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p><p>In so far as all this occurs subconsciously within the mother, the +materialist may lightly dismiss the evolutionary marvel as a "passive" +form of labour. But although subconscious, these unceasing processes +demand inevitably such proportional vital potential and activities on +her part from whom the powers energising it are derived, as to be a +continued tax and strain upon her strength and health. There are women +who feel this strain but little. A rare few of these because they are so +richly endowed with maternal potence that the subconscious processes +have remained, as Nature doubtless intended, for the most part +subconscious and painless. Far more often, however, when Maternity +exacts but little from the mother, <i>it is because she is contributing +but little to the child</i>. I have observed that the finer a child in +physique and in brain, the greater the stress and disability the mother +had suffered prior to its birth.</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>Indifferent, notwithstanding, to all the vital activities and psychical +evolutions taking place within the mysterious laboratory of the mother's +body; reckless of the circumstance that any interference with, or +hampering of the least of these must inevitably jar, and warp, the +delicate complexes of infantine development, we scruple not to strain +and burden, to harass and deplete, the prospective mother even further +by strenuous breadwinning. Her whole physiology and psychology are +profoundly altered by her momentous condition; by the new adjustments to +the needs of the developing babe, of the maternal circulation and +digestion, assimilation and elimination, mentality and intricate nervous +constitution and processes. Fatigue, noise, turmoil, effort, shock—any +one or all of these which are inseparable from industrial +employment—cannot but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>injuriously re-act upon the delicate evolutions +mysteriously occurring in her.</p> + +<p>The infant brain is complete at birth. From its lowest to its highest +departments, all the marvel of exquisitely-delicate construction and +association of its complex cells is achieved pre-natally. And according +or not as her vital powers have been rich and otherwise unexpended, and +according or not as the embryological processes of development have +occurred in quietude and freedom from strain upon the mother's part, +will be the quality for life, in vigour and in sanity, of her child's +intelligence and character.</p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>In view of those lower biological grades through which the embryo passes +before arriving at the human stage, it is inevitable that maternal +over-fatigue, shock or undue effort may arrest its physical development +temporarily upon any of these lower levels. And such arrest must +inevitably entail some warp or bias of a lower animal phase; which may +so impress itself permanently on embryonic development as to detract +more or less gravely from the final transition.</p> + +<p>It is, doubtless, for this reason that many modern humans show in their +configuration, degrees of reversion to ape, sheep, fish and other lower species.</p> + +<p>Shock or nervous perturbation in the expectant mother may occasion, in +the babe, appalling monstrosity, or such minor defects as cleft-palate, +hare-lip, and other deformities. Showing the vital and—inevitably—the +psychological effects on offspring, for good or for evil, of maternal +conditions and impressions.</p> + +<p>The Germans record that of infants born during the war, a number are +gravely degenerate of type, an infant-degeneracy attributed by some to +the creed of Hate obsessing German mothers. The same phenomenon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> is seen +however in the offspring of mothers exhausted by religious preachings +and marchings, in furtherance of their creed of Christian Love.</p> + +<p>For Biology recognises no Theology except its own—that of Evolution.</p> + +<p>At a representative meeting of London doctors, it was stated recently +that the number of imbecile infants now coming into existence with us is +no less than appalling.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>A medical wiseacre has adventured the amazing dictum that <i>Every infant +is born healthy</i>! He might, with equal truth, have said that every +infant is born wealthy, or is born a Chinaman. Some infants are born +alive, a great number are born dead. And between those born alive and +healthy and the still-born, lie all the infinite gradations of +constitutional condition between life and health, between disease and death.</p> + +<p>One child inherits from its parents a tuberculous tendency; another a +neurotic, another a strain of alcoholism or other taint. One is born +blind or a hopeless idiot; another with hare-lip or clubbed-foot; +another with congenital heart-disease. One babe is born with a beautiful +head; all its brain-faculties nobly developed and splendidly balanced. +Another is born headless, or with a skull which, from crown to brows, is +a rapid descent—showing lack of all the brain-powers involved in higher +mentality; is born, in short, of criminal inherency.</p> + +<p>The degrees in which individuals strive against inherited tendencies +differ greatly, as do the life-conditions wherein their will and moral +power are tested—to make or to break them. Man is not, of course, <i>the +creature</i> merely of his heredity or of his environment. But he whose +mother has equipped him with physical defects instead of with qualities, +even though he fight against his disabilities, is obviously handicapped +for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> the life-struggle. A great musician may charm fine music from a +poor fiddle, but in no degree so fine as he will bring out of a more perfect instrument.</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p>A phenomenon which has baffled vital statisticians is a curious relation +between the Birth-rate and Infant-Mortality. A high birth-rate is found +to be associated with a high rate of infant-mortality; while with a +lower birth-rate, the death-rate among infants and children decreases.</p> + +<p>Long and careful observation has left me in no doubt as to the cause of +this phenomenon. Which is, that under strain of disease, of industrial +exhaustion or strenuous activities of any sort, but particularly as +result of <i>the constitutional drain entailed by pregnancy</i>, mothers may +so draw upon the vital powers of their children in order to recruit +their own, as to occasion fatal illness in their families.</p> + +<p>The evil is so great in its effects, not only upon the health and +constitution of the rising generation, but, as well, upon the physical +and mental development thereof, that such maternal depletion is, I am +assured, a cause of widespread disease among children; of infantile +paralysis, degeneracy and mortality. It is reason enough, in all +conscience, to call for the legalised prohibition of all mothers with +young families from engaging in professional or industrial employment.</p> + +<p>Because although such depletion of her children's health is graver in +degree during a mother's pregnancy, at all times over-worked, sickly, or +strenuous women recruit their powers from the constitutional resources +of others. Only, indeed, by such depletion of their neighbours can many +of our present-day neurotic, overactive women (some of them with +ill-nourished bodies and feeble assimilation, but with, nevertheless, +indefatigable energies) contrive to keep going.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p><p>Strong-willed, self-centred women, keen in pursuit of business, +athletics or pleasure, will, by sapping the nervous forces of these, +keep all the members of their households—husband, children, +servants—more or less de-vitalised, neurasthenic and characterless; one +or more actually invalided, perhaps.</p> + +<p>If nervous energy is, indeed, a complex form of electrical energy, this +nervous interchange is intelligible; obeying the law that bodies +under-charged with electricity charge themselves from bodies more highly +charged, until equilibrium is established.</p> + +<p>Who among doctors does not know the wan and listless, semi-paralytic +babes that working-mothers—and most particularly <i>pregnant</i> +working-mothers—bring to the consulting-room? The hapless victims lie +limply, or sit hunched upon the woman's lap, nerveless, wasted, +apathetic; faces white and hopeless, abdomen lax and tumid; the blenched +limbs soft as butter, weak and dangling. They are suffering, perhaps, +from some specific ailment, bronchitis, paralysis, gastric or intestinal +troubles; perhaps only from mysterious wasting and inanition. Not seldom +there is an elder child too, white and weak and fretful, and the subject +of "infantilism"; growth stunted, development arrested. Such children, +in their mental hebetude and physical degeneracy, suggest a degree of +cretinism. And in the suggestion, a possible cause appears for the +cretinous offspring of the hard-living, over-worked mothers of Swiss cantons.</p> + +<p class="bold">IX</p> + +<p>Drummond says of Motherhood:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Even on its physical side ... this was the most stupendous task +Evolution ever undertook.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>While on the physical side, we see that Nature has made infancy and +childhood increasingly helpless as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> species advances in evolutionary +values, in order to call forth increasingly intelligent, and sympathetic +response and resource in the mother. Feminism in <i>un</i>making the mother, +is undoing the labours of countless ages of evolutionary advance. The +intensifying mentality of woman, destined for the more subtly +intelligent and sympathetic nurture of the Race's increasingly valuable +and complex offspring, is being diverted, more and more, by Feminist +counsel and practice from human and vital into merely economic channels.</p> + +<p>Life is so constituted that its most cruel disabilities and evils are +borne inevitably by the children in the van of the Great March. These +hapless ones it is—soft buds pushing from the Human Tree—that bear the +brunt of the evolutionary impulse.</p> + +<p>In the main, the very finest children of The Poor succumb. Because the +higher the organism, the more complex and delicately-fitted to its vital +needs its life-conditions require to be. Briars flourish where +rose-trees die. Degenerate children struggle through where better types +go under. We are not ready, it is true, for exotic humans. But we need +urgently, indeed, all the healthy, intelligent, well-balanced stock we can produce.</p> + +<p>A certain uniformity of type is secured by the expedients of Natural +Selection; by that continual correction of premature evolutionary +unfoldment which results from the checks and prunings of developmental +exigencies—in the necessary acclimatisation and adaptation of the young +and tender organism to environment. And Nature herself provides all the +checks and prunings required, in her tests of teething, of measles, and +the other diseases and trials of infancy and childhood.</p> + +<p>The respiration-curves and the brain pulse-waves of young infants show +serious disturbance as result of sudden loud noises. The consequent +nervous jar perturbs both breathing and circulation.</p> + +<p>The whole organisation of an infant is so delicate and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> is so subtly +balanced as to require the gentlest possible treatment. One sees on the +faces of infants and young children a chronic look of painful +expectancy. Their brows are knitted as though to brace their +hyper-sensitive systems for the next distressing shock. Women accustomed +to hard, laborious work (or sports) lose power to adjust their movements +to these delicate needs. And when, unkind and impatient, they fly at the +unfortunates and shake or beat or scold them violently, they have no +suspicion that for hours afterwards, perhaps for days, the children's +nervous systems may be so shattered and disorganised, digestion and +assimilative powers so impaired, as to interfere gravely with growth and +development. Degrees of "shock," akin to shell-shock, result from such +maternal violence and chronic terrorism; occasioning feeble-mindedness, +morbid timidity, mental hebetude and, moreover, subconscious +impressions, which, later in life, may emerge as obsessions, or as other +forms of insanity. Fear is the most shattering and paralysing of the +emotions. Yet not only brought up by hand, the majority of our little +ones are brought up by <i>violent</i> hand.</p> + +<p>All day long and during every moment of it, a thousand delicate +processes of growth and unfoldment and of intricate adjustments are +going on mysteriously within the shaping brain and body of a child. +Subconsciously, these are a continued tax and strain; making him +hyper-sensitive, irritable, cross, perhaps, for causes that appear +inadequate. A child is like a convalescent, in that he uses up rapidly +for growth and development all the nutritive material and vital energy +at his disposal. This is true of healthy, well-nurtured children. What +then of these child-martyrs of The Poor, who in addition to the strain +of growth, are ill-fed, poisoned by unsuitable foods; are sickly, +rickety, bronchitic, dyspeptic, syphilitic, phthisical? Nevertheless, +all the maternal care these miserables receive are such rough dregs of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> +kindness and of patience as may be left over from the toil of their +working-mothers' hard, exhausting days.</p> + +<p>It is no less than monstrous that our laws allow the nation's babes and +children—to whom are due all the best resources of maternal care and +tenderness and duly-trained maternal powers—to be thus martyred. As +substitute for the home and for their mothers—which are every child's +birthright—more and more, infants and young children are consigned now +to Crèches; chill institutions of alien atmosphere, alien surroundings, +alien nurses, where, unmothered, they are ciphers among other unmothered +alien ciphers. Yet babies and young children are so pathetically +constituted that they prefer blows from their mothers to caresses from strangers.</p> + +<p class="bold">X</p> + +<p>The life-story written in the faces of the great majority of our +Twentieth-Century babes and children is a terrible one, in its +revelation of tortured helplessness, hopeless resignation, unnatural +fortitude, blank despair. See them sunk, limp and dejected, in their +prams or go-carts, eyes staring forward on the dreary waste their lives +are; limbs dangling, like those of toys with broken springs.</p> + +<p>In cities, mothers, ignorant of the shock and injury which noise and +turmoil inflict upon these sensitive brains and nerves, wheel them amid +jostling crowds—in order that they themselves may enjoy the excitements +of the shops. At the low level of their prams, they breathe air vitiated +by the passers-by; are in the exhausting whirl and press of swirling +nerve-currents. In their poor ill-made carriages, they are jerked +abruptly, now up, now down, at every kerb; with no more care or +tenderness than though they were baskets of clothes. They sit patient, +leaden, apathetic; cruelly strapped for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> hours together in one position; +neither pulse of health nor spirit in them.</p> + +<p>In cold weather, their heads but thinly thatched with hair are bare. So +too their limbs; though warmth is life to young, developing creatures. +In hot weather, the sun beats mercilessly down upon their hatlessness, +their exquisitely-sensitive brains but slightly shielded by their thin +un-ossified skulls. Degrees of sunstroke, with lifelong injury to health +and faculty, occur. They knit their pale brows in fruitless attempt to +defend their weak eyes from the glare. Many keep their lids close shut, +to protect both eyes and brain from the nerve-shattering solar rays, +which are far too powerful to be allowed to fall, untempered, upon an +infant's highly-sensitive body. With closed eyes, the poor things miss +all the joys of their ride; the colour and movement about them, and the +spurs to intelligence these should supply. Their unobservant mothers and +nurses suppose them to be sleeping!</p> + +<p>Children old enough to walk are walked to stages—sometimes to extremes +of exhaustion. You may see them dragging heavily along, with wan, +exhausted faces; peevish and cross, and scolded and shaken and slapped +for being peevish and cross. Exhaustion from such over-fatigue will keep +a child below par for days; checking its growth and development—to say +nothing of its happiness. Children derive but little benefit from their +holiday changes to sea or country, because of the exertions forced upon +them, or the too strenuous play to which they are exhorted.</p> + +<p>Children who go bare-headed suffer, in large number, from eye-strain, +with resulting permanent frown. As too, from ear-ache and from +ear-diseases; from headache and toothache. In as many as 75 per cent. of +school-children, vision is defective.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>The obsessing aim of many mothers is to "harden"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> their children. Yet no +more than a clay model in the shaping may be hardened and set, should +the process be applied to children in the shaping.</p> + +<p>Healthy children are inevitably <i>delicate</i> children, because of that +highly-sensitive re-activity to surroundings which not only +characterises but <i>conduces</i> to the developmental state. (Such delicacy +must not be confused with <i>sickliness</i>.) The finer the organisation the +longer it takes (within normal limits) to come to full growth. Our +greatest men and women were delicate in youth. Hardy children are always +of inferior type—for the most part, plain and shrewd and unimaginative, +insensitive, unlovable. They have matured (have adapted to environment, +that is) precociously. Evolution of higher faculty has been prematurely +arrested in them.</p> + +<p>Modern children are described as "super-children," for their abnormal +sharpness and worldly perspicacity. They are merely precocious, which is +to say, they have missed their childhood. And too early development +entails inevitably early decline. Not only America, but England now has +produced a grey-haired boy of ten!</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>No less amazing than it is lamentable is the light neglect by the +majority of cultured mothers, of their grave maternal obligations. From +earliest infancy, they hand over their children, body and soul, to the +ignorance, the carelessness, the cruelty (not seldom to the viciousness +even), of stranger-women of the uncultured classes; women of whose +character and disposition they know nothing, and who are only too often +unfitted by nature, by upbringing, and by habit for this most delicate, +difficult and important of all human tasks.</p> + +<p>It is by no means uncommon to find prostitutes, grown too old for a +trade that has vitiated every cell and secretion of their bodies (to say +nothing of mental vitiation),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> officiating in the capacity of nursemaid +to children of culture.</p> + +<p>Every child is a new creation, with a highly specialised organisation of +mind and of body. For the nurture and best development of these, are +required high degrees of intelligence, of understanding and of sympathy +in treatment. To realise its idiosyncrasies, constitutional and +temperamental, and to adapt to these in its rearing and surroundings, +with respect to diet, exercise, play, sleep, moral supervision and +discipline, demand intuitive perceptiveness, intelligent discrimination, +and practical resource such as no other department of life demands—or is worth.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding all this, mothers who can afford to shelve their duty +upon paid substitutes abandon the most complex and sensitive, the most +beautiful and valuable, and moreover, the most helpless thing in +Nature—the mind of a child—to be shaped and coloured, during all the +most impressionable years of its development, by persons with neither +aptitude nor faculty for this supremely complex and difficult function. +In place of so adapting its environment to the child-organism as to +enable it, fenced within the tender mother-fold, to enjoy to the full +and to develop to the full the lovely, inspiring beliefs and illusions +of natural childhood, latter-day mothers now cruelly rob their little +ones of this fructifying phase, by prematurely forcing worldly knowledge +and distrusts upon them, in precocious adjustment to mature view-points +and conditions from which they should be carefully secluded.</p> + +<p>In that mysterious Mind-department, the Subconsciousness, with its +highly sensitised brain-tablets, every smallest happening of a +lifetime—scenes, experiences, mental impressions—are photographed, to +be stored for ever after as ineffaceable records. And though, perhaps, +wholly forgotten, these subconscious records nevertheless colour and +influence for ever after every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> thought and impulse and action. +Sometimes they flash up as memories. They can be recalled under hypnotism.</p> + +<p>The young mind is like an unfurnished house. The rooms are empty. There +are no pictures on the walls. But its unblotted, exquisitely-sensitised +spaces are ceaselessly filming indelible records of everything seen and +felt and apprehended. One impression may correct, or may distort, +others. Or that right point-of-view which is judgment may focus all +impressions in the true perspective which reveals their true values and +proportions. But until such judgment has been formed by mental +development, it is vitally important that all the impressions absorbed +by young minds, whether of their life-conditions and associates, of +books or of plays, shall be fair and simple and wholesome.</p> + +<p>Thus, the foundations of mind and of character are laid in clean, +intelligising and uplifting influences.</p> + +<p class="bold">XI</p> + +<p>While we deplore, as appalling, that during the first fifteen months of +War, 109,725 of our fighting men were killed or died, the returns of the +Registrar-General show that during the twelve months of the peace +preceding War, <i>there died 140,957 of the nation's children</i>, at less +than five years old; 95,608 of these at less than a year old.</p> + +<p>Consider it! War, with its destructive engines of bomb and shell, more +or less swiftly and painlessly kills just over a hundred thousand men, +in the course of fifteen months. Peace, with its destructive +transgressions against Nature, kills in less time a far greater number +of defenceless babes and children, by slow and more or less torturing +forms of disease. Babies, even when unhealthy, come into existence +endowed with a certain Life-potential. And they struggle hard and +painfully to live. It is amazing to see the odds against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> which the poor +things battle; and battle successfully. It is only the fearfulness of +the odds to which most of them are subjected that succeeds in killing them.</p> + +<p>Pain and suffering are spurs to adult development. In children they are +as needlessly cruel as they are permanently injurious. Far from fitting, +they <i>unfit</i> them for life.</p> + +<p>The ratio of mortality is no guide, of course, to the immeasurable +injuries wrought to mind and body by these same fearful odds upon the +children who survive; and who survive, maimed, diseased, degenerate, to +live out lives of disability, of joylessness and ineffectiveness.</p> + +<p>It will be said—and said truly—that much of this high infant-mortality +results, not from maternal omissions, but from paternal commissions. +Well, that alas! is another of the terrible wrongs against children +which lie at the door of the sex. Were there not women whose lives are +passed in engendering and transmitting the direst of all the diseases +human evil has bred, the hapless imbecile and paralytic, the blind, the +deaf, the ulcerous, the slowly-wasting, tortured little ones who fill +our asylums and hospitals would not be.</p> + +<p>At every turn the truth is more and more impressed, that the fate of +Humanity rests, in some or other form, with its women. Woman is +Redeemer; or she is Destroyer. Because, while man's province is the +material, with its roots in temporal things, woman's province is the +vital, with its roots and stem and blossom in functioning Life.</p> + +<p>The burning wrongs of women? Alas! what are they beside the burning +wrongs of helpless babes and children?</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p class="bold">XII</p> + +<p>An anomaly of Feminism is the admission, on the one hand, that +Motherhood was woman's most valuable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> function, and her greatest claim +on the community in days of barbarism, and the denial, on the other, +that it is her most important function in civilisation.</p> + +<p>The illogic of the position is patent.</p> + +<p>That the production of savages should be primitive woman's chiefest +claim to honour; while the production of highly-evolved and complex +human beings should be civilised woman's least.</p> + +<p>The potence and the values of fine motherhood are proven by the fact +that every great, or good, or clever man or woman has been the child of +a great, or good, or clever mother. Not of one who has made her mark in +the world of affairs. Such, for the most part, have not reproduced at +all. And when they have been mothers their children have been notably of +inferior calibre.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, bad men and bad women have in nearly every instance +been sons or daughters of bad women.</p> + +<p>Examples innumerable might be cited to show that both genius and moral +greatness are variations (mutations) of the human species which have +their origin in mother-genius and greatness.</p> + +<p>Great scientists, it has been noted, have been sons of women +characterised by intense love of Truth. The love of Truth in the +mother—for Truth's sake—became in the executive, concrete mentality of +the son an intuitive apprehension of the truths of Science, and an eager +and indomitable aspiration to render these in terms of intellection.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Shall woman leave to man no field at all of natural supremacy? Shall she +not be content with her beautiful part as generatrix of Faculty, but +must seek to be exponent too?</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>That all women do not marry—cannot marry, indeed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> because of their +preponderance in number over the other sex—is no reason for dissembling +the truth that in wifehood and motherhood lie woman's most vital and valuable rôles.</p> + +<p>Nor is it warrant for training the whole sex as though none were +destined to fulfil this, their natural and noblest—if not always, their +happiest vocation.</p> + +<p class="bold">XIII</p> + +<p>Feminism repudiates, from time to time, the charge against it of +belittling Motherhood. Yet how can it profess to credit the maternal +function with due values or significance when it denies the obligations +and responsibilities thereof, asks no economic concessions for it? And +when, in place of demanding privileges indispensable to its exercise and +complete fulfilment, it makes no distinction, in respect of work and the +worker, between childless and unmarried women and mothers and expectant +mothers? And this despite the fact that, for a period of eighteen months +at very least, the mother's best vital resources belong by rights, +biological and moral, to each babe she produces—nine for the pre-natal +building of its body and brain, and nine for lactation.</p> + +<p>Her moral obligation to nurse, and the criminality of her omission when +able to do so, have been emphasised as follows by Sir J. Crichton-Browne:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Dr. Robertson, Medical Officer of Health for Birmingham has shown +that while the infant-mortality of breast-fed infants is 7·8 <i>per +1000 births</i>, that of infants receiving no breast-milk is 232 <i>per</i> +1000. And Sir Arthur Newsholme, Medical Adviser to the Local +Government Board, has shown that the probability of death from +epidemic diarrhœa is 54 <i>times greater among infants fed on +cow's milk</i> than among those fed on breast-milk, and 150 <i>times +greater</i> amongst infants fed on condensed milk.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p><p>"But it is not merely in a high infant death-rate that the evil +effects of the want of breast-milk stand confessed. Where it does +not kill it often maims, and is responsible for malnutrition, +rickets, tuberculosis, and a multiplicity of ailments. Every doctor +is familiar with the alabaster babies, flabby, limp, languid, and +painfully pallid, who have never tasted their natural nutriment."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Dr. Truby King records the interesting fact that the finest calf-skin, +known as Paris Calf, is obtained from calves reared by their mothers, in +order to provide the finest veal for Paris. So supple and smooth-haired +and superior is the skin of these mother-suckled creatures that dealers +are able to distinguish it at once from the skin of calves that have +been artificially fed.</p> + +<p>About this, Mr. Horace G. Regnart kindly supplies me with the following +significant data:</p> + +<p>"If we feed a calf, 'on the bucket,' the calf's coat loses its shine and +becomes dull. We say it is 'dead.' A couple of days is sufficient to +deaden the coat. And it takes three weeks or a month 'on a cow' to get +the gloss back. <i>A quart of milk direct from the cow is as good as a +gallon of milk out of a bucket.</i></p> + +<p>"We do not attempt to feed our female calves so well as we feed the +bulls. It is too costly. Our heifers are put on 'the bucket' when three +days old. I buy a cow to rear my bull-calves on. I once reared a bull on +'the bucket' satisfactorily. But I gave him twelve gallons of new milk +every day after he was five months old, and kept it up till he was +fourteen months. <i>One cow that gives three gallons does a calf just as +well as twelve gallons</i> viâ <i>the bucket, and is much cheaper.</i> Some +crack bulls have three and four five-gallon cows at once, and go to +Shows with all their nurses in attendance.</p> + +<p>"Once I reared a bull as we rear the heifers. But he was a failure. His +daughters are only half the size they ought to be."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p><p>(An example of direct developmental inheritance—in terms of +deterioration—from father to daughter.)</p> + +<p class="bold">XIV</p> + +<p>Comparing a calf with a human baby, it becomes self-evident that the +diet suited for the large, crude creature which trots about on four legs +shortly after birth must be wholly unsuited to the delicate digestion +and the subtle psychological needs of the small and complex, +highly-organised human infant, which remains so long a helpless infant.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>The all-important <i>proteid</i> of every order of creature differs from that +of every other. Before any form of alien <i>proteid</i> can be built into the +body of a living organism, the digestion and assimilation of this +creature must first have laboriously disintegrated and reconstructed it +to the form of its own individual <i>proteid</i>.</p> + +<p>The Irish tradition that persons not nursed during infancy by their +mothers are beings without souls has much to justify it. Even the +ill-nourished, sickly babes of working-mothers have an essentially +<i>human</i> look in eyes and features, possess far more of nervous power, +and are of appreciably higher and more intelligent psychology than are +the bottle-fed infants of the cultured.</p> + +<p>The bottle-fed start handicapped for life, both in constitution and +mentality. It is safe to say that all great men and women have been +suckled by their mothers or have come of stock thus humanly nurtured. +That they were thus humanly nurtured during their momentous first nine +months of life, is the reason, doubtless, why so many of our greatest +men have sprung from humble origin.</p> + +<p>The incapacity of a mother to nourish the babe she has borne should be +known for a mark of degeneracy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>—sign, too, that she was unfitted to +have borne a child, because deficient in the vital reserve requisite to +carry her maternal function to its normal biological and psychological +conclusion. Just as a statesman or a general would be held unfitted for +<i>his</i> function, if he should lack the physical and mental enterprise to +complete his national undertakings.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>That for the nine months preceding its birth the infant obtains its +nourishment directly from its mother's blood, and for nine months after +birth it obtains this, normally, from her milk—<i>her</i> digestive +processes having so assimilated the originally brute and vegetable +proteids of her food that these are now <i>human</i> proteids, and are ready, +therefore, to be built into the infant's body with the least possible +tax upon its own assimilative powers—proves a number of important facts.</p> + +<p>First: that an infant's digestive powers remain, normally, for nine +months after birth, in a more or less embryonic state; slowly and +gradually developing capacity to convert the products of the brute and +vegetable kingdoms into forms suitable for building into its human +organisation. (Just as we see the digestive organs of the child +progressively developing power to assimilate an adult dietary.)</p> + +<p>Secondly: that the infant's digestion remains thus undeveloped obviously +in order that as little as possible of its vital power may be expended +in the complex processes of assimilation, all available vital-power +being urgently required for its exhaustingly rapid brain- and body-building.</p> + +<p>Thirdly: that where an artificial diet forces precocious development +upon the infant-digestion—since all precocity is degeneracy, all the +organs concerned in digestion will be, necessarily, more or less +structurally defective and functionally inefficient; as a consequence of +not having been permitted time and rest to develop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> slowly and stably +over the normal allotted period. (Proof is supplied by the premature +development of teeth, which occurs in artificially-fed babies some +months before dentition is normally due. And these teeth and those that +succeed them are of such perishable structure that present-day children +need perpetual dental repairs.)</p> + +<p>Fourthly: that such misapplication of vital resources for the premature +development and abnormal functions of precocious digestive organs +entails inevitably corresponding loss of vital power for general development.</p> + +<p>Fifthly—and by no means lastly, but perhaps most important of all: that +since the infant-digestion is quite incapable of properly converting +brute and vegetable-proteids into human proteid, infants artificially +fed must necessarily <i>build into their brains and bodies lower-grade +proteids</i>—and proteids so imperfectly assimilated as to be something +less than human, and, accordingly, more or less brute or vegetable still +in their inherences. And since all living cells and tissues reproduce +upon the plan of the parent-cells and tissues they were derived from, it +is clear that the abnormal cells and tissues constructed of these +half-brute, or half-vegetable proteids must be abnormal; unstable and +degenerate, and prone to lapse readily to still further degrees of +deterioration and disease.</p> + +<p>Hence a source of our neurotic, neurasthenic, adenoid-afflicted, +mentally-defective and otherwise diseased children. Hence too the +increasing criminality—which is <i>animality</i>, of course—that +characterises a considerable proportion of the rising generation.</p> + +<p>Each further generation artificially fed in infancy can but deviate +still further from the Human Normal, becoming ever less human; brain and +body-cells reproducing themselves, throughout life, on the plan of their +infant-construction of half-brute or half-vegetable proteids. One sees +the ox in the dull, soulless eyes, in the bovine flesh, the stolid +faces, and in the crude animal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> natures of many modern little ones, to +whom calf-diet was fed before they had developed the digestive power of +transforming this into substance highly vitalised enough for human brain +and body-building. And the less their systems have rebelled against and +have rejected, but, on the contrary, have conformed to and have thriven +upon such brute-diet, the cruder are their organisations. Of this order +are the insensate child-monsters who win prizes at Baby-shows.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>To one who realises that, of all the powers of Woman, the ability to +nurse her babe is second in importance only to her first and vital +function of producing it, the cry and clamour and impassioned fallacy +that have swirled around the trivial detail of her Suffrage-disabilities +show grotesque beside the human tragedy of her increasing biological +disability and her increasing psychical aversion to fulfil this +indispensable and sacred mother-office. To despise which, as being a +function woman possesses in common with the humbler creatures, is as +narrow-sighted as it would be to scorn the genius of Shakespeare because +both dog and pig, poor things! possess brains. Moreover, in forfeiting +this maternal faculty, woman reverts to the mode of those crude +rudimentary species <i>below</i> the Mammalia.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i10">"... <i>Each mother's breast</i></div> +<div><i>Feeds a flower of blue, beyond all blessing blest.</i>"</div> </div></div> + +<p>Notwithstanding all this, Feminism, in its grim materialism, blind to +the mystical beauty of Life and the sacredness of Individuality, regards +women mainly as parts of an economic machinery. And to serve as such, it +standardises all in body, mind and aptitude, to economic ends; the young +and tender girls whose shaping frames are shaping to become the mystical +looms of evolving Humanity; the young wives in whom love and marriage +have set mysterious processes in motion;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> the young pregnant mothers in +whom the shuttle of Life is already marvellously flying, interweaving +the luminous threads of a soul with a body of flesh.</p> + +<p>Nature made women ministrants of Love and Life, for the creation of an +ever more healthful and efficient, a nobler and more joyous Humanity. +Feminism degrades them to the status of industrial mechanisms, whereof +the commercial products are the chiefest values, and children no more than bye-products.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>And what bye-products they are! God help them!—Who alone can help +them—this pathetic rubble of pallid, sickly, suffering, and dejected +infant- and child-Life; the violet-hued babies, with their dull eyes +glazed by misery, their leaden, half-paralysed limbs; the blind and +crippled, halt and deaf, the imbecile and feeble-minded children, +apathetic, neurasthenic, joyless; as too, on the other hand, the +low-browed, sturdy and soulless, or the debased and evil—All the +generation of degeneracy which our deteriorate and enfeebled looms of +womanhood are grinding out to-day.</p> + +<p>Though shut from sight and thought, in the prisons, hospitals and other +institutions of our modern civilisations is an ever-swelling, +ever-rising, further-menacing tide of diseased, defective, insane and +criminal mankind, product of ours and of those others' violations of +Natural Law; clogging the River of Life, choking the Springs of +Evolution, damming the current of Progress.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VII</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE +AND PROGRESS</p> + +<p class="center">"A woman versed in that finest of all fine arts, the beautifying of +daily life."</p> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>In <i>Woman and Labour</i>, Miss Schreiner laments as follows, picturesquely +but speciously: "Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge +buildings steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands +(often those of men) produce the clothings of half the world; and we +dare no longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples!"</p> + +<p>A scene is conjured of brute-men with clubs savagely attacking and +destroying hapless women's innocent spinning-wheels, as Mrs. Arkwright +ruthlessly destroyed her husband's cherished models. Yet who, regarding +the subject dispassionately, sees cause for anything but gladness that +modern woman has not still to spin the linen of her household and the +garments of its members—for anything but thankfulness for that +intelligent male-brain which carried the woman-invention of the needle +to its higher adaptations in the weaving and the sewing-machine? Who can +justly regret that the taking over by men, in factories, of wholesale +brewings and bakings, jam-makings, and so forth, has relieved the other +sex of ceaseless drudgeries; and in so relieving it of drudgeries of +house-keeping has left it free to develop the higher and the more +intellectual arts of home-making?</p> + +<p>"<i>Slowly but determinedly, as the old fields of labour</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> <i>close up and are +submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the new</i>," Miss Schreiner +affirms. And to emphasise our determination, the demand is printed in +her book, as I have reproduced it, in Italics.</p> + +<p>Losing sight altogether of the inestimable benefits to woman secured by +the intervention of men between her and the hardest and the most +debasing employments, she further protests, "any attempt to divide the +occupations in which male and female intellects and wills should be +employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and arbitrary division."</p> + +<p>"Our cry is, <i>We take all labour for our province!</i>"</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, clever and intuitive woman as she is, she confesses (now +the Italics are mine), "<i>It may be with sexes as with races, the +subtlest physical differences between them may have their fine mental +correlatives</i>." And yet, oh why, having come upon so promising a vein of +truth, did she not follow it to its logical conclusions, and find in it +all the answers to her extremist demands, and, with these, the +refutations of her Feminist plea and claims?</p> + +<p>Men and women are unlike not only in "<i>the subtlest physical +differences</i>" which "<i>may have their fine mental correlatives</i>." They +are unlike in the most obvious and basic facts of physical constitution +and of biological function. And these must inevitably entail mental and +temperamental correlatives more intrinsic and farther reaching even than +the subtler physical differences she recognises as being possibly +modifying factors in psychical aptitude.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Advocating soldiering even for the sex, Miss Schreiner says: " ... +Undoubtedly, it has not been only the peasant-girl of France, who has +carried latent and hid within her person the gifts that make the supreme general."</p> + +<p>Here is fallacy again. Joan of Arc was, beyond all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> things, woman. Not +the man in her, but the woman in her, and her Supra-conscious womanly +attributes it was which (inspiring her by way of mystical voices and +visions) impelled her so to transcend her woman-nature that without +knowledge of arts military or of strategic science, as, too, without +experience, she was able, by intuitive prescience, to lead her +compatriots to victory. For the soldiers, perceiving the Light in her +face, followed in awed confidence whithersoever she led.</p> + +<p>In earlier days of civilisation, this intuitive and visionary faculty of +woman was recognised and honoured.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>In <i>The Human Woman</i>, Lady Grove presents a wholly contrary view to Miss +Schreiner's.</p> + +<p>With her, woman suffers less in being shut out from the labour-market +than in having been driven from the home.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The woman has been driven from her home into the labour-market. +The fact of 82 per cent. of the women of this country working for +their living is an ugly rebuff to the pretty platitudes about the +home," she says.</p> + +<p>" ... The stupendous mistake that has been made up to now is in +supposing that it is men's judgment only that should decide +questions, and hence the hopeless state of unravelled misery +existing in the world, side by side with all the wealth and wonders of the age.</p> + +<p>"If we examine the conditions of the working-classes, after years +and years of male legislation, what a hideous set of conditions we +find. Intemperance, bad-housing and the cruel struggle for +existence among the poorer classes. And yet we spend over +£22,000,000 annually on the education of these people. Surely there +is something wrong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> somewhere. What is it that we, seeing this +condition of things at our very door, have, as women, to be so +grateful for in male legislation?"</p></blockquote> + +<p>The writer fails wholly to perceive that these factors she deplores as +due to defective masculine legislation are effects less of faulty +measures than of faulty Humanity. Measures are the gauge of the men who +frame them. And men are very much the measure of the mothers who bore +them. Those which she properly characterises as the "hideous" conditions +of the working-classes, "intemperance, bad-housing and the cruel +struggle for existence" are circumstances legislation cannot remedy +unless the hearts of legislators are moved to do this, and their hands +are empowered, moreover, to do it, by the collective will of those they represent.</p> + +<p>Except all are content to subordinate their personal interests to the +general welfare, and to improve their personal morale for their own and +for the common good, Acts of Parliament can do but little. Drunkenness +can be penalised by legislation, difficulties put in the way of +obtaining drink. But intemperance can be effectually stamped out only by +individual men and women so rising to higher levels of thought and +self-control as voluntarily to become sober; or by men and women so +improving in brain and constitution that the craving for drink—now +recognised as a disease—no longer obsesses them.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Acts of Parliament may condemn insanitary and defective dwellings, may +compel landlords to repair them to degrees of decency and comfort; may +pull them down and build others in their stead. But none of these +measures will eradicate the bad housing of dirty and comfortless, or of +demoralised and demoralising homes. The best house possible becomes bad +housing for its occupants when the woman at the head of it fails to do +her duty therein, in consequence of industrial labour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> which leaves her +neither time nor energy to make a clean, well-ordered, cosy and +inspiring home of it; or because her own idleness or ignorance, her +drunkenness or worthlessness, results in her neglect of it. Human +conditions, like human measures, result from the personalities, good or +bad, capable or incapable, of those who create them.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>The Feminist's faith in the masculine prerogative of Legislation, as +being a possible panacea—had <i>she</i> but part in it—for every ill +beneath the sun, is one of her gravest disqualifications for taking part therein.</p> + +<p>Legislators who are over-confident in the efficacy of The Law express +their over-confidence in terms of premature and unduly-coercive +legislation. Procedure which, more often than not, frustrates the ends +to which it was designed by the methods taken to secure these. Progress +is personal, moreover. It is the sum of the advance of individuals. +Legislation is the statutory <i>formulation</i> of public opinion; it is not +the <i>source</i> of this. It merely crystallises public opinion. But before +crystallisation of thought (as of chemical) sets in, saturation-point +must first have been reached throughout the medium wherein it occurs.</p> + +<p>Were any other development required to show the utter inadequacy of +Legislation to attain its ends—when not reinforced by personal +co-operation and initiative—this has been supplied in that latter-day +demoralisation of young girls, the consequences whereof will be vastly +more baneful and farther-reaching in contributing to national decline +than even that other dire factor of the flower of our virile youth +struck down before its prime.</p> + +<p>Girls are fully protected by law to the age of sixteen. Yet many of the +demoralised girls seen consorting freely with Tommy or Reggie, according +to their class, are well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> below that age. Legislation is powerless, +however, failing parental vigilance and co-operation to invoke its aid. +Nevertheless, with its characteristic blind confidence in the male +prerogative of Law, Feminism now advocates raising "the age of consent" +to eighteen. But to do this would no more protect the girl under +eighteen than the existing law protects the girl under sixteen—or, for +that matter, protects the girl of twelve. Law can do little or nothing +unless, as happens so seldom and happens too late, parents requisition +its assistance for menace or for punishment. Mothers themselves should +see to it that their little daughters have neither temptation nor +opportunity to consent to their own ruin.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>We saw lately a militant rising of women against men and their laws; the +object being to compel concessions from the male by way of violence. And +so short-sighted were the leaders of this Movement that not only did +they seek to prove their right to make laws, by breaking them, but they +showed themselves ignorant of the first rudiments of combat by electing +to fight the enemy with his own weapon—that weapon of Force which is +man's especial Fitness and Woman's Unfitness. Woman's Unfitnesses have +prevailed, it is true, in the counsels of progress, but, obviously, they +have not prevailed, nor can they ever prevail by being pitted directly +against masculine strengths. Her way of supremacy is one by far more +subtle and sublime.</p> + +<p>The leaders of Militancy seem never to have suspected, moreover, that +while they were demanding to be liberated from all womanly privileges, +they were, nevertheless, waging their deplorable skirmishes from behind +a strong wall of such privileges. Men who should have adopted such +tactics would have received but short and scant shrift.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p><p>Were the sex to be confronted, indeed, with that "Fair field and no +favour!" for which some members of it are so clamorous, these would find +it a grievously different thing from the privilege they paint it.</p> + +<p>Marcel Prévost has said that when men find women competing with them in +fields of Labour, to degrees injurious to masculine interests, they will +turn and strike them in the face. There are indications to the contrary, +however. Among decadent races and savages, the emasculate sons of +deteriorate mothers assert their masculine authority otherwise.</p> + +<p>Far from combating their women's right to work, they force them to +work—and to work in support of the males!</p> + +<p>More and more every day, civilised men, indeed, released by +working-wives from their natural obligation to maintain the family, are +seen so to have lapsed from their sense of virile responsibility as to +be coming further and further to shelve upon such working-wives the +burden of the family support. Among the labouring and artisan classes, +the wife's contribution to the exchequer leaves the husband more money +to spend on drink or on gambling; or on both. In superior classes, too, +it leaves husbands with more money to spend on amusement—of one sort or another.</p> + +<p>Responsibility and effort are natural spurs to masculine development. +Relieve the male of these and he degenerates. As woman released from +child-bearing and the duties entailed by the family, degenerates +rapidly. We can no more improve on The Plan than we can improve without +each and every appointed factor of it.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>Another disastrous blunder of Feminism is to make for equal wage for men and women.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>The higher wage of men springs, economically, from the fact that the +industrial output of women is, normally, less than that of men. But +there is a deeper, and a biological significance involved. Which is, +that men's greater output of work results from more of their energy of +brain and body being available to them for work, because far less of +their vital power is locked-up in them for Race-perpetuation and +nurture. There is the implication also that man being the natural +breadwinner of the family, his wage should suffice for its support.</p> + +<p>A system of equal wages for the sexes would press as cruelly upon women +as it would be disastrous to the Race. Because it would compel woman, +despite the biological disabilities that handicap her economically, to +force her powers to masculine standards of work and output. It would, +moreover, by qualifying her to support the family, serve as cogent +excuse for her husband to shirk his bounden duty.</p> + +<p>The crux of the demand for equal pay for equal work is that, because of +her natural lesser strength and endurance, when a woman is doing work +identical in nature and equal in quantum to that of a man, it means that +<i>she</i> is doing <i>more</i> than a woman's work, and is overtaxing and +injuring her constitution, therefore; or it means that <i>he</i> is doing +<i>less</i> than a man's work, and is "slacking," therefore.</p> + +<p>A further important issue is that when rendered too easy by both husband +and wife earning wage, marriage is entered upon far too lightly, and at +too early and irresponsible ages, than happens when the whole burden of +support rests with the man. Moreover, in such case masculine selection +makes only too often for economic rather than for human values in the +wife. A man upon whom is to fall the whole tax of supporting the home +and the family regards marriage more seriously, and delays it until he +is more mature of years and of settled position.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> Moreover, he chooses +more carefully. And the Race benefits proportionally.</p> + +<p>In manufacturing towns, with opportunity for both husband and wife +earning wage, boy-and-girl marriages, feckless, discordant homes, and +sickly degenerate, neglected children are the rule.</p> + +<p>That women should be paid for work they do, a salary enabling them to +live honestly and in comfort, goes without saying. Economics should be +adjusted on a far higher basis than that mainly of a competitive +struggle which allows the employer to fix wages less according to the +value of work done, than by the number of persons at his mercy, who, in +their eagerness to live, will undersell their values and thus cheapen +labour. Nevertheless economics have, in a degree, adapted to the +evolutionary trend. Because, in the main, the more skilled and difficult +tasks are more highly remunerated than the less skilled, and are +performed by the more fit. And not only are these better qualified to +expend such higher remuneration intelligently, and with benefit to +themselves and to the community, but they are able to secure thereby +those better conditions which are the due and the need of families +higher in the scale of humanity, and requiring, therefore, higher +conditions of nurture.</p> + +<p>The cases of colliers and of other rough-grade humans who earn wage +beyond their mental calibre to expend intelligently, show how an income +too large for its possessor leads to coarse and demoralising +extravagances, rather than to personal happiness or elevation. (The like +is true of many plutocrats.) War has shown us boys' lives wrecked by the +same factor. No greater fallacy exists than that of supposing progress +to lie in freeing persons from all disabilities—poverty, and other +restrictive conditions.</p> + +<p>Wives should be legally entitled to a just proportion of their husband's +income, as a <i>right</i>, not merely as dole.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> This, in recognition of their +invaluable work in home-making, and of their invaluable service to the +State in producing and rearing worthy citizens for it.</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>Masculine legislation, making all the while, in the face of economic +difficulties, for the ever further release of women and children from +the more laborious and debasing tasks, has made compulsory, in their own +and in the interests of their unborn infants, a month of respite for +expectant mothers, and a further month for mothers after delivery. +Extending thus to these poor victims—beasts of the burden of toil, and +beasts of the burden of sex—a mercy and consideration wholly lacking in +the Feminist propaganda. For this latter repudiates indignantly all need +for concession or privilege to wifehood or to motherhood, equally with womanhood.</p> + +<p>To justify the claim for equality in all things, women must be forced, +at all cost, to identical standards of work and production. To ask +privileges and concessions would be to confess, in the sex, weaknesses +and disabilities that must disqualify it from economic identity with the other.</p> + +<p>Far, indeed, from such vain-glorious and disastrous straining for +equality, the leaders of the Woman's Movement should, before all else, +have demanded insistently still further industrial concessions and +privileges for a sex handicapped for industry, by Nature. First and +foremost, they should come into the open and boldly proclaim—what it is +useless to deny, indeed—that in the function of parenthood, at all +events, men and women are wholly dissimilar. They should reject outright +all tinkerings and half-measures for relief of this great human +disability, whereof one sex only bears the stress and burden for the +benefit of both, and for survival of nations and races.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p><p>Not only for the pitiful respite of a month before and a month after +the birth of her child, should the mother be prohibited from industrial +labour. By that time all the damage will have been done. The power that +should have been put into the evolution of her infant will have been put +into the revolutions of a lathe. The life-potential that should have +gone to build its living bone and brain and muscle will have gone to +feed the life of a machine. The breath she will have drawn for it will +have been contaminated by the dust and fumes of toil. Its poor nascent +brain and faculties will have been dulled and depleted, stupefied and +vitiated by the stress and turmoil of its mother's labours. Only the +dregs of the maternal powers will have been invested in the Race. The +finest and most valuable will have gone to swell the balance-sheets of Capital.</p> + +<p>The trumpet-cry of The Woman's Movement should be, indeed, <i>The Absolute +Prohibition of young Wives and Mothers from all Industrial and Professional employment!</i></p> + +<p>Such a prohibition, by lessening the competition of the labour-market, +and by thus increasing the value of labour (which the flood of female +industry inevitably cheapens) would automatically so increase the wage +of men as to make of these true living wage, sufficient for the +maintenance of home and family. Such a prohibition would, moreover, so +diminish the competitive pressure among women as to make it possible for +unmarried women, the future wives and mothers, as well as for the older +spinsters and widows, to select in every fitting trade and industry, +work suited to the lesser strength and endurance of the female brain and body.</p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>Nothing has characterised the Feminist Movement throughout so much as +lack of knowledge of human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> nature (both masculine and feminine), lack +of prevision to foresee the trend of new developments, lack of intuitive +apprehension to gauge the issues of such trend. Its leaders have never +suspected, accordingly, that, in propaganda and in practice, they have +been tampering with a great biological ordinance; and that, in +obliterating women's Sex-characteristics, they have been destroying that +counterpoise of human powers and faculties whereon progress and +permanence rest, and that morale which is the inspiration of advance.</p> + +<p>Regarding their own masculine Rationalism as the ideal and standard for +all women, they have believed it possible to shape all women +successfully thereto. Nature is not to be thwarted, however. And when we +destroy the balance of the Normal, abnormal developments—gravely +mischievous and singularly difficult to deal with—crop up and require +to be dealt with. One may raise the familiar cry that some modern +developments are due to our being in "a transition stage." But from that +remote day when Nature first evolved us as a race of <i>amœbæ</i>, further +to evolve into the human species, we have been always in "transition +stages." Normal transition upwards is so slow an impulse as to be +well-nigh imperceptible, however. Rapid change invariably betokens +regression—descent being vastly easier and swifter in movement than ascent is.</p> + +<p>Deplorably mistaken has been a doctrine of Emancipation which, by +disparaging the arts domestic, has sent out young girls and women, +indiscriminately, from the sphere domestic, to de-sexing and +demoralising work in factories and businesses; and has engendered the +race of stunted, precocious, bold-eyed, cigarette-smoking, free-living +working-girls who fill our streets; many tricked out like cocottes, eyes +roving after men, impudence upon their tongues, their poor brains +vitiated by vulgar rag-times and cinema-scenes of vice and suggestiveness.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p><p>Some of our working-girls are charming-looking, pretty-mannered, pure +of thought and life, of course. A small minority—alas, how small!—are +normal of development and sound of constitution. But these are not the +average. And it is the average with which a nation has to reckon.</p> + +<p>Emphatically, men are not as women. In body and in mind they are by +nature rougher, tougher, and vastly less impressionable. A regime that +<i>makes</i> a boy will wreck a girl. Of more sensitive calibre, she requires +more kindly, protective conditions, moral and industrial, than does he. +Notwithstanding which, little girls now run the streets and take their +chances as they may—in capacities of over-burdened errand-girl, +telegraph-messenger, and otherwise—at ages when their developing +womanhood requires due care of nurture, moral supervision, and freedom +from physical strain. Sedentary occupations are a natural need of their +sex, moreover, as is indicated by the breadth and weight of the female +pelvis and hips, as too by the delicate adjustments of those important +reproductive organs, the future products whereof are of inestimably +higher national values than are the industrial assets of these poor +children's labour. As Girl-guides and so forth, young girls parade our +towns in meretricious (albeit hideous) uniform; developing thereby that +love of publicity and of unwholesome excitement to which the sex is +prone. Small girls just fresh from school are even now employed in +barbers' shops to shave men; destroying thus in them, at the outset of +life, that natural diffidence and reserve toward the other sex which are +the first defences of womanly honour.</p> + +<p>In demanding absolute emancipation, industrial and personal, Feminists +had no other thought but that such new liberty would have widened +woman's scope for usefulness, for happiness, for self-development. Yet +what has been the outcome of it all? For one who has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> used her new +freedom for the ends designed, very many more have used it to their +serious injury; only too many to their moral downfall.</p> + +<p>Already everywhere such liberty has fast degenerated into licence. Our +girls were no sooner emancipated by their mothers from the usually +wholesome—if sometimes too severe—control of their fathers, than +straightway they have emancipated themselves from the indispensable +maternal rule. Strict supervision and guidance in a world they are +ignorant of—or if sophisticated are in far worse case—are essential to +the well-being, physical and moral, of the young and immature.</p> + +<p>Young girls, on first discovering their attraction for the other sex, +become intoxicated by the sense of their new dangerously-alluring power, +and lose their heads. Beyond all things, they require at this phase a +mother's strict and careful supervision, with sympathy and firm control; +to tide them over their perilous phase, and thus to preserve them from +consequences of their ignorance or folly, or from those of a pernicious +bent. Nevertheless, young girls of every class are granted now +disastrous latitudes of thought and action. The vigilant chaperonage +indispensable to protect them from the biological impulses—which they +mistake for "love"—of the careless or vicious young men to whom +(equally with the chivalrous and honourable) modern mothers abandon +their daughters, has become a dead-letter. The girl only just in her +teens is free to play fast-and-loose with boys and men—as too with +life, before she has learned the merest rudiments of living. All too +soon she learns her lesson. And becoming precociously +sophisticated—only too often precociously vicious—her nature and +future are wrecked at the outset. Because nothing wrecks a woman's +disposition so effectually as sex-precocity does. Sex is the very pivot +of her nature. On this she swings up—or down. And early habit decides her bent.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p><p>That many of these cigarette-smoking, decadent young creatures are no +worse than impudent, feather-brained and misguided, does not save the +licence allowed them from being as harmful to physical as it is perilous +to moral health; nor from the experiences resulting from such licence +wholly unfitting the majority for later wholesome restraint, and for +purer and fairer ideals of womanly conduct and living.</p> + +<p>For much of this Feminism is gravely to blame. Not only because it has +led to the absorption of the mothers in outside pursuits, as being of +greater importance than the fulfilment of their maternal duties and +responsibilities to their young daughters, but because, too, the partial +sterilisation of girls, by masculine training and habits, in robbing +them of womanly qualities, robs them of natural reserve and modesty, and +of the other more delicate instincts and aspirations of their sex.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Significant, truly, of latter-day maternal neglect of young daughters +was the disclosure by a doctor, in a recent <i>British Medical Journal</i>, +that of a hundred men infected with venereal diseases, more than +<i>seventy had contracted disease</i> from "<i>amateur flappers</i>." Yet as with +a child badly burned by playing with fire, we blame the mother or +guardian who exposed it to danger of thus injuring itself for life, so +the mothers of these unfortunate girls were to blame for gross neglect +of their duty to safeguard these young lives.</p> + +<p>Nature avenges her betrayed girls, however. For medical authority shows +that these youthful unfortunates transmit disease in its most virulent +and destructive forms. It is as though all the vital potential of their +developing womanhood is perverted to a malign poison, charged with the +forces of their blasted youth.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>The Victorian, who brought up her daughters to marry in ignorance of +biological fact, went to the other extreme.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> But it was a far less +harmful one than that in vogue to-day.</p> + +<p>Like that of the child, the immature, susceptible mind of a girl, +incapable of apprehending the sex-factor in its true perspective with +the other factors of life, becomes unduly dominated by consideration +thereof when too early instructed. She is far better left, for so long +as is practicable, ignorant or hazy concerning this vital phenomenon, in +place of being fully informed, as girls are now-a-days. So that they +know all that there is to be known about sex—except its seriousness and +sacredness. And divorced from the seriousness and sacredness of Love and +Birth—which mere knowledge of biological fact is wholly inadequate to +impart—such knowledge of fact presents a crude and bald distortion of +the truth; only too often imparting an ugly and demoralising warp to +mind and conduct. Ignorance is not Innocence, 'tis true, but it serves +the same purpose in safeguarding innocence that clothes do in +safeguarding modesty. And for one girl who falls in consequence of +innocence, twenty fall from sophistication.</p> + +<p>Unless masculine traits have been over-developed in her by abnormal +training, in which case (as occurs sometimes in the quasi-masculine +woman of middle-age) sex-instinct may acquire an unnatural and +quasi-masculine insistence, this instinct is, in the normal girl, +<i>responsive</i> rather than <i>initiative</i>. (Wherein she differs +diametrically from the male.) And such natural dormancy may be +advantageously preserved by haziness of knowledge, and by the careful +surveillance required for protection of immature minds and powers. The +bald, matter-of-course view-point of many modern girls with regard to +sex, their knowledge of vice, and their cynical acceptance and +discussion thereof, as too of the vulgar intrigues of notorious dancers +and peeresses, to say nothing of the ugly and debasing personal +experiences only too many of them have incurred, are among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> evils of +the injurious licence at present accorded to young persons.</p> + +<p>Feminism, having thrust such disastrous liberty on creatures as eager to +grasp as they are unfitted to cope with the dangers thereof, is striving +now, by way of women-patrols and police-women, to stem the evil with one +hand—while with the other, it continues to open the flood-gates still +wider. The only way to stem the evil is to stem it at its source. The +home, with the vigilant supervision and guidance of a mother whose duty +is publicly recognised and her authority strengthened thereby, whose +time and faculties are devoted mainly to the making of home and to the +safeguarding and disciplining of the young creatures she has brought +into existence, is environment and shelter as indispensable to the +impressionable youth of both sexes—but more particularly to the +impressionable youth of one—as it is for the rearing of infancy and +childhood. Such home-influences, reinforced by the strong hand of a +father who likewise recognises his parental responsibilities, are the +first of all the rights that matter for young womanhood.</p> + +<p>Later, should come a term of domestic service. Mistresses of households +should realise not only their human but likewise their national +responsibility to these young humbler members thereof. No other public +service possible to them would equally conduce to national progress.</p> + +<p>As fathers are legally responsible for debts of sons under age, mothers +should be responsible to the State for the virtue of daughters under sixteen.</p> + +<p>In the <i>personal</i>, vastly more than in any other field of operation, +woman's chiefest value lies. When she exchanges it for public functions, +and seeks to further progress by officialdom and politics, by +institution of women-patrols, police-women, Mayoresses, and so forth, +the supreme importance of the personal factor becomes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> impressed by the +discovery of the utter inadequacy of any substitute to take its place. +"If mothers did their duty, there would be no need for us," a +woman-patrol stated recently.</p> + +<p>By the time young women have reached such phases of demoralisation that +their conduct in public demands the intervention of police-women, it is +too late to reform them, moreover. They will have lost the best promise +and hope of their womanhood.</p> + +<p>And so it is and must be ever all along the line. The home and the +family are the nursery of civic as they are of racial progress. We +regard it as proof of civilisation that Law-Courts for Children have +been instituted. Yet what a blot it is, in truth, upon both parentage +and parenthood that, in our day of enlightenment, such should have become necessary.</p> + +<p>So have mother influences and maternal sense of responsibility declined, +however, that mothers on all sides openly confess their utter lack of +power to control boys and girls just in their 'teens.</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p>The fashion is to pity and deride the "poor" early Victorian because she +lacked the manifold and nerve-wracking outlets for that restlessness and +boredom from which modern women suffer.</p> + +<p>The "poor" Victorian was a more harmonious, better-balanced and more +tranquil being, however. And she was far less cursed with "nerves," with +feverish unrest and carking discontent, than women are to-day.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Craigie observed that the Victorian, with her backboard and gentle +accomplishments, produced (without the pusillanimous expedient of +"Twilight Sleep") notably stronger, finer, and more clever children than +do present-day over-educated or athletic women—athletic women, whose +muscles of arms and of legs have so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> sapped the powers of important +internal muscles that most of them are incapable of bringing their +infants into life without instrumental aid.</p> + +<p>One does not, for a moment, counsel reversion to the type or to the +methods of an earlier generation. Evolution and development must +advance, and are, of course, advancing satisfactorily in some stock. But +the Victorian served her generation nobly, producing splendid specimens +of men and women, and handing on a generous racial constitution—now +being squandered recklessly, alas! by her descendants. The tide of +greater freedom, of broader outlook, and fuller effectiveness for woman +has set in, however. Albeit, owing to Feminist misapprehensions, it is +not only moving too rapidly but it is moving in a wrong direction; +because in direct opposition to biological law.</p> + +<p><i>By their fruits ye shall know them.</i> And the Victorian so preserved her +woman-powers and attributes that she was an excellent and a contented +wife, and could bring into existence—without instrumental aid—a family +of comely, clever boys and girls; nurse them all from eldest to +youngest; rear and discipline and put such stuff of health and sanity +and enterprise into them as shames some flimsy, feeble-minded, +characterless modern stock. We have far to look to-day, indeed, for +statesmen and soldiers, poets and artists, business and craftsmen, and +other such virile and talented personages as those early and +pre-Victorian mothers endowed their epoch with.</p> + +<p>And were further evidence needed that our great-grandmothers equalled +our own women in the qualities we pride ourselves upon as triumphs of +Feminism, the strength and courage, the resource and fortitude those +others showed throughout the stress and horrors of the Indian Mutiny are +proof sufficient that, beneath their gentler virtues, lay the sterner fibre of nobility.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">IX</p> + +<p>To prove to what a third-grade power Woman, once so potent an +inspiration of life, has lapsed, we need but go to The Drama—reflex +ever of its period. Consider Shakespeare's women—subtly wise, +profoundly clever, beautiful and gracious, true and charming, strong and +tender, chaste and gay; warm with temperament, crystal-sparkling with wit and parry!</p> + +<p>And comparing these adorable beings with the posturing, tricky, +intriguing, slangy, spotty creatures—neurotic unfaithful wives and +erratic "bachelor"-daughters—of the modern stage, the deplorable +deterioration of our womanly ideals becomes patent.</p> + +<p>Women have sinned in every age, but they have sinned in some ages +picturesquely and pathetically, because Nature led them. While the +morbids and neurotics of our modern Plays are for ever noisily turning +out the dusty corners of their warped psychologies, in order to discover +some loose end of Nature in them to condone their erotic eccentricities. +Strange, that Twentieth-Century woman tolerates the mirror held to her +in these abnormal and distasteful creatures!</p> + +<p>The modern dramatist is handicapped in his art, it is true, by lack, in +our latter-day actresses, of that personal charm and magnetism, and the +vital power to render the higher and subtler emotions and passions, +whereby the actresses of earlier days held audiences spell-bound.</p> + +<p>Politics and Sports destroy alike the Muses and the Graces. One who +attempts to combine them with the delicate psychological arts and +artistries of The Drama is bound to failure—in her art, at all events.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Time was when the best men reverenced women as beings of more delicate +calibre, to be shielded from the rougher and grosser contacts of life. +Chivalry forbade<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> that they should have taken these to coarse +exhibitions, prize-fights and the like. And to such restriction woman's +purer instinct and her finer taste assented.</p> + +<p>The male being practical and rational, however, since women themselves +are changing all that, he too is coming to believe that any and every +thing is good enough for a sex which more and more repudiates its subtler quality.</p> + +<p>That native delicacy which preserved her once from masculine habits of +thought and indulgence, taught man to realise woman as belonging, by +nature, to a purer and daintier order. (Howsoever inferior to himself in +some other respects he may have held her.)</p> + +<p>It won his reverence and worship that these frailer and more +exquisitely-constituted creatures should possess, despite their +exquisiteness, such fine mettle of resistance in their softness as +withstood the fire and urgence of the masculine siege; that within their +(possibly) ignorant little brains was light that flashed straight to +intrinsic truths and right courses of action; such intuitive +apprehension of The Good and The Beautiful, without experience of the +base and ugly, as taught them to distinguish clearly, to select, and to +hold fast to the fairer in thought and in conduct.</p> + +<p>To encounter in woman his own traits touched to higher, subtler issues, +and transformed to novel and alluring quality by the charm and graces of +another sex, has made always an enchanting, an inspiring, and a baffling +enigma of her—to endue woman for man with eternal values and +impenetrable mystery. For he has visioned in her—without +formulating—the mystery of the Human Duality.</p> + +<p>Trembling in the delicate poise of her twofold being, between the soft +impressionable, variable woman in her and the man of steel æsthetically +sheathed within the velvet of her womanhood, the play of her swift +supple transitions, the kaleidoscopic changes of her perpetual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> new +combinations—giving ever fresh bewildering effects of colour, light and +mode—have made her infinite variety for him. While her soft, immediate +adjustments to his own moods and needs have been his wonder and delight; +presenting to him all that there is in himself, yet in modes impossible +to himself. All that he knows by acquaintance she knows by +intuition—and in a fresh and fairer way. All that he sees, her eyes +make him see again in new and more exquisite lights. All that he thinks +had been already in her woman-heart ere ever man began to think. All +that he loves she shows him a reason for loving—yet not by way of +reason. All that he craves with his soul, her soul can confer. All that +his body and sense have desired, her body and sense can bestow—But with +all the immeasurable differences and enhancements of her unlike sex.</p> + +<p>"<i>Away, away!</i>" cried Jean Paul Richter, apostrophising Music, "<i>thou +speakest to me of things that in all my endless life I have not found, +and shall not find!</i>"</p> + +<p>Wagner said, "Music is a Woman."</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Dr. Havelock Ellis, himself a zealous Feminist, has said, that, in their +ardour for emancipation, women sometimes seem anxious to be emancipated +from their sex. While Ellen Key, most impartial of critics, observes:</p> + +<p>"But full of insight as they are into the <i>ars amandi</i>, have modern +women, indeed, learned how with all their soul, all their strength, and +all their mind to love? Their mothers and grandmothers—on a much lower +plane of woman's erotic idealism—knew of only one object; that of +making their husbands happy.... But what watchful tenderness, what +dignified desire to please, what fair gladness could not the finest of +these spiritually-ignored women develop! The new man lives in a dream of +the new woman, and she in a dream of the new man. But when they actually +find one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> another, it frequently results that two highly-developed +brains together analyse love; or that two worn-out nervous systems fight +out a disintegrating battle over love.... Of love's double +heart-beat—the finding one's self, and the forgetting one's self in +another—the first is now considerably more advanced than the second."</p> + +<p>The reason why the New man and the New woman, having found one another, +find no more inspiration or sweetness each in the other than to "fight +out a disintegrating battle" is because both are male of brain and +bent—one normally so, the other abnormally.</p> + +<p>And when two males meet, their nature is—to fight!</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Into every clause of this book must be read the many inspiring +exceptions to be found among those modern men and women and children who +are advancing normally along evolutionary lines. Such are so fine of +type, in body and in mind, that they blind not a few to facts of racial +deterioration. We point to these and say: One cannot speak with truth of +the degeneracy of nations which produce such noble specimens!</p> + +<p>These exceptions prove the principle I am endeavouring to impress, +however. That were we to apply ourselves to correction of our biological +and social errors, we have with us stock of the noblest Race +conceivable, and the noblest possible future for that Race.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VIII</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS</p> + +<p class="center">"<i>Every child comes with the message that God is not yet +discouraged of Man.</i>"</p> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>Since women possess native gifts of highly-differentiated faculties and +aptitudes, not only their greatest effectiveness, but, too, their +well-being and happiness lie in finding highly-specialised and selective +application for these, in Life, in Art, in Science, and in Industry.</p> + +<p>Their rôle in every field of operation should be recognised as being +wholly different from that of man, however; and their own natural +view-points and special abilities should be fostered, accordingly, by +suitable training; in order to fit them for the special departments for +which they are essentially suited.</p> + +<p>The charming artistry and fancies, spontaneous and full of delicate +insight, feeling, and sense of line, which a woman puts into her +illustrations of a child's Fairy-story, are art as true, for example, +and if less great of achievement, are nevertheless as intrinsically +valuable in The Scheme of Things as are the virile masterpieces of a +Michael Angelo or Turner.</p> + +<p>Few men attain the exquisite artistry in colour that even indifferent +women-painters show. It is an expression, in mentality, of the +biological fact that the colour-sense is naturally so highly developed +in woman that Colour-blindness—comparatively common among men—is rare +indeed in her.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p><p>On the other hand, woman is inherently weak in drawing. When she is +trained, however, to draw with masculine strength and precision, she +loses her natural freedom and delicacy of touch, her sensitive feeling +for line, her exquisite colour-sense, her fertile fancy. Rosa Bonheur's +horses are as strong in drawing as they are baldly deficient in +sentiment. Men have painted horses bolder still in line, but +nevertheless noble and beautiful in feeling.</p> + +<p>The same is true of Literature. Mrs. Browning would have been a great +poet had she not taken her husband for model. Some of her delicate +woman-fancies, tricked out in Robert Browning's over-virile style, are +like charming women masquerading in fustian trousers.</p> + +<p>George Eliot, too, affected the masculine both in viewpoint and +method—a bad habit which so grew upon her that her later novels are +ponderous as political treatises, and devoid of human interest.</p> + +<p>Far different, Charlotte Brontë. True to herself and to her sex, she +wrote and has written for all time—as those others did not—as a woman, +and as only a woman could have written. Jane Austen, likewise.</p> + +<p>The woman point-of-view and method are regarded, for the most part, +however, as mark of the amateur—the model aimed at being the eternal +masculine in mode and trend.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>If the demand, "<i>We take all labour for our province!</i>" be safeguarded +by recognising and differentiating the province into two distinct and +separate—supplementary and complementary—departments, for the +respective labours of the two widely differing sexes, the claim comes +first within the range of reason and discretion.</p> + +<p>As woman was the first doctor, so she was the first artist. Man inherits +from her not only his artistic faculty, but he derives from her his +faculty of creative inspiration. Applying his native intelligence, his +executive ability and power of sustained effort, to this end,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> he has so +developed The Arts as to have carried these to their modern +realisations. And though woman, in her turn, may learn of him, it by no +means follows that his standards or technique are best adapted to her +modes of inspiration, to her ideals or attainments.</p> + +<p>Trained along the lines of natural inherences, and trained, accordingly, +without injury or warp to health or faculty by straining after standards +not their own, women would not be disqualified, as so many are now by +avocational specialisation, for wife and motherhood. They would, on the +contrary, be the better adapted. And health and charm and emotion not +having been sacrificed in them by de-sexing pursuits, such would be +eagerly sought. Thus Racial advance would be secured by its wives and +mothers having been drawn from the best orders of women; the women +naturally endowed with faculty and character; self-reliant, but +unspoiled by abnormal training.</p> + +<p>A number of latter-day women being unfitted, alike by nature and by +inclination, for marriage, two orders of the sex should be clearly +distinguished and administered for; as being wholly different types, for +whom wholly different creeds and employments are indicated.</p> + +<p>Those whose aims and talents incline them to public careers should be +content with the lot to which they are best suited; and content to +accept the privileges thereof, and the disabilities thereof. They should +not be greedy, and demand, at the same time, the liberty of the +free-lance and the privileges of the wife and the mother.</p> + +<p>So with the wife and mother. She, for her part, must forgo the liberty +of the free-lance. Because, with her privileges, she has undertaken +functions and duties which, for their complete fulfilment, demand her +best powers and activities.</p> + +<p>Men who marry are similarly restricted. The bachelor lacks the interests +and happiness of the husband and father. The husband and father lacks +the personal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> liberty and the freedom from responsibility enjoyed by the +bachelor.</p> + +<p>It is women, mainly, who demand both the prerogatives of the married and +of the unmarried states. Notwithstanding that it is wholly impossible +for them to fulfil the functions of both, because it is impossible for +them to possess either the aptitudes or the energies for both.</p> + +<p>In view of all that men have attained by devotion of their lives to the +civilised achievements which now dignify existence and ennoble faculty, +when one sees women more clamorously confident in their bounden right to +inherit lightly all that the other sex has so laboriously won than they +are reverently grateful for the inestimable human privileges and the +treasuries of Art and Mind-wealth available to them by way of these +surrendered masculine lives, it seems cause for indignation equal to +that aroused by the phlegmatic calm wherewith most men accept as +matter-of-course—instead of as matter for reverent gratitude—the gifts +of Life and Faculty, to evolve and to transmit which to them, their +mothers and all the generations of mothers before them surrendered their +lives and their powers.</p> + +<p>Recognition of the intrinsic differences, in trend and in function, +between the sexes, should go far to dispel misconceptions and points of +variance between them. The prevailing notion that the one sex is a sort +of muddled version of the other—and not a highly-specialised +presentment of an invaluable order of qualities, with inevitable +shortcomings in the complementary order of qualities—is greatly to +blame for sex-misapprehensions and antagonisms.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>Feminists anticipate that War-experiences will further and finally +eliminate all economic sex-distinctions, by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> having supplied convincing +object-lessons that their sex is able to do, and to do efficiently, all +that the other sex can do.</p> + +<p>Far from object-lessons in the suitabilities, however, the experience +has furnished terrible examples pointing the contrary way. Because +although women have shown themselves both willing and efficient in these +new capacities, results have proved at what cost to themselves and to +life they have done men's work. Apart from a deplorable deterioration in +morale, showing both in coarseness and in viciousness, the blight of age +which has swooped upon both young and old, as direct consequence of the +hardship and strain of masculine employments, robbing them of youth and +health and joy and beauty, of repose and higher appeal, and transforming +them into the grim, drab, harassed spectres many have become, should be +warning enough, in all conscience, of whither Feminism is leading us.</p> + +<p>Many of our young women have become so de-sexed and masculinised, +indeed, and the neuter state so patent in them, that the individual is +described (unkindly) no longer as "She" but as "It."</p> + +<p>Dire have been the disillusionment and bitterness among our fighting +men, upon returning to the homes and wives or loves they had long +dreamed of—to find the wife or love a shattered wreck, or a strenuous, +graceless, half-male creature; the home a place of nerve-racking unrest.</p> + +<p>It is consoling to know that a number of those who have been de-sexed +merely, and not disabled, will continue to find useful and contented +outlet for their masculine developments in filling still the places of +our fallen heroes. Cruelty lies in the fact, however, that the womanhood +of many will have been wrecked quite needlessly; by strain of +superfluously strenuous drill and marchings, scoutings, signallings, and +other such vain and fruitless imitations of the male.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p><p>The greatest care should have been exercised to have selected the +strong and able-bodied, the older women and the women of the +characteristic worker-type (corresponding to the sterile female-worker +of the bee-hive), for the rougher and the more exhausting tasks. The +young wives and mothers and the young girls should have been rigorously +excluded from such.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Of all human prerogatives, the greatest is that of being preserved, by +class, by ability, by means, or by privilege, from gravitating to levels +of work that coarsen and debase; or that, at all events, do not exercise +and foster the development of higher tastes and faculty. And this human +privilege is, in proportion to their degrees of civilisation, accorded +to women by all civilised peoples. As men have stood between them and +the perils of battle and shipwreck, the slaying of wild beasts, +pioneering, exploring, and the like, so they have stood between them and +the coarsest, ugliest, and most debasing industrial functions.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Feminist anger at restriction whatsoever in the matter of +employment ignores all cause for gratitude on the part of the sex, that, +being at man's mercy as she is, civilised woman is no longer (as the +woman of inferior civilisations is still) a beast of heavy burden. Far +otherwise, indeed, Feminism aims at nothing so much as to repudiate her +established privileges, abolish all distinctions, and to make woman once +again that beast of burden the chivalry of man—at first instinctive, +later magnanimous—has progressively rescued her from being.</p> + +<p>And yet the degree to which sex is defined in Labour (as in Life) is at +the same time the gauge and the cause of human development. Wheresoever +are found low intelligence, crude morale and lack of progress, there the +women are employed in men's work. Wheresoever women are employed in +men's work, there are low intelligence, crude morale and lack of progress.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p>"Thank Heaven for the War!" Feminists have said, however, "because it +has enabled our sex to prove its worth—by enabling us to quit ourselves +like men. The world knows now that women can conduct omnibuses, drive +ploughs, clean stables, kill chickens, ring and slaughter pigs, quite as +well as men can."</p> + +<p>It is as painful as it is amazing to find intelligent and cultured +persons so blinded by the obsessions of their creed as to suppose that +in ploughing and hoeing and making munitions, women are doing finer and +more valuable work than they had been doing previously; that the woman +bus-conductor is a more important person than the children's nurse; that +to drive a cab or clean a boiler is a nobler occupation than the +teaching of music or the cleansing of clothes; that to spread manure is +more dignifying than to make beds; to amputate the limbs of wounded +soldiers is superior to the subtler, far more difficult art of medically +treating the complex ills of women and children.</p> + +<p>That these other employments have been demanded by the times, is +undeniable; as, too, that honour and credit are due to those who well +and capably responded to the exigencies of the hour. But this does not, +in the least degree, lessen the illogic of the claim that such response +to the cruder and less-civilised demands of War proved woman's value +more than did the devotion and efficiency she was previously showing in +the far more complex and progressive arts of Peace. The main value of +her War-work was that it fitted the times. But the times have been +woefully out of joint!</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>At a recent Feminist Meeting, one of the leaders of Militancy detailed +to an audience of fierce-eyed, sombre-visaged members of her own sex, +and sundry meek-browed persons of the other, her latest exploits in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> +matters of arranging Labour disputes and averting strikes of +working-men; of sending Governmental male officials to the right-about, +and of disposing, in general, of masculine concerns.</p> + +<p>The main issue of her story was lost sight of, alike by herself and by +her audience. This was—or so it seemed to one among the latter: What +manner of men were these who required or tolerated it that a woman +should take them thus in hand, and, as though they had been whipped +children, dispose of them and their men's affairs—between worker and +employer, between man and man? What order of creature will be the sons +and the grandsons of men ever further emasculated by every further +generation of subjection by such masterful persons; female-Dominants who +arrogate the virile rights and prerogatives of their menkind; their +initiative and enterprise; their capacity to think, to speak, to plan +and to act for themselves?</p> + +<p>The Subjection of woman by man—What was that evil compared with this +other enormity: the Subjection of man by woman, which is fast replacing it?</p> + +<p>Men who—saving under stress of War—permit women to usurp the functions +and prerogatives of their natural domain, in capacities of Mayor, of +Chairman of Companies and so forth, are, frankly speaking—Muffs!</p> + +<p>Not of such sires were our great Anglo-Saxon Races gotten. Not such was +it who have made England what she is! And the England we look to will +never be the England we look to—until such effeminate blood shall have +been bred out of her sons.</p> + +<p>The male becomes emasculate when women invade his domain. And with the +increasing Hugger-mugger of the sexes, it grows, every day, more and +more difficult for men to escape into the bracing, invigorating +environment and moral of their own sex—a moral untempered by amenities +due to the other, and one indispensable to string them to the pitch of +virile thought and action.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> Our sailors and soldiers and aviators are +still <i>men</i>, because woman has not so far invaded the Navy, the Army, or the Air.</p> + +<p>Feminine invasion everywhere else—in schools and colleges, in the arts, +in politics, in commerce and in sports—is undoubtedly enfeebling the +fibre of our manhood and the quality of masculine achievements. Man is a +pioneer; aggressive, progressive, ever breaking new ground; conquering +new territory and new forces of Nature. And this alike in politics, in +commerce, and in other material affairs. When he fails to pioneer, +reaching out to new horizons of thought and activity, engineering new +enterprises, while at the same time strengthening and consolidating all +he had already acquired—then the world, in place of progressing, +regresses. And for pioneering, whether in political or in geographical +regions, woman's presence hampers him.</p> + +<p>The less men are in a position to escape from the other sex, the more +they lose the impetus and characteristics of their own.</p> + +<p>The like applies to women. Women who mix too much and too freely with +men deteriorate signally in womanly values and quality.</p> + +<p>Both sexes benefit by segregation from the other, in order to +adapt—each to its own characteristic morale and moral. Neither sex is +wholly unconstrained and candid when in company of the other—unless +both are demoralised.</p> + +<p>Sex operates as a stimulant. And to be always under influence of a +stimulant is enervating. On the other hand, when, from over-indulgence, +Sex or any other stimulant ceases to release new inspiration and forces, +it is sign of a permanently enervated state. Or sex operates as a +hypnotic. And to be always under hypnotic influence is as destructive of +individuality as it is fatal to achievement.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p><p>The sexes require to separate, accordingly, in order to derive fresh +impulse on coming together again.</p> + +<p>Both work more seriously and sincerely, more efficiently and more +effectively, apart; taking counsel, when need be, one of the other.</p> + +<p>The dilettante spirit and amenities of mixed companies, destructive of +"thoroughness," are greatly to blame for that decline of British +commerce which has followed on the Feminist invasion of business-houses.</p> + +<p>Significant of the trend is the fact that young and pretty and +inefficient girls are selected for business positions, as clerks and so +forth, while older women of experience and accredited ability are +rejected summarily. It is, doubtless, amusing and flattering to +masculine employers to be surrounded by attractive youth of the opposite +sex. But it is conducive neither to commercial enterprise nor to achievement.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>Because of the intrinsic variability underlying her duality of +constitution, the happy mean and balance (difficult to all humans) are +especially difficult to woman.</p> + +<p>Man, like herself, is of dual constitution. But he is more firmly, +because less finely, poised between his two orders of Traits. She, on +the contrary, tends to oscillate between the opposite extremes of her +two-sided nature. A bent which may be traced, throughout history, in the +excesses, in one or the other direction, that have characterised the +careers of many famous women-personages.</p> + +<p>The Ultra-Feminine extreme, which results from lack of due balance of +her woman-side by the masculine side of her, and the Mannish extreme, +occasioned by over-development of her masculine inherences, may be +regarded as, respectively, the Scylla and Charybdis—the rocks of the +Male-traits, or the vortex of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>Female-traits—whereon, equally, may +be wrecked the noblest characteristics and the highest values of the +sex, when it fails to steer clear, <i>in medias res</i>, of either.</p> + +<p>In a number of women, the Feminist and the Femininist (Ultra-Feminine) +types alternate in the same person. In place of being stably and +permanently centred in the woman-side of them, with the masculine to +steady and intelligise, such persons act and re-act, in more or less +violent pendulum-swing, between their two orders of impulse. Thus we get +women, intellectual, progressive, strenuous, engrossed for part of their +time in serious, perhaps in public avocations—and then plunging, in +violent recoil, into social frivolities; vanities, dissipations, pranks, +intrigues, excesses.</p> + +<p>Men, too, act between extremes. In far less degree, however. Life +demands from most of them over-accentuation and concentration of their +male-abilities, in physical and mental specialisations. And in reaction, +they plunge into follies and vices. But the more virile keep their +heads, and preserve a certain stability and conformity in their +aberrations. While effeminate men, it is mainly who lapse into vicious excess.</p> + +<p>Since woman supplies the inspiration and the morale of life, however, +and since her momentous function of motherhood empowers her to make or +to mar the Race whereof she is creatrix, a nation has a greater claim +upon its women, and has, at the same time, more reason and more right to +restrict their liberty of action, and to direct their bent, than it has +in the case of its men. Its survival and its downfall tremble in the +scales of Life which woman holds. To compensate her for such restriction +and limitation of her scope, obviously it owes her privileges, personal +and economic. And a subconscious recognition of this fact has been, +doubtless, the source of such privileges as she now enjoys.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>There have always been, as history shows, women in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> whom, from faulty +heredity or culture, or from stress of circumstance, the Male-traits +have been abnormally developed; virile-brained, stout-hearted, muscular +chieftainesses, chatelaines, abbesses, matrons; or (in less agreeable +guise) amazons, shrews and viragoes. But always such were recognised as +being abnormal, and for the most part as being repellant. It was not +sought to manufacture them. It is only of late years that Mannishness +has become a serious Cult.</p> + +<p>And now a dangerous thing has happened. Because where formerly symptoms +of Feminism attacked individuals only—and these mainly the mature and +eccentric—now the young and the normal are being indoctrinated +wholesale. Young girls taken during the malleable phases of growth and +development, and forcibly shaped to masculine modes, become more or less +irretrievably male of trait and bent; losing all power to recover the womanly normal.</p> + +<p>While on the other hand, there are assembling to-day, in an opposite +ever-increasing and menacing camp, those others for whom Feminism, with +its extremist, exacting, self-reliant codes and modes, has no appeal; +the pretty mindless, the idle frivolous, the pleasure-seeker, the +freakish and the conscienceless—in a word, the Ultra-Feminines; in whom +the woman-failings are unfortunately more conspicuous than are the +woman-virtues. Between these two extremes stand (and stand so far in +gratifying number) the natural, admirably-balanced, noble and invaluable +Moderates—normal women content to be normal women, and to fulfil the +destined rôle of such. And these are the saving grace of nations.</p> + +<p>Apart from these, the sex is ever further and more dangerously +separating into the two extremist camps; the Mannish and strenuous, and +the Over-Feminised and purposeless, more or less idle and frivolous, +selfishly absorbed in clothes, in luxury and pleasures; exacting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> +masculine tribute in mind and kind, with but little return in affection or ministry.</p> + +<p>In place, accordingly, of that fine normal poise of the Contrasting Man +and Woman-Traits—which is the way of Evolution and of Progress—there +is being substituted in the sex this degenerative segregation of its +Traits in two wholly opposite, and equally lopsided types. And of these, +the purposeful and strenuous, all the while making for masculine +standards, are all the while further discarding the beauty, the +emotions, the delicacy and morale of true woman; while the mindless and +vain, the attractive and charming, are more and more divorcing +themselves from purpose, from seriousness, from noble endeavour and usefulness.</p> + +<p>And since rights accorded to women are shared by all, every new +privilege Feminists win for the sex in the sweat of their assiduous +brows—liberty, latchkeys and general latitude—the Ultra-Feminines +snatch, and apply to frivolous and profitless, or to demoralising ends; +licence, extravagances, vices.</p> + +<p>The Ultra-Feminine, for the most part shallow and mindless (although +many clever women belong to this order), absorbed in complacent culture +of her oftentimes alluring personality, enhancing it, attiring it, +developing its charm and graces, eager of homage and of tribute, is +example of that Parasitism Miss Schreiner condemns in the sex; example +of qualities normally making for beauty, but from loss of balance, owing +to warp, hereditary or of misdirection, morbidly feeding upon themselves.</p> + +<p>This Parasitism is seen in its worst guise in the vast armies of +prostitutes, who in every clime and epoch ravage the fair fruits of +human life and achievement.</p> + +<p>Against this Parasitism in herself, self-absorbing, self-indulgent, +enervating—defect of her reposefulness, of her æstheticism and vital +self-consciousness—every woman needs to be upon her guard; to repress +with firmness the smooth easy lapse it prompts toward sloth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> and +pleasure; to exorcise the soft dry-rot of it, by power of aspiration and +by prayer of ministry. (For noble truth it is that <i>Laborare est orare</i>.)</p> + +<p>The Woman's Movement did good service for the sex in the early chapters +of its history, when it made for due education of woman's higher +masculine inherences; intelligence, application, self-reliance; as also +in finding further fields of usefulness and self-expression for her.</p> + +<p>But unfortunately in the later chapters, over-cultivation of these +traits has increasingly annulled and extinguished her own. And this with +the unforeseen, disquieting resultant that a compensatory movement has +set in apace among that other faction of the sex. So that the more +mannish the Feminists become in mode and aim, the more womanish become +the Effeminates. Thus, albeit sincerely despising and decrying this, +Feminism has nevertheless indirectly fostered the growth of Effeminacy. +While, by supplying it with ever further liberty and scope for the +indulgence of its freaks and failings, Feminist propaganda has directly +played into its hands. Motherhood strikes deeper roots of attribute even +in the Ultra-Feminine; brings thin streams of altruism to her +neurasthenic breasts. In her children she forgets clothes, grows less +greedy of masculine tribute, forgoes pleasures and excitements that had +been the breath of life to her.</p> + +<p>The increasing emancipation of the sex from home-functions and from +womanly and mother-duties, however—claimed and obtained with a view to +further economic scope and application of its powers—has been +exultantly hailed and exploited by the Ultra-Feminines for ever further +indulgence of and wider range of action for their dangerous defects. And +Feminism will find—and this soon to its dismay—that the battle it has +waged against the other sex has been as nothing to the battle it has yet +to wage against its own, in the person of the Eternal Effeminate; idle, +luxurious, parasitic and effete, who,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> with her brood, engenders the +dry-rot which crumbles mighty civilisations, or topples them in Revolution.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>Of the two camps, the vast majority of masculines will always seek their +loves and wives among the Ultra-Feminines; frail and erratic, but +attractive and more or less womanly. So long as men are men, the +feminine graces, even in their spurious forms of Effeminacy, will +possess more vital appeal for them than do the intelligences and utilities.</p> + +<p>The Feminist camp, further and further commandeering the intelligent and +self-reliant, the worthy and purposeful of the sex, while more and more +discarding the charms and the softness thereof, will be further and +further deserted by men. And of the happy mean—the well-balanced woman, +at once tender and intelligent, devoted and charming—there will be ever +fewer available.</p> + +<p>What then is the future, biological and sociological, of Races whose +wives and mothers will have been drawn mainly from the shallow-brained +and shallow-hearted, from the less dutiful, the less high and +right-minded? To say nothing of the less constitutionally-sound, the +Ultra-Feminine being, for the most part, a neurotic? The great majority +of such will decline part, indeed, in functions so dull and distasteful +as the mothering and rearing of children.</p> + +<p>The Feminist wife, with her intelligent grip of economics and her stern +sense of citizen-duty, would fulfil her racial function (in accordance +with Malthusius) during intervals of more absorbing and strenuous +activities. But when once the novelty—which gives a certain piquancy +for some men to a mannishness some women are able to wear quite prettily +and attractively in early youth—shall have worn away, the poor +Feminist's chances of marriage will be few, indeed; save with +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>men-weaklings, requiring the virile support of a strong-minded, +muscular wife.</p> + +<p>The Feminist makes a far more honest and reliable, sincere and helpful, +mate than does the Ultra-Feminine. But men prefer the latter.</p> + +<p>Male characteristics are to be found among their male acquaintance. And +it is not a normal, nor is it a wholesome instinct in a man, to seek in +sex the traits of his own.</p> + +<p>In the cult of Mannishness, woman loses her strongest, her noblest and +tenderest appeal for true men—the appeal of her womanhood. And losing +it, she abandons the male to the toils of the enemy camp; to those whose +womanishness partakes, at all events, of the attributes of a sex +complementary and supplementary to his own.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Unhappy wights! How Nature has handicapped them—in order to spur them +to their virile part of founding and providing for the family!</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>As innocent of misappropriating that which is Cæsar's as they are +ignorant of the biological verities, some Women-leaders and Prime-movers +in Feminism exact and exult in the warm young, zealous adulation and +hero-worship of their followers; never suspecting that such tribute is +rendered, in fact, to the <i>male</i> in them. Both they and their votaries +believe themselves loyal and thrall to their finger-tips to Woman and +The Woman-Cause. Whereas they are, in reality, hero-worshipping, on the +one hand, the Male in their Cult, and on the other, the Masculine traits +of its female exponents. Against man himself and the Maleness that is +his by natural right, many are filled with hottest distrust and +aversion. Yet while sex-antagonism is thus strong in them in fealty to +their creed, Nature is strong in them too. And with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> gentle irony she +exacts their homage for the traits of the foe—masquerading in guise of a female!</p> + +<p>Heroes to worship, every naturally-constituted woman craves. And it is +the hero—far less than it is the heroine—in the Feminist leaders, +their qualities of fight and masterfulness, of virile brain and concrete +enterprise, which evoke their adherents' devotion and tribute.</p> + +<p>Some Feminist leaders bid, indeed, as strenuously for and claim as +jealously the undivided loyalty and subjection of their flock as ever +Tyrant-Man demanded of the sex.</p> + +<p>In schools and colleges too, the girls make gods and heroes of those of +their sex who excel in manly sports. They have never a suspicion that +their gods and heroes are not goddesses and heroines. Similars being +unattractive to one another, the exposition of woman-traits leaves woman +more or less unmoved. As Nature destined, the woman-heart goes out to +those virtues and valours which are the natural complement of her own.</p> + +<p>This latter-day vogue is not a normal, nor a pretty development. But it +is another of the inevitable consequences of disturbing Nature's +balances. Nature's plan and her methods of administration are so perfect +that when left to herself she preserves her equilibrium and secures her +aims by the safest and, at the same time, by the simplest expedients. +When man destroys the hawks which, normally, reduce the smaller fry of +birds to their allotted quotum in the Scheme of Things, however, the +smaller fry multiply inordinately and devour his cherries and his corn. +And when he destroys the smaller fry, the slugs and grubs and <i>aphides</i> +multiply and devour his lettuces and roses.</p> + +<p>So it is with Human traits and faculties. The balance of The Normal is +the way alone of health and happiness and progress.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>There is great boast now-a-days of friendship and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> comradeship between +the sexes. Yet though friendship and comradeship are good allies of +love, they are but sterile, uninspiring substitutes for the profounder, +higher, vital and undying emotions of the true love-passion.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, attachments between men and men, and between women +and women, are strengthening and intensifying; absorbing the emotion and +devotion formerly and normally bestowed on members of the opposite sex. +While attraction between persons of opposite sex becomes ever lighter +and triter in sentiment; serving more and more for brief distraction and +provocative pastime rather than for a living and abiding bond.</p> + +<p>This misplaced affection for members of the same sex arises from the +attraction of traits of the opposite sex unduly developed in them. While +indifference to members of the opposite sex results from lack in these +of the characteristics of their sex, normally accentuated. Thus a woman +is more drawn to one of her own sex possessing virile characteristics, +physical or mental, than she is drawn to a weak-brained, emasculate man. +Masculine women are attracted likewise by the womanly graces and quality +of feminine women.</p> + +<p>While men find in some members of their own sex, feminine traits of +sympathy and sentiment absent in women of male-proclivity. All is an +expression of the law of the Attraction of Opposites, which (normally) +causes persons of opposite sex to be strongly drawn to one another.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, the development in himself, or in herself, of the +characteristics of the opposite sex makes members of either sex +independent of and indifferent to members of the other, by supplying +them with a spurious counterfeit of qualities it is natural to seek in those others.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>Professor Drummond, from whom I quote frequently, as being one of those +biologists on the side of the angels, writes thus beautifully:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Sex is a paradox; it is that which separates in order to unite.... +There is no instance in Nature of Division of Labour being brought +to such extreme specialisation. The two sexes were not only set +apart to perform different halves of the same function, but each so +entirely lost the power of performing the whole function that even +with so great a thing at stake as the continuance of the species +<i>one</i> could not discharge it.</p> + +<p>"It is important to notice this absence of necessity for Sex having +been created—the absence of any known necessity, from the merely +physiological standpoint.</p> + +<p>"Is it inconceivable that Nature should sometimes do things with an +ulterior object, an ethical one, for instance? To no one with any +acquaintance with Nature's ways, will it be possible to conceive of +such a purpose as the sole purpose.</p> + +<p>"Had Sex done nothing more than make an interesting world, the debt +of Evolution to Reproduction had been incalculable.... What exactly +Maleness is, and what Femaleness, has been one of the problems of +the world. At least five hundred theories of their origin are +already in the field, but the solution seems to have baffled every +approach. Sex has remained almost to the present hour an ultimate +mystery of creation....</p> + +<p>"The contribution of each to the evolution of the human race is +special and unique. To the man has been mainly assigned the +fulfilment of the first great function—the Struggle for Life. +Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet been named,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> is the +chosen instrument for carrying on the Struggle for the Life of Others.</p> + +<p>"That task, translated into one great word is Maternity—which is +nothing but the Struggle for the Life of Others transfigured, +transferred to the moral sphere. Focused in a single human being, +this function, as we rise in history, slowly begins to be +accompanied by those heaven-born psychical states which transform +the femaleness of the older order into the Motherhood of the New."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Out of the misconception of Sex as having no other purpose or +significance than that of reproduction merely, there has arisen the +further misconception that, lacking other purpose or significance, the +sex-characteristics of Woman may be obliterated in her not only without +injury, but with benefit to her; as being superfluous and hampering +impedimenta merely, when reproductive issues are beside the question.</p> + +<p>Yet since Faculty lapses first in its latest and highest developments, +sex-deterioration manifests most in the higher mental and moral +Sex-characteristics. One result, therefore, of not fostering, by culture +and by avocation, sex-specialisations upon planes of mind and aptitude, +is that, while lapsing in its higher functions, Sex remains operative +still upon the physical plane, and functions crudely—perhaps viciously +thereon. Just as intelligence becomes dense and degraded when its finer +qualities are not exercised, and their development thus raised to finer +issues. Moreover, by denying to Sex and to the rites of love any but +parental issues, the individual, emotional and spiritual issues of the +human union are ignored; a limitation all the more dishonouring, because +of the present-day misconception of parenthood as being a purely +"physical," and, accordingly, an inferior function.</p> + +<p>There is not, of course, in all the complex marvel of human metabolism, +such an anomaly as a purely physical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> function. Digestion even is far, +indeed, from being such, since by way of this a slice of bread is +transformed into living personality, living thought and impulse, living action.</p> + +<p>Sex is manifestly a Spiritual and an Eternal Principle. Because, by way +of its essential dual differentiations and intensifying operations, +Matter becomes endued not only with Life and Faculty, but, having become +Living Matter, it becomes endued, by power of reproduction, with the +potential of eternal Life and Faculty. Even more, it becomes endued with +the potential of the eternal unfoldment of ever-further intensifying Life and Faculty.</p> + +<p>Sex is, in truth, for both genders, such a convergence of every +characteristic—physical, mental and emotional—in a highly specialised +focus, that the whole outlook upon life becomes highly specialised and +intensified thereby; every impression and experience becoming instinct +and charged with intrinsic meanings, vividness and colour. And this +apart wholly from relation to the other sex. Although, of course, the +focus and intensity of the traits of the one sex are <i>accentuated</i> in +vividness and richness, in response to the complementary traits of the other.</p> + +<p>It is Sex that energises men to be great; great leaders of men, great +writers, great statesmen, great soldiers, great sailors, +explorers—great sinners and great saints.</p> + +<p>Sex it is makes women great also; great mates for great men, great +mothers, writers, ministers to poor Humanity—great saints.</p> + +<p>The mystery of Sex is, surely, Master-key to all the other mysteries of the Cosmos.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p>In aiming at Hermaphrodism, Feminism is contriving not only at +frustration of all that Evolution has achieved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> in Life and Faculty, but +it is making for the extinction of Life itself.</p> + +<p>The Hermaphrodite is incapable of parenthood. And in the degree to which +members of either sex lapse toward Neuterdom, in body or in mind, they +become incapable of transmitting to offspring all those higher +developments of form and faculty which are, essentially, +Sex-differentiations. The present-day decline in parental impulse and +affection, which shows, among other signs, in ever-decreasing +Birth-rates, is a symptom of temperamental Neuterdom; evidence alike of +Sex-decline, and, in this, of decline of that vital energy and spiritual +impulse whereof Sex is the manifestation.</p> + +<p>Such trend toward Race-suicide denotes, in the Race, that same +neurasthenia and pusillanimity, which, in the individual, impel him to personal suicide.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Latter-day marriage, greedily grasping all that Life and Love bestow +while grudging any due to Life and Love, is not true Marriage—but is sacrilege.</p> + +<p>Between this and the mating of true men and women, who, in gratitude for +Love, pay tribute joyfully to Life in lives to follow after them, is all +the vital difference, in impulse and emotion, between the Ship of +Love—with its mysterious freight—immured within a narrow lock whereof +the gate to the Beyond is sealed, and the Ship of Love launched free +upon the open sea of Human Destiny—a Shining sea of Faith and Hope, +which tides beyond the narrow mortal gateway toward a Great Unknown; +Remote, Illimitable, Veiled in Everlasting Silence.</p> + +<p><i>This</i> ship fares forth upon its voyage of Mystery, beatified by full +surrender of all lesser issues to that sacred one of the Eternal +Human—a surrender which endues true marriage with tenderness and awe and beauty.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p><i>Do we not pitch our songs too low, O sweet—my Singers?</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER IX</span></h2> + +<p class="bold">THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN</p> + +<div class="block3"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>"The Earth never tires.... Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first;</div> +<div>Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd;</div> +<div>I swear to you there are Divine Things more beautiful than words can tell."</div> +<div class="right"><i>Walt Whitman.</i></div> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p>In the long and painful history of man's more or less total failure to +value and to honour woman for her greatest, her most vital and +self-sacrificing part in human affairs, none has approached in obliquity +his recent deplorable blunder of awarding her the suffrage and the right +to sit in Parliament, as recognition of her War-services.</p> + +<p>All the long ages of Mother-surrender, of quiet heroism and attainment, +all the best, beautiful years of women's lives which the burden and +sickness, the weariness, danger and anguish have devoured down the +centuries, while the mothers were giving themselves to be the nation's +bone and blood and brain, to nourish, cherish, and upbring it—All were +passed over without word or sign.</p> + +<p>Not for her long ages of devoted duty to the nation's sick and helpless, +for rearing and safeguarding its priceless infant and child-life, for +administering its homes—fashioning, cleansing, beautifying, contriving, +making the utmost of its means and ends—Not for her inestimable +services as man's good comrade and wise counseller, his love and friend +and faithful help, in sorrow, evil and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> adversity; not even for her +age-long, arduous labours and achievements in Religion, Charity, Reform. +For none of these, her great intrinsic and eternal ministries to Life +and to Humanity, has man now set her by him in the Van of Things.</p> + +<p>But for filling shells and felling trees, for turning lathes and driving +motors, ploughing fields and lighting street-lamps—all valuable duties, +it is true, in the crisis we have passed through, and indispensable to +carrying on the nation's business. Yet what a drop from the supreme and +tender to the trite and banal, from the vital and essential to the +merely incidental, is seen in this belated recompense.</p> + +<p>Not woman, Generatrix of Humanity and inspiration of all that is fairest +in Humanity, has been now honoured—but woman the bus-conductor, +ticket-clipper, clerk and agricultural labourer, woman in breeches and +workman's overall, woman whom German frightfulness had dislocated for a +space from her high lot and labours; twisting her powers awry to fit a +hideous revulsion of barbarism.</p> + +<p>How, if the gods ever laugh at the fantastic tricks of poor mankind, +they must now have laughed (or wept) over the opportunity that one sex +had—and forfeited—to requite the other's finest merit.</p> + +<p>How deeply-moving and far-reaching in its impulse and its inspiration +would have been the tribute, had it been made in reverent gratitude to +the mothers-of-men who had saved the world by mothering the men who +saved the Empire—For achievement stamped with the high and unique +quality of service that woman alone could have rendered. And not +because, when tested by men's standards, she proved herself a worthy +second-best in doing things that men have always done.</p> + +<p>The gods must long have wept, I think, that men had thought so lightly +of the women living every day beside them, surrendering their lives and +powers, their interests,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> desires and individuation; toiling over +cooking-pans and wash-tubs, tied for years to children's cots, for life +to some or another person's sick-bed; smothering talents, impulse, +hopes, impatiences, to find the soft and simple word; solacing, +inspiring, making-believe above an aching spirit and a breaking heart +that all was fair and well with the world. And, moreover, in every +generation making these beautiful fictions ever a fraction more truth +and less fiction. For the gods alone know how that kindlier, purer and +more tender Home-environment which women have created in men's +stony-hearted cities involves the most laborious, heart-wearing, complex +and widest exercise of faculty of any human task.</p> + +<p>Women themselves had long been tiring of it; stung to the soul and +mortified by centuries of man's ingratitude—when not contempt. +Nevertheless, where love and duty did not, chains of custom and +tradition bound them faithful to their oars.</p> + +<p>Till German Frightfulness releasing them, the cry is now:</p> + +<p>Since you can do something better and more profitable than merely to row +the old Galley of Life—since you can do men's work, forsooth, come out +into the market-place and help us pay our big War-Bill!</p> + +<p>And yet—Whither will drift the Galley of Life when its rowers put their +strength elsewhere?</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p>In the haze of false sentiment exaggerating—not the value of masculine +work done by the sex during War, because this was, of course, invaluable +and indispensable, but exaggerating, absolutely, the values of this work +as compared with the woman's work it had been doing previously, the +decision to admit women to Parliament was a precipitate and an +ill-considered measure, by no means innocent of party motive.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p><p>Threatening, as it does, a drastic sweep of all political, economic and +every other difference between the standards, training, and employment +of the sexes, it was pressed forward, nevertheless, not only with +characteristic masculine failure to recognise the vital significance of +the other sex in Human Things, but in utter blindness to social and +racial consequences, immediate and remote, which make it possibly the +most momentous decision ever arrived at in the history of human progress.</p> + +<p>Showing how little it was known for the turning-point in our great +destiny, the question was debated with unseemly levity, while less than +half the parliamentary members troubled (or had hardihood) to record +their votes; the abstention of the others proving which way blew the +straws of their faint wills. And of those voting in favour, half, +perhaps, did so (as some confessed) under intimidation of otherwise +losing their seats. (What would be said of the soldier who should turn +his back upon the enemy for fear of losing life even?)</p> + +<p>No more than twenty-five found courage to say their "No's" like honest gentleman.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Yet far from Enfranchisement having been a burning need blazing in the +hearts of women, their newly-awarded vote required to be spurred and +whipped out of all but a small minority. Or coaxed from them by +abandoning appeal on all the wider issues of Imperial and national +policy, and, in so far as their interest was sought, by reducing the +programme to personal and domestic issues—electric lighting in their +parlours, hot-water taps in their kitchens, and so forth.</p> + +<p>And here was seen, at once, the threat of a grave and an increasing +diversion from that purely political outlook of men, which should be +impersonal in issue, broad in enterprise. Not that the human and +domestic side is a whit less momentous than the more abstract and +national. But appealing to a different order of mind, it demands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> that +different order of mind which characterises the woman-sex, to deal with it effectively.</p> + +<p>The plea that women will acquire in time the masculine political +view-point threatens, on the other hand, the loss in them of their own +highly-specialised and invaluable interests, morale and qualities; +which, being womanly of impulse and of trend, make for the individual +welfare, happiness and elevation of the nation's members.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p>As with every other human function, there are two departments of +politics. And the House of Commons represents man's.</p> + +<p>It stands for all that is best accomplished politically by his +highly-specialised order of brain; by his concrete energy and +initiative, his justice and rationalism, his power of administration, +and his uncompromising sternness—pitilessness, if need be—to deal with +and to punish crime and aggression, national and international. It +stands, in a word, for that virile outlook and the virile grip in +Statesmanship which are indispensable to materialise a people's +prosperity and to pioneer its progress. These are the functions of +<i>men</i>. Just as the Army and Navy, Science and Commerce, are the +functions of men. Because the male bent and intellect are those best +fitted to raise these developments to their highest and most effective +issues, just as the male physique and energy are best fitted to achieve +these issues in material results.</p> + +<p>Had anything been needed to emphasise the values of such virile +characteristics in the administration of a nation's policy, the War +furnished it. And the many blunders and vacillations marring the conduct +of the War emphasised the lack of these invaluable masculine qualities +in the concurrent House of Commons. Army, Navy, and Air-Services proved +their manhood doughtily in their respective provinces. Had they been +supplemented by an equally virile Statesmanship, the War,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> having begun, +would have been brought to a speedy termination. In point of fact, it +would never have begun.</p> + +<p>If now, our British politics are already so lacking in the manly ability +and grip indispensable to national permanence and progress, the presence +of women in Parliament can but further emasculate these. It may be said +that some women outside the House are more male of mind and mode (not to +speak of muscle) than are some men inside. But this is reason, surely, +for replacing these weak males by stronger ones, rather than for +adulterating British statesmanship with Femaleness.</p> + +<p>The presence of a masculine woman in a house—whether this be writ with +a small or a capital letter—far from stiffening the manly calibre of +weak men in it, only further enervates and paralyses them. To serve on a +committee of mixed sex is to realise this.</p> + +<p>Women should be represented in the counsels of the nation—but not in +the councils of men. They should have a House of their own, wherein to +foster the interests of women and children mainly, as well as to further +The Humanities and The Moralities; which are, at the same time, woman's +true political sphere and her chiefest concern—because she and the +child most suffer from failures thereof. Thus, the House of Men would be +relieved of problems their sex is unqualified to deal with. While more +time and energy would be left them to dispose of affairs they are best +fitted to administer.</p> + +<p>As already pointed out, the all-potent factor of Sex intervening, +members of neither sex are capable of doing their best work while in +association with the other. Sex-rivalries are stirred, or +sex-antagonisms. Either of which range the sexes on opposite sides; thus +precluding amicable co-operation. Or they engender sex-ascendancy. +Which, making one sex dominate or defer to the other, precludes +intelligent co-operation. Through all, moreover, only too often run +threads of intrigue, to entangle and hamper the powers of both.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><p>British politics have notably declined since woman's incursion therein. +British commerce, once supreme among the nations, has notably declined +since women entered business-houses. Good and thorough work demands, +beyond all things, undivided concentration of the powers upon it. And +for nine persons out of ten, this concentration is impossible while in +the presence of members of the opposite sex. And emphatically this is +true of the male, since woman exercises a hypnotic, and, accordingly, an +enervating influence upon him. Worse still, he poses for her: becoming +meretricious and insincere. It is held by some that women in Parliament +might elevate the codes and modes of latter-day politics, many of our +best men withholding themselves therefrom because of bad odour imparted +by self-seeking and unscrupulous politicians.</p> + +<p>But let us keep our House of Commons a House of men, and make it +representative of the nation's finest manhood. It is the first and +foremost function of the sex, the way of national success and progress. +And just as the presence of women would blunt the pioneering spirit and +cripple the action of a party of Arctic explorers, so women in the House +must blunt the enterprise and hamper the exploits of Statesmanship.</p> + +<p>So far, the good sense alike of women as of men has declared against the +innovation; rejecting, by large majorities, all but one of women +Parliamentary candidates. It remains to be seen, however, whether men +outside the House will later endorse the new departure, by electing +members of the other sex to represent them. A thing impossible for one +sex to do for the other, of course, seeing that not only do men and +women arrive at their different conclusions by wholly different routes, +but all questions bear wholly different values for them.</p> + +<p>It may be argued that the existence of dual departments of politics, and +dual points-of-view is argument for electing representatives of both +sexes to The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>Commons. Not so, however. Each sex is specialist in its +own domain. And an aurist wastes time, and most likely blunders, when he +applies himself to treat eye-diseases. An oculist wastes time, and +probably blunders, when delicate ear-operations are required of him.</p> + +<p>Since by his dual constitution, moreover, man possesses, by inheritance +from his mother, the quotum of woman-apprehension, foresight, and +altruism required to present the woman-bent and view-point in his +outlook and conduct of political and civic affairs, woman's personal +intervention in these is as superfluous as it would be harmful.</p> + +<p>Further, there are two orders of men: An order strictly male in trend +and talent, and an order whose mentality is tinctured with a higher than +average proportion of womanly conservatism, sympathy and intuition. And +these two orders of male—typified, respectively, by the Conservative +and the Radical parties—perpetually struggling to secure the measures +prompted by their respective orders of mind, and intermittently gaining +ascendancy, sustain a poise, or mean, between the unduly conservative +and traditional, and the unduly radical and transitional in our +political administration.</p> + +<p>These two orders of mentality are found again in Youth and Age. All +healthy and vigorous-minded young men are radical of bias; hot-headed, +precipitate and intolerant of crusted orthodoxy, keen to demolish old +institutions and established methods. While maturity makes for +conservatism. It <i>knows</i>. And having learned by experience the values of +institutions which have become institutions because of their values, it +is prudent in its counsels of slow and stable reform, in its distrust of +drastic, precipitate change, and, beyond all, in its wise misdoubtings +of the world in general as being better than it is, and ripe, +accordingly, for the best things.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p><p>For the present, there are numberless problems and questions of women's +industrial employment, of children's employment, of the industrial +supervision of young girls and their moral protection; problems of +female drunkenness and prostitution, crimes of children, crimes against +infants and children; questions of health, of the education and +upbringing of the young, of dress and conduct, and of the general moral +purification and the mental elevation of the Race—with all of which +women are essentially qualified to deal; and the vital national +importance whereof men have proved themselves as incapable of +apprehending as they have shown themselves powerless to administer them.</p> + +<p>The two classes of national problems, or the two departments into which +most of these problems might be advantageously sub-classed, should be +recognised as being the functions, respectively, of the one or of the +other sex, and should be deputed for consideration to the House of Men +or to the House of Women. With the result that in both, every problem of +reform would be dealt with by the sex specialised by nature, by +sympathy, and by training, best to understand and best to legislate for it.</p> + +<p>As with The Lords, either House should have power to question or to +reject the conclusions of the other.</p> + +<p>We need urgently, indeed, such a House of Women to employ its native +wisdom, its intuitive apprehension, and its moral and emotional impulse, +and, moreover, to bring its experience and tact to bear upon a +hundred-and-one tangled and neglected issues of moral and social reform. +In order to remedy evils that have come, from long neglect, to be a +cancer, slowly and surely sapping and vitiating our national life and +endangering our racial supremacy.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p>That women may do useful work in male departments of politics and +economics is quite beside the question. Far more valuable work is needed +and is possible from them in their own especial fields of aptitude. In +these latter, moreover, they would be fostering, in place of +sacrificing, that morale and those distinctive talents Nature has +specialised in them. While their withdrawal <i>in toto</i> from male +political and economic functions would put men on their mettle, and +stimulate their efforts and achievement therein.</p> + +<p>Woman's influence, like that of Religion, is most potent when it is +indirect and inspirational. Like the Church, when she exchanges her +indirect and devotional ministrations for direct and material ones, +temporal or militant, she destroys herself or the peoples she dominates. +Or she destroys both.</p> + +<p>It is common fallacy that so long as the world's work is done and its +affairs tolerably well conducted, it is of no significance whatsoever by +which sex these ends are attained.</p> + +<p>Sight is lost of the intrinsic truth that Life exists for Man—not Man +for Life; its purpose being the evolution of the human Species by way of +the evolution of human Faculty. The world's work has no slightest value +save as spur and instrument of human education. And the evolution of the +dual orders of human Faculty having differentiated the human Species +into two sexes, each representing a wholly different order of +Faculty—obviously the perfection of both orders of Faculty and, +accordingly, the further evolution of both sexes wherein these orders +are respectively specialised, can be attained only by the exercise, by +each order, of the rôle and the functions that best evoke its powers. +If, therefore, the male sex repudiates its allotted rôle and functions, +and forfeits, in consequence, the education of its distinctive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> talents +and moral, by shelving its responsibilities upon the other sex, +howsoever capable a substitute this other sex may prove itself, man acts +as foolishly and fatuously as the schoolboy who shirks his schooling and +the discipline thereof, by enlisting his capable sister to do his lessons for him.</p> + +<p>It is, at the same time, man's duty and his privilege manfully to +shoulder and ably to perform his own allotted part in Life's affairs. +Evading this, or from a false conception of chivalry allowing woman to +usurp a share therein, he degenerates inevitably; in default of his +natural spur to development. Moreover he obliges—or connives at woman +doing likewise, in respect of her allotted part.</p> + +<p>That he has already grown so slack, his virile pride and enterprise have +so far lapsed, as to reconcile him to woman's usurpation of his +masculine functions and prerogatives should warn him of incipient +dry-rot in him. As too, the portentous fact that had he not declined in +physical and mental calibre, she could never so readily and efficiently +have taken his place as we have seen her doing. So efficiently, indeed, +that he will be hard put to it to regain and to retain his lost +professional and industrial footing, by proving himself appreciably the better man.</p> + +<p>As Dr. Havelock Ellis says, if they are to cope with the new Feminism, +men must needs look to their laurels and produce a new Masculinism. For +truly these weak-chinned, neurotic young men of the rising generation +are no match at all for the heavy-jawed, sinewy, resolute young women +Feminist aims and methods are giving us.</p> + +<p>On every side, in politics, literature, journalism, oratory, commerce, +even in scientific invention, women are swiftly coming up abreast of +men, and threaten shortly to out-distance them.—And this upon their own ground.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, the finer and more exquisite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> womanly qualities and +aptitudes, the emotions and devotions; purity, sweetness, patience, +forbearance, tenderness, lovingness and lovableness, together with the +courtesies and graces, have fallen out of culture and are fast declining +toward extinction. And this, in the measure of the mushroom-growth of +masculine abilities and aims and bent, now substituted for them in the +sex. With which decline of womanly characteristics, the religion and +nobility, virility and chivalry, manly reverence and regard for women, +wherewith the true mother illumines the souls of her sons, and which are +man's response to the appeal of true woman, are waning rapidly also.</p> + +<p>There is, in all men worth the name, an instinctive recognition that the +world's most strenuous labours and the world's administration are their +natural functions, and that upon their sex, accordingly, rests the +responsibility alike of progress or decline in these directions.</p> + +<p>This sense of responsibility is both stimulating and uplifting, in the +degrees of its realisation and fulfilment. The yielding, by man, to the +other sex, of masculine essential rights and obligations is, at the same +time, a symptom in him of declining virility, physical and mental, and a +cause inevitable of his further speedy decadence. The position yielded, +and equality in all things ceded to woman, that pride in his sex, in +himself, and in his work, which were his strongest incentives to +progress, drop to ever lower grades. Until he comes at last to the state +of the decadent savage, who keeps as many wives to work for him as their +work for him enables him to keep.</p> + +<p>The spirit and pride of Sex are normal and inspiring, and are the +expression of that impulse which has directed, in both sexes, the +contrary trend of both. No man of mettle feels ever again the same zest +or spur to achievement in a rôle that has become equally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> woman's. +Arrogance? Possibly. But wholesome and energising. Defect of that pride +in his man's mission which inspired Drake, Columbus, Nelson, Cæsar, +Shakespeare, Newton, to great conquest. Without it, man ceases to be +man. That it is a factor to be reckoned with, was proved by the recent +election, which was signalised by being woman's first authorised entry +into the political arena—and was characterised by nothing so much as by +man's indifference, even his neglect to record his vote. And that it is +a factor to be reckoned with, is further and seriously proved by the +slackness and diminished zest and output of masculine Labour, since the +other sex has invaded the field.</p> + +<p>Woman, for her part, is characterised by a similar spirit and pride of +her sex. Equally she loses it when men intrude upon her province. And +this Sex-pride and spirit in her would be nobly intensified and uplifted +to ever higher levels of expression and attainment, were she but assured +of the fine quality and issues of those woman-faculties and functions, +by way of which it is her privilege first to create Life, and afterwards +to minister to it.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>A potent factor in man's impotence to hold his own either in moral or +achievement, when pitted directly against the other sex, is that power +many women exercise of recruiting their vital forces from those of +persons—and of men, particularly—in association with them. The highest +levels of work and inspiration are the product of <i>reserve</i> and surplus +forces. When these are depleted, only languid and lower-grade aims and +capacities are possible.</p> + +<p>The extent to which over-worked women may impair the health and +constitutional vigour of men associated with them in work was strikingly +shown during the changed conditions of War. Surrounded by over-wrought +girls and women, who kept themselves going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> by stimulus of nervous +excitement, of strong tea or more dangerous drugs, many men, co-workers +or heads of departments, became neurasthenic wrecks. Others lapsed to +the condition of infirm old men. The like was seen in fathers and +husbands of such over-wrought War-workers. And nervous depletion +occasioned by working-wives has doubtless much to do with the inanition +and depression now crippling our industrial output.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>I may be charged with holding a brief for the Enemy-sex. If so, it is +not only because man's cause is woman's, but, moreover, because his +present disposition to surrender his prerogatives all round shows him +dangerously blind to the truth of woman's power; misdirection whereof +from its natural channels menaces not only him, but woman herself, and +the Race. <i>Find the woman!</i> said the French cynic. Jestingly: because he +no more than other men had gauged the profundity of the saying, in all +its deep and vast biological phenomena and implications.</p> + +<p>Our national survival stands in jeopardy already, indeed, from the +lower-grade males—narrow-brained neurotics or feeble-brained +neurasthenics—whom latter-day women are producing yearly in tens of +thousands. And the deplorable truth of this degeneracy is overlooked, +because no more than a fractional number of our doctors distinguish +between The Normal and The Average. With the result, that comparing an +abnormal with others more abnormal, they declare the less abnormal +satisfactory. Of the fine physique, the vital health and faculty, the +zest and joy of living which characterise true Normality—and which are +the birthright of every human being—only the few have any conception.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>It is significant that the sole ancient civilisations now surviving, +India and China, have never hazarded their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> chances of survival by +emancipating their women. On the other hand, because their women are in +bondage, personally and psychologically, and because their women's vital +powers are exhausted by laborious and de-sexing occupations, the moral +and material progress of these peoples is at low ebb.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p>Recruiting statistics have shown us the Damocles-sword of Decadence +suspended by a hair above our heads; have shown us our great people so +riddled with disease, defect and abnormality, that nearly <i>half our +manhood was declared</i> unfitted for man's elementary duty of fighting for +his country (55·9 per cent. only being classed in Grade I.). All that +our centuries of evolutionary progress have achieved for us, all that +the Race has achieved for itself by faculty and enterprise, integrity +and industry, threatens now to be sacrificed to a Feminist fanaticism, +which, denying to woman any more vital or tender human faculties or +offices than those of man, has increasingly repudiated all else for her +than rights to pit her wits and muscles against his.</p> + +<p>England has long been, and has once again proved herself supreme among +the nations. Because England, more than any other land, had freed her +women from the more laborious industrial employments; leaving them, in +consequence, more vital power to put into the making of a splendid Race, +fine of body, stable of character; the men of it charged with virile +energy and enterprise, the women house-proud, home-abiding; faithful +wives and admirable mothers.</p> + +<p>Recruiting statistics have valuably emphasised the truth that in those +localities where women are most employed in labour, there disease and +degeneracy are most rampant. Significantly it was shown that +colliery-districts and the Universities (the latter with about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> 80 per +cent. of Grade I. men), were conspicuous in providing the greatest +number of men qualified for military service. Why? Because neither the +mothers of men enrolled in Universities, nor, for the most part, those +of colliery-districts, are employed industrially.</p> + +<p>While, on the other hand, the health and physique of cotton-mill +operatives proved so "alarmingly low" that of 184 weavers and spinners +only 57 could even be passed for Army-training. Of 290 examined, only 57 +men of one cotton-spinning town were graded I.; only 64 were graded II., +while 169 were graded III. and IV.</p> + +<p>Again, <i>Why</i>? Because, unlike colliery-districts where the standard of +health was notably good, in cotton-towns where physique and health were +"alarmingly low" the vast majority of wives and mothers are employed in +factories. It is important, moreover, to note that in such gradings of +men for military service, even those classed first were by no means +necessarily normal or vigorous. On the contrary, many passed were later +shown defective, by breakdown under stress of military discipline.</p> + +<p>Further, that so many as 20 <i>per cent.</i> of the young manhood of our +highest culture were disqualified for Grade I. is a serious +circumstance.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Mr. Lloyd George has said regarding this most vital question: "The next +great lesson of the war is that if Britain has to be thoroughly equipped +to meet any emergencies, the State must take a more constant and a more +intelligent interest in the health and fitness of the people. If the +Empire is to be equal to its task, the men and women who make up the +Empire must be equal to it. The number of B2 and C3 men is prodigious. I +asked the Minister of National Service how many more men could we have +put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had been +properly looked after. I staggered at the reply: '<i>At least a</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> +<i>million</i>.' A virile race has been wasted by neglect and want of +forethought, and it is a danger to the State and to the Empire. I +solemnly warn my fellow countrymen that you cannot maintain an A1 Empire +with a C3 population."</p> + +<p>This estimate of abnormality, by reason of a million of the nation's +young manhood disqualified by definite disease, defect or degeneracy, is +far below the mark. Because owing to the urgent need for fighting men, +the standard of fitness was compulsorily low. And the estimate takes no +account of the huge number of such low-grade "Fit," who succumbed in +death or incapacitation to the strain of military training, or to the +vicissitudes of active service.</p> + +<p>The <i>British Medical Journal</i> has published figures showing that of +2,080,709 men examined by Medical Boards—the men constituting "a fair +sample of the male population between the ages of 18 and 43, and a +smaller proportion of the more fit between 43 and 51"—<i>only 1 in 3 +could be classed in Grade I</i>. That is, out of every 150 members of our +British manhood in its best years of life, <i>only 50 were up to the mark +in health and normality</i>.</p> + +<p>The <i>Journal</i> comments on "this mass of physical inefficiency, with all +its concomitant human misery, and direct loss to the country."</p> + +<p>Sir Auckland Geddes, addressing the Federation of British Industries, +stated that "<i>appalling facts about the health of the nation have been +disclosed in reports of medical examinations carried out by recruiting +authorities</i>." One of the most startling and disquieting of these +disclosures was that of hundreds of thousands of our men, between the +ages of 18 and 43, dying of tuberculosis.</p> + +<p>Despite all this, however, because our authorities fear to face the +truth and the drastic economic upheaval involved in the prohibition of +all young wives and mothers from the stress of breadwinning, attempt is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> +being made to shelve the whole blame of this appalling state of national +health upon faulty industrial and hygienic conditions; too long hours of +work, imperfect ventilation, bad housing, inferior cooking, poor wages, +and so forth. All factors, of course, but only contributory to the great +vital one. And in order to placate the public conscience, reforms in +these directions are promised. Excellent and sadly needed reforms, it is +true—in so far as they go; but bound to failure because they will not +go to the root of things. They will be tried, no doubt, in our promised +Reconstruction-scheme. But being palliative merely, further holocausts +of human life and faculty and happiness will be sacrificed in the experiment.</p> + +<p>Sooner or later—and Heaven send it be sooner lest it come too +late!—the truth must be confronted, and the crisis met. The further the +Feminism now threatening our downfall secures footing, however, and more +and more diverts the nation's life-resources into merely economic +channels, more and more squanders them in abnormal ambitions and output, +the more deeply-rooted and more desperate will have become the cancer of +our national decadence. And incalculably the more difficult and +dangerous will be the task of its eradication.</p> + +<p>The reform should have come while <i>man</i> still held the reins securely in +his grasp—ere Feminism had entrenched itself and its deforming aims and +powers behind an enfranchised woman-sex; to intimidate and out-number +his own. Because women in general, misled by these false standards, and, +moreover, deteriorated by de-sexing training, become every year less and +less disposed toward home and family-life; less and less willing to +burden themselves with the duties and sacrifices indispensable to the +proper fulfilment of wife and motherhood. And now, more than ever, when +they are still further to be pitted against men in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> industrial +struggle, woman-instincts and aptitudes will become ever more warped and +enfeebled in them.</p> + +<p>The Danger menacing us is the graver because, while Disease is the +expression of a healthy vital conscience protesting, in terms of pain +and disability, against conditions, environmental or personal, adverse +to normal states of health and development (and to which the healthy +living organism declines therefore to conform), Degeneracy is +characterised by a vital conscience of so low an order that it conforms +and adapts the type, without pain or protest, to conditions perversive +of healthy normality and of further evolutionary advance.</p> + +<p>There comes a stage, accordingly, in Racial decline, when the Racial +vital conscience no longer rebels, in terms of Disease, but conforms, in +terms of Degeneracy, to artificial, abnormal and evil conditions of +living, environmental and personal. And then as happened to those mighty +civilisations snuffed out before us—the major portion of the community +having lapsed from health and normality into decadent states of mind and +body, vice and corruption become its Normal both of mind and body. Evil +and chaos run riot. Till Nature, defied and transgressed at every turn, +opens the vials of her wrath, and pours forth her microbic myriads to +sow death and destruction wholesale.</p> + +<p>Thus she sweeps from the board of Life another great Race—that had failed.</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p>Already, there are disquieting signs that the physical disease and +abnormality among us have engendered such degrees of mental and of moral +aberration as may lead at any hour to grave disruption. Below the quiet +order of our British constitution are heard, from time to time, the +rumble of chaotic and disintegrating forces. With growing frequency, the +shriek of anarchy shrills. Red<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> flags break. We shall be truly fortunate +if we succeed in bridging over, without more or less serious upheaval, +the critical gap between War and Peace.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Woman is Nature's peacemaker and welder. She it is who, in the home, +knits the loose ends of the multiple incongruous and turbulent human +elements into social unities—families, friendly communities, townships +and peoples—by her annealing powers of affection and sympathy, of +charity and intuitive understanding.</p> + +<p>"<i>Keep the Home-fires burning!</i>" sang our soldiers. No considerations of +The British Constitution, the London Stock Exchange, or Worshipful Civic +Company, fired them to heroism, spurred them to victory. But for the +Home-fires burning in suburban villas, in four-roomed cottages or +two-room lodgings—as equally in hereditary mansions—it was, our +gallants dared and died, and reaped their glorious triumph.</p> + +<p>My father, an early and an earnest advocate of Female enfranchisement, +used to counsel Lord Beaconsfield that to enfranchise women would be to +establish the Conservative party for a century, at least. Because nine +out of ten women were, in those days, Conservative.</p> + +<p>Since then, Feminism has been active, however. Less by way of direct +propaganda of anarchy or Bolshevism, be it said, than by fostering that +masculine bent and spirit of material unrest and discontent which +destroy in women all the finer, fairer ideals and attributes of their +intrinsic womanhood, and those self-denying ordinances which so sweeten +and dignify the humblest tasks as to content the doers of them with the +inspiring sense that they are worth the while. With the result that +nothing so characterises the great mass of latter-day working women as a +smouldering irrational and intemperate Socialism. And the Socialism of +working-women (as, too, of the majority of working-men) is based on +total ignorance of the impracticability and evil of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> making for +universal equality in a vast Scheme of Things, the values and the +ultimate successes whereof depend absolutely on preserving those +highly-specialised diversities and inequalities, alike of faculty and +bent, into which Life, with its countless degrees of evolutionary +development, has progressively graded living creatures, brute and human. +The innumerable orders and classes of our sociology are as inevitable as +they are invaluable. Because they serve for stages of faculty and +avocation upon that biological gradient of Ascent by which we climb.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>As was pointed out earlier in this book, woman, although passive and +reposeful of inherence, is variable and unstable of temperament; her +powers being eternally at ebb and flux, in order that she may be the +medium of those evolutionary mutations which engender human progress. A +nature truly perilous when too great dominance is permitted the sex in +affairs so momentous as those of State-administration, upon the firm +stability and permanence whereof depend so many destinies. Because this +evolutionary impulsiveness of hers is dangerously liable to express +itself in irresponsible, chaotic and anarchical outbreaks. As history +shows, wreckage of many once mighty, but now extinct, civilisations set +in when the males thereof weakly, or basely, surrendered their manhood's +rights of rule to a sex disqualified by its native non-conformability to +rule in national and international policies.</p> + +<p>Should women ever come to exercise political power identical with man's, +they would be liable to subvert the whole national and international +administration of their country on an impulse. Not solely from craving +for novelty, but, too, as result of their inherent bent toward forward +and precipitate movement, and their implicit faith in change as being +necessarily <i>reform</i>.</p> + +<p>Nations in which the feminine element is strong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> betray the native +fickleness thereof in perpetual change of Ministry—even in frequent +revolution. This element of instability is Ireland's curse, the flaw in +her people's splendid Celtic faculty.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>In view of the stern and strenuous and narrowly-rationalistic creed and +claims of Feminism, as too of the steel-brained, steel-willed fighting +women leading it, men may scoff, with sense of false security, at odds +of danger from feminine weakness and fickleness in Feminist ranks. They +scoffed just so at the menace of Prussianism—whereof Feminism is the +female rendering.</p> + +<p>It must always be remembered, moreover, that the civic and political +privileges ceded to Woman, the Feminist, are ceded alike to that +freakish, irresponsible creature Woman, the Femininist, who, to +counterbalance the decline of woman-quality in those others of her sex, +adds to her number and her freakishness as those others wax in number +and in stern determination. And in a House of Commons of mixed sex, +Feminists would find, to their undoing, that here as elsewhere the +Ultra-Feminines would speedily outnumber and out-power themselves. The +Movement, inaugurated in all the stern and sterile sex-insensibility of +the Feminist code, would soon be dry-rotten and corrupt with the +weaknesses bred of Effeminacy.</p> + +<p>Nor should it be forgotten that the present Feminist leaders it was who, +by their dangerous Bolshevist tactics of Militant Suffragism, proclaimed +the anarchy seething in themselves and their adherents.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>So long as there survives within the breast of man a spark of that +Chivalry which has been both the inspiring and impelling power of his +virile development, he can neither meet, nor can he treat with woman +upon equal terms.</p> + +<p>Always the aspects of her in capacities of mother,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> wife or love (or +mistress) must intervene to disarm, and to incapacitate him from +exerting his full strength against her. Whether her appeal to him be +sacred or profane, accordingly—that of woman at her best or at her +worst—always so long as he is man, her highest and most tender (as her +basest) appeal will be by way of those woman-Unfitnesses which in every +age have served as highest incentive of his Fitnesses; that he might +win, safeguard and cherish her. This chivalrous instinct it was, in +part—for behind it lurked the recognition of more than half a nation +suffering from the wrong of Unenfranchisement—which disarmed and +paralysed his action in respect of those same Suffragist outbreaks. And +so long as he is man, will he be similarly disarmed and dangerously +inhibited from meeting and from battling successfully with woman.</p> + +<p>History repeats itself. And if men suppose that they have seen the last +of female Militancy, and overlook the menacing truth that their own +incapacity to cope with this must increase inevitably in direct +proportion to woman's waxing power, they are blind, indeed, to dangerous +breakers ahead.</p> + +<p>Having sown the fickle wind of woman's variability, they are like to +reap the whirlwind in her inherent non-conformability; a difficult and +parlous factor such as they have never previously encountered in +political and industrial administration. Such non-conformability as is +seen at an extreme in the anarchy of revolutions; in which women, having +lost control and balance, plunge deeper and deeper into excesses, +without power, it would seem, of recoil. While men reach a maximum, +recover poise, and then setting about to re-constitute order out of +chaos, more often than not evolve a higher form of order than had +previously obtained.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p>Secure in their traditional superior strength, however, and with +characteristic complacency in this relation, men have no suspicion of +the sex-antagonism—hatred even—seething against them in Feminism. And +this far from having been annealed or softened, has been, on the +contrary, greatly aggravated by the concessions and new privileges +lately accorded the sex.</p> + +<p>Strange to say, the chief talk of extremist women in their new +War-capacities was bitterest grievance and hostility against the male, +because, although installed in masculine positions, they were denied +rights identical with his; of rank and recognition, of responsibility +and pay. That they held these capacities temporarily merely, and as +novices and amateurs, while men held theirs as experts, for long service +or for superior values by right of masculine abilities, had no weight +whatsoever. Never in all her days of so-called subjection has woman been +so loud and denunciatory of the injustices of The Oppressor, of his +conspiracies and crimes against her, as since she has been yielded a +number of those rights which Feminism claims.</p> + +<p>Feminists will say this is because complete equality in all things has +not yet been granted—has yet to be fought for. The truth is, however, +that the interests and functions of men fail wholly to satisfy the +wholly dissimilar natures of women. But until they have realised +this—the true reason of their discontent—an ever-increasing number of +women will continue to make these their coveted goal, and to chafe with +anger and bitterest resentment against the other sex for denying them +full measure of things—without intrinsic value for them.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>It needs no saying by me, that, apart from the Feminist extremist +faction, the Woman's Movement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> includes a number of the sex +characterised by the noblest ideals and impulse, as by the finest +achievements; their creed and aims being pure of self-seeking or +materialist ambitions for themselves or for their kin. And these it is +to whom we owe it, that, amid the clamour and the combat of those +others, the spirit of true Womanhood, devoted, wise and altruistic, is +making itself felt everywhere in modern thought and modern progress. +Such women for the most part discredit Feminism, in many cases directly +oppose both its doctrine and practice.</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p>The huge numerical preponderance of women must, of itself, presently +swamp all masculine power and initiative in State affairs unless the +political functions of the sexes be separated. Thenceforward, <i>Vox +populi</i> must be the voice of Woman—man's having ceased to be heard.</p> + +<p>And man's chiefest menace lies, be it reiterated to the point of tedium, +in that momentous fact of the biological investment in woman, of the +Racial Trustfund. For this is, at the same time, his sole heritage and +that of the nation. And not only does it constitute her the custodian of +Human Life and Faculty but it makes her arbitress as well of man's and +of the nation's destiny.</p> + +<p>In yielding his House of Parliament, man has surrendered not only his +highest and most characteristic prerogative, but he has yielded the last +exclusive stronghold of his manhood. An entrenchment indispensable to +his difficult task of holding his own against a sex overwhelmingly +superior in number, and chartered, by right of womanhood, with +time-honoured baffling privileges which handicap and defeat him at all +turns. A sex Nature has armoured with charms, moreover,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> and with +weaknesses for his disarming; by appeal, on the one hand, to his +chivalry, on the other, to his senses.</p> + +<p>Entrenched in his last stronghold, he stood some chance of exerting his +allotted dominance in life's affairs. All his strongholds invaded, he stands none.</p> + +<p>For the rest, it can only be said that men who should reject their own, +and elect members of the opposite sex to represent them in Parliament, +would by that vote alone of non-confidence in the ability or the good +faith of their kind, proclaim the human male a pitiful failure in +species; an order without specialisation of brain, of character, or of +moral, to give it essential values in Human concerns.</p> + +<p>Woman, on the other hand, would stand acclaimed a Super-Being. One not +only highly-specialised by God and Nature, as creatrix of the Race, and +endowed with gifts to be the Racial nurse and guide and teacher, but, +added to these most vital of human capacities, she would stand +accredited by man with such superior qualifications also for the +administration of the State as to lead him to adjudge her his superior +in this capacity likewise. While her still further pre-eminence is now +to be emphasised by pitting her on equal terms against the male, in all +the Arts and Crafts, the professions and the businesses.</p> + +<p>Truly—poor Super-Being that she is to be—burdened and spent by her +super-tax of faculties and functions, she will need, indeed, to break +into the Racial Trust-Fund, in order to equip herself for these her +multifarious exactions. Because not only will it be her affliction to +produce the Race and mother it, but she must provide for it too; +moreover, must doctor it, play lawyer, parson and accountant to it; +paint its pictures, mould its statuary, plan its architecture, build its +houses, compose its music, blow its trumpets, beat its drums; and, over +and beyond all these, must administer its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> politics, and serve it +presently, no doubt, as Premier, Primate and Chancellor.</p> + +<p>While it must be merely a matter of brief time, when, to her other +tasks, will be added the manning of its Army, its Navy and Air-Services, +and the serving of its guns.</p> + +<p>Should Feminist aims be realised—and already they are more than +half-won—it will be a case, truly, of <i>Exit Man!</i></p> + +<p>Rejected on all counts, as possessing no intrinsic sex-values, to offset +woman's vital and pre-eminent one of the creation of Life (for his +biological part in this is so slight and brief as to be unworthy of note +were it not indispensable, and will be insignificant, indeed, when he no +longer serves as highly-specialised agent and artificer of the Racial +faculty); possessing no distinctive qualities and no obligations of +fatherhood, to protect and to provide for offspring, and thereby to +offset woman's vital and important one of nurturing and rearing this; no +more than woman's equal (if that) in the Sciences and Arts, in Politics +and Commerce—Truly no alternative will be left him save to retire, +abased, into the dim background of the Human Pageant; a self-admitted +failure, without place or standing, by virile and exclusive right and +power of body, brain and office.</p> + +<p class="bold">IX</p> + +<p>A more inspiring picture presents itself, however.</p> + +<p>Of a Manhood, worthy of its racial and national traditions, waking +timely to a recognition of its manhood's powers and duties, and, having +emancipated itself from woman's rule in all beside her natural province, +reinstating its supremacy in every virile field and function; and thus +re-shouldering bravely its allotted burdens in Labour, Faculty and +Administration.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p><p>Of a Womanhood re-finding itself also, and finding itself and its +natural lot upon a fairer and a nobler plane—the plane of Life, as +ever, but illumined now by broader outlook, and instinct with higher understanding.</p> + +<p>And these two working for the common good, of our Anglo-Saxon Race, +recruited by their sympathetic impulse and reciprocal achievement, +having been set, in course of a few generations, upon routes of such a +Human Renaissance as should carry it forward to fulfilment of its splendid destiny.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>In this New Human Dispensation would be a House of Women to serve as a +second—a balancing and an uplifting—wing to the House of Men.</p> + +<p>Thus in the national as in the natural life, The Sexes would be most +effectively operating and co-operating; travelling each along its own +inherent and allotted lines, employing each its own intrinsic powers and +fulfilling its intrinsic functions, apart from, but abreast of and in +continual touch with the other; inspiring, fortifying, supplementing and +complementing the attributes, the trend and the achievements, each of each.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Said Mazzini, "<i>Man and Woman are the two human Wings that lift the soul +toward the Ideal we are destined to attain</i>." And the value and the +effectiveness of these two human, as of other wings, lie in the degree +to which, although they work in unison, <i>they move in different areas</i>; +apart from and independent, each of the other; balancing and +correlating, but, nevertheless, each sustaining its own side of the body, Vital and Social.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>APPENDIX</span></h2> + +<p class="bold"><span class="smcap">Further Evidences in Support of the Biological and Mendelian +Propositions Advanced in Book I.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">I</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>The Male is the impelling force in Physical Development, or +Adaptation to environment</i></p> + +<p>Scientific stock-breeding supplies valuable practical examples of +applied Genetics, or the Science of Heredity.</p> + +<p>Although artificial, in the sense that the creatures of the Stock-yard +are not mated by law of Natural Selection, nor are they bred or reared +under normal environmental conditions, the circumstance that breeders +are breeding for special characteristics, and mate the parents with a +view to the transmission and the accentuation of such, provides +important indications regarding hereditary influence and its determinant factors.</p> + +<p>Mr. Horace G. Regnart, who has done much to establish Stock-breeding on +a scientific basis, kindly furnishes me with the following interesting +and suggestive data:</p> + +<p>"We Breeders pay more attention to the bull because he can sire fifty +calves yearly; while the cow can produce only one. One can afford to pay +a thousand guineas for a bull, whereas one cannot afford fifty cows at +the same price. And the purchase of a first-class bull is the cheapest +way of getting a good herd. The history of practically every great herd +is the history of some particular bull. As we say, '<i>a bull is half the +herd</i>.' It is equally true to say that every great bull is the son of a +great cow. With one highly-prepotent bull we can raise a high-class +herd, even if we start with second-rate females; while a bad bull will +ruin the best herd in the county. It is for this reason that we 'put all +our money' on the bull."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p><p>All of which supports my theory that the male is the impelling agency +in Adaptation to Environment, or evolutionary development on the plane +of physics, and that such progressive development is achieved by way of +the male traits being Dominant upon this plane, and manifesting, +accordingly, in the physical terms of stature and muscle and force-production.</p> + +<p>The male being the determinant agent in the physical characteristics of +size and flesh and nervous energy—for which breeders of Live-stock are +making—the bull is "half the herd." "With one highly-prepotent bull," a +high-class herd may be raised, even though inaugurated with second-rate +females. Whilst "a bad bull will ruin the best herd in the county." Akin +to which is the circumstance that, in two generations, the improvement +which occurs in the offspring of a New Forest pony-mare when mated with +a horse, lapses; the descendants reverting to the type of the New Forest pony.</p> + +<p>If, however, the male, being the agent of Adaptation, determines +progressive development in the direction of such physical traits as +further fit species to its material environment, the female it is, that, +being the agency of the Evolution of Life (and of the equipment of +species in terms of Life, accordingly) supplies offspring with the Vital +potential of living cells and vital organs—heart, lungs, digestive and +assimilative organs and functions—which, by engendering the multiple +functions and vital processes of Life, <i>sustain</i> the existence and the +powers of the organism in relation to environment. The female, moreover, +provides it with the Vital potential of reproductive organs for the +transmission of types ever further evolved and adapted, in terms both of +Life and Adaptation.</p> + +<p>The male thus broadly sketches out the lines and supplies the initiative +of structural development. The female supplements the sketch with the +structural potential of living cells, whereby structural development is +achieved; as too with the vital potential of organs whereby living +organisation is sustained and transmitted.</p> + +<p>The great sire, bull or man, generates the great daughter. But since +Life is earlier in origin and precedes Development, the great mother it +must be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> who first <i>engenders</i> the great son. Because, as I have already +pointed out, Life and Reproductive-Energy must exist in the potential +before they can evolve upon the plane of personal development. In other +words, function precedes structure. The potential of both function and +structure must precede the <i>development</i> of either on the plane of Life.</p> + +<p>Woman, accordingly, is Creatrix of the Race, because in her the Race +becomes potential. Man is Artificer of the Race, however, because from +him the Race receives its powers of concrete development.</p> + +<p>For progressive evolutionary advance, therefore, every new generation of +females must contribute a new complement of Vital potential, equal in +potence to the new complement of Developmental initiative which the new +generation of males contribute, and by way of which the female Vital +potential is differentiated into further concrete powers. Fruitless for +one parent to supply a finer complement than the other is able to render +in terms, respectively, of Life or Development. The female potential +must be adequate to energise the male powers of differentiation. The +male powers must be adequate to differentiate the female potential.</p> + +<p class="bold">II</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>The female supplies the Typal and Vital Potentials of Adaptation</i></p> + +<p>To Mr. Regnart, I am indebted for the following further data, which seem +further to support my view:</p> + +<p>"Ursula Raglan was a Beef-cow that milked heavily. To a Beef-bull, she +produced Gainford Champion—a great bull. While to a Dairy-bull, she +produced the dam of Priceless Princess—about the best Dairy-cow that +ever looked through a halter."</p> + +<p>Here we find the Vital-potential indispensable to the equipment of great +offspring, proved great in the mother, by her Female vital-function of +lactation. While her respective bull-mates appear as the determinant +factors which differentiate this Vital potential in offspring, +respectively, into the Beef-traits (stature and muscle, that is) or the +Milking-traits (Vital function, that is). The very term "Dairy-bull," +signifying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> a male with power to transmit to female descendants the +purely Female trait of milking, is evidence, in itself, of a female +trait, derived by a male from his mother, passing into the potential, +and lying dormant, or Recessive, for a generation, in his male +organisation, and then emerging again in his daughter.</p> + +<p>The great bull is sire of a great cow—<i>because he was son of a great +cow</i>. And he is a great bull because he received from his dam a great +female Vital-potential, for differentiation into greatness of the male +traits that characterise great males. And in his turn, he may sire a cow +greater than his mother, because in passing on to his daughter the great +female Vital-potential of his mother, he passes on a female potential of +greatness to which his own male inherence of greatness has added a +further power of Differentiation. This increased <i>Male</i> power of +differentiation, descending in the female line, however, manifests in +traits of increased <i>Female</i> functioning—the function of milking, that +is.</p> + +<p>The daughter inherits thus from her father the Female potential of her +paternal grandmother, with new power of Male differentiation acquired by +its residence during a generation (so to speak) in a male organisation. +Which new power, when reawakened to function in a female organism, +manifests in a further degree of Femaleness.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Male development having progressed along lines of increasing brain- and +nervous power, which the female has ever further inherited, Female +development has progressed along lines of such increasing brain-power as +has enabled her to transform her native simple and undifferentiated +Femaleness into ever further developed and more complex Female <i>traits</i>, +or functional and nervous characteristics.</p> + +<p>While, on the other hand, since Female evolution has proceeded along +lines of increasing Life, or Vital Power, which the male has ever +further inherited this increasing Vital power it has been that has +served as <i>potential</i> for the evolution of his Maleness in terms of +higher brain- and nervous power.</p> + +<p>The great cow is mother of a great bull <i>because she was daughter of a +great sire</i>. And she was a great cow because she received from her sire +a great male <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>complement of developmental power, which imparted to her +Recessive, and undifferentiated Femaleness, further power of functioning +as female characteristics. And she may mother a son greater even than +her sire because the great male Developmental impetus of her father +becomes in her a greater Vital potential; which, descending in the male +line, engenders further power for the further differentiation of male characteristics.</p> + +<p class="bold">III</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Evolution of Species and evolution of the Individual occur on +different planes</i></p> + +<p>The Evolution of Species progresses in every generation by way of each +Sex having derived from the other Sex a new and opposite potential to +engender, in every alternate generation, the further evolution of its +Sex-traits along its own (and contrary) lines.</p> + +<p>It may be considered therefore that Type, or Species, evolves to higher +inherences by way of progressive divergences of Sex-characteristics. +While the Evolution of the individual progresses in every generation in +proportion as parents of both sexes had mated, in the previous +generation, with such members of the opposite sex as were best fitted to +supply, in the gametes contributed to offspring, complements which, by +union with their own, so matched and supplemented their own as to have +quickened and energised the development of offspring to the fullest and +the most efficient issues. In any line, however, a strain of greatness +or of other inherence descends in alternating succession, now in the +female, now in the male line; receding now into the potential, and then +evolving in development. So that while the Individual normally evolves +in every generation, the Type evolves only in alternate generations.</p> + +<p>The evolution of Type, or Species, is the intrinsic function of the +spontaneous Evolution of Life into two orders of Sex. It occurs on a +wholly different plane from that of the evolution of the Individual. But +by way of his, or her, complement to the biological constitution of +offspring, members of both sexes contribute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> alike to the evolution of +<i>Species</i> and to that of the <i>Individual</i>—according as such complement +enhances the power of the traits of the opposite Sex to manifest, and +further to evolve in offspring.</p> + +<p>The intensification in the one sex of its own inherences stimulates a +proportional intensification of the opposite inherences in the other +Sex, both as regards the evolution of the Type and of the Individual. +The phenomenon would seem to be akin to that increase of one electrical +potential evoking a proportional increase of the other electrical +potential, to complement it. When one sex fails to supply its due +potential, or complement, to the other, the evolution both of Type and +Individual receives a check.</p> + +<p>And because the evolution of Type is achieved by the Germ-plasm derived +from a parent of one sex obtaining new increment from being invested in +the organisation of offspring of the opposite sex, it is not until the +new Typal-inherence of this Germ-plasm is revivified again in the +organisation of a member of the Sex from which the plasm was derived, +that such new impulse manifests. Hence the phenomenon of characteristics +being transmitted from parents to offspring of opposite sex. So that +daughters of normal womanly organisation reproduce the Typal +characteristics of their fathers' maternal line; while in sons of normal +male organisation those of their mothers' paternal line emerge.</p> + +<p>Hence too, the reversion of offspring of hybrid plants to the +types,—pure Dominant and pure Recessive—of their grandparents.</p> + +<p class="bold">IV</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Progressive segregation of Male and Female traits in opposite +sides of body ever further intensifies and differentiates their +intrinsic qualities</i></p> + +<p>The biological constitution of humans and of the other higher organisms +differentiating them into two opposite symmetrical sides, in which, as +development rises higher in the scale, the Dominance, or Maleness, in +them is ever further and more perfectly segregated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> from the +Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, secures the progressive +intensification, respectively, of Maleness or of Femaleness in them, by +ever further ranging the factors, or traits, of these on opposite sides +of the biological equation; and by thus more effectively centralising +the powers, according to sex, in one or the other side thereof.</p> + +<p>Mendel's peas, not thus differentiated into two sides, are bi-sexual and +self-fertilising. Of the original stock, that order in which Dominant +traits are prepotent is differentiating toward a male <i>genus</i>, however. +While the Recessives are differentiating toward a female <i>genus</i>. +Although regarded as "pure" Dominants and "pure" Recessives, they are +nevertheless hybrids in respect of Sex. Being self-fertilising, both +Dominants and Recessives are of low power, alike for reproduction and +development. Because the Dominance, or Male developmental power, of the +Recessives being inhibited by the Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, +is of low Vigour. While the Recessiveness, or Female vital power in the +Dominants being unduly expended by the Dominance, or Maleness, in them, +is of low Vitality. The male sex-cells of the self-fertilising Dominants +thus fertilise female sex-cells of low vitality. While the female +sex-cells of the self-fertilising Recessives are fertilised by male +sex-cells of low vigour.</p> + +<p>In cross-breeding, the conditions cease not only to be those of +self-fertilising, but they cease, moreover, to be those of the close +inbreeding of self-fertilisation. In the "hybrids" obtained by crossing +the higher-vigoured male sex-cells of the "pure" Dominants with the +higher-vitalised female sex-cells of the "pure" Recessives, the +Dominants—because Dominance is prepotent for exterior +characteristics—submerge the external traits of the Recessives, which +are prepotent for vital and internal functioning. Such Dominants are a +bi-sexual species in which the male is prepotent. And to be male, means +that they have expended, in terms of structural development, a great +proportion of the female Vital power inherent in them; thus masking the +Recessive female traits in them, as regards exterior characteristics. +But since reproductive power inheres in these Recessive traits, these +traits are preserved in the sex-cells, equally with the Dominant traits. +The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> plants being not only bi-sexual, but self-fertilising also, the +sex-cells must obviously be bi-sexual too; in order to provide the +organism with factors both of life and development. Every sex-cell is a +hybrid cell, therefore; bearing both Dominant and Recessive traits. But, +like their parents, in some, the Dominant, in others, the Recessive +traits are prepotent. And the Dominant sex-cells mating with Dominants, +the Recessives with Recessives, the original types of so-called "pure" +Dominants and "pure" Recessives reappear in the third generation.</p> + +<p class="bold">V</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Self-fertilising organism is a female organism with a male +organism differentiated in it</i></p> + +<p>Because the female represents the Life-potential of species and the +Vital potential of organisms, a self-fertilising plant or creature must +be regarded as a female organism, with a male organism of Adaptation, or +Differentiation, developed in it. This male organism energises both its +developmental and its functioning power, and fertilises it; although the +<i>potential</i> of structure, of growth, of function and of reproduction are +engendered in the female organism. The female is the root-stock or +parent-stem of all species, therefore.</p> + +<p>If Dominance is Maleness, and Recessiveness is Femaleness, and if +Dominance energises structural development while Recessiveness engenders +reproduction, a Dominant self-fertilising plant is a female plant, with +a male plant of superior Dominance differentiated in it. While a +Recessive self-fertilising plant is a female plant of superior +Recessiveness, with a male plant of inferior Dominance differentiated in +it. In crossing stock of superior Dominance with stock of superior +Recessiveness, the Dominant prevails over the Recessive in the general +structural traits of the resulting "hybrid," but not in its reproductive +inherence. The new hybrids being male in inherence, nothing is added to +the female reproductive, or Vital, potential in them. The root-stock +transmits to its sex-cells therefore just as its grandmother +did—Recessives of her type, and Dominants of the type of the Dominant +male engrafted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> on her, of the male grandfather of this third +generation, that is. Hence reversion.</p> + +<p class="bold">VI</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Sterility of offspring of alien species proves evolution of +Species and of Individual are independent phenomena</i></p> + +<p>The fact that dog and wolf, when mated, breed fertile species, proves +them sprung from the same root-stock. While the hybrid offspring of +different species are sterile. Showing such an intrinsic incompatability +of the alien complements in the zygote as, while operating as no bar to +their immediate union and their development into a complete hybrid +individual, nevertheless bars the incorporation of the alien breed in +the Vital potential of stock.</p> + +<p>Such sterility in the offspring of creatures of different species is +weighty evidence that the Evolution of Type, or Species, and the +Evolution of the Individual are wholly independent phenomena; occurring +upon wholly different planes, and involving wholly different principles +and sets of processes. In the mating of alien species, the two +sex-cells, although of dissimilar species-inherence, unite nevertheless +and develop in the maternal environment into a living entity of mongrel +order. But the Germ-plasm contained in the gamete of one species will +not germinate in the alien environment of an organism of alien species. +No potential, either Vital or of Differentiation, is engendered, +therefore, for production of offspring. Hence sterility results. The +potential of a living individual is seen thus to belong to a wholly +different plane of phenomena from the potential of Stock. Conditions +which do not annul the powers of life and of function in the one, quench +life and function in the other with the seal of sterility.</p> + +<p class="bold">VII</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Possible explanation of "Sports"</i></p> + +<p>Mr. Regnart says: "We often meet with Sports. Second- and third-rate +parents may produce an exceptionally fine individual, but such animals +are always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> failures to breed from. The law of Filial Regression comes +into operation. Our aim is to find families that have produced a large +number of fine animals—we know then that we are on safe ground."</p> + +<p>In these cases, it would seem that the "fine individual" results from so +singularly harmonious and successful a complementing and fructifying of +the parental halves in offspring as conduce to develop the best points +of both; doubtless, too, to eliminate or to annul weak or faulty factors +of either parental strain. Neither of such inferior-grade parents +transmitting a fine <i>lineal</i> potential, however, the exceptional +fineness of the individual is not inherent in the Germ-plasm he or she +transmits to offspring. The fine characteristics of such "Sports" are +not transmissible, therefore, to descendants.</p> + +<p>Proof again of two planes of Life and Evolution, that of Species and +that of the Individual. Moral, too, of the importance of fine selection +in mating, since the harmonious mating of second- or third-rate parents +may produce finer offspring than are born of ill-assorted matings of two +finer breeds of parent.</p> + +<p>The case is recorded of a pony about the size of a Shetland pony, which +was the offspring of pedigree Shire-parents on both sides, <i>both parents +being over 17 hands</i>. The most striking feature about the animal was +that there was nothing of the <i>horse</i>-type about him—he was a perfect +example of <i>pony</i>.</p> + +<p>Shire horses are typical examples of Vigour, or developmental power, +expressed in terms of stature, muscle and nervous energy. And for so +long as the breeding for these characteristics was supplemented in terms +of vital organs and vital functioning, by an equivalent maternal +complement of Vital potential, to sustain the constitutional expenditure +involved in stature, muscular equipment, and nervous energy, the breed +improved in these particulars. Pushed beyond this limit, by introducing +into stock further strains of Vigour, or developmental initiative, +without simultaneously providing the indispensable equivalents of these +in increasing Vital potentials, all at once the balance toppled, and +reversion to inferior type resulted.</p> + +<p>An excessive proportion of the Vital power of these two Pedigree Shires +of great stature and great strength<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> had been expended in the +achievement of such great stature and great strength, and in the +equipment of digestive and assimilative organs required to sustain +these. But little had remained, accordingly, for Reproductive +investments. Hence reversion in the de-vitalised stock.</p> + +<p>One conceives of the counterpoise in Stock, of Male and Female +complements, as being akin to that of the opposite and complementary +curves of an arch. So long as equipoise is sustained by the perfect +balance of the contrary curves, so long each re-inforces the other to +support a heavy superstructure of development. Lopsidedness of either +curve leads to collapse.</p> + +<p class="bold">VIII</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Vigour is Male. Vitability is Female</i></p> + +<p>"Vigour," which breeders regard as a potent factor in heredity, is +commonly confounded with Vital Power, or Vitability; although the two +would seem to be diametrically opposite in cause, in nature and effect.</p> + +<p>An athlete, in so-called "condition," is in the prime of Vigour; his +muscular and nervous powers being at high levels of structure and of +functioning. His Vital powers are proportionally at low ebb, however; as +is proved by his notable lack of recuperative power in illness. He is +bad subject, indeed, in respect of progress and recovery from disease.</p> + +<p>Feeble-minded persons possess but little Vigour of brain or of body, yet +their Vital power, as shown in healthy organic functioning and +vitativeness, is often extraordinary. Vigour is an expression of nervous +energy, and is generated by the brain. Vitability is Life-power, and +results from vital organs efficient both in structure and in processes. +It is engendered in the Reproductive System; which may be regarded as +the power-house of Life and vital function.</p> + +<p><i>Vigour</i> is the power of Differentiation, or Individuation, of an +organism, structural and functional, physical and mental, in terms of +its relation to environment. <i>Vitability</i> is the intensification of the +individualism and of the functioning of an organism in terms of Life-power.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p><p>Vigour, being katabolic, a male and a Dominant trait, manifests in man +(as in plants) as Tallness, or the expenditure of vital energy upon the +material plane, in growth and stature; as too in functional initiative +and activity, both physical and mental, on the material plane.</p> + +<p>Vitability, being anabolic, a female and a Recessive trait, manifests as +Dwarfness, or the conservation of vital energy upon the material plane, +in respect of growth and stature; as too in weakness, or inhibition of +vigour and activity, both physical and mental.</p> + +<p>The male trait of Vigour makes men larger, stronger, hardier, and more +resistant to disease than women are. The female trait of Vitability +makes women healthier, more charged with vital power and temperament, +more recuperative from disease, and longer-lived than men. The +complementary inherences of Vigour and Vitability, derived respectively +from the two parents, and supplementing one another in offspring, endow +him or her with fine form and structure, healthy vital organs and +efficient function, power of Life and nervous energy.</p> + +<p>In the normal male, Vigour dominates Vitability; the maternal potential +of Vitability being differentiated in him into its male equivalent. +While in the normal female, Vigour recedes within the Female traits of +vital power and healthy functioning, endurance and womanly faculty.</p> + +<p>The opposite modes of Vigour and Vitality are well shown in disease. In +vigorous men, disease may assume the type known as "sthenic"; +occasioning such violent re-activity, or rebellion, of the system, and +such consequent severity of symptoms as speedily exhaust the resources, +and tend to fatal ending. While Vital power, being anabolic and +conservative, meets the foe passively, and instead of wasting, +economises the forces by moderation of symptoms; bending to the course +and processes of sickness, and making thereby for recovery. Because of +the lesser vitability of their cells, disease in men tends toward +structural, or organic deteriorations. While disease in normal women is +more often functional, merely.</p> + +<p>In masculine women, disease is prone, as in men, to structural +degenerations. Masculine women are very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> liable to cancer; a liability +they transmit as heritage to offspring of both sexes. Hence the +increasing masculinity of latter-day women has entailed upon the race an +increased liability to cancer and to other structural degeneration. This +liability has assumed such grave proportions as to occur in children +even, showing in the abnormal growths, "adenoids" now so prevalent as to +have become "the normal" of modern childhood.</p> + +<p class="bold">IX</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>The living body is a highly-vitalised Vegetative organism with a +highly-specialised Cerebro-nervous organism differentiated in it</i></p> + +<p>Professor Cuvier said, "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole +animal; the other systems are there only to serve it."</p> + +<p>Professor Bergson amplifies the statement:</p> + +<p>"A higher organism is essentially a sensori-motor system installed on +systems of digestion, respiration, circulation, secretion, etc., whose +function it is to repair, cleanse and protect it, to create an +unvarying, internal environment for it, and above all to produce its +potential energy for conversion into locomotive movement."</p> + +<p>In both statements, is recognition of the Dual differentiation of the +body into an organism of Life which functions in relation to its own +intrinsic being, and an organism of Consciousness which functions in +relation to exterior environment. That in death from starvation, the +brain and the nerves remain almost unimpaired, while all the other +organs and tissues lose weight, their cells undergoing profound +degenerative changes, is further indication of two distinct and separate +departments of development and processes in every animal existence.</p> + +<p>As in its Mendelian phenomena of the Segregation of its Contrasting +Traits, and the Dominance and Recessiveness of these in constitution and +heredity, so, in its living organisation, the human body is +extraordinarily and in a number of ways essentially plant-like. The +brain and the nervous system may be regarded, indeed, as a +highly-differentiated Cerebro-Nervous organism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> grafted upon a simpler +Vital, and vegetative body, from which, as from a soil, it draws its +life and energy: and from which, as age advances, it gradually withdraws +the power of further sustaining its existence.</p> + +<p>This Cerebro-Nervous graft perishes only because the Vegetative body on +which it is installed has come to the end of its power to sustain the +life of the Nervous organism picketed upon it.</p> + +<p>The close resemblances in structure and in processes between the Cells +of vegetable and animal organisms, when taken in conjunction with a +number of other biological indications, justify the conclusion that +living bodies are actually vegetative organisms to which have been +super-added, by progressive evolutionary differentiations, faculties of +Motion and of Consciousness.</p> + +<p>(Plants are recognised as possessing rudimentary consciousness. While +Growth is a mode of Motion.)</p> + +<p>The trunk, which contains the respiratory, circulatory, nutritive and +reproductive organs represents the Vitative, or Vegetative, system. The +brain with its tributary spinal cord and spinal-nervous system +represents the Sensori-motor organism. While the limbs are +highly-differentiated implements which the Cerebro-Nervous organism has +developed in the Vitative organism; to serve it with means of locomotion +and of action, for the achievement of intelligent purpose.</p> + +<p>The lungs, with their ramifications of tubes and their air-cells, +closely resemble the branches and leaves of a tree, which spread into +and absorb from the atmosphere the oxygen whereby it lives. While the +convoluted intestines are like the roots of a tree, absorbing nurture +for it from environment.</p> + +<p>The Vegetative organism, being the agency of Life, is female in origin +and inherence.</p> + +<p>The Cerebro-spinal organism, being the agency of Adaptation, is male in +origin and inherence. In both, however, the inherences of the other sex +are represented.</p> + +<p>The body resembles thus a bi-sexual plant, its root-stock being female +and Recessive, with a male Dominant and differentiating organism +incorporated in it.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">X</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Vegetative body has its own brain and nervous system and its +(involuntary) muscles</i></p> + +<p>This Vegetative body has its own separate (organic) brain, in the Solar +Plexus—or "Abdominal brain"—and its nervous system, in the intricate +"Sympathetic" system of nerves; which, in addition to administering the +nutrition of the body, is intimately and closely associated, in +psychology, with the brain and with the spinal-nervous system of the +Psychical organism. Itself subconscious, this organic brain nevertheless +contributes vital impulse and colour to Consciousness.</p> + +<p>It possesses also its own specialised system of muscles, the +"Involuntary muscles"; which are not under control of the conscious +brain and will, but operate automatically—by so-called reflex action. +The motions they subtend are concerned with vital functions; nutrition, +respiration, circulation, assimilation, elimination, reproduction.</p> + +<p>The Vitative organism, being vegetative of growth and passive of mode, +needs rest and sun and wind and air and water for its nurture and +development. With that rising of the sap in the world of vegetation +which occurs in spring, kindred processes occur within the human +vegetative body. It responds to the re-creative forces of its mother-earth.</p> + +<p>With every recurring Spring-tide, youth turns again to thoughts of love, +because of this natural renaissance of its vitative resources, for +purposes of re-creation—both of Cells and individuals.</p> + +<p>Old age is a permanent winter of this plant-body. Summer suns revive but +little more than flickerings of its vegetative pulsings. Although the +psychical life, intellectual and nervous, may be still vigorous, the sap +of the plant-body no longer rises, quick and warm and fructifying, to +earth's perennial call.</p> + +<p>This plant-like body with its plant-like fruiting Cells, it is, that +when charged with the graces and magnetic potences of health and high +nurture, supplies the pleasing personality found not seldom in sinners, +while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> often conspicuously lacking in saints—a seeming anomaly which +has gone far to discredit the virtues.</p> + +<p>By way of it, human personality resembles a mystical flowering plant +that breathes and feels and moves; and a fruiting plant that reproduces. +The Cerebro-Nervous system animates and intelligises this beautiful +vessel of flesh wherein it subsists.</p> + +<p>The vigour of its Vegetative stock, supplementing brain and nervous +system by fine structure, fine stature, organic vigour, native faculty, +and reproductive power, has given the Anglo-Saxon race its world-wide +rule. It is to this that its women have owed their shapely frames, their +healthful constitutions and their loveliness; the warm tints of hair and +skin, the fresh and flower-like complexions, and the fruit-like form and +bloom of cheek for which they once were famed.</p> + +<p>Rich personal charm and sweetness of healthful condition which are all +too swiftly passing from our modern women, hag-ridden by a strenuousness +that is wrecking the flower-body, with its vital joy and warmth, its +grace of being and its bliss of sense, its temperamental thrill and colour.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>The doctrine of Evolution is signally incomplete unless we realise it as +a sequence of progressive developments, direct and without intermission, +from the simplest forms of Elemental Matter to the highest, living +orders of Creation—Mineral, Vegetable, Brute and Human being +progressive stages in the evolution of Life and of Consciousness; graded +by links so subtly and infinitesimally constituted as to belong equally +to the kingdom below and to that above them.</p> + +<p>The subject appears full of interest and suggestion, showing all the +planes of Nature, from mineral to man, linked in an unbroken line by way +of this half-vegetable body of flesh, with its roots in earth and its +branches in Consciousness. No more than this briefest of mentions can be +given here, however.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">XI</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Mysterious "Internal Secretions"</i></p> + +<p>Biologists tell of Dual planes of operation in the processes of every +organ of the body. Because some of these function on the external plane, +in visible secretions or in other ways calculable by scientific methods, +and they function, too, upon an Inner and occulted, plane; in the form +of mysterious "Internal Secretions," the mode and nature whereof have +long baffled and eluded the most intricate scientific appliances and intellections.</p> + +<p>What is indicated if not an Inner, and Potential, plane of Life and +vital processes—a <i>plane of Involution</i>, or Recession +(centripetal)—whereon factors of environment, air, food, water and so +forth are transformed by vital involutionary processes, into +<i>potentials</i> of living form and function? Which potentials remain +latent, or Recessive, in the cells and glands secreting them, and +available for transformation by evolutionary processes, into actualities +of physical form and function on the Outer (centrifugal) plane of +Life—the <i>plane of Evolution</i>.</p> + +<p>And Life and health, together with normality of faculty and function, +depend upon the perfect balance and co-ordination of these two contrary +orders of factors and processes, which, I assume, are engendered, +respectively, in the Male and the Female departments of living organisms of both sexes.</p> + +<p>All the vital functions—Respiration, Circulation, Digestion, +Reproduction—may be classed as Recessive functions, because they are +characterised by a Recession, or withdrawal, from the Without to the +Within. This is a phenomenon of the <i>Involution</i> of Environment, for +transformation thereof into potential Life, and potential Evolutionary output.</p> + +<p><i>Death</i> is a centripetal withdrawal of the soul from the material +Without to an Inner zone of Spiritual, or Potential, Being. And in due +time, analogy assures us, having assimilated and transformed the +resultant of a terrestrial existence into a new potential of Life, Life +issues forth again, by the centrifugal impulse of re-Birth, to +differentiate itself once more in living form upon the Outer plane. +(<i>Re-incarnation</i> is, obviously,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> the true interpretation of +<i>Resurrection of the body</i>, which otherwise is scientifically impossible.)</p> + +<p>Winter withdrawal, or Involution, of the sap of Vegetation from the +outer plane of functioning to the inner plane of potential Life, whereby +it derives such new increment of Vital potential as, with the outgoing +of sap again in the renaissance of spring, evolves in increased growth +and new foliage, is further example of the principle and processes of +Dominance and Recessiveness—of the female Vital impulse and the male +Developmental impetus, operating in an eternal tidal rhythm of ebb and flow.</p> + +<p class="bold">XII</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Dual planes of Mentality: Outer and Material, Inner and Occult</i></p> + +<p>As in the Domain of Life and vital processes, so in the Domain of +Consciousness and nervous processes, there are two planes of function; +an Inner and occulted plane of Mind, or potential Consciousness, and an +Outer plane of material Consciousness; representing respectively +afferent (or centripetal) and efferent (or outgoing) nervous currents.</p> + +<p>Faculty and sense may be regarded as having developed in one direction +along lines of the telescope, with increasing capability to horizon the +Without; while they have developed simultaneously along lines of the +microscope, to reveal an Invisible Within.</p> + +<p>The Senses, which adapt man's Consciousness to environment by the +functions of Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell, have become, with +evolutionary development, so increasingly sensitised in response to The +Without as ever further to have set him in rapport with the world +exterior. While, at the same time, so have they become sensitised in +response to The Within, as ever further to have deepened and quickened +his apprehension of an occulted Interior plane. Faculty has acquired +thus, simultaneously with its increasing power of focusing the Outer and +Objective, an increasing power so to invert its focus as to penetrate +ever more deeply into the Inner and Subjective, alike of man's own +constitution and that of environment.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p><p>These two contrary, but co-operative, modes of mentality are, +respectively, Intellection and Intuition—Male and Female modes of mind.</p> + +<p class="bold">XIII</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Differentiation of the Zygote, or Mated Sex-cell</i></p> + +<p>I have described, throughout, the right side of the human body as the +male-side—that in which the Male-traits of Humanity are specialised in +the individual; the left as the woman-side, that in which the +Woman-traits of Humanity are centred.</p> + +<p>But the modes of constitution, as of inheritance, are more complex, of +course, than that one parent supplies the potential of one side, the +other parent that of the other side.</p> + +<p>As regards inheritance, the maternal ovum comprises, I believe, the +potential of the whole body, with the exception of the brain, the +spinal-cord and the spinal nerves. But because the mother is descended +from parents of both sex, and possesses, therefore, both Male and Female +elements, the ovum must contain (as must every other cell) both male and +female factors. These, it is conceivable, are grouped, by contrary +polarities, into two areas, or hemispheres; an upper and a lower. Of +these the upper is Male in inherency. It comprises the potentials of +shoulders and spinal column which are fulcra of action, and of lungs and +heart which are the <i>energising</i> organs of Life. The lower hemisphere of +the ovum is Female in inherency. It comprises the potentials of the +pelvis, which is the cradle of Maternity, of the reproductive organs, +which engender Life and the emotions, and of the digestive and +assimilative organs, which engender vital processes.</p> + +<p>So too, because the male parent is likewise descended from parents of +opposite sex, his contribution to offspring must also contain both male +and female factors. But while the mother supplies, in the ovum, the +potential of the whole body—face and head, trunk, limbs and vital +organs, the father contributes the potential of the brain, the spinal +cord and the spinal nerves only, which adapt the organism, by way of +form and Consciousness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> to environment. The limbs, which adapt it, by +way of Motion, to environment, may be regarded as differentiations +primarily of the brain and nervous system.</p> + +<p>The ovum is spheroidal; the sperm-cell rectilinear (following the rule +that the line of Maleness is a straight one; that of Femaleness, a +curve). And as in the spheroidal ovum, the factors of the opposite +sexes, grouped into two areas, separate it into hemispheres of opposite +sex-inherency, so in the rectilinear sperm-cell, we may surmise the +factors of the two sexes to be grouped lengthwise, and to separate it +thus into a male side and a female side. Such a sperm-cell penetrating +the ovum, and developing laterally, further differentiates this into +anterior, posterior and lateral areas. The two lateral developments of +this potential brain and spinal cord and nerves eventually constitute +the right and the left brain-hemispheres, and differentiate the body +into right and left sides.</p> + +<p>The left brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and nerves, +is derived from the <i>male</i> side of the sperm-cell; while the right +brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and spinal nerves, is +derived from the <i>female</i> side (by inheritance) of the sperm cell.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Weismann describes the Germ-Plasm as being transmitted in the female +line solely, from ovum of mother to that of daughter.</p> + +<p>This supports the above view; namely, that the Germ-Plasm proper is +inherent in the ovum, in which it exists in potential, or +undifferentiated, form, and that it becomes differentiated (in both +sexes) into a right and a left-reproductive gland of contrary +sex-inherence, by differentiative power of the dual-sexed sperm-cell. +The re-polarisation of the fertilised ovum, which is visible beneath the +microscope, would seem to represent this differentiative process.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<p>Since the microcosm is as the macrocosm, the Dual constitution must be +repeated in every living cell of the body; the cell-plasma representing +the vegetative system, the cell-nucleus representing the cerebro-nervous +system. Possibly the nucleolus is the Supra- and Subconscious element.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold">XIV</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Inorganic Matter is Dual and Hermaphrodite. Life breaks up this +Neuter counterpoise, and progressively unlocks and segregates, and +thus reveals and specialises the inherent attributes of Sex</i></p> + +<p>Phenomena of Duality characterise not Living Matter only, but Inorganic +Matter too. The elemental atom is never found manifesting singly, but +always as two atoms coupled together, in the form of "the molecule"; +these mated atoms being of opposite electrical potential.</p> + +<p>And since Living Matter has evolved out of Inorganic Matter—what is to +be inferred but that the duality of the living cell is the evolution, on +the plane of Life, of the duality of the chemical molecule?</p> + +<p>Further, that the duality of living forms in terms of +sex-characteristics is the evolution, on the plane of Living Faculty, of +the duality alike of the living cell and of the chemical molecule; the +two sexes representing, respectively, the contrary inherences of all +these dualities, specialised and ever further intensifying in the +contrary trends of the opposite Sex-traits of Male and Female.</p> + +<p>The elemental molecule is seen thus to be hybrid, or hermaphrodite, in +constitution, precisely as the living cell and the living body are. +While that both living cells and inorganic crystals reproduce, proves +factors of Sex differentiated and functioning in them.</p> + +<p>The inertia of Matter is due to the hermaphrodite state; its contrary +Sex-impulses interlocking and nullifying one another. Life breaks up +this neuter state of equipoise, by increasingly segregating the +dual-sex-inherences and evolving each along its own intrinsic trend; +thereby engendering between their dual factors fructifying +interoperations which result in the motions of Growth and other vital processes.</p> + +<p>Growth is a phenomenon of Reproduction. Living cells increase their +substance by germination of their bi-sexual elements. Attaining +maturity, a cell divides into two cells, each of which by way of similar +processes develops into a mature cell.</p> + +<p>And since for all Change, two (or more) contrary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> impulses are +necessary, and since Reproduction is a function of Sex, what is to be +inferred but that Evolution and Growth and all other phenomena of living +cells result from oppositions, co-operations and correlations of the +contrary impetus and processes of two orders of sex-factors present +therein? By way alone of their bi-sexuality, are cells, both animal and +vegetable, able to reproduce the cell-offspring required by living +organisms for processes of growth, of function and repair.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Printed in Great Britain by<br /> +Richard Clay & Sons, Limited</span>,<br /> +BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E.1<br /> +AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2><span>ADVERTISEMENTS</span></h2> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold2">WOMAN AND LABOUR</p> + +<p class="bold">By OLIVE SCHREINER</p> + +<p class="bold">Demy 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d. net</p> + +<p class="center"><i>SEVENTH IMPRESSION</i></p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p>"At last there has come the book which is destined to be the prophecy +and the gospel of the whole awakening.... Remarkable as this book of +Olive Schreiner's is, merely as an intellectual achievement, its +greatness and its life are in the emotional power which has found its +stimulus and its inspiration in a vision of the future.... A book which +will be read and discussed for many years to come."—<i>The Nation.</i></p> + +<p>"It is a fascinating mingling of keen argument, scientific knowledge, +historical pageantry, rushing emotion, written (need it be said) in that +adorned prose which is Olive Schreiner's characteristic style.... The +book ... is an epic."—Mr. <span class="smcap">J. Ramsay Macdonald</span> in <i>The Daily Chronicle</i>.</p> + +<p>"All the qualities which long ago won for Olive Schreiner the gratitude +and admiration of readers all over the globe are here in their old +strength. There is fierce satire; there is deep-souled eloquence. There +is the same quick reasoning, the same tenderness, the same poetic +insight into the puzzle of life.... The feelings which are behind the +various women's movements could not find clearer or more eloquent +expression than they do in this remarkable book."—<i>The Daily Mail.</i></p> + +<p>"It is one of those books which are sunrises, and give us spacious and +natural horizons. Like Mazzini's essays, it is logic touched with +emotion, politics on fire. One may begin to doubt the cause of woman's +rights when the opponents of sex equality produce an equally glowing +earnest and prophetic book."—<i>The Daily News.</i></p> + +<p class="bold">T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold2">BABY WELFARE</p> + +<p class="bold">A GUIDE TO ITS ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE</p> + +<p class="bold">By W. E. ROBINSON, M.D. <i>Assistant Physician and Pathologist to the +Infants' Hospital, London</i></p> + +<p class="bold">Demy 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. net</p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p>"We congratulate the author on his careful study of the healthy infant, +about whom it has too long been difficult to obtain exact +information."—<i>The Lancet.</i></p> + +<p>"A valuable addition to the literature dealing with the scientific +knowledge of infancy and early childhood.... The book starts with a +brief and easily comprehended exposition of physical characteristics, a +groundwork of great value to intelligent women who desire, from one +reason or another, to be self-reliant as far as possible where their +babies are concerned. A chapter devoted to 'The Healthy Infant' gives in +pleasingly lucid fashion a picture of what a baby should be doing at +each point of its development."—<i>The Queen.</i></p> + +<p>"This book deals fully and clearly with the physiology of the infant; +with dietetics, based on a study of human and cow's milk, as supplied to +it; with the effects of faulty upbringing, more especially of faulty +feeding; the signs, causes and treatment of diseased conditions, and so +on. It should be a valuable aid to the intelligent mother or +nurse."—<i>Nursing Notes.</i></p> + +<p class="bold">T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace London, W.C.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold2">WOMAN AND MARRIAGE</p> + +<p class="bold">A HANDBOOK</p> + +<p class="bold">By MARGARET STEPHENS</p> + +<p class="center">With a Preface by DR. <span class="smcap">Mary Scharlieb</span>, and an Introduction by Mrs. <span class="smcap">S. A. +Barnett</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Large crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. net</p> + +<p class="center"><i>SIXTH IMPRESSION</i></p> + +<p>The direct purpose of this book is to explain very simply something of +the structure and the use of parenthood, and to show the possibilities +which arise from it—in short, to help women, and men too—in the +understanding of themselves. It endeavours to increase intelligence on +the subject of child-life by letting a clear light shine on those +everyday matters of birth and life which are so often furtively wrapped +in a mysterious and wholly distorting gloom.</p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p>"'Woman and Marriage' is an outspoken book which should be carefully +read by those for whom it is written. It is not a book for boys and +girls; it is a physiological handbook, thoroughly well written, orderly, +wholesome and practical.... We commend this work to all who want a full +account in simple words of the physical facts of married life. All the +difficulties of the subject are handled fearlessly, gravely and +reverently in this book, and as it must be kept out of the reach of mere +curiosity, so it deserves thoughtful study by those of us whose lives it +touches."—<i>The Spectator.</i></p> + +<p>"If more such books were written, and more such knowledge disseminated, +it would be a good thing for the wives and mothers of the present +day."—<i>The Times.</i></p> + +<p class="bold">T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold2">IMPORTANT NOTICE.</p> + +<blockquote><p>All the works mentioned in this list may be purchased through any +bookseller. They are also obtainable at all Libraries.</p> + +<p>Any book-buyer wishing to see any of the books mentioned before +purchasing them may, on sending to Mr. Unwin the name of his local +bookseller, have the opportunity of so doing.</p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.,<br />1, ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON, W.C.2.</p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p class="bold">CONTENTS</p> + +<div class="block"> +<p>HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY <i>pages</i> 1 to 8<br /> +TRAVEL & DESCRIPTION <i>pages</i> 8 to 9<br /> +POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY & ECONOMICS <i>pages</i> 10 to 13<br /> +BELLES LETTRES <i>pages</i> 14 to 16<br /> +POETRY AND DRAMA <i>page</i> 17<br /> +MISCELLANEOUS <i>page</i> 18<br /> +FICTION <i>pages</i> 19 <i>to</i> 21<br /> +NEW EDITIONS AND IMPRESSIONS <i>pages</i> 22 to 27</p></div> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p class="bold">Life and Letters of Silvanus Phillips Thompson, F.R.S. By JANE S. +THOMPSON and HELEN G. THOMPSON. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920).</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>This is a straightforward and somewhat intimate account of the career of +a man of great and varied gifts. Born into the family of a simple Quaker +schoolmaster of York his extraordinary energy and devotion to science +carried him into the foremost ranks of physicists, an acknowledged +leader in electro-technology and optics. Both as popular lecturer and as +trainer of technical college students his skill was unrivalled, and +wheresoever he went his enthusiasm for men and things won him +friendships, alike in his own country and abroad. Many of the letters +describe experiences on his journeys, others adventures of the +antiquarian in the pursuit of sixteenth and seventeenth century +scientific literature, and yet others tell of battles for truth in some +field or other.</p> + +<p>The book contains appreciations of his works as original investigator, +teacher, writer, artist, and "prophet," and indirectly testifies to the +warmth of personal regard which the frank geniality of his nature won +for him in many spheres.</p> + +<p class="bold">All and Sundry: More Uncensored Celebrities. By E. T. RAYMOND, +Author of "Uncensored Celebrities." Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>Few books this year have attracted more attention or been more widely +read than Mr. E. T. Raymond's "Uncensored Celebrities," a work as +caustic as it was impartial. In his new work Mr. Raymond does not limit +himself to political personalities only, but includes figures in the +Church, such as the Bishop of London and Dean Inge; in literature, Mr. +G. K. Chesterton, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling; in +journalism, Mr. Harold Begbie, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and Mr. Leo Maxse; in +art and music, Mr. Frank Brangwyn and Sir Thomas Beecham. Mr. Raymond +includes also character sketches of President Wilson, M. Georges +Clemenceau, the Duke of Somerset, Viscount Chaplin, Viscount Esher, Sir +Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Ernle, Mr. Speaker, and many other prominent +people. Wider in range than "Uncensored Celebrities" and equally +brilliant, this work may be expected to appeal to even a larger public +than its remarkable predecessor.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Life of John Payne. By THOMAS WRIGHT, Author of "The Life of +William Cowper," etc. With 18 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">28s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>Few great authors appeal more to the imagination than John Payne, the +hero of "The John Payne Society," who shrank from the lime-light of +"interviewing." Recognised as a true poet by Swinburne, he was probably +the most skilful translator of the nineteenth century, for we owe to him +a version of Villon's poems which is itself a poetic work of consummate +art, the first complete translation of the "Arabian Nights," the first +complete verse rendering of Omar Khayyam's quatrains, to say nothing of +translations of "The Decameron," etc. Among his friends were Swinburne, +Sir Richard Burton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, French +authors such as Victor Hugo, Banville, and Mallarmé, and the artist who +ventured to depict "God with eyes turned inward upon His own glory." Mr. +Wright by an extraordinary exercise of tact and sympathy was able to +pass the barrier which shut Payne off from anybody who sought to know +the man behind the books. For twelve years before Payne's death in 1916 +he was his most intimate friend, and as, during all that time, he had in +view the writing of Payne's Life he lost next to none of his +opportunities for obtaining at first hand the facts and opinions needed +for his work. Moreover, Payne made him a present of a MS. autobiography +and supplied him with valuable material from his letter-files. Mr. +Wright was, in fact, Payne's Boswell, and no life which may be written +hereafter can have the weight and interest of this vivid book, much of +which gives us the sound of Payne's own voice.</p> + +<p class="bold">A History of Modern Colloquial English. By HENRY CECIL WYLD, B. +Litt. (Oxon.), Baines Professor of English Language and Philology +at the University of Liverpool. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>The book deals more particularly with the changes that have taken place +during the last five hundred years in the spoken forms of English. The +development of English pronunciation and the changes in grammatical +usage are dealt with in considerable detail, and there is a chapter on +idiomatic colloquialisms, modes of greeting, forms of address in +society, conventional and individual methods of beginning and ending +private letters, expletives, etc. The main part of the book is based +almost entirely upon new material collected from the prose and poetical +literature, and also from Letters, Diaries and Wills written during the +five centuries following the death of Chaucer. A sketch is given of the +chief peculiarities of the English dialects from about 1150, to the end +of the 14th century, and special chapters are devoted to a general +account of the languages of the 15th, 16th, and 17th and 18th centuries +respectively. Many questions of general interest are dealt with, such as +the rise of a common literary form of English, and its relation to the +various spoken dialects; the recognition of a standard form of spoken +English, and its variations from age to age, and among different social +classes. The various types of English are illustrated by copious +examples from the writings of all the periods under consideration. This +will be a work of much interest for the intelligent general reader as +well as for the scholar. Professor Wyld is the author of many well-known +and widely read books of which this ought to prove not the least popular.</p> + +<p class="bold">Zanzibar: Past and Present. By <span class="smcap">Major</span> FRANCIS B. PEARCE, C.M.G. +(British Resident in Zanzibar), With a Map and 32 pages +Illustrations. Super Royal 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">30s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>This important work deals with the past and present history of Zanzibar. +From the earliest times this island, owing to its commanding position +off the coast of Africa, controlled the great trade-routes which +traversed the Continent from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans, and it +has remained to the present day the Metropolis of the East African +Region. It has known many over-lords, and the author, who is His +Majesty's Representative in Zanzibar, traces the story of this romantic +island-kingdom down the centuries. The close association of this African +island with ancient and mediæval Arabia is demonstrated, and the advent +of the old Persian colonists to its shores explained. Coming to later +times such names as Vasco da Gama and Sir James Lancaster, that famous +Elizabethan sea-captain, are met with; until leaving beaten tracks, the +author introduces the reader to the hoary kingdom of Oman, whence came +those princes of the Arabian desert, who subdued to their sway the rich +spice-island of Zanzibar, and the adjacent territories of Central +Africa. Modern Zanzibar is fully dealt with, and the enlightened Prince +who occupies the throne of Zanzibar to-day is introduced to the reader +in a personal interview. The latter portion of the work is devoted to +descriptions of the ruined Arab and Persian stone-built towns—the very +names of which are now forgotten—which until cleared by the author, lay +mouldering in the forests of Zanzibar and Pemba. The text is elucidated +by a series of beautiful photographs and by specially prepared maps.</p> + +<p>This volume must be regarded as the standard work on the Sultanate of Zanzibar.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Canadians in France, 1915-1918 By <span class="smcap">Capt.</span> HARWOOD STEELE, M.C., +late Headquarters Staff, 2nd Canadian Division. With Maps. Demy 8vo. (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. NET.</p> + +<p>Captain Steele, who is already favourably known as the author of the +spirited volume of poems entitled "Cleared for Action," here recounts +the deeds of the famous force sent by Canada to take part in the Great +War. What St. Julien, Ypres, St. Eloi, the Somme, Passchaendaele, Lens, +Vimy, Amiens, Cambrai and Mons, 1918 mean in the glorious record of the +Allies will be fully understood by the reader of this book.</p> + +<p>This is the first complete record of the achievements of the Canadian +divisions to be published. Captain Steele served three years in France, +and participated in most of the important engagements in which the +Canadians took part.</p> + +<p class="bold">Drake, Nelson and Napoleon: Studies. By <span class="smcap">Sir</span> WALTER RUNCIMAN, Bart., +Author of "The Tragedy of St. Helena," etc. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">12s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>In this work Sir Walter Runciman deals first with Drake and what he +calls the Fleet Tradition, of which he regards Drake, the greatest +Elizabethan sailor, as the indubitable founder; next the author deals at +considerable length with Nelson, his relations with Lady Hamilton, and +the various heroic achievements which have immortalised his name. From +Nelson the author passes on to Napoleon, and shows how his career and +policy have had a vital relation to the World War. As himself a sailor +of the old wooden-ships period, Sir Walter is able to handle with +special knowledge and intimacy the technique of the seafaring exploits +of Nelson; and Sir Walter's analysis of the character of Nelson, a +combination of vanity, childishness, statesmanlike ability, and +incomparable seamanship and courage, is singularly well conceived.</p> + +<p class="bold">Bolingbroke and Walpole. By the Rt. Hon. J. M. ROBERTSON, Author of +"Shakespeare and Chapman," "The Economics of Progress," etc., etc. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">12s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Many years ago, in his "Introduction to English Politics" (recast as +"The Evolution of States"), Mr. Robertson proposed to continue that +survey in a series of studies of the leading English politicians, from +Bolingbroke to Gladstone. Taking up the long suspended plan, he has now +produced a volume on the two leading statesmen of an important period, +approaching its problems through their respective actions. The aim is to +present political history at once in its national and its personal +aspects, treating the personalities of politicians as important forces, +but studying at the same time the whole intellectual environment. A +special feature of the volume intended to be developed in those which +may follow is a long chapter in "The Social Evolution," setting forth +the nation's progress, from generation to generation, in commerce, +industry, morals, education, literature, art, science, and well-being.</p> + +<p class="bold">Seen from a Railway Platform. By WILLIAM VINCENT. Crown 8vo, cloth. +(Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">3s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Mr. Vincent must from his early years have cultivated his faculty of +observation, and he has a marvellous memory for what he has seen or +heard. His recollections start from the early 'sixties, when, as a boy, +he got a situation as bookstall clerk, from which position he rose to be +bookstall manager in various parts of the country. His experiences as +bookstall manager on a railway platform, with its continuously shifting +crowds and contacts with various idiosyncracies, are highly interesting, +but he recalls many events that have happened in his time away from the +bookstall, the notorious Heenan fight, the remarkable exhibition of the +"Great Eastern" and others. He gives curious accounts of the early +railway carriages, the treatment of the third-class passenger and much +other lore concerning railway travel in the now distant days. +Altogether, Mr. Vincent has produced a valuable volume of reminiscences.</p> + +<p class="bold">Life of Liza Lehmann. By Herself. With a Coloured Frontispiece and +16 pp. Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Shortly before her death, Madame Liza Lehmann completed a volume of +Reminiscences. A charming and gifted woman her life was spent in +artistic and literary surroundings. She was the daughter of an artist, +Rudolf Lehmann, the wife of another, Herbert Bedford, one of her sisters +being Mrs. Barry Pain, and her cousins including Muriel Ménie Dowie +("The Girl in the Carpathians") and Mr. R. C. Lehmann, of "Punch." Her +memories include a dinner with Verdi, conversations with Jenny Lind, +anecdotes of Edward VII, Brahms, Mme. Clara Butt, and other celebrities. +As the composer of "A Persian Garden," she became world-renowned, and +her self-revelation is not less interesting than her tit-bits about other artists.</p> + +<p class="bold">Men and Manner in Parliament. By <span class="smcap">Sir</span> HENRY LUCY. With a +Biographical Note and about 32 Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>As "Member for the Chiltern Hundreds" Sir Henry Lucy published an +interesting volume on the Parliament of 1874. The book has been long out +of print, but it again came "on the tapis" as it seemed to the publisher +so thoroughly worth bringing to life again. It is recorded in the +authorised Life of President Wilson that study of the articles on their +original publication in the "Gentleman's Magazine" directed his career +into the field of politics. He wrote to the author apropos this book: "I +shall always think of you as one of my instructors." The book is +essentially a connected series of character-sketches written in the +well-known witty manner of the famous <i>Punch</i> diarist. Gladstone, +"Dizzy," Dilke, Bright, Auberon Herbert, Roebuck, Sir Stafford +Northcote, etc., are some of the leading figures, and lesser-known +M.P.'s resume a vigorous vitality, thanks to Sir Henry's magic pen.</p> + +<p class="bold">Anglo-American Relations, 1861-1865. By BROUGHAM VILLIERS & W. H. +CHESSON. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>This book deals with the causes of friction and misunderstandings +between Great Britain and the United States during the trying years of +the Civil War. The reasons which, for a time, gave prominence to the +Southern sympathies of the British ruling classes, while rendering +almost inarticulate the far deeper feeling for the Cause of Union and +Emancipation among the masses of our people, are examined and explained. +Such dramatic incidents as the Trent affair, the launching of the +"Alabama," and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation are dealt with from +the point of view of their effect upon opinion in this country as +illustrated by contemporary correspondence and literature. Interesting +facts, now almost forgotten, of the movements inaugurated by the English +friends of the North to explain to our people the true issues at stake +in the conflict are reproduced, and an attempt is made to estimate the +influence of the controversies of the time on the subsequent relations +of the English-speaking peoples.</p> + +<p>Mr. W. H. Chesson, grandson of George Thompson, the anti-slavery orator, +who was William Lloyd Garrison's bosom friend, contributes a chapter +which attempts to convey an impression of the influence of Transatlantic +problems upon English oratory and the writings of public men.</p> + +<p class="bold">Woodrow Wilson: An interpretation. By A. MAURICE LOW, Author of +"The American People: A Study in National Psychology," with a +Portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>Mr. A. Maurice Low has long been recognised as, next to Lord Bryce, the +most acute, discriminating, and well-informed of the English critics of +America. His long residence in that country and his exhaustive study of +certain phases of American life have given him a background for the +interpretation of their political life.</p> + +<p>Mr. Low has written this interpretation of President Wilson "because the +man to-day who occupies the largest place in the world's thought is +almost as little understood by his own people as he is by the peoples of +other countries, and still remains an enigma," but his point of view as +an interpreter is that of a contemporary foreign observer who, while +having the benefit of long residence in the United States and an +intimate knowledge of its people and politics, may justly claim a +detached point of view and to be uninfluenced by personal or political +considerations.</p> + +<p class="bold">Peace-Making at Paris. By SISLEY HUDDLESTON. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Mr. Huddleston has been one of the most independent commentators of the +proceedings at the Paris Conference, with a keen sense of the realities, +and his despatches have, in the phrase of one of our best-known authors, +made him "easily the best" of the Paris correspondents. This book aims +at giving a broad account of the seven months which followed the +Armistice; but the writer has a point of view and has not told the story +of these memorable days objectively, such as might have been done by any +compiler with the aid of the newspapers. A resident in Paris, he has +lived close to the heart of the Conference, and throws a vivid light on +certain events which it is of the utmost importance to understand. Thus +the famous "moderation interview," which was followed by the telegram of +protest from 370 M.P.'s and the return to Westminster of the Prime +Minister, who made the most sensational speech of his career, came from +his pen. The attitude of Mr. Wilson is specially studied; his apotheosis +and the waning of his star and his apparent lapse from "Wilsonianism" is +explained. There is shown the dramatic clash of ideas. Special attention +is devoted to the strange and changing policy in Russia, and some +extremely curious episodes are revealed. This is not merely a timely +publication, but the volume is likely to preserve for many years its +place as the most illuminating piece of work about the two hundred odd +days in Paris. It is certain to raise many controversies, and it is one +of those books which it is indispensable to read.</p> + +<p class="bold">Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman. Edited with an +Introduction by THOMAS B. HARNED (One of Walt Whitman's Literary Executors). Cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. Net. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Anne Gilchrist, a charming woman of rare literary culture and +intelligence, who was born in 1828 and died in 1885, was Whitman's first +notable female eulogist in England, her essay on him being a valuable +piece of pioneer-criticism. Admiration in her case became identified +with love; in the 'seventies she wrote Whitman ardent love letters, the +contents of which would have surprised any literary man less acquainted +than he was to heroic candour. Whitman was not insensible to the +affectionate feelings of Mrs. Gilchrist (her husband died in 1861), and +his share of their correspondence is of considerable interest to +students of "Leaves of Grass."</p> + +<p class="bold">Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) +Division. By RAYMOND E. PRIESTLEY, Author of "Antarctic Adventure." +Illustrated. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. Net. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>Written by a member of the Division for his comrades and their relatives +and friends, the book is first of all intended to place on record for +the North Midland people the deeds of their men during the weeks which +crowned four years of steadfast endeavour during the Great War.</p> + +<p>It has, however, a wider significance, and thus deserves a wider +circulation. The North Midland county regiments were composed mainly of +miners, machinists, operatives and agriculturists: men without military +traditions or militant desires. The last men to take to war without an +all-compelling reason.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Transvaal Surrounded. By W. J. LEYDS, Litt.D., Author of "The +First Annexation of the Transvaal." With Maps. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>This work is a continuation of "The First Annexation of the Transvaal" +by the same author, and like the previous volume is based chiefly on +British documents, Blue Books, and other official records. References +are given to these, and the reader can form his own opinion from them. +To find his way through the overwhelming mass of documents is only +possible for the man who for long years drew up and signed most of the +papers issued by his Government. For the official records accessible to +the historian are incomplete; they must be supplemented by the archives +of the Republic. Only when this has been done—as it has now by one who +knows—will the history of the relations between England and the Boers +be freed from falsehood and slander.</p> + +<p class="bold">Modern Japan: Its Political, Military and Industrial Development. +By WILLIAM MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN, Ph.D., M.R.A.D., F.R.A.I., M.J.S., +etc. Lecturer on Japanese, School of Oriental Studies (Unv. of +Lond.), Priest of the Nishi, Hongwaryi, Kyoto, Japan, (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>Unlike the book of casual impressions by the tourist or globe-trotter or +a tedious work of reference for the library, Mr. McGovern's book on +"Modern Japan," gives for the average educated man an interesting +description of the evolution of Japan as a modern world Power, and +describes the gradual triumphs over innumerable obstacles which she +accomplished. The book relates how the Restoration of 1867 was carried +out by a small coterie of ex-Samurai, in whose hands, or in that of +their successors, political power has ever since remained. We see +portrayed the perfecting of the Bureaucratic machine, the general, +political and institutional history, the stimulation of militarism and +Imperialism, and centralised industry. It is a vivid account of the real +Japan of to-day, and of the process by which it has become so. Though +comprehensible to the non-technical reader, yet the most careful student +of Far Eastern affairs will find much of value in the acute analysis of +the Japanese nation. The author is one who has resided for years in +Japan, was largely educated there, who was in the Japanese Government +service, and who, by his fluent knowledge of the language, was in +intimate contact with all the leading statesmen of to-day. Furthermore +his position as priest of the great Buddhist temple of Kyoto brought him +in touch with phases of Japanese life most unusual for a European. While +neither pro nor anti-Japanese, he has delineated the extraordinary +efficiency of the machine of State (so largely modelled on Germany), +while, at the same time, he has pointed out certain dangers inherent in +its autocratic bureaucracy.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold"><i>TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION</i></p> + +<p class="bold">Byways in Southern Tuscany. By KATHERINE HOOKER. With 60 full-page +Illustrations, besides sketches in the text and a removable +Frontispiece, the end papers being a coloured map of Southern +Tuscany by Porter Garnett. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">18s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>In addition to its absorbing historic interest this book has the claim +of recording the impressions of a vivacious and observant lady who +describes what she has seen in modern Tuscany from San Galgano to Sorano.</p> + +<p>Those who like books which conjure up beautiful historic places and +fascinating romances of real life will be sure to enjoy this handsome +volume. Among the stories related by the author is the harrowing one of +Nello Pannocchieschi told by Dante, the scene of which is the ill-famed +Maremma, mentioned in a proverb as a district where "You grow rich in a +year, but die in six months."</p> + +<p class="bold">The Romantic Roussillon: In the French Pyrenees. By ISABEL SAVORY. +With Illustrations by <span class="smcap">M. Landseer MacKenzie</span>. Super Royal 8vo.</p> + +<p class="center">25s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>This book is written for a double purpose: to reveal to lovers of +sculpture the beauties of certain Romanesque work hitherto hidden in +remote corners of the Pyrenees, and to suggest to travellers the +attractions of a little country formerly known as the Roussillon, which +now forms part of the Pyrénées Orientales.</p> + +<p>Well off the beaten track, though within easy reach of London, it should +appeal to lovers of fine scenery and to students of Romanesque and +mediæval architecture.</p> + +<p>Miss Isabel Savory, author of "The Tail of the Peacock" and "A +Sportswoman in India," has explored every inch of it. Each chapter is a +witness to the writer's research in the Library at Perpignan, coupled +with a graphic description of the country from an artistic point of +view, and lively portraits of the Catalam as he exists to-day.</p> + +<p>Miss Muriel Landseer MacKenzie, sculptor and great-niece of Sir Edwin +Landseer, gives a series of pencil drawings of which the collotype +process makes faithful reproductions. Apart from their own merit, they +represent subjects of which apparently no records exist, details of +Byzantine and Romanesque architecture discovered in neglected abbeys, +old churches, and ruins in the hills.</p> + +<p>At the end of the book there is a map and a few practical notes for +travellers which indicate that prices are moderate, and that there are +good roads for motorists, though the country is pre-eminently adapted +for those who like the informality of the knapsack and the mountain path.</p> + +<p class="bold">In the Wilds of South America: Six Years of Exploration in +Colombia, Venezuela, British Guiana, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, +Paraguay, and Brazil. By LEO E. MILLER, of the American Museum of +Natural History. First Lieutenant in the United States Aviation +Corps. With 48 Full-page Illustrations and with maps. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>This volume represents a series of almost continuous explorations hardly +ever paralleled in the huge areas traversed. The author is a +distinguished field naturalist—one of those who accompanied Colonel +Roosevelt on his famous South American expedition—and his first object +in his wanderings over 150,000 miles of territory was the observation of +wild life; but hardly second was that of exploration. The result is a +wonderfully informative, impressive, and often thrilling narrative in +which savage peoples and all but unknown animals largely figure, which +forms an infinitely readable book and one of rare value for geographers, +naturalists, and other scientific men.</p> + +<p class="bold">Millions from Waste. By Frederick A. TALBOT, Author of "The Oil +Conquest of the World," "All About Inventions and Discoveries," +"Moving Pictures; How they are Made and Worked," "Practical +Cinematography," "The Building of a Great Canadian Railway," etc., +etc., etc. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>In this book, Mr. Frederick A. Talbot, whose many volumes dealing with +invention, science, and industry in a popular manner have achieved such +a successful vogue, introduces us to what may very appropriately be +described as a fairyland of successful endeavour in a little known +field. The present work does not aim at being a treatise upon the whole +subject, because it is far too vast to be covered within the covers of a +single volume. He takes us, as it were, into the less frequented, yet +more readily accessible by-ways, where exceptional opportunities occur +for one and all sections of the community to contribute to one of the +greatest economic issues of the day.</p> + +<p>Every industry, every home, contributes to the waste problem; each +incurs a certain proportion of residue which it cannot use. This +circumstance, combined with the knowledge that it is our duty to +discover a commercial use for such by-products, has been responsible for +many happy stories of success achieved during voyages of discovery which +the author duly records.</p> + +<p>Mr. Talbot does not confine himself to a mere recital of the so-called +waste products. He describes how their recovery and exploitations may be +profitably conducted, so that the present volume is of decided practical +value. He treats of the fertility of thought displayed by the inventor, +chemist, and engineer in the evolution of simple ways and means to turn +despised materials into indispensable articles of commerce. Many of the +appliances are of a striking and highly ingenious character and cannot +fail to excite interest.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Nations and the League. By Various Writers. With an +Introductory Chapter by Sir GEORGE PAISH. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>This important work presents the views of eminent men of different +nationalities upon one of the most burning questions of the day. French +views are supplied by M. Léon Bourgeois, President of the Association +Française pour la Société des Nations, and the famous French barrister, +M. André Mater, whose historical account of experiments already made in +International Leagues, is of high interest. The President of Columbia +University, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, supplies an essay on Patriotism +in which this noble quality is rightly adjusted to a larger idea of +human brotherhood than has formerly been connected with it. Sir Sidney +Low presents a British view, and Messrs. Louis Strauss and A. Heringa +contribute Dutch and Belgian views respectively. Mr. Johan Castberg, +President of the Norwegian Odelsting, and the celebrated explorer, Dr. +Nansen, write for Norway, and the Germans have a spokesman in Professor +Lujo Brentano, of Munich. Sir George Paish brings his long experience +and expert knowledge to bear on the economic questions that confront the League.</p> + +<p class="bold">Local Development Law: A Survey of the Powers of Local Authorities +in Regard to Housing, Roads, Buildings, Lands and Town Planning. By +H. C. DOWDALL, Barrister-at-Law, Lecturer on Town Planning Law in +the University of Liverpool and Legal Member of the Town Planning Institute. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d</p> + +<p>This book, which incorporates the important legislation just passed on +the subject, has been written at the request of architects and surveyors +as well as lawyers, council clerks, and councillors, who have complained +that they have been unable to find the kind of information which it +supplies in a brief, comprehensive, and intelligible form.</p> + +<p>For the law of housing, roads, parks, open spaces, allotments, public +buildings, town planning, private Bill procedure, compensation, and +kindred matters bearing on the public control of land and the use of +land for public purposes is contained in many large volumes through +which even a skilled lawyer finds his way with difficulty. Mr. Dowdall's +work deals with all these subjects systematically and fully, almost in +the form of a code, but it is held together and enlivened by a certain +measure of historical and illustrative matter, and avoids unnecessary +detail by giving references through which the fullest information is +made readily accessible to those who desire it, but perhaps do not know +where to look for it.</p> + +<p>The author is of opinion that local authorities are often imperfectly +aware of the full range and scope of the powers which they enjoy, or of +the manner in which they might be co-ordinated and brought to bear upon +what is, after all, the single and indivisible problem of town planning +and town improvement.</p> + +<p class="bold">My Italian Year. Observations and Reflections in Italy, 1917-18. By +JOSEPH COLLINS. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage. 6d.</p> + +<p>In the latter part of 1917 the author was assigned to military duty in +Italy. The nature of his duties brought him in close contact with +Italians in every walk of life and every part of the kingdom. Italy was +not previously unknown to him, as he had made already frequent visits. +He presents a study of the Italian temperament, describes the different +social classes, gives a study of the governmental machine, describes +various sights and monuments (not at all in the tourist manner), and +altogether writes a very original book. The author has been trained by a +life of observation, examination and deduction, as the work itself +clearly shows. He writes with lucidity and charm, and though, as he +says, he has been since childhood a lover of Italy, he writes with great +impartiality of certain features of the Italian people. Despite the fact +that the war enters the book to a certain extent, its main interest is +by no means the war, but the fascinating study it presents of the +Italian character, ways and manners, and of Italy generally.</p> + +<p class="bold">Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. By W. TROTTER. New Library +Edition. Revised and Enlarged. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p class="center">PRESS OPINIONS OF THE FIRST EDITION.</p> + +<p>"An exceedingly original essay on individual and social +psychology."—<span class="smcap">The New Statesman.</span></p> + +<p>"It is a balanced and inspiring study of one of the prime factors of +human advance."—<span class="smcap">The Times.</span></p> + +<p>"The main purpose of Mr. Trotter's book, which may be commended both for +its logic and its circumspection, is to suggest that the science of +psychology is not a mass of dreary and indefinite generalities, but if +studied in relation to other branches of biology, a guide in the actual +affairs of life, enabling the human mind to foretell the course of human +action."—<span class="smcap">Daily Telegraph.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Boy-Work: Exploitation or Training? By the Rev. SPENCER J. GIBB, +Author of "The Problem of Boy-Work," etc. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Mr. Spencer Gibb Is well known as a writer on the social and economic +problems which arise from the employment of boys. His new book, is a +systematic consideration of these problems, as the conclusion of the War +has left them, and of the remedies which are being proposed. It seeks to +co-ordinate these reforms so as to lead to a solution of the problem. +But the book is of wider than merely economic and industrial interest. +The problem as Mr. Gibb sees it is not only one of boy-work, but of the +<i>boy at work</i>. He therefore examines, with close analysis and +sympathetic knowledge, the psychology and physiology of the boy at the +age of entering upon work and in the succeeding years, and traces the +reaction of working conditions, not only upon his economic future, but +upon his character.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Land and the Soldier. By FREDERICK C. HOWE, Author of "The Only +Possible Peace," etc. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>The author believes that this is the moment for extensive social and +agricultural reconstruction: the large bodies of returning soldiers on +the outlook for work gives an unparalleled opportunity for experiment +toward this; and the war experience of the Government gained in +financing and organising war industries and communities could be applied +with great advantage and effect. The plan is based on the organisation +of farm colonies somewhat after the Danish models, not on reclaimed or +distant land, but upon land never properly cultivated, often near the +large cities, and aims to connect with the communities thus formed the +social advantages of, for instance, the garden villages of England. In +fact, the author advances a broad and thoughtful programme, looking +toward an extensive agricultural and social organisation, and based upon +a long and careful study of experiments in this line in other times and +countries as well as here.</p> + +<p>It is a book that no one concerned with reconstruction can afford to neglect.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Only Possible Peace. By FREDERICK C. HOWE, Author of "Privilege +and Democracy," "The City," "The Hope of Democracy," etc. Large Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Under modern industrial conditions it is conflicts springing from +economic forces that are mainly responsible for war forces that seek for +control of other people's lands, territories, trade resources, or the +land and water ways which control such economic opportunities. Mr. +Howe's work, keeping these essential points in view, is an attempt to +show how to anticipate and avoid war rather than how to provide means +for the arbitration of disputes after they have arisen. Mr. Howe, a +widely known student of economics and international questions, has here +produced a book of the highest importance.</p> + +<p class="bold">Nationalities in Hungary. By <span class="smcap">ANDRÉ de HEVESY</span>. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>This is a study of the many and various nationalities of which Hungary +is composed, of their respective characters, and of the problems which +confront these nationalities. The author advocates a sort of United +States of Hungary, giving each nationality the fullest liberty of +internal self-determination. Included in the work is an ethnographical +map of Hungary which is of great assistance to the reader.</p> + +<p class="bold">The New America. By FRANK DILNOT, Author of "Lloyd George: the Man +and His Story," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p>This volume presents in a series of short, vivacious sketches the +impressions made on a trained observer from England of life in the +United States during 1917 and 1918. Manners, outlook and temperament are +dealt with appreciatively, and there is a good-humored analysis of how +Americans eat, drink and amuse themselves. The chapters include "The +Women of America," "American Hustle and Humour," "President Wilson at +Close Quarters." There is an intimate character-sketch at first-hand of +General Rush C. Hawkins, who raised and commanded the New York Zouaves +in the Civil War, with a narrative of some of his conversations with Lincoln.</p> + +<p class="bold">Home Rule Through Federal Devolution. By FREDERICK W. PIM. With an +Introduction by <span class="smcap">Frederic Harrison</span>. Paper covers.</p> + +<p class="center">1s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 2d.</p> + +<p>The author assumes that there is a general consensus that extensive +modifications of our existing legislative and administrative systems are +urgently required, and that all indications seem to show that the +present time offers an exceptional opportunity for dealing with them. He +offers federal devolution as the solution of the Irish question. Mr. +Frederic Harrison makes a valuable contribution to the pamphlet.</p> + +<p class="bold">Bye Paths in Curio Collecting. By ARTHUR HAYDEN, Author of "Chats +on Old Clocks," "Chats on Old Silver," etc. With a Frontispiece and +72 Full Page Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>The broad way of collecting is crowded with bargain-hunters. Competitors +are keen and prices are high. All real collectors love peregrinations +into the unknown, and have often stumbled upon quaint and long-forgotten +objects which were once in everyday use, but are now relegated to the +attic or the lumber-room. In furniture there are many objects not deemed +desirable by the fashionable collector; in porcelain and earthenware +there is still much that has not reached the noisy mart to be chaffered +over as being rare. There are precious and beautiful things +comparatively unsought and unconsidered. Modernity has forgotten many +by-gone necessities. The tinder-box with its endless varieties has not +escaped studious attention but it has not come into the forefront of +collecting as has the ornate and bejewelled snuff-box with its more +highly attractive appearance. Old Playing-Cards, Old Fans, Silhouettes, +Patch-Boxes, Snuffers, Old Keys, Old Chests and Coffers, Earrings, Brass +Table-Bells, Carved Watch-Stands, Curious Teapots, Tea-Caddies and +Caddy-Spoons, Tobacco-Boxes, Tobacco-Stoppers, have their appeal to +collectors who have specialised and have become experts—that is, have +left the highway of collecting and pursued a delightful search in the +bye-paths. This volume deals with these, among other subjects.</p> + +<p>The author has drawn upon his notebooks for twenty-five years, and has +opened to the reader a wonderful storehouse of miscellaneous information +illuminated with a gallery of photographic reproductions. As a pleasant +guide in the bye-paths of collecting, Mr. Hayden will fascinate those +real collectors who love collecting for its own sake.</p> + +<p class="bold">Shakespeare and the Welsh. By FREDERICK J. HARRIES. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">15s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>The author has dealt with his highly interesting subject in a manner +both critical and attractive. Not only has he examined Shakespeare's +knowledge of Welsh characteristics through a study of his Welsh +characters, but he has also collected much valuable information +regarding the Celtic sources from which Shakespeare drew his materials. +The opportunities which probably presented themselves to the poet for +studying Welshmen at first hand are suggested, and an endeavour is made +to arrive at an explanation of Shakespeare's singularly sympathetic +attitude toward the Welsh nation. What will strike the general reader +most, perhaps, is the variety of topics which arise around Shakespeare's +Celtic allusions, and a subject of great interest to the Welsh reader +will be the claim that Shakespeare was descended through his paternal +grandmother from the old Welsh kings. The claim is not a mere +speculative one, for a pedigree is given. The work is unique in many +respects, and should find a welcome not merely among Welshmen, but among +all Shakespeare students.</p> + +<p class="bold">My Commonplace Book. J.T. HACKETT. Dem 8vo, Cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">12s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>The title of this bock, it is needless to say, does not mean that the +contents are commonplace. It is a very rich collection of choice +extracts from the verse and prose of famous writers, and writers who +deserve to be famous. Swinburne is particularly well represented, as is +seldom the case in anthologies. The arrangement of the book and the +accuracy of the matter have been the subject of careful consideration.</p> + +<p class="bold">Some Greek Masterpieces in Dramatic and Bucolic Poetry Thought into +English Verse. By WILLIAM STEBBING, M.A., Hon. Fellow of Worcester +College, Oxford, and Fellow of King's College, London.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>The author, who is a scholar, presents in this volume an English verse +anthology of two departments in Greek poetry. Among the passages and +poems which he has rendered are the charge against Olympus by +Prometheus, the "Hymn of the Furies," Iphigenia's appeals to her father +and mother, "Hue and Cry after Cupid," etc. To convey the poet's thought +has been the translator's purpose, and his versions are particularly +intended for the reader who has classical tastes without having had a +thorough classical education.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Legend of Roncevaux. Adapted from "La Chanson de Roland," by +SUSANNA H. ULOTH. With four illustrations by John Littlejohns, +R.B.A. Small 4to, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>Of all the legends circulating round the name of Charlemagne none is +more famous and popular than that of the Paladins Roland and Oliver. The +poem known as "La Chanson de Roland" is the earliest epic in the French +language, dating in all probability from a period not long after the +conquest of England by William of Normandy and before the first Crusade. +Mrs. Uloth has written a metrical and rhymed version of the most +important part of the "Chanson," namely, the story of the treachery +which led to the battle of Roncevaux, and the thrilling series of +encounters which terminated in the heroic death of Oliver and the lonely +and mystical death of Roland. There are not many rivals in the field, +and her work should, therefore, command a good deal of interest. It may +be added that Mr. John Littlejohns, who illustrates the work, has won a +considerable reputation for originality and charm in drawing and painting.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Collected Stories of Standish O'Grady. With an Introduction by +Æ. First 3 volumes now issued. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">4s. 6d. NET EACH Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<div class="block"> +<p class="bold"><span class="smcap">The Cuculain Cycle.</span></p> + +<p>(1) <b>The Coming of Cuculain.</b><br /> +(2) <b>In the Gates of the North.</b><br /> +(3) <b>The Triumph and Passing of Cuculain.</b></p></div> + +<p>These three books contain the essential and most beautiful portions of +Mr. Standish O'Grady's "Bardic History of Ireland," the work which +proved to be the starting-point of Ireland's Literary Renaissance. That +work has long been unobtainable, and is now offered for the first time +in a convenient and popular form, which will enable every reader to make +the acquaintance of the most striking figure in contemporary Anglo-Irish +literature. The debt which a generation of brilliant poets and +dramatists owe to the author of these Cuculain stories has well been +described by one of his disciples, who wrote:—</p> + +<p>"In the 'Bardic History of Ireland' he opened, with a heroic gesture, +the doors which revealed to us in Ireland the giant lord of the Red +Branch Knights and the Fianna. Though a prose writer, he may be called +the last of the bards—a true comrade of Homer."</p> + +<p class="bold">A NEW VOLUME OF THE TALBOT LITERARY STUDIES.</p> + +<p class="bold">Irish Books and Irish People. By STEPHEN GWYNN, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth</p> + +<p class="center">4s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Whatever Captain Gwynn writes is worth reading. He has a knowledge of +the literary value of Irish books, and the complex personality of Irish +possessed by few present-day writers, and he imparts his knowledge with +that peculiar detached conviction of the hurler on the ditch. Whether +one accepts or rejects the opinions expressed, they are always worthy of +consideration, while the fine choice of language and beautiful literary +style will well repay a second reading. Capt. Gwynn deals with such +subjects as Novels of Irish Life, A Century of Irish Humour, Literature +Among the Illiterates, Irish Education and Irish Character, Yesterday in Ireland, etc., etc.</p> + +<p class="bold">To Book Lovers.</p> + +<p>If you would like to receive future issues of this catalogue you are +invited to send a post card to that effect to T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd. 1, +Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.2.</p> + +<p class="center"><i>Please write your name and full address clearly.</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold">Swords and Flutes. Poems. By WILLIAM KEAN SEYMOUR. Crown 8vo, +cloth. 4s. net.</p> + +<p class="center">4s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 3d.</p> + +<p class="center">WHAT THE CRITICS SAY OF MR. SEYMOUR'S WORK.</p> + +<p>"We recognise not so much audacity of experiment as a sound loyalty to +the best standards of the past, and an almost acute appreciation of +beauty both of vision and form.... Mr. Seymour's poetry is full of rich +and multi-coloured pageantry, a sheer delight to the eye and +imagination."—<span class="smcap">The Bookman.</span></p> + +<p>"Mr. Seymour's verse is full of a haunting, fugitive sense of beauty, +and owes allegiance to a school of lyric craftsmanship which is rapidly +falling out of date. But it is something more than this. Mr. Seymour +believes that poetry should not only beautify, but interpret +life."—<span class="smcap">Daily Telegraph.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">"The Measure" and "Down Stream." Two Plays. By GRAHAM RAWSON, +Author of "Stroke of Marbot," etc. Crown 8vo. Paper Cover.</p> + +<p class="center">4s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 3d.</p> + +<p>"The Measure" is an amusing comedy of contemporary life, in a prologue +and two acts, dealing with the adventures of two bachelors who become +entangled in a family containing three daughters.</p> + +<p>"Down Stream" is a one-act play whose action takes place in a +supposititious country in South-Eastern Europe, where the King traps one +of his Ministers neatly, and then deals with him in an unexpected fashion.</p> + +<p>Of Mr. Rawson's previous volume ("The Stroke of Marbot," Fisher Unwin, +1917) the <i>Times</i> said: "They are effective plays which should act well, +and the stage directions are so given as to make them quite good reading for the study."</p> + +<p class="bold">LATEST ADDITION TO THE TALBOT PRESS BOOKLETS</p> + +<p class="bold">The Spoiled Buddha. An Eastern Play in two Acts. By HELEN WADDELL. +Paper Covers.</p> + +<p class="center">1s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 3d.</p> + +<p>The play is about the Buddha, in the days before he became a god; and +about Binzuru, who was his favourite disciple, and who might have become +even as the Buddha, only that he saw a woman passing by, and desired her +beauty and so fell from grace.</p> + +<p class="bold">Songs of the Island Queen. By PEADAR MacTOMAIS. Paper Covers.</p> + +<p class="center">1s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 3d.</p> + +<div class="block"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>"Those are songs of a dreamer of Eire,</div> +<div>A scion of a race that is old</div> +<div class="i1">—Of a race that is strong,</div> +<div>A people begotten of freemen,</div> +<div class="i1">Rocked on the cradle of song."</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="bold">West African Forests and Forestry. By A. HAROLD UNWIN, D.Oec., +M.Can.S.F.E. Author of "Future Forest Trees." With upwards of 150 +Illustrations. Cloth. (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">£3 3s. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>The author, late Senior Conservator of Forestry in Nigeria, having spent +eleven years in West Africa in forestry work, has had exceptional +experience. He starts by dealing in general with West African forests, +then successively in geographical order, with the trees and forests of +Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory and Gold Coasts, Togo, Nigeria, +and the British Sphere of the Cameroons. He supplies notes on timber +trees both for export and local use, and gives throughout the botanical +and vernacular names of indigenous trees. Dr. Unwin has also chapters on +the oil beans, seeds and nuts of the West African forests; on the oil +palm and palm kernel industry, and the question of the forest in +relation to agriculture. The work is an elaborate one, marked by +singular thoroughness in its execution.</p> + +<p class="bold">Collected Fruits of Occult Teaching. By A. P. SINNETT. Demy 8vo, +cloth. (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">15s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage. 6d.</p> + +<p>Mr. Sinnett, who is one of the leading lights of Theosophy and one of +the ablest exponents of reincarnation and the science of the evolution +of races, embodies in this work the deeply interesting information +which, as an occultist, he states he has derived about the human soul, +its hereafter and other matters.</p> + +<p>Much of the work is due to the teaching of the occult master with whom +Mr. Sinnett claims to be in touch. It cannot be doubted that even the +most sceptical reader will be thrilled and impressed by more than one of +the chapters of this remarkable and fascinating book.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Religion of a Doctor. By THOMAS BODLEY SCOTT, M.D., Author of +"The Road to a Healthy Old Age." Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p>Dr. Scott, who is well known for his skill as a physician, offers here a +sort of modern companion to the famous "Religio Medici." The essays in +this interesting volume enable the reader to view the spiritual side of +a contemplative man of science of our day.</p> + +<p class="bold">Revelations of Monte Carlo Roulette. By J. COUSINS LAWRENCE. Crown +8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">3s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 4d.</p> + +<p>Mr. Lawrence has had an extensive experience in studying roulette +playing at Monte Carlo, and the result is an accumulation of evidence +supporting his accusation of unfair control on the part of the bank in +the notorious Casino. The book is a full and descriptive account of the +methods of croupiers in dealing with players, of the observation +maintained by the officials over both croupiers and the players. The +work is full of typical incidents, tragic and amusing, observed on the spot.</p> + +<p class="bold">Blind Alley. By W. L. GEORGE. Author of "The Second Blooming," etc. +Crown 8vo. (Second Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">9s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"A powerful piece of work, and is at once a protest against the +exploitation of youth by age and an attempted demonstration that war and +all its activities are spiritual blind alleys from which we merely have +to grope back to the position from which we started."—<span class="smcap">Pall Mall +Gazette.</span></p> + +<p>"It is an indictment in detail, a display of follies and festivities, a +protest against the past stifling the future, a stirring of muddy +depths."—<span class="smcap">Manchester Guardian.</span></p> + +<p>"It strikes us being so far its author's high watermark."—<span class="smcap">Daily +Chronicle.</span></p> + +<p>"We ate tempted to say that 'Blind Alley' is the greatest character +study of the influence of the war we have read."—<span class="smcap">Ladies' Field.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Pink Roses. By GILBERT CANNAN. Author of "Mendel," "The Stucco +House," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"Character and atmosphere are the qualities of Mr. Gilbert Cannan's new +novel, and they revel through its pages like a riot of pink roses.... +Ruth Hobday symbolises the new generation, who have learnt in suffering +what they will realise in joy. Mr. Cannan has done nothing better than +the portrait of this splendid type of young womanhood. Indeed, we are +inclined to doubt if he has ever done anything as good."—<span class="smcap">Daily +Telegraph.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Candidate's Progress. By J. A. FARRER. Crown 8vo, cloth, with a +picture wrapper.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>This is a jeu d'esprit, a political skit which pokes fun pretty evenly +at all parties, especially at so-called democratic representation as +exemplified by a parliamentary election conducted largely by the cynical +wiles of the election agent.</p> + +<p>The Candidate (a Conservative), who tells the story in the first person, +meets all the local elite and has patiently to listen to crusted +Toryism; he gets heavy orthodox support from the Bishop and the Church, +and is involved in expensive experiences in competing in philanthropy +with the Liberal candidate. He finds it necessary to take elocution +lessons; eventually, after incredible exertions, he gets in by five +votes—but this is only part of an extravaganza which has the great +merit of being founded largely on fact and the observation of a +political expert who is also a master of irony.</p> + +<p class="bold">Pirates of the Spring: A Novel. By FORREST REID. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>Mr. Forrest Reid is one of those careful craftsmen who are not convinced +of the absolute necessity of producing one or two full-length novels +every year. Mr. Reid has always an interesting story to tell, and he is +a master of style, tender and sensitive, yet powerfully effective. +"Pirates of the Spring" is a fine example of Mr. Reid's work which will +certainly enhance his literary reputation amongst discriminating readers +who appreciate a good story well told.</p> + +<p class="bold">By Strange Paths: A Novel. By ANNIE M. P. SMITHSON. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">6s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>Miss Smithson's former novel, "Her Irish Heritage," achieved a success +seldom accorded to first ventures, and "By Strange Paths" is certain to +be equally popular. Miss Smithson is a nurse by profession, and her +pictures of the unseen side of hospital life are drawn with the sure +touch of knowledge and experience. Her characters are familiar because +they are real, and the human notes of gladness and sadness run through +the story as "a melody in tune."</p> + +<p class="bold">Tales That Were Told. By SEUMAS <span class="smcap">MacMANUS</span>. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">6s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>These are stories that are truly different real Irish folk tales, with +the scent of the turf smoke still on them, and qualities of humanness, +fancy and humour which make them of irresistible appeal. A delightful +book for young and old, written with that touch of genius which brought +a poor Donegal schoolmaster into the front rank of Irish authors.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Whale and the Grasshopper. By SEUMAS J. O'BRIEN. With +frontispiece and cover design by <span class="smcap">John Keatings</span>, A.R.H.A. Crown 8vo, +cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">3s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p>A curious title of a curious book of curious stories that a curious +reader will simply revel in.</p> + +<p>Mr. Seumas O'Brien is one of the younger school of Irish writers who has +taken American readers by storm, and this unique collection of short +stories comes to us by way of Boston and Dublin. Regarding the stories, +the "Boston Transcript" says:—</p> + +<p>"One new short stories writer has appeared this year whose published +stories open a new field to fiction and have a human richness of feeling +and imagination rare in our sophisticated literature. In Seumas O'Brien +I believe that America has found a new humorist of popular sympathies, a +rare observer and philosopher whose very absurdities have a persuasive +philosophy of their own."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold"><i>FIRST POPULAR EDITION.</i></p> + +<p class="bold2">GREATHEART</p> + +<p class="bold">By ETHEL M. DELL.</p> + +<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth. With a Striking Picture Wrapper, printed in three +colours. (Fifth Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">3s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"We think Miss Dell's many admirers will consider her present novel the +best she has written."—<span class="smcap">Pall Mall Gazette.</span></p> + +<p>"Miss Dell's huge circle of admirers will revel in this latest example +of her skill in incident and plot. It goes with an unfaltering swing +from start to finish."—<span class="smcap">Sheffield Telegraph.</span></p> + +<p>"The novel is full of tense situations and highly wrought emotions. +Whoever begins it will not put it down until it is finished."—<span class="smcap">The +Scotsman.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold">A NEW POPULAR EDITION OF THE SEQUEL TO "THE SHULAMITE."</p> + +<p class="bold2">THE WOMAN DEBORAH</p> + +<p class="bold">By ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW.</p> + +<p class="center">New Impression, Re-set. Crown 8vo, cloth, with a Striking Picture +Wrapper, printed in three colours.</p> + +<p class="center">3s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Alice and Claude Askew's South African Novel, "The Shulamite," is one of +the most popular of successful novels. The sequel, "The Woman +Deborah"—an equally striking piece of work—has long been unobtainable. +This new impression will find many new readers for both books.</p> + +<p class="bold">Town Planning in Practice: An Introduction to the Art of Designing +Cities and Suburbs. By RAYMOND UNWIN. With many Illustrations, Maps +and Plans. Crown 4to, cloth. (Sixth Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">31s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>"Few men in England have had so much experience of town-planning as Mr. +Unwin has had.... His is the first English handbook on the subject.... +It is not too technical for the general reader, and it deserves a wide +public."—<span class="smcap">Manchester Guardian.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Evolution of Modern Germany. New and revised edition. By W. +HARBUTT DAWSON. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"A book so well known needs no recommendation, and those who have the +earlier edition will assuredly desire to get the new one. It is +essential as a work of reference."—<span class="smcap">The New World.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Richard Cobden: The International Man. By J. A. HOBSON. With a +Photogravure Frontispiece, and 8 other Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hobson has produced one of those rare books which it is difficult +to read through, because they are too interesting. It continually lures +one into reflection; one puts it down on one's knees and wanders away +straight out of the text down some pleasant (and sometimes unpleasant) +path of speculation.... Almost every page testifies to Cobden's +soundness of judgment in the sphere of international policy."—<span class="smcap">New +Statesman.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Tropic Days. By E. J. BANFIELD, Author of "The Confessions of a +Beachcombe," etc. With Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">16s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p>"The plant and bird life of a tiny Pacific island are described with +care and charm, and in a number of revealing chapters the characters and +habits of the very primitive natives who are Mr. Banfield's neighbours +are explained. To the naturalist the abundant illustrations of rare +growths will be a treasure."—<span class="smcap">The Manchester Guardian.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Shakespeare's Workmanship. By SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, M.A., +Litt.D., King Edward VII. Professor of English Literature in the +University of Cambridge. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Third Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">15s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's analysis of Shakespeare's craftsmanship goes +direct to the principles of dramatic construction; and if ever the +poetic drama seriously revives in England it is more than likely that +this book will be found to have had a hand in the revival."—<span class="smcap">Westminster +Gazette.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Soul of Denmark, By SHAW DESMOND. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Third Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">15s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"This book is the result of nearly four years' residence in Denmark; and +conveys a full and intimate picture of the Dane and his life as he +impressed the author."—<span class="smcap">The Times.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Old and New Masters. By Robert Lynd. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">12s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"A book of essays full of charm, insight and sympathy, and of the +transmitted enthusiasm that is the basis of all good criticism."—<span class="smcap">Daily +News.</span></p> + +<p>"This is a fascinating volume, and has the right quality of literary +criticism."—<span class="smcap">Sunday Times.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Through Lapland with Skis and Reindeer. By FRANK HEDGES BUTLER, +F.R.G.S. With 4 Maps and 65 Illustrations Demy 8vo, cloth. (Third Impression, Re-set.)</p> + +<p class="center">12s. 6d. NET. EACH. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"It is at once a fascinating story of travel, a practical guide book, +and a storehouse of interesting information on the manners, customs, and +folklore of a little-known people."—<span class="smcap">World's Work.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Uncensored Celebrities. By E.T. RAYMOND Large Crown 8vo, cloth, +(Fourth Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"Some exceedingly frank portraits of public men are contained in a book +with the curious title of 'Uncensored Celebrities,' which Messrs. Fisher +Unwin publish. The author, Mr. E. T. Raymond, is mercilessly careful to +explain in his preface that the work is 'not meant for the +hero-worshipper."—<span class="smcap">Evening Standard.</span></p> + +<p>"No book of personal studies of recent years has given so much food for +thought, and in spite of its frankness it is always fair. Mr. Raymond +has succeeded in revealing men without taking sides.... Here we have +clear vision, sane opinion, and a very useful sense of humour, not +always free from acid."—<span class="smcap">National News.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">A Short History of France. By MARY DUCLAUX. With 4 Maps. Demy 8vo, +cloth. (Fourth Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"Mme. Duclaux is a true literary artist; and no one, we venture to say, +even among the writers of her adopted nation, the home of brilliant +literature, was better fitted for the exact task she has here set +herself and so charmingly fulfilled.... One of the chief merits of the +book, which makes it valuable for all persons, and they are legion in +these days, who wish really to understand France, is Mme. Duclaux's +penetrating knowledge of the French character."—<span class="smcap">The Spectator.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Wonders of Instinct: Chapters in the Psychology of Insects. By +J. H. FABRE. Translated by <span class="smcap">Alexander Teixera de Mattos</span> and <span class="smcap">Bernard +Miall</span>. With 16 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Third Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage. 6d.</p> + +<p>"Nothing has ever been written in the literature of natural history more +fascinating than the essays of J. H. Fabre."—<span class="smcap">Daily News.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Six Centuries of Work and Wages: The History of English Labour. By +JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"Professor Thorold Rogers' works on political economy possess a +permanent value as a storehouse of data on that branch of the science in +which he specialised, and it may almost be said, made his +own."—<span class="smcap">Westminster Review.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Poems. By W. B. YEATS. With a Photogravure Frontispiece. Demy 8vo, +cloth. (Eighth Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Yeats is the only one among the younger English poets who has the +whole poetical temperament.... It is this continuously poetical quality +of mind that seems to me to distinguish Mr. Yeats from the many men of +talent, and to place him among the few men of genius."—Mr. Arthur +Symons in the <span class="smcap">Saturday Review</span>.</p> + +<p class="bold">The Economic Interpretation of History. By JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS. +Special Library Edition. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. (Eighth +Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"Professor Thorold Rogers clothed the bare bones of political economy +with the living tissue of life when he fascinated his generation with +the 'Economic Interpretation of History' ... an unrivalled survey of the +inter-action of economic motive, social growth and political +history."—<span class="smcap">Christian World.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">How France is Governed. By RAYMOND POINCARE. Large Crown 8vo, +cloth. (Fifth Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"A most interesting and valuable account of the whole framework of +French administration ... packed with information not easily obtained +elsewhere, and conveyed in language of remarkable and attractive +simplicity."—<span class="smcap">The Spectator.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Life of Girolamo Savonarola. By PROFESSOR PASQUALE VILLARI. +Special Library Edition. Illustrated. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. (Eleventh Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"The most interesting religious biography that we know of in modern +times."—<span class="smcap">Spectator.</span></p> + +<p>"A book which is not likely to be forgotten."—<span class="smcap">Athenæum.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Rural Housing. By WILLIAM G. SAVAGE, M.D. (Lond.), B.Sc., D.P.H. +New edition, with a new chapter on the After War Problems. With 32 +Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"This is a practical book, by a man who has had good opportunities of +mastering his subject. He begins with a sketch of the Law; goes on to +discuss the housing question as it stands now; then gives detailed +advice on the construction of new cottages, and ends with an essay on +the economics of the housing problem."—<span class="smcap">The Economist.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Woman and Marriage. A Handbook. By MARGARET STEPHENS. (Fifth +Impression.) Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">6s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Spectator</span> says "Woman and Marriage is an outspoken book which should +be carefully read by those for whom it is written. It is not a book for +boys and girls; it is a physiological handbook, thoroughly well written, +orderly, wholesome and practical.... We commend this work to all who +want a full account in simple words of the physical facts of married +life. All the difficulties of the subject are handled fearlessly, +gravely and reverently in this book, and as it must be kept out of the +reach of mere curiosity, so it deserves thoughtful study by those of us +whose lives it touches."</p> + +<p class="bold">Lures of Life. By JOSEPH LUCAS, Author of "Our Villa in Italy." +Crown 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression, Re-set.)</p> + +<p class="center">6s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"A stylist and moralist whose 'lures' range from religion and the magic +of words to old furniture and plate, nice people and the new +democracy."—<span class="smcap">Book Monthly.</span></p> + +<p>"There is an epicurian touch about the book whose author loves ease and +leisure, old furniture and Italian villas and gardens."—<span class="smcap">The Friend.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Our Villa in Italy. By JOSEPH LUCAS (Second Edition.) Illustrated. +Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">5s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Lucas has written a book which will delight every English lover of +Italy.... Many an agreeable story do we find in these simple, +well-written pages so full of the lure of Florence, and, indeed, of all +Italy."—<span class="smcap">The Guardian.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Road to a Healthy Old Age. By T. BODLEY SCOTT, M.R.C.S. (Eng.). +Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth. (Third Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">5s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p>"In this book an attempt is made to demonstrate both to the medical +profession and the laity that premature decay, physical and mental, may +within limits be prevented.... We have perused the book with pleasure, +and cordially recommend it to our readers."—<span class="smcap">Medical Times.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Works of Augustus Jessopp, D.D. Uniform Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">4s. 6d. NET. each Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>"We doubt if such an account of English village life, its bad and good +sides, its specialities, its humours, and the odd, knarled characters it +produces has ever been published.... Full of thought, but fuller yet of +a subtle humorousness which is not Addison's or Lamb's, but something as +separate and almost as attractive."—<span class="smcap">The Spectator.</span></p> + +<div class="block"> +<p class="center">List of Volumes:</p> + +<p>ARCADY: FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.<br /> +BEFORE THE GREAT PILLAGE.<br /> +THE COMING OF THE FRIARS.<br /> +RANDOM ROAMING, AND OTHER PAPERS.<br /> +STUDIES BY A RECLUSE.<br /> +THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON.</p></div> + +<p class="bold">Dreams, By OLIVE SCHREINER, Author of "Woman and Labour," "The +Story of an African Farm," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">3s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p>"Written in exquisite prose they have the essential qualities of poetry, +and are, indeed, poems in prose."—<span class="smcap">Athenæum.</span></p> + +<p>"The book is distinctly one of genius."—<span class="smcap">British Weekly.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">"Stops," or, How to Punctuate, a Practical Handbook for Writers and +Students. By PAUL ALLARDYCE. (Eighteenth Impression.) Cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">2s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 3d.</p> + +<p>"A boon to authors, journalists, printers, teachers, and all whose +occupations bring them into contact with printing and +writing."—<span class="smcap">Pitman's Phonetic Journal.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Irish Song Book. With Original Irish Airs. Edited by ALFRED +PERCEVAL GRAVES. Paper covers. (Thirteenth Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">2s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 3d.</p> + +<p>"A collection of national airs, untrimmed, unadorned, unaccompanied, +fresh with the fragrant lyrical poesie of a people who honoured their +bards as they honoured their kings."—<span class="smcap">Cambridge Magazine.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">The Life of Lamartine. By H. REMSEN WHITEHOUSE. With many +Illustrations. Two volumes. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">42s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 8d.</p> + +<p class="bold">Vagabonding Down the Andes. By HARRY A. FRANCK, Author of "A +Vagabond Journey Around the World," etc. With a Map and 176 +Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Second Impres.)</p> + +<p class="center">25s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.</p> + +<p class="bold">Public Speaking and Debate. A Manual for Advocates and Agitators. +By GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. Crown 8vo, cloth. (Fifteenth Impression.)</p> + +<p class="center">2s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 3d.</p> + +<p>"It is eminently readable; full of good advice to public speakers and +debaters, and rich in capital stories."—<span class="smcap">The New Age.</span></p> + +<p>"To the aspiring young orator this is a most practical and informing +work."—<span class="smcap">Reynold's Newspaper.</span></p> + +<p class="bold"><i>WESSELY'S DICTIONARIES.</i> Pocket Size (6¼ by 4¼ inches). Cloth, +4s. net each.</p> + +<p class="center">4s. 0d. NET. EACH. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Wessely's Dictionaries are not only convenient in size, low in price, +and thoroughly up-to-date, but also remarkably complete. They are not +mere dictionaries of technical terms, or of conversational phrases, but +combine the advantages of both; and they also contain useful lists of +geographical and Christian names which differ according to the +languages, and tables showing the conjugation of irregular verbs. The +type is very clear, and in all respects the dictionaries are admirably +adapted to the needs both of students and of travellers.</p> + +<div class="block"> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">List of Volumes.</span></p> + +<p>English-French and French-English Dictionary.<br /> +English-German and German-English Dictionary.<br /> +English-Italian and Italian-English Dictionary.<br /> +English-Spanish and Spanish-English Dictionary.<br /> +English-Swedish and Swedish-English Dictionary.<br /> +Latin-English and English-Latin Dictionary.</p></div> + +<p class="bold">Spanish America: Its Romance, Reality and Future. By C. R. ENOCK, +Author of "The Andes and the Amazon," "Peru," "Mexico," "Ecuador." +Illustrated and with Map. 2 vols. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)</p> + +<p class="center">30s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage. 9d.</p> + +<p>Starting with the various States of Central America, Mr. Enock then +describes ancient and modern Mexico, then takes the reader successively +along the Pacific Coast, the Cordillera of the Andes, enters the land of +the Spanish Main, conducts the reader along the Amazon Valley, gives a +special chapter to Brazil and another to the River Plate and Pampas. +Thus all the States of Central and South America are covered. The work +is topographical, descriptive, and historical; it describes the people +and the cities, the flora and fauna, the varied resources of South +America, its trade, railways, its characteristics generally, and +suggests the possible future of this vast, and, as yet, it may be almost +said, unexplored region with its infinitude of opportunities for +enterprise. Mr. Enock has written several volumes in the "South American +Series"; he is one of the best-known and most authoritative writers on +South America. Here he has written a volume which is not only most +valuably informative, but in such a manner as to form entertaining +reading for all classes of readers.</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>THE SOUTH AMERICAN SERIES.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">15s. 0d. NET. EACH Inland Postage. 6d.</p> + +<p>1. <b>CHILE.</b> By G. F. Scott Elliott, F.R.G.S. (5th Impression.)</p> + +<p>2. <b>PERU.</b> By C. Reginald Enock, F.R.G.S. (4th Impression.)</p> + +<p>3. <b>MEXICO.</b> By C. Reginald Enock. F.R.G.S. (5th Impression.)</p> + +<p>4. <b>ARGENTINA.</b> By W. A. Hirst. (5th Impression.)</p> + +<p>5. <b>BRAZIL.</b> By Pierre Denis. (3rd Impression.)</p> + +<p>6. <b>URUGUAY.</b> By W. H. Koebel. (3rd Impression.)</p> + +<p>7. <b>GUIANA: British, French and Dutch.</b> By James Rodway.</p> + +<p>8. <b>VENEZUELA.</b> By Leonard V. Dalton, B.Sc. (3rd Impression.)</p> + +<p>9. <b>LATIN AMERICA: Its Rise and Progress.</b> By F. Garcia Calderon. With a +Preface by Raymond Poincaré, President of France. (5th Impression.)</p> + +<p>10. <b>COLOMBIA.</b> By Phanor J. Eder, A.B., LL.B. (3rd Impression.)</p> + +<p>11. <b>ECUADOR.</b> By C. Reginald Enock. F.R.G.S. (2nd Impression.)</p> + +<p>12. <b>BOLIVIA.</b> By Paul Wallé.</p> + +<p>13. <b>PARAGUAY.</b> By W. H. Koebel. (2nd Impression.)</p> + +<p>14. <b>CENTRAL AMERICA.</b> By W. H. Koebel.</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>THE STORY OF THE NATIONS.</i></p> + +<p class="center">With Maps and many other Illustrations. Large crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">New and Revised Edition</span>.</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p class="bold">Japan. By DAVID MURRAY, Ph.D., LL.D. with a new chapter on Japan as +a Great Power, by JOSEPH LONGFORD, B.A., Emeritus Professor of +Japanese, King's College, London, and 35 Illustrations and Maps.</p> + +<blockquote><p>Edition<br /> +<br /> +9th 1. Rome.<br /> +8th 2. The Jews.<br /> +9th 3. Germany.<br /> +7th 4. Carthage.<br /> +8th 5. Alexander's Empire.<br /> +9th 6. The Moors in Spain.<br /> +10th 7. Ancient Egypt.<br /> +7th 8. Hungary.<br /> +6th 9. The Saracens.<br /> +6th 10. Ireland.<br /> +7th 11. Chaldea.<br /> +4th 12. The Goths.<br /> +6th 13. Assyria.<br /> +5th 14. Turkey.<br /> +5th 15. Holland.<br /> +6th 16. Mediæval France.<br /> +4th 17. Persia.<br /> +4th 18. Phœnicia.<br /> +4th 19. Media.<br /> +3rd 20. The Hansa Towns.<br /> +6th 21. Early Britain.<br /> +4th 22. The Barbary Corsairs.<br /> +6th 23. Russia.<br /> +4th 24. The Jews under the Romans.<br /> +5th 25. Scotland.<br /> +3rd 26. Switzerland.<br /> +3rd 27. Mexico.<br /> +3rd 28. Portugal.<br /> +3rd 29. The Normans.<br /> +3rd 30. The Byzantine Empire.<br /> +3rd 31. Sicily: Phœnician, Greek and Roman.<br /> +2nd 32. The Tuscan Republic.<br /> +3rd 33. Poland.<br /> +3rd 34. Parthia.<br /> +5th 35. The Australian Commonwealth.<br /> +3rd 36. Spain.<br /> +6th 37. Japan.<br /> +8th 38. South Africa.<br /> +5th 39. Venice.<br /> +3rd 40. The Crusades.<br /> +3rd 41. Vedic India.<br /> +3rd 42. The West Indies and the Spanish Main.<br /> +2nd 43. Bohemia.<br /> +3rd 44. The Balkans.<br /> +3rd 45. Canada.<br /> +4th 46. British India.<br /> +2nd 47. Modern France.<br /> +2nd 48. The Franks.<br /> +2nd 49. Austria.<br /> +2nd 50. Modern England before the Reform Bill.<br /> +3rd 51. China.<br /> +3rd 52. Modern England from the Reform Bill to the Death of Queen Victoria.<br /> +2nd 53. Modern Spain.<br /> +2nd 54. Modern Italy.<br /> +2nd 55. Norway.<br /> +4th 56. Wales.<br /> +2nd 57. Mediæval Rome.<br /> +2nd 58. The Papal Monarchy.<br /> +4th 59. Mediæval India under Mohammedan Rule.<br /> +1st 60. Parliamentary England.<br /> +3rd 61. Buddhist India.<br /> +2nd 62. Mediæval England.<br /> +1st 63. The Coming of Parliament.<br /> +2nd 64. The Story of Greece from the Earliest Times to <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 14.<br /> +2nd 65. The Roman Empire.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">66. Denmark Sweden.</span></p></blockquote> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold"><i>THE "CHATS" SERIES.</i><br /><span class="smcap">Practical Guides for Collectors,</span><br /> With +Frontispieces and many Illustrations.<br /> Large crown 8vo, cloth. <span class="smcap">New Volume.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Chats on Royal Copenhagen Porcelain: Its History and Development +from the 18th Century to the Present Day. By ARTHUR HAYDEN, Author +of "Chats on English Earthenware," etc. With 56 Illustrations. +Large crown 8vo, cloth.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>The above volume has been condensed from the author's edition deluxe, +published a few years ago, concerning which the "Pall Mall Gazette" +said: "No book on ceramics has been awaited with so much interest by +collectors as Mr. Arthur Hayden's work on 'Royal Copenhagen Porcelain.' +Hayden has handled this eventful history with the skill of the practised +writer, the enthusiasm of the collector, and the method of the curator." +In presenting it in a cheaper edition, although, naturally, many of the +illustrations have been omitted, there is remaining a gallery of +examples richly illuminating the subject. In the letterpress nothing has +been omitted which is of importance. The full tables of marks which +appeared in the first edition are here reproduced. There is no other +volume on the subject, and, therefore, to all who are interested in +Copenhagen porcelain, now considered to be the leading factory in +Europe, this volume is indispensable.</p> + +<p>An additional chapter deals with Copenhagen Faience, which has qualities +of its own appealing to connoisseurs.</p> + +<p class="bold">NEW IMPRESSIONS IN PREPARATION.</p> + +<p class="center">10s. 6d. NET EACH. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<blockquote><p>Chats on English China. By <span class="smcap">Arthur Hayden</span>. (6th Impression.)<br /> +Chats on Old Silver. By <span class="smcap">Arthur Hayden</span>. (2nd Impression.)<br /> +Chats on Old Prints. By <span class="smcap">Arthur Hayden</span>. (4th Impression.)<br /> +Chats on Costume. By <span class="smcap">G. Woolliscroft Rhead</span>. (2nd Impression.)<br /> +Chats on Pewter. By <span class="smcap">H. J. L. J. Massé</span>, M.A. (2nd Impression.)<br /> +Chats on Old Lace and Needlework. By Mrs. <span class="smcap">Lowes</span>. (3rd Impression.)<br /> +Chats on Postage Stamps. By <span class="smcap">Fred. J. Melville</span>.<br /> +Chats on Old Coins. By <span class="smcap">Fred. W. Burgess</span>. (2nd Impression.)<br /> +Chats on Oriental China. By <span class="smcap">J. F. Blacker</span>. (3rd Impression.)<br /> +Chats on English Earthenware. By <span class="smcap">Arthur Hayden</span>. (3rd Impression.)</p> + +<p class="bold"><span class="smcap">Other Volumes</span></p> + +<p class="center">6s. 0d. NET. EACH. Inland Postage 6d.</p> + +<p>Chats on Old Furniture. By <span class="smcap">Arthur Hayden</span>. (5th Impression.)<br /> +Chats on Old Miniatures. By <span class="smcap">J. J. Foster</span>, F.S.A.<br /> +Chats on Autographs. By <span class="smcap">A. M. Broadley</span>.<br /> +Chats on Old Jewellery and Trinkets. By <span class="smcap">MacIver Percival</span>.<br /> +Chats on Cottage and Farmhouse Furniture. By <span class="smcap">Arthur Hayden</span>.<br /> +Chats on Old Copper and Brass. By <span class="smcap">Fred. W. Burgess</span>.<br /> +Chats on Household Curios. By <span class="smcap">Fred. W. Burgess</span>.<br /> +Chats on Japanese Prints. By <span class="smcap">A. Davison Ficke</span>.<br /> +Chats on Military Curios. By <span class="smcap">Stanley C. Johnson</span>, M.A.<br /> +Chats On Old Clocks. By <span class="smcap">Arthur Hayden</span>.</p></blockquote> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold"><i>THE MERMAID SERIES.</i></p> + +<p class="center">The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists, Literal Reproductions of the Old Text.</p> + +<p class="center">With Photogravure Frontispieces. Thin Paper Edition.</p> + +<p class="center">5s. 0d. NET EACH. CLOTH</p> + +<p class="center">7s. 6d. NET EACH LEATHER. Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Beaumont.</span> <b>The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher.</b> Introduction and +Notes by J. St. LOE STRACHEY. 2 vols.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Chapman.</span> <b>The Plays of George Chapman.</b> Edited by William Lyon +Phelps, Instructor in English Literature at Yale College.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Congreve.</span> <b>The Complete Plays of William Congreve.</b> Edited by Alex C. +Ewald.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dekker.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Thomas Dekker.</b> Notes by Ernest Rhys.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dryden.</span> <b>The Best Plays of John Dryden.</b> Edited by George Saintsbury. +2 vols.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Farquhar.</span> <b>The Best Plays of George Farquhar.</b> Edited, and with an +Introduction, by William Archer.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Fletcher.</span> See Beaumont.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Ford.</span> <b>The Best Plays of John Ford.</b> Edited by Havelock Ellis.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Greene.</span> <b>The Complete Plays of Robert Greene.</b> Edited with +Introduction and Notes by Thomas H. Dickinson.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Heywood.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Thomas Heywood.</b> Edited by A. W. Verity. +With Introduction by J. A. Symonds.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Jonson.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Ben Jonson.</b> Edited, with Introduction and +Notes, by Brindsley Nicholson and C. H. Herford. 3 vols.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Marlowe.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Christopher Marlowe.</b> Edited, with +Critical Memoir and Notes, by Havelock Ellis; and containing a +General Introduction to the Series by John Addington Symonds.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Massinger.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Phillip Massinger.</b> With Critical and +Biographical Essay and Notes by Arthur Symons. 2 vols.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Middleton.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Thomas Middleton.</b> With an Introduction +by Algernon Charles Swinburne. 2 vols.</p> + +<p><b>Nero, and Other Plays.</b> Edited by H. P. Horne, Arthur Symons, A. W. +Verity, and H. Ellis.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Otway.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Thomas Otway.</b> Introduction and Notes by +the Hon. Roden Noel.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Shadwell.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Thomas Shadwell.</b> Edited by George +Saintsbury.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Shirley.</span> <b>The Best Plays of James Shirley.</b> With Introduction by +Edmund Gosse.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Steele.</span> <b>The Complete Plays of Richard Steele.</b> Edited, with +Introduction and Notes, by G. A. Aitken.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Tourneur.</span> See Webster.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Vanburgh.</span> <b>The Select Plays of Sir John Vanburgh.</b> Edited, with an +Introduction and Notes, by A. E. H. Swain.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Webster.</span> <b>The Best Plays of Webster and Tourneur.</b> With an +Introduction and Notes by John Addington Symonds.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Wycherley.</span> <b>The Complete Plays of William Wycherley.</b> Edited, with an +Introduction and Notes, by W. C. Ward.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold"><i>WORKS BY ROBERT W. SERVICE.</i></p> + +<p class="center">CLOTH 4s. 6d. NET EACH. Inland Postage 4d.</p> + +<p class="bold">Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. 4th impression.</p> + +<p>"It is the great merit of Mr. Service's verses that they are literally +alive with the stress and joy and agony and hardship that make up life +out in the battle zone. He has never written better than in this book, +and that is saying a great deal."—<span class="smcap">Bookman.</span></p> + +<p class="bold">Songs of a Sourdough. 33rd Impression.</p> + +<p class="bold">Ballads of a Cheechako. 12th Impression.</p> + +<p class="bold">Rhymes of a Rolling Stone. 11th Impression.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Robert Service is, we suppose, one of the most popular verse +writers in the world. His swinging measures, his robust ballads of the +outposts, his joy of living, have fairly caught the ear of his +countrymen."—<span class="smcap">The Spectator.</span></p> + +<p>"Of the Canadian disciples of Kipling, by far the best is R. W. Service. +His 'Songs of a Sourdough' have run through many editions. Much of his +verse has a touch of real originality, conveying as it does a just +impression of the something evil and askew in the strange, uncouth +wilderness of the High North."—<span class="smcap">The Times.</span></p> + +<p class="bold"><i>THE IRISH ARTEMAS.</i></p> + +<p class="bold">The Book of the Land of Ire: Being a record of those things that +were done by the Men of Ire when the Men of Hun made war on the +earth. By ALPHEO that is an humble disciple and brother scribe of +one Artemas. Post 8vo. With specially designed cover.</p> + +<p class="center">1s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 2d.</p> + +<p>Alpheo is no respecter of persons, and his keen shafts of wit fly north +and south, east and west, to find their mark in the camp of the +Carsonite, in the inner room of the Sinn Feiner, in the Wait and See +Cabinet of Downing Street, and in the secret places of Tammany.</p> + +<div class="block"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>"Yet malice never was his aim,</div> +<div>He lashed the vice but spared the name.</div> +<div>No individual could resent</div> +<div>Where thousands equally were meant."</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>A book of genuine wit and humour which is sure to be as much appreciated +as "The Book of Artemas."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold">PRESENTATION EDITION</p> + +<p class="bold">of the Novels of</p> + +<p class="bold2">ETHEL M. DELL</p> + +<p class="center"><i>Seven volumes, Crown 8vo, bound uniform in Cloth gilt, complete in a +handsome box.</i></p> + +<p class="center">25s. 0d. NET. The set.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>NOTE.</i>—The volumes are also included in <span class="smcap">The Adelphi Library</span> of +Standard Novels, and sold separately, bound in cloth at 3/6 net each.</p></blockquote> + +<p class="center"><i>List of Novels included in this Presentation Edition.</i></p> + +<blockquote><p>The Way of an Eagle.<br /> +The Knave of Diamonds.<br /> +The Rocks of Valpré<br /> +The Swindler, and other stories.<br /> +The Keeper of the Door.<br /> +The Safety Curtain, and other stories.<br /> +Greatheart.</p></blockquote> + +<p class="center"><i>IMPORTANT.</i>—It is advisable to place your order for this +presentation edition without delay, otherwise delivery cannot be guaranteed.</p> + +<p class="bold"><span class="smcap">T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1, Adelphi Terrace, London.</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold">UNWIN'S POCKET NOVELS.</p> + +<p class="center"><i>Neatly Bound</i> 2/- <i>net</i> <i>Picture Wrapper</i></p> + +<blockquote><p><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">1 THE WAY OF AN EAGLE By <span class="smcap">Ethel M. Dell</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">5 THE KNAVE OF DIAMONDS By <span class="smcap">Ethel M. Dell</span></span><br /> +16 MY LADY OF THE CHIMNEY CORNER By <span class="smcap">Alexander Irvine</span><br /> +22 RICROFT OF WITHENS By <span class="smcap">Halliwell Sutcliffe</span><br /> +23 THE VULTURE'S PREY By <span class="smcap">H. De Vere Stacpoole</span><br /> +31 ARUNDEL By <span class="smcap">E. F. Benson</span><br /> +33 EXILE By <span class="smcap">Dolf Wyllarde</span><br /> +35 CARNIVAL (abridged edition) By <span class="smcap">Compton Mackenzie</span><br /> +44 GUY AND PAULINE By <span class="smcap">Compton Mackenzie</span><br /> +45 THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT By <span class="smcap">Compton Mackenzie</span><br /> +46 THROUGH SORROWS GATES By <span class="smcap">Halliwell Sutcliffe</span><br /> +47 SHAMELESS WAYNE By <span class="smcap">Halliwell Sutcliffe</span></p> + +<p class="center">1/9 <i>net</i></p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">2 M'GLUSKY THE REFORMER By <span class="smcap">A. G. Hales</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">3 THE TRAIL OF '98 By <span class="smcap">Robert W. Service</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">4 ANN VERONICA By <span class="smcap">H. G. Wells</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">6 THE BEETLE By <span class="smcap">Richard Marsh</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">7 ALMAYER'S FOLLY By <span class="smcap">Joseph Conrad</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">8 THE SHULAMITE By <span class="smcap">Alice & Claude Askew</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">9 NEW CHRONICLES OF DON Q. By <span class="smcap">K. & Hesketh Prichard</span></span><br /> +11 THE CAMERA FIEND By <span class="smcap">E. W. Hornung</span><br /> +12 MONTE CARLO By <span class="smcap">Mrs. De Vere Stacpoole</span><br /> +13 CALLED BACK By <span class="smcap">Hugh Conway</span><br /> +14 THE STICKIT MINISTER By <span class="smcap">S. R. Crockett</span><br /> +15 THE CRIMSON AZALEAS By <span class="smcap">H. De Vere Stacpoole</span><br /> +17 PATSY By <span class="smcap">H. De Vere Stacpoole</span><br /> +19 BY REEF AND PALM By <span class="smcap">Louis Becke</span><br /> +21 UNCANNY TALES By <span class="smcap">F. Marion Crawford</span><br /> +24 THE PRETENDER By <span class="smcap">Robert W. Service</span><br /> +25 ME. A Book of Remembrance <span class="smcap">Anonymous</span><br /> +26 GARRYOWEN By <span class="smcap">H. De Vere Stacpoole</span><br /> +27 THE LADY KILLER By <span class="smcap">H. De Vere Stacpoole</span><br /> +28 AS IN A LOOKING GLASS By <span class="smcap">F. C. Philips</span><br /> +29 THE VICTORIANS By <span class="smcap">Netta Syrett</span><br /> +32 THE ROD OF JUSTICE By <span class="smcap">Alice & Claude Askew</span><br /> +34 THE CHRONICLES OF DON Q. By <span class="smcap">K. & Hesketh Prichard</span></p></blockquote> + +<p class="bold">UNWIN'S POCKET NOVELS.</p> + +<p class="center"><i>Neatly Bound</i> 1/6 <i>net.</i> <i>Picture Wrapper.</i></p> + +<blockquote><p>10 THE CANON IN RESIDENCE By <span class="smcap">Victor L. Whitechurch</span><br /> +18 THE INDISCRETION OF THE DUCHESS By <span class="smcap">Anthony Hope</span><br /> +20 QUEEN SHEBA'S RING By <span class="smcap">H. Rider Haggard</span><br /> +36 THE SWINDLER, and other stories By <span class="smcap">Ethel M. Dell</span><br /> +37 THE SAFETY CURTAIN, and other stories By <span class="smcap">Ethel M. Dell</span><br /> +38 DON Q's LOVE STORY By <span class="smcap">K. & Hesketh Prichard</span><br /> +39 LADY MARY OF THE DARK HOUSE By Mrs. <span class="smcap">C. N. Williamson</span><br /> +40 THE KNIGHT ERRANT and other stories By <span class="smcap">Ethel M. Dell</span><br /> +41 THE ELEVENTH HOUR, and other stories By <span class="smcap">Ethel M. Dell</span><br /> +42 GOD'S CLAY By <span class="smcap">Alice & Claude Askew</span><br /> +43 THE SUNSHINE SETTLERS By <span class="smcap">Crosbie Garstin</span></p></blockquote> + +<hr /> + +<p class="bold">BAEDEKER GUIDE BOOKS</p> + +<p class="center">(List of Volumes in English.)</p> + +<p class="center"><i>Published at NET Prices.</i></p> + +<p><b>Austria-Hungary</b>, including <i>Dalmatia</i> and +<i>Bosnia</i>. With Excursions to <i>Cetinje</i>, +<i>Belgrade</i> and <i>Bucharest</i>. With 71 Maps +and 77 Plans and 2 Panoramas. Eleventh +edition. Revised and augmented. 1911. Net <b>13s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<i>The Eastern Alps</i>, including the Bavarian +Highlands, Tyrol, Salzburg, Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia and +Carniola. With 73 Maps, 16 Plans, and 11 Panoramas. Twelfth edition. Revised +and augmented. 1911. Net <b>14s.</b></p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p><b>Belgium and Holland</b>, including the <i>Grand-Duchy +of Luxembourg</i>. With 19 Maps and 45 Plans. Fifteenth edition. Revised +and augmented. 1910. Net <b>10s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>The Dominion of Canada</b>, with <i>Newfoundland</i> +and an Excursion to <i>Alaska</i>. By +<span class="smcap">J. F. Muirhead</span>. With 13 Maps and 12 +Plans. Third edition. Revised and augmented. 1907. Net <b>8s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>Constantinople and Asia Minor</b>, see <i>Special List</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Denmark</b>, see <i>Norway, Sweden, and Denmark</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Egypt</b>, <i>Lower</i> and <i>Upper Egypt</i>, <i>Lower</i> and +<i>Upper Nubia</i> and the <i>Sudan</i>. With 24 Maps, 76 Plans, and 57 Vignettes. +Seventh edition. 1914. Net <b>16s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>England</b>, see <i>Great Britain</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>France</b>:<br /> +<br /> +<i>Paris</i> and its Environs, with routes from +London to Paris. With 14 Maps and +42 Plans. Eighteenth Revised edition. 1913. Net <b>8s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<i>Northern France</i> from Belgium and the English +Channel to the Loire, excluding Paris and its Environs. With 16 Maps +and 55 Plans. Fifth edition. 1909. Net <b>8s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<i>Southern France</i> from the Loire to the +Pyrenees, the Auvergne, the Cévennes, +the French Alps, the Rhone Valley, Provence, +the French Riviera, and <i>Corsica</i>. With 33 Maps and 49 Plans. Sixth edition. 1914. Net <b>9s.</b></p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p><b>Germany</b>:<br /> +<br /> +<i>Berlin</i> and its Environs. With 7 Maps and +24 Plans. Fifth edition. 1912. Net <b>4s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<i>Northern Germany</i> as far as the Bavarian and +Austrian frontiers. With 54 Maps and +101 Plans. Sixteenth Revised edition. 1913. Net <b>12s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<i>Southern Germany</i> (Wurtemberg and Bavaria). +With 36 Maps and 45 Plans. Eleventh Revised edition. 1910. Net <b>8s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<i>The Rhine</i> from Rotterdam to Constance, +including the Seven Mountains, the Moselle, the Volcanic Eifel, the Taunus, +the Odenwald and Heidelberg, the Vosges Mountains, the Black Forest, &c. +With 69 Maps and 59 Plans. Seventeenth Revised edition. 1911. Net <b>14s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>The Mediterranean.</b> Seaports and Sea +Routes, including Madeira, the Canary Islands, the coast of Morocco, Algeria, +and Tunisia. By Professor <span class="smcap">John Kirkpatrick</span>. +With 38 Maps and 49 Plans. 1911. Net <b>15s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>Great Britain</b>, <i>England, Wales, and Scotland.</i> +By <span class="smcap">J. F. Muirhead</span>. With 28 +Maps, 65 Plans, and a Panorama. Seventh edition. Revised and augmented 1910. Net <b>12s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<i>London</i> and its Environs. With 9 Maps and +18 Plans. Sixteenth edition. 1915. Net <b>8s.</b></p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p><b>Greece</b>, the <i>Greek Islands</i> and an Excursion +to <i>Crete</i>. With 16 Maps, 30 Plans, and a Panorama of Athens. Fourth revised +edition. 1909. Net <b>10s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>Holland</b>, see <i>Belgium and Holland</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Italy</b>:<br /> +<br /> +<b>I.</b> <i>Northern Italy</i>, including Leghorn, +Florence, Ravenna, and routes through Switzerland and Austria. With 36 Maps +and 45 Plans. Fourteenth Revised edition. 1913. Net <b>10s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>II.</b> <i>Central Italy and Rome.</i> With 19 Maps, +55 Plans, a view of the Forum Romanum, and the Arms of the Popes since 1417. +Fifteenth Revised edition. 1909. Net <b>10s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>III.</b> <i>Southern Italy and Sicily</i>, with Excursions +to Malta, Sardinia, Tunis and Corfu. With 30 Maps and 34 Plans. Sixteenth +Revised edition. 1912. Net <b>8s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<i>Italy from the Alps to Naples.</i> With 25 Maps, +and 52 Plans. Second edition. 1909. Net <b>10s.</b></p> + +<hr class="smler" /> + +<p><b>Norway, Sweden and Denmark</b>, with +Excursions to <i>Iceland</i> and <i>Spitzbergen</i>. +With 62 Maps, 42 Plans, and 3 Panoramas. Tenth edition. 1912. Net <b>10s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>Palestine and Syria,</b> including the principal +routes through <i>Mesopotamia</i> and +<i>Babylonia</i> and the <i>Island of Cyprus</i>. With +21 Maps, 56 Plans and a Panorama of Jerusalem. Fifth edition. Remodelled +and augmented. 1912. Net <b>16s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>Portugal</b>, see <i>Spain and Portugal</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Riviera</b>, see <i>Southern France</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Russia</b>. With Teheran, Port Arthur, and Peking. With 40 Maps and 78 Plans. +First edition. 1914. Net <b>18s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>Scotland</b>, See <i>Great Britain</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Spain and Portugal</b>, with Excursions to +<i>Tangier</i> and the <i>Balearic Islands</i>. With +20 Maps and 59 Plans. Fourth edition. 1913. Net <b>16s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>Switzerland</b> and the adjacent portions of +Italy, Savoy and Tyrol. With 77 Maps, 21 Plans, and 15 Panoramas. +Twenty-fifth edition. 1913. Net <b>12s.</b><br /> +<br /> +<b>Tyrol</b>, see <i>The Eastern Alps</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>The United States</b>, with Excursions to +<i>Mexico</i>, <i>Cuba</i>, <i>Porto Rico</i>, and <i>Alaska</i>. +By <span class="smcap">J. F. Muirhead</span>. With 33 Maps and +48 Plans. Fourth Revised edition. 1909. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Feminism and Sex-Extinction + + +Author: Arabella Kenealy + + + +Release Date: November 9, 2011 [eBook #37964] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION*** + + +E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Martin Pettit, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/feminismsexextin00kenerich + + + + + +FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION + + * * * * * + +OLIVE SCHREINER'S GREAT BOOK + +WOMAN & LABOUR + +_Large Crown 8vo. Cloth._ + +8s. 6d. net + +"The feelings which are behind the various women's movements could not +find clearer or more eloquent expression than they do in this remarkable +book." + +_The Daily Mail._ + +"At last there has come the book which is destined to be the prophecy +and the gospel of the whole awakening." + +_The Nation._ + + +T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., LONDON. + + * * * * * + +FEMINISM AND SEX-EXTINCTION + +by + +ARABELLA KENEALY L.R.C.P. (DUBLIN) + + +"_A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can +a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit._" + +"_Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them._" + + + + + + + +London +T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. +1 Adelphi Terrace + +First published in 1920 + +All rights reserved + + + + +FOREWORD + + +Feminism, the extremist--and of late years the predominant cult of the +Woman's Movement, is Masculinism. + +It makes for such training and development in woman, of male +characteristics, as shall equip her to compete with the male in every +department of life; academic, athletic, professional, political, +industrial. And it neither recognises nor admits in her natural +aptitudes differing from those of men, and fitting her, accordingly, for +different functions in these. It rejects all concessions to her +womanhood; even to her mother-function. It repudiates all privileges for +her. Boldly it demands a fair field only and no favour; equal rights, +political and social, identical education and training, identical +economic opportunities and avocations, an identical morale, personal and +public. + +In _Woman and Labour_, Miss Olive Schreiner sums in a line the Feminist +objective: "_We take all labour for our province._" And this is the text +of the Feminist creed; the elimination of sex-differences and the +abolition of sex-distinctions in every department of life and activity. + +Feminists anticipate--the militant faction with zest--fierce economic +encounters between the sexes now that, War ended, our men, having fought +their own and woman's battle in the trenches, are returning to reclaim +their places in the world of work. Secure in that possession which is +"nine-tenths of the law," and armed with their new powers of +enfranchisement, it is further anticipated that the usurpers will be +able triumphantly to stem the masculine reflux, and to retain, on all +hands, their new industrial footing. + +By showing that, contrary to Feminist doctrine, the division of Labour +into two sexes, so to speak, is as natural and is as indispensable to +Human Progress as is the division of Life into two sexes, the purpose of +this book is to dissuade women from exploiting a world's misfortunes for +their own immediate profit, and to reconcile them, in their profounder +and more vital interests and in those of the Race, to surrender freely +all the essentially masculine employments into which mischance has cast +them. + +Human evolution and progress have resulted absolutely from an opposite +trend, in inherence and development, of the two sexes, as regards Life +and characteristics, aptitude and avocation. The progressive +differentiations and specialisations of vital processes and living +forms, whereby human character and faculty have been increasingly +advanced to higher powers, reach their most admirable culmination in the +complex division of Humanity into two genders; each of which is enabled, +by way of such complex specialisation, to promote, to intensify and to +dignify its own allotted order of qualities. To oppose and frustrate +this natural dispensation, whereby Human development is achieved by the +two sexes travelling along diametrically opposite lines of Ascent, is to +nullify all that civilisation has secured, and to transform the impulse +of Progress into one of Decadence. + +Nature, marvellously prescient in all her processes, has provided that +the sexes, by being constituted wholly different in body, brain and +bent, do not normally come into rivalry and antagonism in the fulfilment +of their respective life-roles. Their faculties and functions, being +complementary and supplementary (and obviously best applied, therefore, +in different departments of Life and of Labour), men and women are +naturally dependent upon one another in every human relation; a +dispensation which engenders reciprocal trust, affection and +comradeship. + +Feminist doctrine and practice menace these most excellent previsions +and provisions of Nature by thrusting personal rivalries, economic +competition and general conflict of interests between the sexes. + + +Should any reader find in these pages allusions and passages which, +without biological or medical knowledge, may not be wholly clear to him, +let him remember that these are addressed to such as have dipped more +deeply into the subjects dealt with. + +The main outlines and implications of the new Hypothesis presented here, +of the origin and evolution of Sex, are all that he requires to grasp, +in order to follow the argument of the book in its relation to Feminist +methods. + +ARABELLA KENEALY, L.R.C.P. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + +FOREWORD v + + +BOOK I + +WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION + + I. IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM 3 + + II. INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND + FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND FUNCTIONS + ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE 21 + + III. THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION 35 + + IV. ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE 51 + + V. MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS BY + MISAPPROPRIATING THE LIFE-POTENTIAL OF MALE OFFSPRING 73 + + +BOOK II + +WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE + + I. DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS + DUE TO FEMINISM 95 + + II. THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE 109 + + III. THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE 126 + + IV. THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES 146 + + V. MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE + DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT 166 + + VI. FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS + TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN FACULTY 190 + + VII. FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE + OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE AND PROGRESS 219 + + VIII. DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO + ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS 242 + + IX. THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN 264 + + +APPENDIX + +FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF BIOLOGICAL AND +MENDELIAN PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I 292 + + + + +BOOK I + +WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN EVOLUTION + + + + +CHAPTER I + +IMPASSIONED FALLACIES OF FEMINISM + + "The sexual love which has its origin in what is external and + accidental may easily be turned to hate, a kind of madness that is + nourished on discord; but that love, on the other hand, is lasting + which has its source in freedom of soul and in the will to bear and + bring up children."--_Spinoza._ + + +I + +There is no subject save that of Religion about which so much +impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written as has been spoken and +written round the Woman Question. + +For more than half a century--since Mill wrote his famous _Subjection_, +indeed--it has become an increasing vogue to regard Woman as a martyr; +more or less sainted, more or less crushed and effaced beneath the +iron-heeled tyrannies, personal, economic, and political, of the +oppressor, Man. And it has been in the spirit of this conviction and in +fervid endeavours--indignant and chivalrous on the part of the one sex, +and still more indignant and but little less chivalrous on the part of +the other--to liberate unhappy victims from a barbarous oppression, that +most of the impassioned fallacy has been spoken and written, and doughty +deeds done. + +At the certain cost, therefore, of being stigmatised as a reactionary +(severely qualified), I propose to unmask some of these which I believe +to be baseless obsessions, and to present a wholly new--and, I hope, a +more veracious and inspiring version of the case between the sexes. + +To begin with, I assert boldly that the so-called Subjection of Woman, +very far from having been a cruel injustice merely, on the part of man, +has served, on the contrary, as a blessing and an inestimable benefit +not only to herself but to the Race bound up in her. A blessing often +rough and painful in its methods, during epochs when all other methods +were both rough and painful, attended, too, by wrongs and cruelties; +yet, in the main, operating vastly to her well-being and advancement +and, in hers, to those of the Race. + + +Looking back upon the hard and bloody routes of Evolution whereby the +human Races have attained to present-day developments, we see our +forbears groping blindly, fighting blindly, advancing blindly; +stumbling, falling, picking up again; making new departures only +hopelessly to lose the road; making new departures, now to find it and +trudge on. In all its painful and laborious phases, a terrible and +sordid climb. Yet, nevertheless, in its great annals of Ascent, a noble +and a wondrous March of Progress. + +And whether we are Religionists or Evolutionists--or are sufficiently +broad-minded to be both--the history of Life is seen to have been a +history of deathless effort, never ceasing, never waning; renewed with +every generation; intensified by every further acquisition of new power, +as, with every further recognition of new goals and problems, the +ever-increasing Purpose and the ever-increasing perplexity and +complexity of The Purpose revealed itself at every step. It becomes +increasingly clear, moreover, that Creation, or Creative Evolution (to +employ Professor Bergson's phrase), has been the resultant of a +progressive aggregation of Atomic Matter about some vast immanent +_Idea_, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees materialising in the +objective. Very much as bricks are grouped about the pre-conceived plan +of a house, and could not be assembled in the building of the simplest +tool-hut without predetermination of the site of every brick, and of +the relation of every brick to every other. + +And in all those past ages of conflict, bringing Order out of Chaos, +Progress out of Order, and an ever-increasing domination of blind Energy +and Inorganic Matter by Mind and Purpose, the fighting male it has been +who, in his conquest of the Earth as in his conquest of other fighting +males, both brute and human, has borne the greater heat and burden of +the day. Women have striven also--toil has been the crux of their +development as of their mates. But men have striven twofold. While women +toiled in the security of homes, the sword, the blunderbuss or +press-gang, or the equivalent of these, according to the epoch, awaited +men and still await them at most street-corners of the arduous male +career. + +Women have suffered more, _psychically_; because this way lay their +nature and their human lot. Men have suffered more, _materially_; +because here lay theirs. And since advancement comes by suffering, women +are reaping to-day the harvest of past travail of their sex, in the +higher psychical development which now characterises that sex. During +centuries when men were vastly too hard-pressed by the struggle for +barest existence to have been aware that they possessed souls, women +were privileged to be aware of theirs--by the affliction thereof. + +The immediate purpose of this fencing of the women behind the stronger +frames, the stronger wills, and stronger brains of fighting males was +the Racial one, of course. While men battled with environment and with +alien aggressors for their lives and for their food, as for those of the +family, the sheltered women were alike the loom and cradle of the Race. +As well, they made havens, or homes, for the fighters to return to for +sleep and refreshment. They plied a simple, primitive agriculture, +practised a primitive healing art, and otherwise evolved The +Humanities. But since mortal power is limited, power expended in one +direction is power withdrawn from some other. Power spent in battle is +power lost to progress. The woman who, with the instinct for home and as +shelter for her babes, laid the foundations of Architecture in a hut of +mud, was enabled to do this solely by virtue of masculine protection. + +It is in peace only that Progress arises, in leisure that The Arts +evolve. And woman, walled in by the lives of the males, found leisure of +body and mind to pluck flowers for the adorning of her hut, to shape +platters of clay, and, later, even for embellishment of these with crude +designs. Thus she was the first artist. + +The fighting male was--by necessity--destructive. He invented a club. +The female was--by privilege--constructive. She invented the needle (a +fish-bone, doubtless). And while the male transmitted to offspring his +virile fighting and destructive qualities, woman tempered and humanised +these by incorporating with them her milder traits and artistries of +peace. Lacking the male aggressive and protective faculties, however, +increasing in skill and resource with his ever further Adaptation to +(and of) environment, woman's gentler and humanising aptitudes would +have had neither opportunity for evolution, nor scope for exercise and +further sway. + + +II + +I have been reading an account, by a naturalist, of some phases in the +life-history of crabs. And it is interesting to find even among +creatures so low in the Life-scale (although Darwin regarded these as +the most intelligent of _crustaceae_) that same instinct of protection of +the female which is seen in the higher orders of creation. + +A crab, being encased in an unyielding shell, is able to increase its +growth only by "casting" its shell and developing one of larger size +over its increased bulk. During the interval between casting an old +shell and acquiring a new one, the crab in its soft, pulpy condition is +readily injured, or falls prey to its natural enemies. To protect itself +as well as may be, it shelters in rocky crevices or in other available +hiding-places. This shell-casting occurs in both sexes, of course. But +the circumstances under which the change is made differ widely in the +sexes. For while the male-crab has no protector during his defenceless, +shell-less state, his shell is cast a month or more earlier than occurs +in the female; after which he feeds up, in order to be in superior +fighting trim for her protection during her shell-casting phase. +Fishermen describe him as then spreading himself over her as a hen +covers her chicks, and in her defence desperately attacking all comers. +The result of such protection of the female is that, although males are +larger and fiercer, "hen-crabs" are numerous, while males are scarce. + +The like is true of nearly every species. The males protect the females. +Even the gorilla, savage and most terrible of beasts, lies at night on +guard beneath the tree in which his mate and offspring sleep. If need +arise, he fights to the death in their defence. + +With regard to the chivalrous devotion of male-birds, Olive Schreiner +thus comments in _Woman and Labour_ (an example of that I have ventured +to describe as the "impassioned fallacy" hurtling round the Woman +Question): "Along the line of bird-life and among certain of its +species, sex has attained its highest aesthetic, and one might almost say +intellectual, development on earth ... represents the realisation of the +highest sexual ideal which haunts humanity." + +(This however, less, I fear, to accredit the male-sex with chivalry than +to discredit the human male by ornithological comparison!) + + * * * * * + +One does not profess that such protective role of males--beast and bird +and crab--is the outcome of sentiment. It is instinctive, subconscious. +Nature's purpose being to preserve and to perpetuate species, she +achieves this by safeguarding the female. The province of the male in +reproduction is but slight and brief. It exacts so little from him as to +interfere not at all with those other masculine activities which are the +function of his sex. + +Whereas, as Professor Lester Ward says, "Woman [and the female of all +species] _is_ the Race." Out of her blood and bone and vital powers she +evolves and fashions it, nurtures and ministers to it. + + +III + +For the preservation of species, two roles are essential: the Male role +of Combat, demanding strength and boldness, resource and +fighting-quality, in order to protect and provide for the female and +offspring; and the Female role of Devotion and Self-surrender, in order +to nurture offspring ante-natally, and, after birth, to nurture and to +tend its helplessness. + +Now all but biologists, perhaps, take it as matter-of-course that Love +had its origin in Sex. + +Seeing love between the sexes as the strongest and most dominant of the +civilised passions, it is natural to infer that it was born of the +instinctive attraction between male and female, and that this +instinctive attraction, with the growth and expansion of faculty, mental +and temperamental, has evolved to the high and tender issues to be found +in latter-day romantic passion; theme of poets, novelists, artists; +richest and most exquisite of life's emotions; inspiration and motive of +the finest human achievements. A passion which, for a space at least, +transfigures the natures and ennobles the lives of all but the crass and +the sordid. + +Nevertheless--Love did not arise out of sex. The sex-relation in primal +men and women held no element of affection; no sympathy, tenderness, +self-sacrifice, or other attribute of Love. On the part of the female, +it was compulsory surrender and the habit of surrender to superior +strength, mitigated, doubtless, by a subconscious instinct to secure +offspring. In the male, it was impulse as tyrannous and selfish as was +the instinct to kill. Like the instinct to kill, a factor in it made for +fitness for survival. There was in it, accordingly, an element of +instinctive selection. But the selection made for survival-fitness +merely in the mate. It owed nothing to sentimental appeal exercised by +one female, and lacking in another. The instinct to mate was implanted +by Nature for the continuation of species. If its observance contained +an element of gratification, it held no more of reciprocity than did the +gratification of that stronger lust, to kill, include a consideration of +the feelings of the prey, or than greed of any other form of possession +extends a grace of reciprocal benefit to the thing acquired. + +Modern savages have no conception of sexual love. There are no +love-songs, no courtship, no affection in their matings. The males marry +mainly in order to secure wives to work for them. And they select strong +women because these are best fitted for work. Or they select women who +have some or another small possession. Biological instinct is a factor, +doubtless, but it is not a factor of sentiment. + +In his fine book, _Natural Law in the Spiritual World_, Professor +Drummond says: + + + "Probably we have all taken for granted that husbands and wives + have always loved one another. Evolution takes nothing for granted + ... in the lower reaches of Human Nature, husband and wife do not + love one another ... for the vast mass of mankind during the long + ages which preceded historic times, conjugal love was probably all + but unknown.... + + "The idea that the existence of sex accounts for the existence of + love is untrue. Marriage among early races has nothing to do with + love. Among savage peoples, the phenomenon everywhere confronts us + of wedded life without a grain of love. Love then is no necessary + ingredient of the sex-relation; it is not an outgrowth of passion. + Love is love and has always been love, and has never been anything + lower." + + +Even to-day, despite the evolution of the higher faculties, despite long +centuries of inherited habit and tradition, and despite the circumstance +that in all the nobler types of men and women the sex-instinct is +spiritualised by affection and understanding--Even in this late day of +civilisation, the male sex-instinct may be seen still in all its native +tyranny and selfishness; seeking gratification in sensuality and +cruelty, with callous disregard alike of the welfare as of the suffering +of its victim. In the violation of women and children that occurs both +in peace and in war, the instinct manifests as an impulse of aggression, +and the sex-function as one of brutality or ruthless lust. + + +IV + +Respecting the origin of Mind and Emotion, Charles Darwin said: + + + "In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the + lowest organisms, is as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself + first originated." + + +And Huxley: + + + "I know nothing, and never hope to know anything of the steps by + which the passage from molecular movement to states of + consciousness is effected. The two things are on two utterly + different platforms, the physical facts go along by themselves and + the mental facts go along by themselves." + + +While Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace (the biologist who was working out the +theory of Natural Selection simultaneously with Darwin, both unaware +that the other was working in the same direction) attributes to a +Creative act of God, all the moral and intellectual qualities which have +been super-added in man to those lesser and simpler ones he possesses in +common with the higher animals. Wallace describes this as a "Divine +Influx," and regards it as being wholly distinct and apart from the slow +and gradual processes of Natural Selection. + +But yet, in point of fact, what was it that inspired and energised the +earlier processes, if not this same Divine Influx? The simpler processes +must, from their earliest rudimentary beginnings, have been leading up +to the later and more complex. And the later and more complex were, +surely, continuous with the simpler--since Nature abhors miracles, and +works by slow progressive biological sequences. + +Nothing shows as more impersonal than a crystal; cold, hard, senseless, +motionless. And yet in crystals is the element of Life, even the power +of reproduction, showing factors of sex already operative in them. While +living bodies, charged with warmth, mobility, sentience, intelligence, +have Inorganic Matter for their basis of construction. And that +Inorganic elements are very far from being the impersonal things they +seem, but are linked by subtle correspondences to living Mind and vital +powers, is shown by their effects on living processes and consciousness. +Given as medicines, digestion (which is a species of rapid evolution +from lower to higher forms of energy) develops such vital inherences +within them as prove their apparent impersonality to contain a principle +continuous not only with living processes, but with the highest +mentality. + +Professor Leduc observes in his illuminating book, "The Mechanism of +Life," "_the ordinary physical forces have, in fact, a power of +organisation infinitely greater than has been hitherto supposed by the +boldest imagination_." + +Coralline structures and beautiful shells, fungi, leaves, and plants +bearing coloured, flowerlike blooms spring into growth when a formless +fragment of calcium salt is dropped into a chemical solution. And these +"Osmotic growths," artificially produced, possess far greater complexity +of structure and of function than do the simpler living organisms of +Nature. + + +The evidences of a Vast Stupendous Plan, which every further scientific +discovery still further emphasises, are slowly forcing from our men of +Science the confession that behind the marvellous phenomena their +findings reveal, and which they are powerless to explain, must lie a +Cause, occult and irresistible, an Impulse, all-pervading, +incomprehensible. + +Bergson describes an _elan vital_--a living impetus--determining such +phenomena. + +In his Presidential address to the British Association at Dublin, in +1908, Professor J. S. Haldane summed up as follows the position of +Physiological Science: "The point now reached is that the conceptions of +Physics and Chemistry are insufficient to enable us to understand +physiological phenomena." + +Weismann says: "Behind the co-operating forces of Nature, we must admit +a Cause ... inconceivable in its nature, of which we can only say one +thing with certainty, that it must be theological." + +Drummond says: "Evolution is Advolution,--better, it is Revelation--the +phenomenal expression of the Divine, the progressive realisation of the +Ideal, the Ascent of Love." + +If, then, we admit Life to be the product of a Divine Influx, whereby +Inorganic Matter has been, by way of evolutionary processes, +increasingly empowered to fructify in living form and faculty, Human +Attributes are seen to be the flower of Spiritual seed, which, sown in +Life, has germinated; has struck roots of biological function into +living flesh and put forth leaves in living traits; has developed in +physiological processes and blossomed in powers of Mind and of body. And +as the stronger and deeper the grip of its roots in the earth, the +taller and nobler the oak towers heavenward, so it must be with human +characteristics. The deeper and more firmly the seedling faculties +strike roots in living function, the fuller and more potent springs the +impulse toward that evolutionary perfection which is the goal of Human +Being. + +If, however, living processes are the resultant of a Divine Influx, they +are Spiritual processes. Life is then a manifestation in Matter, of +Spirit. All the developments of Life are Spiritual phenomena, therefore. +The imperfection and evil found in living creatures are not attributes +of Life. They are crudities of rudimentary organisation, or are failures +in or aberrations from the normal development of Life. + + +V + +In the Evolution of Faculty, living traits are seen to have been all the +while attaining to higher power by the differentiation and development +of special organs to subserve their fuller function, their finer +conscious apprehension, and their more complex manifestation on the +material plane. + +The brain has been specialised thus to serve as the organ of +Consciousness; the eye, of Vision; the ear, of Hearing; the hand, of +Touch and of manipulation. The lowest organisms possess no such +specialised organs of sense or of consciousness. Nor are they equipped +with special reproductive organs. They reproduce by cleavage; by +budding a small portion of themselves, which, when separated, grows to a +mature organism. + +With other differentiations and specialisations of Function and Faculty, +there has developed--for the all-important racial purpose of creating +ever higher and more potent living species--the highly-complex human +reproductive system, which, by its close and subtle nervous alliance +with the brain, has become the medium and the instrument of a new and +irresistible emotion. So that it serves not only for the perpetuation of +a complex species, but, moreover, for the attraction, by natural +affinity, of the mates best suited to one another. + +And in course of evolutionary progress, the emotion of Love has been all +the while more and more so leavening and inspiring sex-attraction with +its purer and more tender attributes, that human passion has come to +combine--in those of higher nature--the flame and energy of physical +attraction with the tenderness and devotion of altruistic affection. +With the result that human parenthood, thus quickened and spiritualised, +has become ever further empowered to evolve more highly intelligised, +more beautiful and more efficient types of offspring. + + +That Passion, pure and simple, has evolved out of the Male sex-instinct +is certain. Even in its chivalrous development of romantic passion, are +found, in transfigured form, that flame and urgence for possession which +manifest crudely and cruelly in the primal male-instinct. Without this +virile ardour, indeed, the sex-relation is but a poor and tepid, or a +cold and sensual thing. + +Yet Passion is not Love. + +That meekness and forbearance, humility and self-surrender have been +reared in the Female sex-instinct of submission to passion (primarily in +aversion and fear more often than in acquiescence) is equally certain. +And without these chastening factors to temper, soften and anneal, the +sex-relation is a fierce and tyrannous concern. But no more than +passion, is submission Love. Neither in passion nor in submission, pure +and simple, is there joy of surrender or welding communion. + +Nevertheless, since every human faculty must have its roots in living +function, and every living function must possess some physical organ in +which its processes occur, from what human function sprang the Love that +is selfless, altruistic and pitiful; soul and inspiration of the most +sacred emotions--self-sacrifice, charity, mercy, devotion, tenderness? +In what nursery of Human Consciousness was this fair and gentle blossom +sown; to spring, to develop, and to make for gracious growth? + +Since, although it has come to lend its purity and sweetness to the +Sex-passion, it neither sprang from nor has been reared in sex-instinct, +is it a product of Parental Affection? Is it an evolution of the +self-negation and the tenderness of parents for their children? + + +VI + +Throughout Nature, the parental instinct is seen as a unique +development, detached from and high above all other developments. +Demanding, as it does, the complete surrender and self-denying labours +of one individual in the interests of another, it differs from and +traverses all other dictates. It impels a creature whose every instinct +it had been--whose religion of biological survival it had been, +indeed--to be wholly self-centred in its every aim and action, all at +once to make another creature the focus of its interests and efforts. +Where for a scratch, for a glance, the fierce female would have fallen +tooth and nail upon another, now she surrenders meekly to the pangs of +bringing offspring into life--and straightway licks and suckles the +frail being that has riven her. Where she would furiously have driven +off, or would have killed, another creature that approached her food, +now she gives herself as food for this. Where lesser Fitness for +survival on another's part had been signal for making such her prey, now +Unfitness in the extremest degree claims her devotion and care. + +Superfluous to cite cases of maternal altruism. The mildest and most +timid among creatures becomes fierce and courageous in defence of her +young. Style it "merely instinct," if you will. It is none the less +heroic on the part of every individual that obeys it, and does not obey +it blindly and mechanically merely, but employs all her poor wit and +resource to suit her heroism to the special circumstance. + + +Without care and attention from the moment of its birth, the life of an +infant would be reckoned in hours. The higher the organism, the more and +for the longer period its infancy exacts unceasing devotion and nurture. + +Fish and moth and other species of low order are cast off in the egg. +Chicks scramble out of the shell. + +The higher their grade in the scale of organisation and intelligence, +the more helpless and incapable young creatures are to feed and to fend +for themselves. Kittens are born blind and helpless, but after a few +days they see and crawl about. The elephant-mother suckles and +safeguards her baby-elephant for two whole years. + +Now, were there no purpose in all this--Were it not that such devotion +to offspring serves as impulse and spur to the evolution and development +of faculty in parents, Nature, in planning the complex human species, +would, surely, have endowed the human infant and child with fuller +powers of self-preservation. + +Were there other functions and aptitudes the exercise whereof would +better stimulate and foster human progress, it is inconceivable that +children would be, and would be for so long, the helpless, feckless, +dependent mortals that they are. + +For ten long lunar months, the human babe is part of its mother; homed +in the nest of her body, warmed by her warmth, fed by her blood. She +breathes for it, digests for it, assimilates for it, exercises for it. +For ten further lunar months, it is dependent upon her for the food by +which it lives. For nearly a year, save for an inept power of creeping, +with but small sense of direction, it requires to be moved and carried +everywhere. For years it must be washed, dressed, combed, laid down to +sleep at night, got up in the morning, taken for rides or for walks, +played with, bidden, chidden; comforted, warmed, cooled; defended, +cherished, instructed--in a hundred ways to be gently and progressively +adapted to life, by way of a more or less highly-specialised +environment. Even when no longer helpless, it must be provided for in +the matters of housing, food, clothing, education. It must be instructed +in a means of livelihood, and started on its young career. + +Among the poorer classes the child depends upon its hard-worked parents +for a period varying between twelve and sixteen years. In the +professional classes, the young son and daughter are not fully qualified +for independent existence before the ages of twenty-three or +twenty-five. In ill-health, in brain defect, and in other incapacities, +parents must provide for their offspring for life. + +And seeing how the demands of the young, and the response and exactions +of the parents multiply and amplify proportionally with the higher +evolution of both, we are forced to believe that the small +survival-value of the child, owing to its native unadaptedness to +environment, is part of The Plan, and that it subserves some high and +complex purpose in human development. + + +VII + +An essential obligation of Parenthood is, that, in order to fulfil this +duly, the parents require to undergo a wholly new and intrinsic +adjustment of faculty. Having arrived already at a complex adaptation to +a complex civilised environment, in physique and character, in mentality +and habit, now, by a revolutionary reversal of their human progress, +they must re-adapt to the simplest of all creatures and conditions--a +helpless, puling infant in a cradle. + +Where they had had a whole world, perhaps, of intellectual interests and +social pursuits to engage them, now they forgather beside a cot +and--according as they are human or are not--lose themselves, brain and +heart and soul, in the puling, impotent thing. They make themselves eyes +and ears, arms and legs for it; carriage, chair and bed. They gaze, +entranced, upon the marvel of the opening and shutting of its eyes. It +yawns; they tremble lest it dislocate a jaw. It sneezes; now they +shudder lest it may have taken cold. It gurgles, and they are +transported to a seventh heaven. + +Never has either been equally fluttered at their recognition by an +exalted personage as both exult when flattered by the flicker of an +eyelash that it distinguishes its father from its mother; or either from +its nurse. Both perhaps are self-contained and philosophic beings, yet +its cry distracts them; scatters their composure to the winds. The inept +thing cannot even tell them what it wants. Its cry for food is much the +same as is its cry when it requires to be laid down, or lifted up. When +its milk is not sweet enough, its inarticulate fury is expressed in +notes identical--so far as they can judge--with those of its impotent +wrath when a pin-point pricks it. + +But whatsoever the cause, to the winds the parental composure is +scattered, as hither and thither they scurry, distraught, seeking a +reason and a remedy. And this, of course, had been their tyrant's +purpose. He had meant to strike panic in his parents' hearts. He was +vexed or empty, or was otherwise uneasy. And behold the penalties of +those who suffer him to be vexed or empty, or otherwise uneasy! + +And whether they are rough, hard-working persons who have neither time +nor taste for fuss and nonsense; whether they are the Archbishop of +Canterbury and Mrs. Archbishop, Sir Isaac and Lady Newton, or the +Emperor and Empress of Japan, it is all the same to Baby. No other uses +have they in his absurd judgment than to obey his slightest gurgle. + +And the wonder of the business is that they too--provided they be +normal, wholesome-minded, natural-hearted persons--are of similar +opinion. Even a Professor of Archaeology must feel a twinge of some +emotion when his first baby cuts its first tooth. King Lion himself +suffers it with patience when his cub scratches his royal countenance, +or gets its milk-teeth into his prize-bone. + +The whole face of the earth is transformed by the Baby, indeed. And how +much it is transformed for the better! It is not too much to say that it +is humanised, redeemed. The most grudging of curmudgeons murmurs only a +little to surrender his place at the fire to The Baby. The thirsty thief +forbears to drink his infant's milk. + +In his great story, _The Luck of Roaring Camp_, Bret Harte has shown, +and has shown as probable, the uplifting and regenerating influence that +"The Luck"--its mother a sinner, its father, Heaven alone knew +who!--exercised upon a rough community of vicious men. + +"It wrastled wi' my finger," says one in an awed whisper. To cover +sentiment he adds, "the durn'd little cuss!" But carefully he segregates +the member sanctified by the tiny, satin touch, from the other fingers +of his wicked hand. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +INCREASING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE SEX-CHARACTERISTICS AND +FUNCTIONS ARE THE MAIN FEATURE OF HUMAN ADVANCE + + "The most beautiful witness to the Evolution of Man is the Mind of + a little child.... It was ages before Darwin or Lamarck or + Lucretius, that Maternity, bending over the hollowed cradle in the + forest for a first smile of recognition from her babe, expressed + the earliest trust in the doctrine of development. Every mother + since then is an unconscious Evolutionist, and every little child a + living witness to Ascent."--_Professor Drummond._ + + +I + +Tracing the attribute of Love to its source in the parental function, it +becomes clear that this function cannot be dismissed thus in a phrase. + +There are two parents. And the parts played by these, respectively, not +only differ widely in their nature, but they are signally +disproportionate in their share of the labours involved. For while the +male bears the brunt of the struggle with environment, for his own and +for survival of his mate and offspring, upon the female falls the +biological stress of pregnancy and lactation, and the material cares of +upbringing. + +The reproductive function of the male is but slight and cursory. With +the female lies the tax of havening the embryo before birth, of +nurturing it with her blood and substance, of suffering the drain it +makes upon her vital energy, the burden of its weight; with, finally, +the anguish and the dangers of delivery. And having come through all +this, the subconscious and involuntary sacrifice is replaced by +further--but now voluntary sacrifices. She not only continues to feed it +with her living substance, but she employs brain and wit and bodily +effort in tending, safeguarding and rearing it. + +Meanwhile the sire--among the lower creatures, at all events--detaches +himself with lordly indifference from any portion in these later, as he +went free of the earlier obligations. He shares his prey with her and +with their young. He defends them from the natural enemies of all. +Sometimes he condescends to play for minutes with his cubs. But +excepting among birds, the male parent takes little or no part in the +upbringing of his family. + +As with Love, so with Fatherhood, we take it as matter-of-course that +this sprang and has evolved to present developments directly out of +natural instinct. But as Love did not evolve out of the sex-instinct, +neither did father-love evolve from a paternal instinct inherent in the +lower animals and in primal man. + +Of this, Professor Drummond says: + + + "The world was now beginning to fill with Mothers, but there were + no Fathers, ... while Nature has succeeded in moulding a human + Mother and a human child, he still wanders in the forest, a savage + and unblessed soul. + + "This time for him is not lost. In his own way he also is at + school, and learning lessons which will one day be equally needed + by humanity. The acquisitions of the manly life are as necessary to + human character as the virtues which gather their sweetness by the + cradle; and these robuster elements--strength, courage, manliness, + endurance, self-reliance--could only have been secured away from + domestic cares.... The Evolution of a Father is not so beautiful a + process as the Evolution of a Mother, but it was almost as + formidable a problem to attack.... If Maternity was at a feeble + level in the lower reaches of Nature, Paternity was + non-existent.... When we leave the Birds and pass on to the + Mammals, the Fathers are nearly all backsliders. Many are not only + indifferent to their young, but hostile; and among the Carnivora + the Mothers have frequently to hide their little ones in case the + father eats them." + + +In place of saying, therefore, that Love sprang in, and has developed +from the exercise of the parental function, we must say that Love--in +all its higher aspects--sprang and has developed in the _maternal_ +function. + +But since every attribute, in order to be conscious and realised, is not +only rooted but is reared in living function--out of what living +function did Mother-love evolve? In the exercise of what vital processes +has it been fostered and furthered? + +In so far as these involve sacrifice of self in the interests of the +child, the maternal ante-natal processes are processes of +self-surrender. But these, when once incurred, are subconscious and +involuntary. The prospective mother has no choice but to submit to +physiological exactions. + +And only a few women--those in whom maternal love is deep beyond the +average--feel affection for their infants before birth. + +Since love must have an object upon which to exercise its faculties and +lavish its devotion, it is not, therefore, until the babe is in the +mother's arms that the Love-attribute begins to function. And then the +primal fount of all conscious and voluntary human selflessness and +sacrifice springs afresh in the individual when, in yearning toward the +helpless being in her arms, she wells with tenderness and gives herself +to be its life. + +In the altruistic tender yearning of the mother to her babe, whereat her +blood transforms itself to milk, Human Love first sprang and functioned +consciously. + +_This is my Body which is given for you.... This is my Blood ... which +is shed for you._ + +Says Goethe, "There is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest +on a deep moral foundation." He might have added "and on a great +biological function." Every act of voluntary sacrifice, every impulse of +compassion, mercy, tenderness, devotion, has had its inspiration and its +source in this which is discredited by some as being a merely physical, +and is despised, accordingly, as being an inferior process; this +mystical transmutation of the mother's blood to milk, and the +self-forgetting yearning wherein she yields herself as food for +offspring. By the evolution, upon ever higher planes of consciousness, +of this primarily instinctive sacrifice, not only Motherhood but +Fatherhood too, and the Love-passion between the sexes have been +fructified and purified, and uplifted down the ages. Other acts of +devotion arise out of maternal ministry. But this is the intrinsic +source of all. + +Travelling up through all the rudimentary phases of development, +simultaneously and side by side with the male fierce methods for the +Survival of _Fitness_, there was evolving in the female, subconsciously +and secretly, this sacramental impulse which was to inaugurate a new +era--an era wherein charity and ruth were to be born as response to the +claims of _Unfitness_. + +The first woman who, of her free-will, gave her breast to her babe was +the Mother of all the Humanities. She it was who prepared the way for +the coming of Christ. By her, Love entered first into human +consciousness. + +And by countless generations of such willing tender sacrifice upon the +part of mothers, human love has climbed out of the darkness of blind +subconscious instinct into the Light of a great transfiguration. + + +It is weighty evidence of the evolutionary impulse inherent in the +function of Lactation, that the development of this maternal trait +engenders species so far higher in organisation and morale than those of +creatures unequipped to suckle offspring, as to set the Mammalia in a +class by themselves in the van of progressive advance. The higher +organisation and morale of such result not only from the +self-surrendering instinct in the mothers of species, but doubtless also +from the superior nutrition promoted in the developing tissues of the +young of species, by the highly-individualised food elements which are +secreted by the maternal living cells. + +The vital significance of this new potence in blood to transform itself +to milk for sustenance of offspring is emphasised by the fact that the +Mammalia are warm-blooded creatures. While that this new quickening of +Life by the altruistic parental instinct originates in the female shows +her as medium of that Divine Influx inspiring Creative Evolution, and +evolving faculty by way of living function. + + +II + +The question now arises: If Love and the higher affections had their +origin in the maternal function, how happens it that man, in whom this +capacity is absent, and who is devoid, moreover, of an inherent paternal +instinct, has come, notwithstanding, to possess these higher affections? + +One may answer off-hand, with the lightness of the tyro, that these have +been transmitted to him by maternal inheritance. + +But complex biological problems are not thus easily explained. Nature +works by processes, not by implications. And the physical functions and +the mental attributes of the sexes are so dissimilar, and have, with +evolution, so diverged by ever further accentuation, that we must seek +for definite biological processes by way of which the male has become +endowed with, and whereby his primal characteristics have been +transformed by the evolution in him of the maternal instinct--under +guise of the wholly new and alien trait of Fatherhood. + +A study of Evolution shows the differentiation and intensification of +Sex-characteristics to have been the main feature in Human advance, and +to have been progressively achieved by incalculable centuries of +increasing differentiation and intensification of two opposite orders of +impulse and faculty. + +In savages and in all the less civilised races, the personal and +temperamental differences between the sexes are but slight, and last +for no longer than a few years of life. As with other faculties, +Sex-differentiations become ever further intensified and more +complexly defined as development rises in the scale. Man becomes more +man. Woman, more woman. Most notable during the period over which +the human organisation sustains its maximum of condition, these +Sex-characteristics take longer to arrive at their perfection, and are +longer and more fully sustained in the higher races and organisms than +is the case with the lower. Then, with that degeneration of tissue which +sets in with on-coming age, the old man becomes womanish, the old woman +mannish. + +It cannot be doubted that human perfection reaches its climax in the +accentuation of the differences between the Sex-characteristics, +physical and mental, of the one sex from those of the other. The best +types of men differ far more from the best types of women than inferior +men and women differ from one another. In body and in attribute, the +sexes are complementary and supplementary. And their dissimilarities are +the measure of their complementary and supplementary values. + +Their attraction to one another, their interest and happiness in one +anothers' company, are proportional to the degree in which members of +one sex supply for members of the other, sentiment and qualities lacking +in their own. Mannish women and womanish men are alike incapable of +experiencing and inspiring the love-passion, which charms and +transfigures life for true man and true woman. These unfortunate, +imperfect neuter-persons, because of the deficiency in them of normal +sex attributes and impulse, are shut out from the richest and sweetest, +most sacred emotions of Humanity--precisely as persons of defective +brain are debarred from the richer and fuller appreciations and joys of +consciousness. + +And yet, apart and distinct from, although at the root of this abnormal +neuterdom, wherein the traits of one sex are so antagonised by those of +the other that the finest powers of both are nullified--normally, +all men possess latent in them the qualities of Woman; all women +have latent in them the qualities of Man. Otherwise, this third +Neuter-gender--mannish women and womanish men--could not have come into +being. + +In crises of life and under other abnormal conditions, the dormant +characteristics of the one sex are seen to emerge in members of the +other, and to become dominant. A woman, in the face of danger, develops +the strength, the courage and the material resource of a man. A man, +when put to it, reveals the gentleness, patience and psychical resource +of a woman. And in neither is this substitution of alien traits +imitative, merely. That it is vital and intrinsic is shown by the fact +that not only mental characteristics, but the body itself becomes +transformed. If the circumstances--exposure to danger, to hard and rough +physical labours or to mental exactions which are the normal of the +male--continue for long, woman's physique, equally with her attributes, +becomes increasingly virile of mode. + +A kindred metamorphosis occurs in men. When called upon to exercise for +any length of time the functions of a woman, beside a sick bed, for +example--or, to state it otherwise, when the male in him no longer +receives the stimulus of the natural male role and activities--man's +virile qualities decline. He becomes emasculate. + +So too in disease. With the vital powers at low ebb, man's virility +ebbs low. He grows soft and sensitive, uncontrolled and emotional, loses +energy and initiative; lapses in outlook and temperament from the +masculine normal. In abnormal states of physical development, men are +puerile or womanish. + +Women, as result of like abnormal undevelopment, or after operative +removal of reproductive organs (_propter quos est mulier_) become +mannish of type. In extreme cases the figure changes to a strong and +sturdy maleness, the voice drops to gruffness; manners and speech become +terse and abrupt, the jaw squares; even moustache or beard may develop. +Such women lose, perhaps, every womanly characteristic; refinement of +form, mental delicacy and sensitiveness, emotion, subtlety. They lapse +to the biological grade, not of cultured, but of rough working men. In +lesser degrees of sex-extinction, such as are seen in many of our modern +girls, de-sexed by masculine training, the subjects are boyish merely; +lean, active, restless, hipless, breastless, lacking all those fair, +delicate artistries of face and form, as likewise the complex +sensibility and emotionalism which are the higher characteristics of +their sex. + + +III + +These and other singularities of the phenomenon indicate that man has, +so to speak, a woman concealed in him; woman has a man submerged in her. +The case suggests the little Noah and his wife of the toy weatherglass. +Under some conditions the man in woman emerges temporarily. Under some +conditions the woman in man reveals herself. But the emergence in the +one sex of the characteristics of the other, when appreciable and +permanent, is abnormal and unpleasing, and is obviously degenerative. + +Man is at his best when the woman in him is dominated by his natural +virile traits. Woman is at her best when the man in her is sheathed +within her native womanliness. This way, each is a highly evolved and a +finely-specialised creation. + +Nevertheless, such possession, in latency, of the qualities of the +other, not only enhances for members of both sexes the potence of their +own, inspiring and enriching these, but it engenders more perfect +sympathy and understanding between them. The woman in man endues him +with intuitive apprehension of the Woman-nature; of its needs and modes, +its disabilities, its sufferings and aspirations. The man in woman +informs her of the intrinsic values of his sterner calibre, and thus +lends her patience with his impatiences, moves her tenderness and care +for him in his rougher, more arduous lot, wins her admiration of his +enterprises and ambitions. Moreover, the man in her strengthens and +intelligises her mental fibre, stiffens and renders more stable and +effective her more pliant will and softer, more delicate aptitudes. + +While she, in her turn, endows him with her intrinsic mentalities. + +Masculine intellection, pure and simple, is initiative, vigorous, +enterprising; analytical, logical, critical; its outlook rational and +concrete, its disposition just and honest. Capable in the degree of its +virility, of strenuous and sustained endeavour, of keen concentration +and close application; taking nothing for granted, but questioning and +demanding proof of all things, it is an admirable executive agent of +Mind. _Per se_, however, it is rational and deductive, judicial and +judicious, rather than inspirational and creative. The blending with it +of the Woman-faculty in him quickens his male brain by contributing the +emotional element; endues it with intuitive sensibility, fructifies it +with female creativeness. + +Thus it blossoms in Imagination--a new talent, which his natural +intellectual energy and executive ability enable him to raise to highest +issues in Inductive Science and the creative Arts. + + +Sex, with its phenomena of the characteristics of both sexes blended +but, nevertheless, distinctive in the totally dissimilar constitution of +members of both, presents an enigma which all the thinkers of all the +ages have left unsolved. + +What is its significance--what its explanation? How has it been +possible--without miracle, but by way of biological sequences of form +and process, of function and faculty--for the divergent characteristics, +physical and mental, of the two sexes to have developed in both, not +only without either order of characteristics (normally) neutralising +those of the other, but, on the contrary, with both orders ever further +intensifying their differences in the sex to which they belong? + +By hereditary transmission. True! But by what precise means? Because +Nature achieves her results always by the continuous operation of +unerring Law and intensifying processes, not by eccentricities or +deviations. When she seems to us to skip at random, it means that we +have missed some intermediate footprints linking her progressive +sequences in a long unbroken train. + +This problem of human duality, physical and psychical, has baffled not +biologists only, but philosophers, religionists and seers. It fills both +life and literature with puzzles, paradoxes, incongruities. It has been +the source of perpetual misapprehension, misconception, +maladministration, personal and ethical. + +It lies at the root of the whole Woman question. It has supplied the +motive--and has made the mischief of the Feminist propaganda and +practice. + +Because, in view of the masculine qualities latent in women, allied with +the circumstance that masculine powers are those most profitable and +effective on the plane alike of physics and of economics, it has seemed +an inevitable conclusion that these dormant male potentialities were +_powers lying idle_; virgin soil which, tilled and cultivated, would +yield fruitful harvest. And this for the benefit not of woman solely, +but of Humanity at large. Strangely enough, the converse proposition has +not presented itself. A pity! For it might have brought enlightenment. +Because it presents itself outright in the form of a patent absurdity. + +Suppose a Man's Movement which should have had for aim the cult in males +of their potential woman-qualities! Not for an instant could the project +have found footing as being rational, its ends desirable, or as +improving upon Nature. Everywhere is pity or contempt for the effeminate +man. He is regarded as a poor creature, neither one thing nor the other; +as little the peer of true man as he is notably an unworthy counterfeit +of woman. + +Yet how is this? Is it that we admit the male-sex to be so vastly and +intrinsically superior to the female that we are not satisfied for half +only, but demand that the whole human species shall be male? +Nevertheless, since masculine qualities, although undeniably present, +are normally latent in women, they must be inferior in power and calibre +to these same qualities in men. Otherwise, in place of remaining in +latency, they would assert themselves like men. Woman's inferior +masculine powers, even when developed to the full, can equip her, +therefore, to be no more than inferior male; "lesser man" merely, in +place of being "diverse"--the highly-differentiated, finely-specialised +being for which Nature would seem to have been shaping in her, during +untold aeons of progressive differentiation. + + +IV + +The prevailing notion is that these masculine potentialities dormant in +women are powers common to both sexes, which have been blighted in the +one by long generations of educational and vocational disabilities +precluding exercise and outlet for them. Or that they are powers which +have been dwarfed by long "subjection" of the sex in maternal and +domestic functions mainly. + +Consulting Biology, we find that such artificial repression of Faculty +in the mother (even were artificially-repressed faculty transmissible as +such) could in no way have limited itself, in succeeding generations, to +inheritance by daughters. On the contrary, the more we learn of the laws +of Heredity, the more it is seen that Faculty descends from mother to +son, rather than from mother to daughter. And yet, despite the +sex-disabilities, personal and social, which are now condemned as having +precluded the mothers of earlier eras from developing their masculine +abilities, such mothers transmitted masculine characteristics in +ever-increasing degree to successive generations of male offspring. + +Whereupon another seeming paradox confronts us. Namely, that the sons of +those earlier women, in whom masculine inherences were permitted to +remain dormant, were notably more virile of body and mind than are the +sons of latter-day emancipated mothers who have sedulously cultivated +and have fully exercised their male proclivities. + +And now upsprings a further momentous consideration: Is this cause and +effect? Were the sons of women in whom the potential male had remained +abeyant, more virile of body and brain than are the sons of women who +have cultivated masculine characteristics, solely and absolutely because +the mothers in the latter case had misappropriated to their own uses +powers that belonged by right of heredity to sons? While those other +mothers, by retaining such in latency, preserved them as a rich +inheritance for male heirs. Is it similar, indeed, to the cases of a +mother who realises and expends for her own purposes her sons' financial +patrimony, and of a mother who, expending the interest alone thereof, +retains the capital intact; and is enabled thus to pass it on as +heritage? Is the power held latent in one generation the potential of +the generation following? + +It may be asked: Why should woman forgo possession and exercise of +faculties available to her, in order to transmit these to sons? One +might answer as in respect of that other patrimony. If it be true that +she holds these powers in trust merely, they are not hers to spend. To +expend them is to despoil her sons; to make paupers and bankrupts of +them, humanly speaking. Further, since daughters inherit from the +father, the male entail woman forbears to realise and to exploit for her +own uses returns to her sex in the person of her grand-daughter--by +paternal inheritance. For the able father is the parent of the able +daughter. + +Thus Nature works with the eternal justice of eternal reciprocity +between the sexes; making them all the while more complexly diverse, but +nevertheless more closely interdependent. So that one sex can neither +progress nor can it regress by itself; but draws the other onward with +it, or drags it back. Thus, the bread of human heritage consigned to the +stream of posterity by one sex, for equipment and furtherance of the +other, returns to the hand of the sex that consigned it. + +If this be so--and I hope to prove it so--the woman who develops the +potential male in her defrauds of its lawful racial and personal entail +not only the opposite sex, in the person of her son, but she defrauds of +its dower her own sex too, in the person of her grand-daughter. + +Of the interesting and important biological processes underlying the +mystery of the Dual-Sex constitution and its manifold phenomena, I am +about to present a wholly new and--I venture to believe--a wholly true +and convincing elucidation. + +_Natura simplex est_, said Newton, _et sibi semper consonans_. (Nature +is simple and always agrees with herself.) Bewilderingly multiple in her +phenomena, she is superbly simple in her principles. By the operation of +her one great Law of Gravitation, she sustains the mighty Solar +systems--and brings the apple to the ground. By the extension, +counterpoise and co-operation of one Primal Cosmic Energy--with its dual +impulses, Centripetal and Centrifugal--she has generated all the diverse +marvels of a Universe. And in view of her simplicity of Principle, it is +conceivable that the Duality of Sex may be an extension into Life of +that same principle of Duality which characterises the vaster Cosmic +phenomena. + +If this be true, Man and Woman are the complex resultant of infinitely +many and varied evolutionary differentiations and associations of the +two modes of Primal Energy. If so, the principle of Sex must have +existed before Matter; must have been inherent in Creation before +Creation began to evolve. And if so, Evolution would seem to have had +for its purpose the ever further and fuller manifestation of these dual +and contrary inherences in terms of Life and Sex. While, to judge by +effects, it has had for its means such ever more intimate and intricate +co-operations of these as have resulted in the progressively diverse and +complex developments found to-day in Human Life and Human +Sex-Characteristics. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MYSTERY OF SEX AND SEX-TRANSMISSION + + "The idea that the female is naturally and really the superior sex + seems incredible, and only the most liberal and emancipated minds, + possessed of a large store of biological information, are capable + of realising it."--_Professor Lester Ward._ + + +I + +Those happy persons who do not perplex themselves concerning the +intrinsic causes behind all physical phenomena see it as only "natural" +that two parents of opposite sex should produce offspring of both sexes. + +And yet it is not only a great mystery, but, on the face of it, it is an +anomaly that a child who may possess an admixture of all the physical +and mental characteristics of its two parents, bears, nevertheless, the +sex and the sex-characteristics of one only. Sex, male or female, breeds +true in nearly every case; the rare exceptions merely emphasising the +rule. The mystery deepens when we realise that every individual is a +product of countless such admixtures of the qualities, throughout +countless generations, of countless forefathers and foremothers. And +although such a man or woman may hark back to any one, or more, of the +traits of his or her innumerable forbears, he or she, nevertheless, +"breeds true" in the factors of sex and sex-characteristics. + +Long and closely biologists have pondered these many and involved +problems. How is it, they inquire, that an embryo bred of two parents of +opposite sex develops the sex of one only of these? How is it that the +mother, who belongs to one sex only, produces--and produces in about +equal number--offspring of both? The phenomenon is expressed, +biologically, in the term, "sex-limited factor"--an incalculable +something in the embryo which limits its sex to the sex of one only of +its parents. But the "something," and the method of this sex-limitation +have remained enigmas. + +Sex is regarded by the new Mendelian school of biologists as that which +is known as a "Mendelian factor." And to follow the argument to its +conclusions, a few simple words about the Mendelian theory of Heredity +are essential to those unacquainted therewith. + + * * * * * + +About forty years ago, a German monk, Mendel by name, was struck by the +facts that in his bed of edible peas certain plants grew tall, while +others remained dwarf; that the blossoms of certain plants were white +always, while those of others were always coloured. He made a number of +experiments in crossing the plants, with a view to discovering the law +of inheritance by way of its operation in hybrid varieties. Briefly, the +results of his experiments--which have since been repeated and confirmed +by many later observers--were as follows: + +There are plants that are tall and can transmit only Tallness to +offspring. There are plants that are dwarf and can transmit only +Dwarfness to offspring. So too, there are plants of white blossom or of +coloured blossom that can transmit, respectively, only White or Coloured +blossoming to offspring. + +When a Tall is crossed with a Dwarf plant, however, or a Coloured with a +White plant, strange to say, the hybrid offspring of this cross shows +_one_ only of these opposite traits, to the exclusion of the other. No +intermediate, or mixed, forms are produced. + +Thus, a Tall crossed with a Dwarf produces only Talls. Plants of +Coloured flower crossed with those of White flower give only Coloured +flowering varieties. A yellow and a green-seeded cross produce only +yellow-seeded plants. + +In the cross between plants of opposite traits, _one_ set of traits +appears thus, exclusively, in the hybrid offspring. These +traits--because they _dominate_ growth and development--Mendel styled +"Dominant." While those traits which are dominated by the other and +opposite traits and do not appear in offspring, he styled "Recessive." + +On further breeding, a new and stranger thing happens, however. Because +when such hybrids--plants bred of parents that had borne, respectively, +"Dominant" and "Recessive" characteristics, but with the parental +Dominant traits so overpowering the Recessive traits of the other parent +that these latter are submerged and concealed--When these hybrids are +crossed with other hybrids like themselves, both the Dominant and the +Recessive traits of the original parents reappear in offspring. The tall +hybrids resulting from the cross between Tall and Dwarf plants, when +crossed with other tall hybrids of similar origin, produce both Tall and +Dwarf plants. So with Colour, and with the other so-called "Contrasted +Traits." + +It becomes evident, therefore, that although the Dominant traits of +Tallness and Colour overpower in the growth and development of the +second generation of plants, the Recessive traits of Dwarfness and +Whiteness, these latter traits are _submerged_ only, and are neither +impaired in their values, nor destroyed. In the third generation, under +different conditions of mating, the original Recessive, and submerged, +traits re-appear, and reveal themselves in offspring-plants as the +Dwarfness or the Whiteness that had characterised their grandparents. + +Mendel assumed that such hybrid plants--offspring of a Dominant and of a +Recessive parent--produce two varieties of sex-cells, or gametes, and +that one order of cells contain the Dominant traits of the Dominant +parent, while the other order contain the Recessive traits of the +Recessive parent. + +But any individual sex-cell, or gamete, cannot (according to his view) +bear both Dominant and Recessive traits. The Dominant traits and the +Recessive traits of the respective parents he regarded as being +segregated, absolutely, in one or in the other set of sex-cells produced +by hybrid varieties. And of these, the cells bearing Dominant traits are +able to transmit Dominant traits only to offspring; while the cells +bearing Recessive traits transmit Recessive traits only to offspring. + + +II + +Now, Biology shows that plants and living creatures develop from a +single microscopic cell, formed by the union of two half-cells, of which +each half was contributed by one of the two parents. + +Clearly then, a hybrid plant is one that has sprung from the union of +two half-cells, one of which bore the Dominant traits of one parent, +while the other bore the Recessive traits of the other parent. But +because Dominant traits overpower Recessive traits in development, the +cross between a tall plant and a dwarf plant produces tall offspring +only--Tallness being a Dominant trait which overpowers the Recessive +trait of Dwarfness. So too, the cross between a plant bearing coloured +and a plant bearing white flowers produces offspring bearing coloured +flowers only--Colour being Dominant over the Recessive Trait of +Whiteness. + +But because the Recessive traits of Dwarfness and of Whiteness were only +_overpowered_ in the plant-development, by the Dominant traits of +Tallness and Colour, but were neither lost nor impaired in stock, hybrid +plants that had shown only Dominant traits in growth and constitution, +produce, nevertheless, two sorts of sex-cells for plant-reproduction: +cells that bear the Recessive traits of the one parent, and cells that +bear the Dominant traits of the other parent. So that in the +fertilisation of one another by such hybrids, cells bearing Dominant +traits mate with other cells bearing Dominant traits, and produce plants +of pure Dominant type--Tall or Coloured, like one of the grandparents. +While cells bearing Recessive traits mate with other cells bearing +Recessive traits, and produce plants of pure Recessive type--Dwarf or +White, like the other grandparent. + +It is seen, therefore, that in plants, when a cell bearing Dominant +traits mates with one bearing Recessive traits, the Dominant +characteristics so overpower the Recessive that these latter lie latent, +and concealed, in the resulting plant. But when a cell bearing Recessive +traits mates with another cell bearing Recessive traits, the resulting +plant (its growth and development not over-ridden now by the more +assertive Dominant traits) is able to develop its Recessive +characteristics. + + * * * * * + +These interesting and significant laws of plant-heredity and +constitution, discovered by Mendel in peas, have since been found by +many expert observers to hold true as regards other species of plants; +as too in poultry, in mice, and in rabbits, and moreover, in the +hereditary transmission of human characteristics. + +In _Heredity and Variation_, Dr. Saleeby points out that in the mating +of a black with a white rabbit, some of the offspring will be black like +one parent, some white like the other, and some grey--a blend of the +colours of both parents. + +In the last case, the _Dominant_ trait of Blackness, derived from one +rabbit-parent, blends in the fur of the rabbit-offspring with the +_Recessive_ trait of Whiteness, derived from the other rabbit-parent; a +grey rabbit resulting. But that the Contrasted Traits come to no more +than a temporary and partial compromise during the life of such a +rabbit-individual, without either of the traits losing its intrinsic +characteristic--Blackness and Whiteness, respectively--is proved by the +fact that these grey rabbit-offspring, on further breeding, produce not +_grey_ rabbits, but black rabbits and white rabbits; proving that the +Black trait and the White trait in them remained distinct and +segregated, neither altering its character in the least degree. + +It is as though one should take a spoonful of black pepper and a +spoonful of white salt, and thoroughly mix them. A drab +"pepper-and-salt" mixture will result. But neither pepper nor salt will +have changed its colour or its properties one iota. Could they be +separated out again, each would be precisely as it had been before +mixing. So it is with the Dominant and the Recessive traits in living +organisms. They commingle intimately, but each retains its original and +intrinsic quality. + +All the diverse and beautiful varieties of vegetation and the loveliness +of flowers, in form and colour, result from multiple associations in +hybrid-plants, of those which are known as the "Contrasted Traits" of +parent-stock. + + +III + +The lay reader need not perplex himself with the problems and phenomena +of Mendelism. + +All he requires to remember are its three leading principles. Firstly, +that in the world of Life, plant and animal, living attributes are +divided into two contrasting orders. Secondly, that of these two orders +of so-called "Contrasted Traits" ("Contrasting Traits" would be a fitter +phrase), the two groups are as absolute and opposite in character and in +significance as are the _plus_ and the _minus_ signs of Algebra, the +Positive and the Negative potentials of Electricity, the conditions of +Light and Darkness, of Blackness and Whiteness, of Heat and Cold. +Thirdly, that the Dominant order of traits are paramount over and +extinguish the Recessive order of traits. + +To sustain her equilibrium by a counterpoise of dual and contrary +factors, physical and vital, Nature must preserve these factors absolute +and unchangeable as the constitution and the opposite attraction of The +Poles. But in order to produce her countless progressive variations of +form and attribute, physical and vital, she assembles these contrary +factors in countless progressively complex combinations, co-operations +and correlations. + +It is conceivable, therefore, that the infinite gradations and +variations of form and attribute found in the world of living creatures +are, as in the world of plants, phenomena of the ever further +differentiation and more complex combination, in the hybrid offspring of +two parents, of two orders of Contrasting Traits, transmitted by the +respective parents. + +In all their multiple associations and diverse developments, however, +the two Sets of Traits remain unchanged, precisely as do the individual +elements of chemical combinations. Variations in species result, +accordingly, not from change in the essential traits, but from changes +in the modes and the degrees of the commingling of these in organisms; +and in the modes and degrees of their ever more complex associations in +such. + +Tallness, being an impulse toward extension, can never be Dwarfness, +which is an impulse toward contraction. Black can never be White. Square +can never be Round. Yet two opposite traits, both influencing +development, may come to a mean, or poise, in an individual organism; as +is seen in the grey offspring of a black rabbit mated with a white +rabbit. But it is a _counterpoise_ merely of contrary factors. The +traits of Blackness and Whiteness remain absolute and unalterable. + +If now, the reader has grasped these leading principles of +Plant-biology, he is in a position to follow the new application of them +to Human Biology which I now venture to present. + +Without going into details of physiology, it may be stated that the +principles of reproduction are so identical in plants and living +creatures as wholly to justify argument from one to the other. The only +differences are in degrees of structural complexity as organisms rise +higher in the scale of development, and demand, accordingly, more +complex organs and functions for the more perfect manifestation of their +characteristics; as also for the transmission of these to offspring. It +may be repeated, however, that Mendelian law is found to hold good in +humans, both in the hereditary transmission of normal characteristics +and in the hereditary transmission of the abnormal traits of disease and +degeneracy. + +Increasing complexities, structural and functional, are indispensable to +the presentment of the attributes of the higher species, Man. But such +complexities are, nevertheless, continuous with and have sprung out of +the simplicities of lower and rudimentary organisms, precisely as the +branches and leaves and flowers of a plant are continuous with and have +sprung out of its roots. A vital and important biological detail (to be +considered later) is that plants are not, as living creatures are, +differentiated into a right and a left-side, identical in construction. +Another is that plants are self-fertilising. + +With the lower animals, plural births are the rule. And in these, the +still crude and imperfect differentiations of the Contrasting Traits +allow of piebald and other modes of chequered colour and amorphous +construction. + +The higher the organism, the more complex are the biological +requirements for its pre-natal development, as for its post-natal +nurture. The functions of Parenthood, both physiological and +psychological, are always evolving to higher and more complex issues, +therefore, as the species to be reproduced and nurtured becomes more +complex. In human births, single offspring is the normal. Twin births +are comparatively rare. And that these are abnormal is shown by twins +being below the average always in health or in faculty; usually in both. + + +IV + +As already mentioned, Sex is regarded by the large and ever-increasing +order of the adherents of Mendel as a "Mendelian factor." But in +applying Mendelian truth to humans, I venture to think the applications +have not been carried to their ultimate and most momentous conclusions. + +Because, given the keynote to the Principle of Duality in the phenomenon +of the Contrasting Traits found manifesting in plant-heredity and +constitution, the duality of the Human Sexes, with their respective +orders of Contrasting characteristics, suggests itself as being +analogous. + +Human attributes, physical and mental, are seen, like those of plants, +to group themselves into two distinct categories, the Male and the +Female sex-characteristics, primary and secondary. And these, though +wholly contrary in nature and in trend, are found--precisely as occurs +in plants--linked together in the hybrid offspring of the two parents +from whom they were, respectively, derived; blending in a temporal +unity, but remaining, nevertheless, unchanged in their essential +differences; coming to means and counterpoises in individual +organisations, yet nevertheless preserved distinct and unalloyed in +these, as is shown by their emergence, unaltered, in offspring of +opposite sexes. + +As a hybrid plant is the product of two parents characterised by +opposite traits--Tallness and Dwarfness, for example--so, I submit, a +human creature is the hybrid offspring of two parents characterised by +opposite traits--Maleness and Femaleness, with the Sex-traits +differentiating one sex from the other. + +And at once a solution of the many baffling presentments and problems of +Sex presents itself--of the enigma of man with Woman potential in him, +of woman with Man potential in her; a key to the mysterious Duality of +human biology and psychology, with its conflict of battling impulses, +its harmonies of blending attributes, its innumerable and diverse +developments in proportions, in means, in extremes; in normalities, +eccentricities, deviations and reversions. And the analogy between the +two orders of Traits--in Plant-life at the lower end of the scale of +species, and in Human life and psychology at the higher end--suggests +that the ever-increasing complexity of organisation and faculty which +has characterised Evolutionary Progress, has had for aim, as it has had +for method, the ever further differentiation and more perfect +segregation, but, nevertheless, the ever closer and more intricate +association of the contrary factors of Maleness and Femaleness. + +In the lower organisms--plant and animal--the two groups of Traits are +but crudely differentiated as characteristics distinguishing one sex +from the other. In such lower organisms, Sex-development is merely +rudimentary; the first foreshadowings in Life of two intrinsic orders of +Essential Attribute, the progressive evolution whereof reveals two +contrary trends in physiological and psychical inherences. + +Like Light and Darkness, Heat and Cold, Sex is a phenomenon of Dual +states which manifest by way of relativity. Without Maleness, Femaleness +has no significance--no existence, in fact. And the converse. And in the +lower and rudimentary forms of existence, in proportion to their degrees +of undevelopment, the dual states of Sex are but faintly defined. The +very lowly forms are bi-sexual and self-fertilising. While the first and +simplest mode of reproduction is by cell-division merely; the principle +of Sex, with its dual factors, functioning, but not yet differentiated +into dual forms. + +The evolution of Species and the evolution of Sex have been so +absolutely co-incident in biological progress, indeed, that we are +forced to perceive them as cause and effect; or, rather, as one and the +same thing. And the evolution of Sex has meant, of course, the ever +further divergence and the more complex specialisation, in form and in +function, of the characteristics of the one sex from those of the other. + + +V + +On still closer consideration, it appears, moreover, that the evolution +of Sex has meant pre-eminently the evolution of the _female_ sex--the +slow and gradual emergence and development, in species, of female +characteristics, as, in course of Evolution, these have freed themselves +and have risen ever further into evidence from long subjection by the +stronger, fiercer, more assertive--in a word, the Dominant--traits of +the male. + +(A conclusion as singularly interesting, I think, as it is instructive, +in view of modern Feminist doctrine and aims, which make, not for the +culture and the ever further evolutionary development of the +Woman-traits in woman, but, on the contrary, for a reversion to earlier +cruder states of the subjection in her of her Woman-traits by those male +Dominant ones, which, as the hybrid offspring of a male and of a female +parent, every female creature inherits from her father, together with +the Woman-traits she inherits from her mother. There is seen here the +irony that woman has, by long ages of biological development, released +herself from sociological subjection by the male, only voluntarily to +set the Woman in herself in far worse psychological subjection to the +male in herself.) + + +In the new and profoundly interesting light thrown by Mendel on some +previously unsolved problems of heredity, the reason for the long +subjection of woman, biological and sociological, becomes clear. + +Because, given the key-notes of Tallness and Colour as Dominant traits, +one identifies these, at once, as traits of Maleness; the greater +stature of male creatures and the richer colour of their fur and plumage +in the lower species pointing unmistakably thereto. Dwarfness (or lesser +stature) and Whiteness (or lesser colour) are Recessive, and are +obviously Female traits. The plant of Dominant type, though still +bi-sexual, is making for a male _genus_; the Recessive type is making +for a Female _genus_. White creatures are so feminine in general effect +that it seems an anomaly when they are males. The converse is true of +black creatures. The black horse is stubborn and restive; the white, +gentle and submissive. + +White poultry are prolific in egg-production; white cattle are good +milkers--a female characteristic. Jersey cows are both small in size and +pale of colour. + +The male sex stands presumably for Dominance. And his positive, or +objective, traits overpowering the negative, or subjective, traits of +Recessiveness, prevail accordingly in early biological development. + +The female sex stands for Recessiveness. Her less assertive traits yield +and recede into the background before those of the Dominant male. In +stature, in strength, and in colour, and in the allied mental +attributes, he holds the foreground in form and in function. The reason +being that his role in Life is adaptation to environment. + +The male, therefore, in his masculine role of Adaptation, with his +Dominant traits making fiercely for the survival and for the ever +further development of physical fitness--until physical fitness, or +Adaptation, had attained due degrees of ascendancy--was long lord of +Creation; the female, his vassal. And this not only in life and in +action, but too in the personal characteristics of both sexes. During +aeons before the Recessive female-traits were able to come into evidence +as definite traits, they functioned as negations, merely; submerged and +over-ridden in all female creatures by the Dominant male-traits they had +inherited from their sires. + +Primal physical development may be said, thus, to have derived its first +impulse from those fierce and fighting male-proclivities which +characterised it in the epoch of that early savage struggle with +environment whence Species emerged. Only with further evolutionary +progress, do the female traits manifest as personal characteristics, +secure survival, and find increasing exercise and sway. + +The tigress is only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the +tiger. Primal woman was only less fierce, less strong, and less savage +than the male. It is only, indeed, in the maternal function and relation +that the female traits of both tigress and primal woman awake, and find +justification, impulse, and scope for development. And while the +material progress which has led to modern Civilisation resulted from +Adaptation to, and of, environment, and derived its impulse from the +male proclivities of strength, assertiveness and intelligence, the moral +progress thereof may be said to have derived its impulse from the +evolution of the female sex-characteristics. Because the evolution of +Woman-traits has meant the ever further tempering and counterpoising of +the fiercely active and aggressive male propensities, by the more +passive and self-surrendering qualities of the female. + +Judging the respective characteristics of the sexes by their +widely-differing roles in the most important of their co-operative +living functions, the parental one--the sole function wherein the sexes +of lower organisation co-operate, indeed--the respective attributes of +Dominance and Recessiveness manifest clearly in these. The province of +the male being to fight for mate and young, providing food, defending +life--in order to fit him for this struggle for racial survival, his +traits of strength and stature remain long paramount, alike in +development and function, over those of the female, as regards his own +organisation and that of his offspring, both male and female. The +province of the female being to surrender her powers to the nurture of +offspring before birth, and, after birth, mildly to suckle and to tend +its helplessness, Nature equips her to these ends; inhibiting, or +negativing, strength and fierceness in her by the traits of +Recessiveness. + +Tigress or savage woman, her struggle with the rough conditions of +primal existence is only less fierce and less strenuous than her mate's. +It demands the positive male-qualities (which manifest first in stature, +strength and pugnacity) only less in degree than does his, therefore. +The negative female qualities which, manifesting first in passivity and +surrender, detract from her fierceness and activity, would have made for +extinction of species had they not been defended by those of her +fighting mate, as too by the male-traits she herself had inherited from +her fighting father. They could only evolve, accordingly, precisely in +proportion as they were sheltered behind the male dominant powers. The +tiger shelters his tigress only during her maternal phases, however. Her +cubs brought forth, suckled, reared, and thrust into the jungle to fend +for themselves, she must fight her own battles for food and existence. +And her brief maternal phases being all too short for more than the +scantest development of female traits--which derive their fullest +impulse in their exercise as mother-traits--she remains a tigress +merely, and produces tiger offspring merely, because only tigerishness +secures survival in her domain of life and attribute. + +With the further advance of progressing species, savage woman has +evolved from savage brute to savage woman by way of such increasing +shelter and protection by her Dominant mate as have permitted the slow +and gradual evolution of the Recessive Woman-traits in her; and thereby +the evolution of the Woman-sex. Her maternal phases and the unfitnesses +of these become ever more prolonged and incapacitating; her offspring +demands ever longer periods of suckling, devotion and care, as both she +and it rise higher in the scale of organisation. Thus, Sex has evolved +in the male by response to the ever-increasing claims upon him, by the +female and by offspring, of his traits of protective chivalry and +intelligent effort. And Sex has evolved in the female by response to the +ever-increasing claims by offspring upon her, of her traits of devotion +and ministry. + + +The evolution of the Woman-attributes has been rendered possible only by +that protection accorded by the male to the female as the due of her +maternal unfitnesses; securing thus for her and for offspring a more +privileged and kindlier environment. Environment which, evoking less of +fight and physical stress, enabled her inherent milder, +self-surrendering Recessive traits to emerge, to unfold, and to function +increasingly in life and heredity. + +And in the degree of her advancing evolution, the male evolved. Because, +just as in her earlier hybrid constitution, the Dominant male-traits she +had inherited from her father, submerging the Recessive female-traits +she had inherited from her mother, made her, for long aeons, more male +than she was female, so now, with their progressive evolution, the +Recessive female-traits not only made _her_ ever more woman, but, +transmitted in ever fuller measure to her sons, increasingly tempered, +modified and humanised, the masculine fierceness and combativeness of +these. Whereby were substituted arts of peace and civilisation for those +of war. + +Thus, with advancing Evolution, the female sex-characteristics have +engendered, in both sexes, qualities of quietism and subordination, to +temper those of force and aggression; amenities of gentleness, +forbearance and affection, to soften assertiveness, turn the edge of +strife, and fructify intelligence. Thus, human civilisation has been +fostered and furthered. + + +In the hybrid creature that every man and woman is, are grouped two sets +of Contrasting Traits, or Sex-characteristics: traits Dominant, or male, +and traits Recessive, or female. And in the complex human hybrid, these +traits, ever increasing in complexity of constitution and further +diverging in trend, are associated in ever more close and complex poise +and counterpoise as both become more intensified and intelligised. + +Man is a hybrid in whom the male Dominant traits derived from his father +prevail in impulse and development over the female Recessive traits +derived from his mother. Woman is a hybrid in whom the maternal +Recessive traits prevail in impulse and development over the male +Dominant traits she has inherited from her father. + +The Woman-traits (which, as said, reach their highest culmination in +_mother_-traits), become in man _paternal_ traits; modified +mother-instincts which move him not only to love, in addition to +providing for and protecting offspring, but, transfiguring all his other +characteristics, move him to philanthropy, amity, tolerance and altruism +in his dealings with his fellow-creatures. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +ONE SIDE OF BODY IS MALE, THE OTHER SIDE IS FEMALE + + "Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine, + Your heart anticipate my heart, + You must be just before, in fine, + See and make me see, for your part, + New depths of the Divine!" + + _Robert Browning._ + + +I + +On further applying the Principle of Duality, as operating in +organisation and heredity, strangely interesting and significant +developments appear. + +Because, with the ever further evolution of Form and Faculty as +organisms have risen higher in the scale of life, the bodies of living +creatures are seen to have become further differentiated into two sides; +a right and a left. Anatomically, these two sides appear identical in +structure and in function, although contrary in incidence to one +another. Each is incomplete and impotent without the other. +Nevertheless, paralysis and other diseases show that each is, as it +were, an entity totally distinct from the other. One side may be wholly +helpless and insensitive while its fellow remains sound and efficient. + +Complementary and supplementary each to the other, both are, in a sense, +complete. Further and closer comparison of function shows, however, that +although they co-operate in action, they are by no means identical in +power or aptitude. + +The right half of the body is, for both sexes, the active and executive +half; quicker and stronger, and in all ways more efficient on the plane +of physics. + +The left half is, relatively, passive and inert, is _responsive_, +mainly, to the initiative and requirements of the right half, by which +its powers are overshadowed in every form of direct activity. + +As with the two sides of the body, so it is with the two halves of the +brain, which are at the same time the agencies of mentality and the +centres for recording the sensations and for directing the movements of +the two sides of the body. The brain-half which controls the right side +is known as "the Leading half." It is the agent in concrete +intellection, as in physical activity. + +While, so far as biologists and psychologists have been able to +discover, the other half of the brain is negative in function--a blank, +as regards concrete intelligence and nervous or muscular initiative. In +disease, it has sometimes been found to undertake, and to perform feebly +and imperfectly, sundry of the duties of its active "Leading" partner. +But inert and inadequate in muscular action, it is negative in +intellection. It has been observed, however, that patients in whom this +brain-half is diseased show signs of moral deterioration. Yet whatsoever +its functions--and the fact that it does not atrophy nor degenerate in +the marvellous structure and complexity which characterise +brain-constitution shows that it functions duly--its operations are +totally dissimilar to, and are, moreover, wholly overshadowed by those +of its active, intelligent partner. + + +Here again, as in the two sides of the body, appear, surely, the factors +of Dominance and Recessiveness--in other words of Maleness and +Femaleness; of strength and activity upon material planes, and of +inhibition upon these. + +Developments which, being in full agreement with one another and with +others, suggest that the two orders of Sex-characteristics (derived from +parents of opposite sex) are centred, respectively, in the two sides of +the body, and in the two brain-hemispheres allied, respectively, with +these. One side of the body, with its allied brain-half, represents the +paternal inherences of the individual; the other, the maternal. If so, +the right side of the body, with its allied Leading, or Dominant, +brain-half is, clearly, of male inherence. While the left side, with its +allied Recessive, or Dormant, brain-half is of female inherence. + +The inference is further supported by the fact that the stronger right +side is rather larger and more masculine in form; while left-side limbs +are in normal right-handed persons, more slender and shapely and +delicate--in a word more womanly--than are those of the right. + +As regards the face, from one aspect both sides are complete, from +another aspect both are incomplete, without the other. And in +configuration and expression, the two sides of the face differ +appreciably; the left side being more psychical, emotional and +subtle--in a word again more womanly. + +In most persons, the hands and ears and eyes of one side differ from +those of the other, both in form and in function. In some persons the +differences are considerable. It happens occasionally, indeed, that the +eye of one side resembles in colour the eyes of one parent, while the +opposite eye bears the colour of those of the other parent. + +Strange to say, there are, moreover, in the human male, organs concerned +with the strictly female function of lactation. + +Indication of primaeval human hermaphrodites formed one of Darwin's +greatest puzzles, indeed. In his _Descent of Man_, the following passage +occurs: + + + "It has been known that in the vertebrate Kingdom one sex bears + rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the + reproductive system, which properly belong to the other sex.... + Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to + have been hermaphrodite, or androgynous." + + +It escaped him as it has escaped later biologists that Man, the highest +of the vertebrates, _is still androgynous_. And this inevitably so, +since, being of bi-sexual parentage, the sex-characteristics of both +parents must be present in him. + +In _The Evolution of Sex_, Professors Geddes and Thomson state: + + + "Sometimes a fish is male on one side, female on the other, or male + anteriorly and female posteriorly.... Among invertebrates the same + has been occasionally observed, especially among butterflies, where + striking differences in the colouring of the wings on the two sides + have in some cases been found to correspond to an internal + co-existence of ovary and testes.... The prettiest cases of + superficial hermaphrodism occur among insects, especially among + moths and butterflies, where it often happens that the wings on one + side are those of the male, on the other, those of the female." + + +II + +Despite the fact that Nature has evolved the complex human races from +the single-celled microscopic _amoeba_ ("Protoplasmic father of Man," as +science has styled this), there are those who regard it as another of +numerous blunders on the part of the Great Mother that the left side of +the body is a more or less passive and powerless member. Accordingly, +the doctrine of Ambidextry has arisen. With the result that its wiser +exponents have abandoned it. Because it has been found that children +trained on Ambidextrous lines develop neurotic symptoms. This occurs +even in cases in which children naturally left-handed are taught to use +the right hand, as is normal. + +In a lecture given before The Child-Study Society in London, Mr. P. B. +Ballard, London County-Council Inspector of Schools, stated that +left-handed bowlers send down the ugliest balls, left-handed boxers deal +the most unexpected blows--blows that hurt terribly. To be left-handed, +it seemed, was to be not merely awkward, but to be wicked, moreover. Yet +any attempt to interfere with a child's natural habit is liable to make +him stammer. (The evil bent of left-handed persons has a special +significance in view of my hypothesis of the dissimilar mental functions +of the two brain-hemispheres. The term "sinister" expresses this bent. +The inference is that in such transposition of the normal functions of +the brain-halves, the tempering and humanising influence of the +Woman-half is counteracted.) + +Of a group of 545 left-handed children, 1 per cent. of pure left-handers +stammered, against 4.3 per cent, of 399, in course of being taught to +use the right hand, Mr. Ballard further stated. In another group of 207, +the figures were 4.2 per cent, and 21.8 per cent. respectively. Six out +of ten left-handed children who had been taught to use the right hand +were practically cured of stammering after having been allowed to use +the left hand exclusively for eighteen months. There are twice as many +left-handed boys as left-handed girls; and stammering is twice as +prevalent among boys. + +All of which indicates normal differences in function of the two sides +of the body--differences suggesting that, as I have surmised, each is +the site and the agency of a principle totally unlike that of the other. + + +III + +Upon referring to Biology--on the processes whereof every development, +both physical and psychical, of living creatures rests--this curious +dual constitution of the body, together with the problems of dual +sex-transmission and inherency, become explicable. + +And the solutions are at the same time so simple and inevitable as to be +the strongest possible confirmation of my thesis. + + +As already stated, living organisms, offspring of two parents, derive +half the source of their structure from one parent, half from the other. + +All plants and living creatures evolve their organisation from a single +microscopic cell, precisely as Life itself evolved primarily, and has +developed out of the single-celled, microscopic _amoeba_. The +microscopic cell which develops into a living creature is composed thus +of two halves, or "gametes," to employ the scientific term. One half was +contributed by the father: the other, by the mother. The two have united +to form a whole cell. From such a cell (zygote), half male, half female, +the body of every living organism has sprung. + +Now, although these two half-cells unite to form a whole cell, exchange +constituents, and appear to lose their identity each in the other, it +is, in the face of the strange dual constitution of the body, difficult +to doubt that each half actually retains its identity and +sex-inherences, and develops along its own lines (albeit in close +correlation with the other), throughout all the marvellous, intricate, +and complex processes of embryological existence, during which the +zygote is evolving into a living creature, capable of separate and +individual life. And the inherences of these two halves are represented, +at birth, in the respective sides of the body; each being, as it were, a +complete and perfect entity, although inseparably knit in one flesh to +its twin. And throughout all the further intricate and complex processes +whereby the creature comes to maturity, lives, reproduces its species, +and dies, each half preserves its individual inherence alike in +constitution and in function. And yet in the mystical unity of their +commingling duality, they are one flesh. + +Each of the parental half-cells contained, marvellously, the potential +moiety of a living personality. But either, alone, would have been but +an incomplete and valueless thing, had it not become united with the +complementary half-cell required to complete it structurally, and to +engender and energise its potentialities. Nevertheless, throughout all +the immature and the mature phases of life, from conception to birth, +and from birth onward to death, the opposite sides of the body represent +normally the opposite sex-inherences of their respective parents. They +are, in humans, the Man and the Woman--two in one--that exist in every +living man and woman. They represent contrary principles; they perform +different functions; they engender and energise dissimilar processes. +One is the centre of the Male characteristics, Dominant upon the +material plane; the other, of the Female characteristics, Recessive +thereon. + +Normality and health are the mean and balance, in the individual, of the +complementary and supplementary functions and processes of the opposite +sex-inherences of his, or her, body. Precisely as in the social economy +the complementary and supplementary roles of men and women counterpoise +the aptitudes and determine the effectiveness of human life and action. + +The left, Female-half of the body, with its allied half-brain,[1] is +inhibitive, and engenders the evolution and the preservation, physical +and mental, of The Type; sustaining health and vital power by way of the +female attributes of rest and conservation. + +The right, Male half, with its allied half-brain, is executive, and +energises the development (Adaptation) of The Type in its relation to +Environment, and, disbursing and applying the vital resources, generates +and differentiates potential faculty in terms of living function. + + +IV + +This hypothesis of the dual constitution and of dual functions of the +two-sided body supplies an explanation, equally simple and inevitable, +of the parental transmission of Sex. _Natura simplex est_, said Newton. +And Du Prel, "Nature is much more simple than we have any conception +of." + +Because, as Biology shows, not only does each of the two parents +contribute to offspring, but there being both a right and a left +reproductive gland in members of both sexes, the contribution either +parent supplies must have been derived from one or other of these glands +in them. And if the two sides of the body are of different +sex-inherence, it is only logical to conclude that the contribution the +gland of one side makes will be of different sex-inherence from that of +the other. + + +Since all forms of Energy have two modes, potential (or latent) and +kinetic (or active), on the plane of physics, this must be true, of +course, of Vital Energy. + +Life-energy must be present in all living bodies in the forms, +respectively, of _latent_ Vital Energy and _functioning_ Vital +Energy--energy conserved and available for functioning, and energy +expending itself in the living processes of mentality and action. + +An individual is able to move his limbs by power of the _potential_ +motion stored, or latent, in the muscle-cells of his limbs. Just as a +locomotive-engine is enabled to travel by power of the _potential_ +motion stored in the steam generated in its boiler. And as in the +living organism, so in the engine, the mechanism and the processes that +engender in it the _potential motion_ of steam are wholly distinct from +those which convert this potential motion into _actual motion_. + +One is able to think, by power of the _potential_ mentality stored, or +latent, in his brain-cells. For not only the vital processes which +sustain the life of the organism, as those too which enable it to +function in terms of living personality and action, but brain-power also +must exist in the dual forms, respectively, of _potential_ Faculty and +_functioning_ Faculty. So too, Reproductive power. In all of these +appear again the modes of Dominance and Recessiveness, of powers +_positive_ and _manifesting_, and of powers _negative_ and _latent_. And +since the female sex is characterised by traits of repose and +conservation, and the male sex by traits of action, the dual modes of +vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy _in potential_, and of +vital, muscular, cerebral and reproductive energy _in course of +generating function_, range themselves inevitably on the two sides of +the living equation as Sex-characteristics differentiating the male +organisation from that of the female. Thus ranged, they characterise the +two sides of the body as representing, respectively, a right, male side +which is the central agency in function, and a left, female side, which +is the reservoir of the _potential_ of function. + +If then the female mode of functioning is the Potential, or Recessive, a +mode of latency, it is to be inferred that the male traits every female +creature inherits from her father will, when incorporated in a body of +female prepotence, pass into the potential, or Recessive, mode; and will +thus become inhibited from developing as male-characteristics. +Nevertheless, this male potential will be preserved in that reproductive +gland which represents the paternal inherences in her, and will be +transmitted, as her contribution to male offspring, in the sex-cells +generated by this gland. + +While the female inherences every male derives from his mother will, in +the presence of the Dominant male-characteristics he derives from his +father, retain their latent, or Recessive, mode; and will thus not +emerge as female characteristics. The female inherences will be +preserved, however, in that reproductive gland which represents the +maternal inherences in him; and will be transmitted as his contribution +to female offspring. + +It will be seen thus that, as in hybrid plants, so in hybrid creatures +of both sexes, cells of two sexes are generated: in the male, cells +Dominant for maleness and cells Recessive for maleness--female that is; +in the female, Recessive cells, prepotent for femaleness, and Dominant, +or male, cells. + +And of these, the Dominant male sex-cells contributed by the male +parent, mating with the Dominant, or male, sex-cells contributed by the +female parent, male offspring results. While the Recessive female +sex-cells contributed by the female parent, mating with the Recessive, +or female, sex-cells contributed by the male parent, female offspring +results. + +Furthermore, Dominance being paramount in development, it must be from +the Dominant inherence imparted by residence in a male organisation to +the potential, or Recessive, female Germ-Plasm that the latter derives +the new developmental impulse it transmits to sex-cells. While +Recessiveness being Life and Faculty in the potential mode, it must be +from the Recessive inherence engendered in the Dominant male Germ-Plasm, +by residence in a female organisation, that its Dominance, passing into +latency, derives a new potential of further evolutionary impetus. + +The differentiation of living creatures into two sexes, therefore, of +bodies into two sides, of brains into two halves, and of Germ-Plasm into +two reproductive glands, would seem to have had for object the ever +further specialisation and segregation in the individual, for purposes +alike of constitutional organisation and of the evolution of Faculty and +Reproduction, of the two Orders of Contrasting Traits, which I have +assumed to be Maleness and Femaleness, respectively. + +From this view-point, the female Sex and Sex-traits are Recessive, or +Potential, always, on the material plane, and manifest increasingly +thereon only by way of ever more complex alliances with male-traits; +which, being positive on the concrete plane, equip the female inherences +for function thereon. Femaleness, or Recessiveness, on its side, +however--being Life-Energy in the potential--is all the while +engendering new potence for Dominance to transform into active, or +functioning, power. While although negative, it is equally potent, on +_its_ side of the equation, to alter the values and manifestations of +Dominance. Just as negative electricity inhibits the positive and +destructive forces of positive electricity, although it does not, of +itself, _manifest directly_. + +The Dominant traits of Tallness and Strength, for example, are direct +and _positive_ factors in physical development. Dwarfness and Weakness +are indirect and _negative_ factors therein. Nevertheless, degrees of +Dwarfness or of Weakness must proportionally reduce and modify the +tallness of Tallness or the power of Strength. + +But that Recessiveness is not a _minus_ sign merely, as algebraically +understood--but is an essential potence on another, and a psychical +plane, is shown by the lesser height of woman rendering itself as a +Grace; her lesser strength appearing in the new virtue of Gentleness. + +That the female provides, for fertilisation, only a single sex-cell, +from the reproductive gland of one or other side, while the male +provides multiple and commingled cells from both sides, supports the +view that sex-cells derived from one side are of opposite sex-inherence +to those from the other side. Otherwise, why two reproductive glands? + +The author of _The Causation of Sex_ adduces evidence showing not only +that the two glands are of opposite sex-inherence, but, moreover, that +normally they function alternately; so that now a cell of one, now, of +the other sex, is produced. It is likely, however, that function is +seldom so mechanical, but that personal constitution or nurture modifies +its operations. + +That the male cells are multiple in number points to such a struggle of +survival-fitness as ever characterises the more strenuous male destiny. +Not, perhaps, the fittest as regards intrinsic superiority, but that +most compatible with the requirements of the Queen-cell is selected for +mate. Should the Queen-cell be of inferior standard, therefore, then (as +happens in life) not the noblest of type, but that most adapted to +environment secures racial survival. + +So that here again, evolutionary racial advance may derive its impulse +from the Female factor. + +A singular phenomenon, recorded by the biologist, Roerig, and one which +materially supports my argument, is that disease of the ovaries of a +female deer will cause _male_ antlers to develop in her. Proving a male +organism concealed, or held Recessive, in her, by power of her female +sex-organs normally to inhibit the development of her inherited +male-traits. A strange feature of this abnormal occurrence is that +disease of _one_ ovary only causes antlers to develop on _one_ side +only--and this on the side opposite to that of the diseased gland. + +On the other hand, castration of male sheep of the Merino breed (only +the males of which are horned) occasions hornlessness. + + +V + +Male traits being paramount on the plane of concrete function, although +they exist (normally) in Recessive form in the female, it is from the +male inherence of her active right side and its allied brain-half that +she derives her concrete powers alike of body and of brain. + +It is obvious, therefore, that when abnormally stimulated by undue +exercise, such male-traits may develop into abnormal dominance. + + +The left arm of woman is essentially the woman-member. In its +half-passive action of supporting her infant for hours together, it is +stronger for this maternal ministration than is the more active and +doughty right arm of the male. Her left hand is more delicate of form, +gentler and more soothing of motion than her right hand is. It is the +hand she caresses with. While for direct, strong action--masculine +action, that is--the paternal right half of her is dominant, as in the +male. And although in our present-day stages of Evolution, the Recessive +Woman-traits have emerged as definite characteristics, emancipating +themselves from subjection by the Dominant male-traits, it must be +remembered that their impulse and their powers are yet but rudimentary. +Woman is still more male than she is female; her methods being more +masculine still than they are womanly. And this in the degree of her +cruder racial stock, or of the harder conditions (natural or artificial) +of the environment in which she finds herself, demanding more of +masculine proclivity in her--of physical activity and mental +assertiveness--than of her intrinsic Woman-qualities of emotion and +ministry. + +Civilisation, foreshadowing evolutionary ideals, discountenances, the +fighting female. Nevertheless, the cruder female _fights_ still with her +male right arm, and the more cultured female, with tongue and tactics. + +The intrinsic Woman-qualities, whereof Christianity is the gospel, are +yet in their infancy of development; are yet more ideals for which we +are shaping and waiting than they are realised and abiding facts. + +Even their own babes are not secure from the instinct of blows inherent +in the male-muscles of their mothers' right arms, when these are +restrained neither by a woman's tenderness nor by a man's chivalry. +Girl-babies, save those of the rarer higher types, beat their mothers +and nurses only rather less frequently and less fiercely than boy-babies +do. + +Later in their life-history, that new impulse to the evolution of the +Woman-traits which characterises their development to womanhood, +normally negatives and further tempers in girls the male instincts of +fight and of sport. But many of our modern amazons, brought up like +boys, are more male than are their brothers. The male fighting-instinct +which moved man to invent a club (destructive) has become so tempered by +the increasingly potent Woman-traits in him that, save when angry or at +war, he is content to turn his club into a golf-stick, a cricket bat, or +tennis racquet; his sword into a plough-share. Whereas, on the contrary, +the Woman-traits which moved woman to invent the needle (constructive) +are becoming so over-ridden by the male in her that modern woman, +artificially masculinised, abhors the needle, and is almost as much +dominated as the other sex is by the male instinct for a weapon in the +hand. + + +The class, Vertebrates, would seem to represent an adaptation to +environment typically Male; earlier than and contrary in trend to that +of the Mammalia, whereof the impulse was obviously Female. + +Increasing vertebration was characterised by such a progressive +differentiation of Male from Female traits as progressively segregated +these in opposite sides of the body; with spinal column and spinal cord +for, respectively, physical and nervous central lines of demarcation. +Thus the Male traits were enabled more and more to detach themselves at +will from Female inhibition, and thereby increasingly to specialise and +exercise those powers of force and fierceness and activity by way of +which species became ever more individuated; aggressive, intelligent, +efficient, in terms of _Fitness_ for the struggle for survival. + +Until that later evolution of female adaptation to _Unfitness_, in the +sacrificial function of Lactation, inhibiting and tempering the earlier +male trend, engendered the yet higher order of Mammalia. + +(With that intuitive illumination inspiring speech, men and races +lacking in virility are contemptuously described as being +"invertebrate.") + + +According to this hypothesis, the paternal (and male) inherences of any +mother may be said to be transmitted to the grandson in the direct male +line of her heredity--an unbroken line of Maleness reaching back to its +amoebic origin. While the maternal (and female) inherences of any father +are transmitted, in the direct female line, to the grand-daughter--a +similar line of continuity. The Woman-sex and traits of the grandmother +remain thus for a generation dormant, or Recessive, in the father; +"skipping a generation," as the phrase is. Then, in the third +generation, they re-appear in the grand-daughter; by power of a maternal +contribution in which the female inherence is prepotent. While the +male-sex and traits of the grandfather remain dormant, or potential, in +the mother; likewise "skipping a generation." Then they emerge in the +grandson, by power of a male gamete evoking the inherent male in them. + + +VI + +The attributes of the one sex invested thus in the other, although +normally submerged, form nevertheless a valuable endowment; supplying +supplementary and complementary factors to counterpoise, to energise, +and fructify the powers proper to the sex of the individual. + +Man bears throughout life the Woman-potential his mother transmitted to +him. But it is not his to realise. He bears it in trust for his +daughters. He transmits it to his daughters, and in them this potential, +recovering its woman-impulse, evolves to a further degree of +woman-power. The like with mothers and sons. + +All of which is supported by the Mendelian doctrine that the mother +transmits "Femaleness" as a Dominant factor to her daughters and as a +Recessive factor to her sons. + +But the method whereby this is achieved has remained a mystery. + +Professor Punnett says with regard to the phenomenon: + + + "The mother transmits to her daughter the dominant faculty of + femaleness, but to balance this, as it were, she transmits to her + sons another quality which her daughters do not receive ... among + human families, in respect to particular qualities, the sons tend + to resemble their mothers more than their daughters do." + + +A striking illustration of such transmission by mother to son of a +paternally-derived abnormal inherence _which she herself does not +develop_, is found in so-called "bleeders"; persons who suffer from the +disease, haemophilia. The daughters of a "bleeder" father show no symptom +at all of the affliction, but they, nevertheless, pass on to their sons +this male heritage of the grandfather. + +There are numerous other examples of traits and diseases thus "skipping +a generation"--in other words, of lying dormant, or potential, merely; +overshadowed in the constitution and psychology of the sex to which they +do not rightly belong, but developing in a succeeding generation in +offspring of that sex whereof they are a natural trait, or (so to speak) +a natural defect. + + +Since the woman-half she contributes to their hybrid constitution +engenders the potential of their living processes, the mother may be +regarded as still mothering her children throughout development and +maturity, and to the end of their natural term. Accounting for that +mystical sympathy between mother and child which intuitively informs her +of fatalities occurring to absent sons and daughters--but to sons +pre-eminently. Marvellously, they remain one living flesh so long as +life persists. + +During the War, mothers at a distance have known by an intuitive flash, +and have told of the death of sons cut down in battle. One mother +described the sensation she experienced as being precisely _as though +one side of her body had been suddenly torn away_. So too, mothers whose +infants have died during childbirth or shortly after, describe as +persisting for months subsequently a sense as though part of them were +dead. + +The father too must function in the hybrid living constitution. With the +immense difference, however, that his part therein is a factor of the +development of traits, not of the mystical functioning of Life. A +notable feature of this paternal heritage is that in women at middle-age +(when the wane of reproductive power releases vital potential from +maternal investments) not only may masculine physical traits emerge, but +there may develop in them notable brain-capacities inherited from the +father. Capacities inherent in them previously, but long inhibited in +action by the normal female brain-Recessiveness. + + +VII + +Every higher evolutionary differentiation results inevitably not only in +progressive mutations in the traits of species, but, as well, in +variations of the reproductive processes of such. When _defects_, +physical or mental, are not reproduced in later generations true to +Mendelian law, however, this is not abnormal, but is beautifully normal. +Normality requires that defect--which is a deviation from The +Normal--shall not be transmitted in any ratio whatsoever, but shall be +corrected in a succeeding generation. + +Moreover, when we realise the number and the complexities of human +traits, all struggling to keep The Law, it is only to be expected that +any single characteristic owing to its sex-inherence, may pass into the +potential or Recessive, mode, and may thus vanish for a generation. +Further, by the law of compensation, any trait or determinant, although +itself Dominant, may be dwarfed and submerged by some other Dominant +trait more assertive than itself. + +Suppose a father normally larger and stronger than the normally shorter +and weaker mother: Stature and strength being both Dominant and +masculine traits, the traits of such a father, dominating the +development of his sons, should so over-ride the traits of lesser +strength and stature of the mother (in whom strength and stature are +normally Recessive) that his sons will be tall and broad and strong, and +mentally virile. On the other hand, the mother's traits, prepotent in +the development of daughters, will inhibit in these and diminish the +strength and stature of their paternal inherences. Thus, the woman of +pure Recessive (the essential woman) type is smaller, more delicately +organised, and weaker than the male. + +By such means, the normal of the relative strength, stature, and mental +qualifications of the sexes is preserved; the specialised +characteristics of both ever further diverging in trend, while at the +same time intensifying their intrinsic attributes. + +Suppose, however, a mother who deviates from the normal in having +developed along masculine lines, and who is, accordingly, tall or strong +or mentally virile: Far from supplementing, in her sons, the father's +traits of strength and stature, her sons will be more or less emasculate +in mind or body, or in both. Strength and stature and virile mentality +not being normal to her, these can only have emerged in her and can only +have been exercised by her at cost of the masculine potential she bore +in trust for male offspring. A woman who wins golf or hockey-matches may +be said therefore to energise her muscles with the potential manhood of +possible sons. With their potential existence indeed, since +over-strenuous pursuits may sterilise women absolutely as regards male +offspring. + +Thus it is that muscular and otherwise masculine women produce weakling +males. (Giant women--female-Dominants--are incapable of reproduction.) +Tall mothers may produce tall sons, by transmitting to them the single +trait of tallness of the maternal grandfather. But since tallness in +woman is development along masculine lines, and detracts from her +maternal power, the tall son in such case is likely to be defective in +other manly traits. Men are of greater height than women, mainly in +consequence of greater length of leg. The power expended in the male in +length of limb is absorbed in the female into complex pelvic +developments, wherein it is stored as Reproductive potential. + +The power thus stored in latency reveals itself in the amazing +evolution, as regards capacity and muscular equipment, by way of which +the maternal _uterus_ so develops during pregnancy as to enable it to +cradle an infant of 9 or 10 lbs. weight, and to deliver this by output +of immense energy--a marvel of biological function and mechanism. + +Since the male trait of Tallness may be transmitted by woman from her +father to her son, without manifesting in herself, it is obviously waste +of power for her to develop a characteristic she needs neither for +personal nor for hereditary purposes. Whereas, by further evolving her +own woman-traits of suppleness and grace, she contributes new factors to +those of the male. And so with all the other sex-characteristics. + +Mr. Horace G. Regnart, M.A., the well-known breeder of pedigree stock, +states that a bull of marked _masculine_ characteristics sires daughters +of marked _feminine_ characteristics. While the _feminine_ cow bears +sons of strongly _masculine_ type. On the other hand, the daughters of a +"steery" bull (a bull of de-sexed type) are themselves defective in +female characteristics, and bear sons defective in male characteristics. + + +VIII + +Clearly and fully defined, accordingly, as Sex-characteristics are in +proportion as the individual is of high and normal organisation, +obtrusions in the one sex of the traits of the other are as much +stigmata of abnormality as are cleft-palate, webbed feet, or other +deviations from the normal. Because they are reversions to lower types +of organisation in which sex was less highly differentiated than is the +normal of to-day. + +Although, with progressive evolution, the Sex-traits are spun ever finer +and finer, and are ever more subtly and inextricably interwoven with +those of the other, normally the threads run true and distinct as do the +threads of warp and woof in textile fabric. + +The ever finer spinning of the threads secures an ever closer, subtler +interweaving. Whereby the fabric of human organisation, of character and +Faculty, becomes ever firmer yet more supple, ever stronger yet more +delicate, ever more intense and rich of colour, but nevertheless more +beautifully harmonised and subtilised by half-tones and complex +gradations. + +This is the reason why the strongest and most virile men are the most +humane; the sternest are most tender; the greatest are most subtle. So +inextricably interwoven with their virile characteristics are the finer +spun Woman-potencies, as strangely and exquisitely to temper and +sensitise their Manhood's powers. + +And it is why the tenderest, most womanly women are the noblest; the +gentlest are the most enduring; the wisest are the sweetest. + +But no more than Black can be White, Acid, Alkaline, or the Straight +line a Circle, can Repose be Action, Sternness be Sweetness, Firmness be +Softness, Fierceness be Gentleness; Assertiveness, Selflessness; +Boldness, Modesty. Nevertheless, in the hybrid unfoldment of Contrasting +traits, Softness tempering Fierceness transforms it to Strength; +Sweetness tempering Sternness melts it to Mercy; Assertiveness +reinforcing Selflessness nerves it to Devotion; Firmness preserves +Softness from lapsing to Weakness; Altruism, inspiring Chivalry, +transfigures it to Heroism. But that Fierceness and Strength, Sweetness +and Selflessness, have only intensified as, with further evolution, they +have extended further into Life and Consciousness, is shown when they +tear themselves asunder from their counterpoising attributes. Fierceness +is seen then to be more fierce in complex man--because fierce in so many +more and deeper issues of Life and Consciousness--than is the fierceness +of the gorilla, which manifests largely in muscular savagery; champing +of jaws, and beating on its breast as on a drum. + +So too, the emotion of complex woman is more deeply rooted in her, and +is more intense, than is the instinctive emotionalism of the savage +woman which expresses itself mainly in reflex movements and hysterical +outcries. + + * * * * * + +Thus down the ages, man, by way of Fatherhood, has endowed woman ever +further with his developing traits of strength and intelligence. Woman, +by way of Motherhood, has endowed man with an ever fuller heritage of +her attributes of selflessness and intuition. + +So these poor souls--the Man and the Woman in all men and women--have +climbed the steep ascent together, hand in hand, toward the Light. +Without the other, neither could have come. So tragically drear and +solitary would have been the pilgrimage, save for the spiritual converse +of that mystical comrade. + +Only by way of this psychical comradeship, which solaces the one sex by +the inspiration of the other, do men and women win through the +terrestrial travail of the human destiny. + +The mystical Man (who is her father in her) when woman would falter and +fail in the fight, whispers, "Courage, dear Girl, go on!" + +The mystical Woman (who is his mother in him) goes with her son into the +murk and struggle of temptation, holding her lamp of The Good and The +True and The Beautiful before his blinding eyes. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] Owing to an interchange of nervous strands, the right half of the +brain controls the left half of the body; and the converse. Structural +details which need not be considered here, but which have clearly for +purpose the closer and more complex association and co-ordination of the +Contrasting Traits of the two sides of the body. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MASCULINE MOTHERS PRODUCE EMASCULATE SONS BY MISAPPROPRIATING THE +LIFE-POTENTIAL OF MALE OFFSPRING + + "_The truth, when it is discovered, is what every one has known._" + + +I + +Mendel found that the hybrid plants resulting from his cross-breedings +of Dominants with Recessives produced, when mated with similar hybrids, +sex-cells of pure Dominant and sex-cells of pure Recessive types, and, +moreover, a proportion of sex-cells of mixed type, corresponding to the +grey rabbit-offspring of a black rabbit that has mated with a white. + +So too, are found among humans, four types of men and women such as +might be expected under my application of Mendelian doctrine: +_Homozygotes_ for Traits, or pure typical men and women--Dominant males +and Recessive females, respectively; and _Heterozygotes_ for Traits, or +mixed types--Dominant females and Recessive males. + +Of the pure Masculine type, are men who are wholly male in body, mind +and bent; active, energetic, enterprising; pioneers of material +progress; State-builders, city-builders, trade-builders, financiers, +explorers, soldiers, men of affairs. Of the Mixed type, are men who, +while being virile of body and mind, possess nevertheless a greater +admixture of womanly quality than is strictly normal. These are the +artists, poets, writers, doctors, priests, philanthropists. + +Among women also, are two kindred orders; the wholly womanly--pure +unalloyed types of natural woman, wife and mother, sister, friend; and +women who, while being wholly womanly too in attribute and trend, +possess, nevertheless, underlying manly faculties which give broader +scope and effectiveness to abstract and impersonal issues of their own +sex-characteristics. These are the artists and poets and writers who +present the Woman point of view. They are the Florence Nightingales, the +Charlotte Brontes, Mary Somervilles; the philanthropists, reformers, +born physicians, teachers, nurses, and so forth; whose part it is to +mother, befriend and inspire humanity at large rather than to minister +to individuals. Whose part it is, as well, to extend the tender, +purifying ethics of Woman and The Home ever further and more deeply into +public life, public work, and public administration. + +Such men and women possess the characteristics of their own sex fully +differentiated, but tinctured and fructified by more than a normal +quotum of the characteristics of the other. They are quite normal, +however, and are wholly invaluable in their contribution to the world's +affairs. Admirably manly or womanly, they bear but little likeness to +the hereditarily-defective or to the artificially-manufactured +species--mannish women and womanish men. They deviate from the essential +Man and Woman types by degrees of overlapping in the higher mental +attributes. In all the main characteristics of Sex, physical, mental and +functional, they are completely men and women. The abnormal mixed types +are, on the contrary, more or less degenerate, structurally, +functionally and mentally. These persons of natural Mixed Types are +Nature's workers rather than the parents of her Races. The daily round +is too restricted for them. Their abilities and bent claim wider fields. +The home cannot contain them. It is too round to fit their angles. They +are hampered by its reciprocities, stifled by its personal atmosphere, +restive beneath its obligations. And not seldom they succeed in making +homes as uncomfortable for others as they themselves find such. + +These Heterodox--of which mould Genius is--are indispensable to spur and +quicken human progress, while adding nothing to the personal evolution +of the Human Type. They advance the standards and the ethics of Humanity +by creating ideals in Art, in Literature, in Politics, in Reform and +Philanthropy. But only too often they fall short, in their own lives, of +the standards and ideals they establish for the world at large. + +The Advance-guard of Faculty, they break new ground of Mind and Morale +for others to cultivate. Although they themselves frequently quarrel +with life, they make life in general greater and happier for their +fellows. If women, they possess much of the initiative and energy, the +intellect and chivalry of men. But they apply these to womanly ends. If +men, they possess much of the insight and sympathy, the altruism and +creativeness of women. But they devote these to manly achievements. + + +Herbert Spencer held that Genesis (or reproductive power) and +Individuation (or Self-development) exist in inverse ratio. Which is +because individuation _beyond the normal_ can only be achieved by +drawing upon the vital potential of offspring. Hence, these strong +individualities of Mixed Type--because reproductive power is diminished +in them--but seldom transmit their abilities to offspring. Genius is +frequently sterile. Otherwise, its children are of inferior calibre. + +It is in imitation, doubtless, of the natural Mixed Types--which may be +described as a normal deviation from The Normal--that the cult of the +mannish woman is being cruelly and disastrously forced upon our +latter-day girls and women; resulting in wholly deplorable developments. + +The woman of natural Mixed-type is essentially womanly in aim and bent. +She does womanly work with virile energy and masculine mental grip. But +she never (or seldom) assumes male proclivities or adopts male habits; +crazes to wear trousers, to ride astraddle, to smoke, spit, swear, +stride, talk slang, or shoot living sentient creatures. Nor does she +otherwise exchange the more highly-evolved and delicate morale and +manners of woman for those of the male. In Art, in Literature, in +Science; in Industry and Reform, her aims and work preserve the womanly +mode and outlook. + + +II + +In consequence of doctrine which, for several generations, has trained +women to develop for their own uses the masculine potential belonging to +sons, many of our present-day boys and girls are seen actually to have +exchanged their natural sex-characteristics. Boys are born now, puny, +neurotic, and effeminate; while girls are strong and male and masterful. +And it is precisely in the families whereof the girls are strong and +male and masterful, that the boys are weakly and effeminate; the +degenerative lapse from The Normal expressing itself, in both sexes, in +terms of abnormal characteristics of the other sex. + +That at thirteen, girls now-a-days are taller and heavier than boys of +the same age has been established by the Anthropometrical Committee of +the British Association. + +Dr. J. J. Heslop, after carefully observing the health and the physical +growth of children in fourteen elementary schools belonging to the +Stretford (Lancashire) Education Authority, has published a striking +return of his investigations. The following table shows the average +height and weight at this age: + + ++--------------------------------------------------------------------+ +| | Height. | Weight. | ++-----------------------+--------------------------+-----------------+ +|St. Matthew's | Boys 4 ft. 7-3/4 in. | 5 st. 7-3/4 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 9 in. | 5 st. 10-3/4 lb. | +|Cornbrook Park | Boys 4 ft. 8-1/2 in. | 6 st. 0 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 10-1/3 in. | 6 st. 5-1/2 lb. | +|St. Anne's | Boys 4 ft. 7 in. | 5 st. 3-3/4 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 9 in. | 5 st. 10-1/2 lb. | +|Trafford Park | Boys 4 ft. 7-3/4 in. | 5 st. 4 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 9-1/2 in. | 5 st. 8-1/2 lb. | +|Gorse Hill | Boys 4 ft. 8-1/2 in. | 5 st. 10 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 10 in. | 5 st. 11 lb. | +|Seymour Park | Boys 4 ft. 8-2/3 in. | 5 st. 0 lb. | +| | Girls 4 ft. 10 in. | 5 st. 11 lb. | ++-----------------------+-------------------------+------------------+ + + +The most notable development among girls takes place between the +eleventh and thirteenth years. + +The opposite bias in this abnormal substitution of alien sex-traits is +due presumably, in both sexes, to an antagonising and neutralising of +the qualities normal to the one sex by emergence of those of the other. +Thus, the boy is puny and emasculate because his impoverished maleness +is too feeble to dominate the Female traits inherent in him, as is +normal to males. The girl is big and crude and masterful because her +impoverished Womanliness is inadequate to inhibit and refine her +inherent Male traits. + +The aims of Feminism are being realised in unforeseen developments. +Because in addition to extinguishing the most beautiful and inspiring +order of human qualities, this masculinising of women is burdening the +Race and deteriorating type by producing an ever-increasing number of +neurotic, emasculate men and boys. + + +III + +The present-day Mortality-rate of boy-babies has become increasingly and +alarmingly high. + +The mortality-rate of males is higher always than is that of females, +because of the greater hardships and dangers of men's pursuits. This is +one of the reasons why, although, normally, boys are born in greater +number (about 1050 to every 1000 girls) the female (pre-war) population +of England and Wales exceeded the male population by the huge majority +of 1,205,311. + +But the excess of male over female infant-mortality has greatly +increased of late years. In 1860 it was only 9 per cent. In 1913 it had +leapt to the high figure of 23 per cent. And this diminishing vital +power of males begins before birth even, 180 boys being born prematurely +as compared with 145 girls. Of boys born, 7 die from inborn physical +defects, as compared with 6 girls. While, before the age of three +months, 4 boys die to every 3 girls. Among 1000 infants dying before +they are a year old, only 96 are girls, as compared with 120 boys. +Recent statistics show that in rural Westmoreland, 48 boys under a year +old died, while only 21 girls of the same age succumbed. In Wiltshire, +the ratio was _135 boys to 78 girls_. + +To quote from a writer on these startling statistics of the +Registrar-General:-- + + + "Tuberculous diseases, convulsions, intestinal troubles, bronchitis + and pneumonia, and other maladies, all kill more boy than + girl-infants in their first year. The figures are surprising. + Omitting fractions, we find that among 1000 infants of each sex 21 + boys die of intestinal troubles to 17 girls; 10 boys die of + convulsions to 8 girls; 21 boys die from bronchitis and pneumonia + to 17 girls; and 14 boys from other causes to 11 girls. + Whooping-cough stands alone, carrying off 3.15 girls to 2.65 boys. + Even when chloroform or ether is given for the purposes of an + operation it kills more boys than girls." + + +It may be objected that, according to my view, the mortality of girls, +bred of constitutionally impoverished males, should likewise have +increased. But this high mortality among boy-infants and children must +so weed out the weakliest males that many of these do not live to +become fathers. Moreover, by developing into abnormal dominance the +_male_ potential in her, the mother de-vitalises sons more than she +de-vitalises daughters. + +Further, these crude hoyden-sisters of the weakly boys fail rather in +the higher attributes of Sex than in mere survival-power. They survive, +but they are marred in type by the stigmata of sex-immaturity or +abnormality. + +Increasing sex-impoverishment is bringing into vogue--almost as a matter +of routine--the performance on male infants of an unnatural (and a +degenerative) Jewish rite. + + +IV + +Of the many theories advanced to explain the determination of Sex in +offspring, the true one is, undoubtedly, the relative parental power of +the respective parents. + +Normally, this being well-balanced, the ratio of the sexes is about +equal; the preponderance being on the male side, however, owing to the +maternal parental potential being normally greater, because conserved by +reason of her less onerous role in life. When parental potential is +relatively greater in the father, female offspring is born. When greater +in the mother, male offspring results. In the families of men notably +virile, daughters preponderate. In those of women notably womanly, sons +are in the majority. (Presuming in such case the parent of the other sex +to be of average potence.) + +The preponderance of male-births during War-conditions is due to the +fact that by far the greater stress of these conditions, with consequent +depletion of vital reserves, falls upon the males. Hence the women--who +although depleted likewise by the increased demands upon them, are less +vitally exhausted than the men are--become relatively prepotent in +parental potential. The more virile men being absent on military duty, +moreover, the less virile members of the sex it is who preponderate in +the paternal role. + +Other parental factors, as of age, health and circumstance, which affect +the sex of offspring, do so _indirectly_ by their effects upon the +relative vital and parental potential of mother and father. + +In corroboration of the view that power conserved in the mother +engenders Maleness and masculine vigour in offspring, I have received +the following letter from the Head-mistress of the village-school of +Corley: + + + "I was much interested in your article _re Boy-babies_. I think my + school here is unique, there being 86 children on the roll, of whom + 57 are boys and 29, girls. And of the children in the village who + will be of age for admission this year, 7 are boys and 3, girls. + + "In the village there are several families composed of boys only. + + One family has 7 boys and 2 girls. + + " " " 6 " " 0 " + + Two families have 5 " " 1 girl each. + + " " " 4 " " 1 " " + + "Of one family reckoning 6 boys (1 dead; making 7 in all) the + mother has but one leg--the other having been amputated when she + was fourteen.[2] _None of the mothers here (so for as I can learn) + do work outside their homes_; except in odd cases, an odd day's + washing or cleaning. + + "_None do regular work on farms, or otherwise._ + + "All the children are well-fed, clean and well clothed. Our Medical + Nurse says she finds the finest babies here--of the whole of her + district. For 57 years the yearly returns in School have shown a + great preponderance of boys over girls." + + +The writer contrasts this Utopian order of things with her experience of +the rickety and otherwise diseased and defective states of +school-children whose mothers were employed in factories. + + +V + +It would seem that the embryological development of the male brain and +nervous system, it is which demands more of vital expenditure on the +part of the mother than does that of the female brain; less elaborately +differentiated as is this in respect of concrete intellection and +physical adaptation. + +For this reason, not only is more constitutional vitality on the +mother's part required for the production of sons--and more particularly +of virile sons--but the production of male offspring entails more +stress, and exacts a greater toll, physical and psychical, than does the +ante-natal nurture of the female embryo. Mothers who have borne female +children with but little constitutional strain or suffering may be +greatly debilitated, even invalided, during pregnancy with male +offspring. One finds women permanently weakened in constitution and +function, indeed, from the strain of producing a male. In such cases, +the male may be exceptional of type. Or the mother may be of +exceptionally low vitality. + +It has been argued that defect and degeneracy, as hare-lip, +cleft-palate, clubbed or webbed-foot, are more common in the male +because he is normally less highly-developed than the female is. The +contrary is obviously the case. In creating a difficult and a simpler +thing, there will necessarily be more failures in the difficult than in +the simpler product. Being nearer to Nature, the female is usually more +true to the normal type of species. But the type is not so fully +differentiated, or specialised in relation to environment, as is the +male. + +It is significant that the female _aphis_, when its vital potential is +stimulated by summer heat, is able to breed without co-operation of the +male, but breeds _females_ only. Supporting not only the view that the +female is the rootstock of species, while the male is, so to speak, an +alien grafted upon it, but indicating too, that the production of +females represents less output of reproductive energy, since one sex +alone is able to accomplish this. + + +VI + +Absence both of womanly emotion and of spiritual attribute disqualifies +the faces of the greater number of our modern "beauties" from being +truly beautiful. They lack those last exquisite touches which psychical +qualities bestow; sweetness, tenderness, gaiety, pensiveness, mystery, +mockery, witchery, wistfulness, surrender, resistance, maidenhood, +motherhood--the celestial and the terrestrial melting into one another +like the colours of the rainbow. + +Since evolution is advancing in some stock, modern beauty is, no doubt, +of higher calibre than has been attained in any previous epoch. But for +the most part, the faces of our handsome women are pre-eminently +pagan--bold, sophisticated, clever; without sweetness, softness, +imagination, sensitiveness--in a word, without Soul. The outlines, +howsoever fine, are hard and antipathetic in their uncompromising +firmness. The eyes are cold and critical and challenging, so that their +relentless gaze is sometimes rather of the nature of a blow than it is a +sympathy. + +Owing to that setting of the jaw which attends strong muscular action, +the shaping bones of the faces of developing girls thicken and coarsen, +and the naturally delicate, beautiful contours of chin and of cheek +deteriorate to the crude and heavy lower jaws characteristic of a very +large order of the sex to-day. + +The weak receding, or the sharply-pointed chin of the over-feminised +type--both early-Victorian and modern--errs in the other direction. To +give fine balance to the face and form--as to the mind--the Male traits +must be duly represented. These broaden and strengthen the curves, and +preserve them from lapsing to narrowness and feebleness; lending touches +of straightness and firmness which nobly enhance the graces. In excess, +they mar and deface, however; as is exemplified in the strong and +slovenly features, without drawing or delicacy, which characterise the +new type of girl being turned out by our schools and colleges, most of +which make now-a-days a speciality of sports. Similar heavy jaws and +blunt, amorphous features are replacing in our working-girls, de-sexed +by masculine employments, the classic, nobly-modelled lineaments which +made our Anglo-Saxon Race once the most beautiful, as it was the most +vigorous and enterprising, of the nations. Such faces may be deplorably +senseless for the sense--and lack of sensibility--in them. + +The facial type of the opposite extreme is ultra-feminine--a cameo-like +reversion to an earlier Victorian physiognomy, to which several +generations of mothers have failed to add any new quality. But, unlike +its Victorian prototype, the modern ultra-feminine face lacks blood and +emotion, and shows like a faded attenuation thereof. The cold, delicate +features, with the pinched nostrils which, owing to adenoid +obstruction, have never expanded to a full, inspiring breath of Life, +suggest further cameo-comparison; as being the daintily-carven shell of +an extinct creature. + +So devitalised and neurasthenic are many of our pretty young girls, that +their flowerlike faces, topping over-tall and undeveloped bodies, +suggest delicate blossoms crowning long attenuated, sapless stems. +Neither faces nor bodies are vitalised and athrill with powers rooted in +healthful organs; vivified by healthful functions, and instinct with +warm, iron-rich, magnetic blood. They show that making for beauty which +is inherent in the Woman-traits, but which, in latter-day girls, owing +to defective constitutional vigour or to educational, social or +industrial exhaustion, has been able to realise itself only in sickly +and weed-like development. + +Life manifests in these neurotics in the form of vivacities merely; not +as vitalities. + +Severed from their natural roots in Life and vital function, they +resemble nothing more than charming cut-blossoms gracefully fading on +drawing-room shelves. + +The truth is that girls brought up on modern strenuous methods skip the +years between 16 and 26. If young and fresh at 16, all at once we find +them 26 in constitution and in temperament--a little lean, a little +lined, a little wan, a little shrill, a little chill, and only too often +more than a little disillusioned and cynical--in a word already +_passees_. Some are, of course, an interesting and attractive 26, but +the fresh, warm, vital and beautiful years from 17 to 27, the years of a +natural woman's most charming bloom of mind and body, have dropped from +their lives, like petals from roses. So that our girls in their 'teens +require to hide the ravages of time by every sort of artifice. And at 26 +in years, they are approaching the forties in constitution and +temperament; are even keen on politics, cards, finance--resorts, +pre-eminently, of materialistic middle-age. + +This blighting of young womanhood, with loss of youthful bloom and +responsiveness, it is that has led to the decadent and demoralising +vogue of the Flapper. Since, beyond all things, men seek vital youth and +freshness in the other sex, to find it now-a-days, they must seek it in +children. + + +VII + +Deplorable are the degenerative processes by way of which those noble +natural characteristics of the Woman-sex which Nature has achieved by +ages of evolutionary advance may be observed to lapse, and are presently +all but obliterated from the woman form and face. + +Increasingly the curves straighten; the conflict between straight lines +and curves occasioning wrinkles. The jaw squares. The lips lose womanly +fullness, sweetness, and their natural colour and texture of +rose-leaves; becoming thin and pale and stern. Shadows gather round +them, foreshadowing, it may be, a masculine growth of hair. Hair loses +lustre and grows sparse, particularly above the brows. The chin loses +its feminine softness; rigidity and grimness being substituted. Eyes +lose fullness, tenderness, brilliance, and woman's normal melting +expression. The glance grows chill, hard, shrewd, direct. Crowsfeet mar +the modelled lids. The serene, inspiring woman-brows are furrowed by the +permanent frown of eye-strain or of nervous tension. The voice falls +flat and metallic, or drops into gruffness and harshness; losing its +delicate tuneful inflections, its sympathetic timbre, its joyous +quality. The cheeks hollow; the white temples are wrecked. + +In the faces of women whose systems are functioning healthfully, a +number of exquisite artistries in cellular texture of skin and in +tinting appear; the skin beneath the eyes differing from that of +the cheeks, that of the brows differing from that of the chin, +that above the mouth from that below, and so forth. In women +subjected to constitutional strain, all these exquisite artistic +differentiations--product of incalculable evolutionary developments--are +obliterated; the skin over the whole face becoming of the same grain and +hue, as is normal to the male. The body becomes spare and sinewy, or set +and spread; its movements heavy and abrupt. And more and more the hidden +male emerges from the wreckage. The male right arm, swinging like a +pendulum, suggests itself as being the motive-power of the ungraceful +mechanism. + +With the increasing maleness of physique, male mental proclivities +develop; obsessions to wear trousers, to smoke, to stride, to kill, and +otherwise to indulge the masculine bent. + + * * * * * + +It may be objected that Beauty takes too high a place in the counsels of +this book. _Beauty is Normality_, however. Nature, in her every aim and +handiwork, makes beyond every other thing for grace. Weed and moth, +shell and beetle, humming-bird and dragon-fly--all are lovely in +technique and artistry. Plainness and uncouthness in humans only too +often belie noble mind or disposition. This results, however, from such +failure of vital resources that the individual had fine material only to +equip his mind, and none left over to adorn his body. + +One sees the converse too, where all the available potential of beauty +has been lavished on handsome exteriors. + +Plainness is a mark of abnormality. The victim may be normal in other +respects. But in this, he or she is abnormal. And more particularly +_she_--since Woman is both medium and Creatrix of living harmony and +grace. So is comeliness declining, however, that one of the +specifications of a recent Baby-Competition was that beauty would not be +a necessary qualification. + +Yet Beauty is the natural birthright and The Normal of all babes and +children. + + +VIII + +The Male cult is impressed now at the earliest age. Some of our hapless +little girls, in consequence of having been subjected early to strain of +masculine drill, hockey, cricket and other rough and strenuous +exertions, are more like colts or smaller-sized bullocks in their crude +conformation and ungainly movements, as also in their crude mentality +and manners, than they are like charming human maids. + +Few developments in life are prettier or more engaging than is a natural +little girl. The sex of her, with its fair Woman-attributes, reveals +itself early in children of high organisation. Crowned by her curls, in +her simple white frock, she is as fresh and dainty, as winsome and +elusive as a fairy. Her little Woman-soul begins to make for beauty ere +ever she can walk. Ere ever she can walk, she moves her limbs in rhythm +of the dance. She tries to sing. She stretches out a tiny finger and +reverently touches a bright colour--a blue ribbon, a gold button, a pink +flower on a chintz. Set her in a field, she runs to cram her hands with +daisies. She fills, within the House of Life, an exquisite small niche +that nothing else can fill. + +Yet now they are cropping her fair curls, are exchanging her white frock +for masculine knickers. They are training her soft limbs and exquisite +elastic movements to the hard and rigid action of the soldiers' drill +and march; are teaching her to stride her pony that once she sat as +prettily and lightly as a bird; are making a hard, boisterous tom-boy of +her, with lusty, hairy limbs and uncouth manners; perverting all her +natural highly-differentiated delicate attributes and graces to clumsy +lower-grade form and activities. + +They have robbed her of her Doll, whose helplessness and wax perfection +fostered sentiments of worship, tenderness and ministry in her. They +have given her a whipping-top, which--unlike the boy, who pleasures in +the skill and mechanism of its handling--she lashes with contorted +features and neurotic spitefulness. + + +With characteristic scorn of physical disability, Feminism contemns old +age as disease or degeneracy--a weakness to be combated with latter-day +strenuousness, cloaked by a counterfeit youthfulness, forced exertions +(even games!) simulated youthful zests and gaieties. + +Beyond all things, women are exhorted not to allow themselves to "grow +old" as their grandmothers did, sitting, comely and tranquil and wise, +at their quiet firesides. + +Yet the truth is, Age is a natural beautiful phase; in its way, as +natural, as healthful and as beautiful as are any of the younger +seasons. Calm and stately as the snows of Nature's winter, as Nature's +winter shows us, old age does not presage death--because there is no +Death. That we call Death is but a temporary Recession from the Outer +and Terrestrial to the Inner and Celestial zone of Being. And with the +vital quietude and longer-sightedness of eyes, come spiritual quickening +and longer-sightedness of mental view. So that both eyes and mind +perceive The Outer more and more obscurely, focusing more and more on +The Remote. The stream of life runs stilly for the reason that it runs +more deep; centring again to that Within and Spiritual, whence it issued +in Birth, and will issue again in re-Birth. + +Compare such serene-faced, dignified age, cause to all of reverence and +tenderness, for the mystery and pathos of its wise and tranquil +resignation--Compare such with the restless, harried, malcontent old age +of modern counsels! + + +IX + +Before the advent of that admirable institution, the Eugenics Education +Society, for the establishment of a new Science of Heredity, as, too, of +a new propaganda of Race-Culture, vital and illuminating data, not only +of supreme scientific interest but, moreover, of the greatest practical +significance, passed, for the most part, unnoted. + +I venture to believe, however, that Eugenic propaganda has been too much +in the direction of eliminating defect from the Race by prohibiting +marriage to the so-called "Unfit." Whereas the true way of Racial +health, of normality and excellence, is, surely, to eliminate from life +the many conditions, material, economic, and personal, which make for +Unfitness--which preclude, indeed, the survival of little save +Unfitness. + +For since we are not in the secret of Nature's aims, and are wholly in +the dark as to the human type for which she is aiming, to prohibit +parenthood to any but the flagrantly abnormal, the insane and imbecile, +the epileptic and the hopelessly-diseased, might be to quench the +evolution of such higher Fitness as we are not qualified to foresee. +That which shows like disability in one age may be the incipient ability +of a later. In cruder, primitive days, when standards of Fitness were +physical strength, rapacity and cunning, honesty and mercy, and more +delicate organisation of body--the starting-points of new routes of +evolutionary development--would have been condemned as worthy only of +extermination. + +In sickly and declining stock there may exist, moreover, an ebbing vein +of rare faculty, which, re-vitalised by a due potential of maternal +re-creative power, might come to throb with genius. + +Realising all the factors--the innumerable lives, the incalculable +personal traits, endeavours and experiences, that have gone to make the +Individualism of any strain of stock, and realising that just these +factors of Individualism can have occurred in one line only of human +ascent and can never be repeated, it becomes clear that summarily to +extinguish any human strain, by arbitrary prohibition, would be to +exterminate a unique branch of the great Life-tree, and thereby to +deprive the Race of a specialised route of further ascent; a route which +no other stock could supply. + +The fact that great families, with great histories and talents behind +them, fall into decadence shows that even in decadent stock are +inherences of greatness which might be recruited to greatness again. +While apart from all this, the right of Parenthood, with the +evolutionary impulse to character and faculty consequent upon the +exercise of parental functions, is the birthright of every individual +capable of fulfilling such. The counsel of Selective Parenthood is +dangerous doctrine, indeed. Given Life, Nature by her methods of Disease +is able to eliminate stock too deteriorate for, or beside her purpose. +But she alone knows her purpose. And she alone can judge as to what is +intrinsic Fitness for Survival. + +Selective Parenthood makes, moreover, for the elimination of those +valuable object-lessons of inherited defect and disease, whereby Nature +points her inestimable morals of healthy and disciplined living. For +evasion, too, of those penalties and burdens in the care and maintenance +of the Unfit, which a nation justly incurs by such social wrongs and +maladministrations as are largely responsible for disease and defect. + +The doctrine of operative sterilisation is not only humanly repugnant +but, in view of the psychological import of every physical function, it +is essentially evil. + + +X + +Some momentous morals of the Feminist trend are pointed by the +Insect-world, which may be regarded as a devolutionary back-water, +wherein Life is slowly ebbing toward extinction by fluctuating out in +ever smaller, meaner, drabber, ineffective, pulseless and spectral +existences--chill and teeming myriads unwarmed by the throb of emotion, +unillumined by the light of Mind. Dust which, raised from dust by power +of Life, has caught the trick of living, and goes on living and +perpetuating, without cause or impulse other than age-old, time-worn +mechanistic habit imparted by the state of living. + +And in this phantom under-world of Decadence, cast by the shadow of Life +and peopled with distorted images thereof, the females are +Dominant--larger in size, stronger, more active, more enterprising and +ferocious than the males. As in the world of Vegetation, by way whereof +Matter first quickened into Life, so in this realm of _Insectivorae_ by +way of which Life is gravitating back to the inertia of Inorganic +Matter, in ever shallower, denser and more sluggish strata, the male is +seen as appanage and victim of the female. + +In the beehive, he appears as ineffective drone amid a throng of +strenuous neuter female-workers. And a female is his Queen. + + +Significant again is it that insect-females are seen increasingly to +have emancipated themselves from mother-instincts and maternal +functions, as regards nurture or affection for their young. The single +process wherein the warring males and snarling females of finer fierce, +evolving species sheathe their claws and mute their hates in a +co-operative, self-effacing instinct--Reproduction, here in this +disintegrating world of Devolution, functions without welding spark, or +lighting gleam of parent-altruism. At best, it is as chill, as +colourless and meticulously mechanical as the interminable tickings of a +world of clockwork. At worst, it is a repulsive rapacity on the part of +females to secure perpetuation. And this secured, they straightway sting +the craven male to death, or tear him limb from limb and ghoulishly +devour him. + +Queen Bee leads her vassal suitors so strenuous and dizzying an +ante-nuptial dance, for privilege of mating with her, that only one +survives to claim the prize; the others dropping, dead and dying, in the +wake of her murderous supremacy. And, as with other masculine and +muscular females, her progeny are neuter working-females (sterile) and +emasculate males (drones). + +As Feminists demand for human babes, the Bee-mother hands over her +offspring to be brought up by the State. While some other +insect-mothers, having reposited their eggs (to serve as bombs that +explode and devastate their living hosts) straightway abandon them, and +return to the more strenuous and repulsive female-pursuits of this +Phantasmagoria-world--a clockwork kingdom fabricated of Life's debris, +and drably mimicking the throb and motion of its mechanism in ghoulish +mockeries and vacuous reiterations; the while it runs down slowly, +ticking back to the molecular vibration of mineral inertia. + + +END OF BOOK I + +NOTE.--_Mendelian and other readers interested in the more scientific +aspects of the subject are referred to an Appendix at the end of this +volume, in which these issues are further considered and some important +evidences adduced._ + +FOOTNOTE: + +[2] I have observed that lameness in women, by restricting physical +activities and thus conserving vital energy, conduces to male offspring. +The fact may well have been the origin of the Chinese custom of +crippling the feet of female children. In my own professional practice, +by prohibiting all strenuous and exhausting pursuits, intellectual, +social or athletic, before and after marriage, I have succeeded in +securing male offspring in patients whose stock had for generations +given birth to girls only. In those _organically_ de-sexed by male +pursuits, rest will not avail, of course.--_Author._ + + + + +BOOK II + +WOMAN'S PART IN HUMAN DECADENCE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +DECLINE AND FALL OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS DUE TO FEMINISM + + "This is the function of our and every age, to grasp the knowledge + already existing, to make it our own, and in so doing to develop it + further and raise it to a higher level. In thus taking it to + ourselves we make it different from what it was."--_Hegel._ + + +I + +Ancient history is depressing study. + +It shows us peoples rising slowly and laboriously out of states of +barbarism to high degrees of culture and enlightenment, and then, more +or less suddenly, falling upon decline; lapsing to total extinction, +even. One after another, we may watch them climb the Evolutionary Hill, +then slacken pace and struggle on spasmodically. Till presently we find +them steadily losing ground; slowly at first, but, gathering momentum, +regressing more and more rapidly, until finally they are seen racing +headlong to destruction. + +Of some among the proudest and the greatest Civilisations, so absolute +has been their ultimate extinction that nothing more than ruined temples +and some statuary remain to mark their quondam glory. + +Biologists tell us this is natural. Races, they say--like +individuals--have only a certain life-tenure. They are born, develop, +attain maturity, lapse to old age and then die; just as men do. + +The analogy is not sound, however. Because although individual men die, +the stock they leave behind, if duly preserved and replenished by fresh +blood, may live indefinitely. Moreover, such records as remain show +that these past civilisations died, obviously, not of natural old +age--but of disease. Natural old age is sane and wise, and +self-controlled; healthful in mind and in body. Whereas the main +features characterising the decline of these great powers, were +viciousness and licentiousness; physical, mental and moral corruption. +Theirs was no passing in gradual waning of strength and quiet +dissolution; not even in senility. They may be described, on the +contrary, as having rushed helter-skelter upon death in full vigour of +their prime. We see in them, indeed, all the vehemence and +self-destructive forces of "sthenic" disease--disease as it occurs in +strong men struck down in full health. They died in riot, venality, and +lust, and every other form of vice and evil. Clearly, they died +unnaturally--of disease, not naturally of old age. + +How and why then did this happen? How and why should disease thus have +stricken these in mid-career? Since history shows the political +institutions, the laws and the administration of many of such mighty +decadents to have reached high levels of excellence, in respect of +justice and intelligence, while Culture, Art and Industry were likewise +notable among them, the causes of their downfall must be looked for +elsewhere than in their sociology. + +And since all human processes, sociological as well as natural, have +their roots in Biology, we are led to examine such records as remain, +for evidences of biological failure. Healthy and vigorous races do not +decline in consequence of unjust laws or maladministration. If they are +healthy and vigorous, they reform these. + + +II + +Investigation shows one striking feature as having been common to most +of these great decadences. In nearly every case, the dominance and +licence of their women were conspicuous. And realising Woman's +portentous role in Racial advance, it is difficult to believe anything +but that her role must be equally potent in Racial decline. + +A nation becomes decadent because the individuals composing it have +become decadent. The individuals composing it can only have become +progressively decadent by progressive hereditary decadences. And since +Woman is the racial reservoir and the Agency of Evolution, hereditary +decline of individuals and nations must have its source in a decline of +mother-power. + +History confirms this view. It shows the progress and waxing supremacy +of these great powers to have been concurrent with rising levels of +womanly character and virtue, with high regard for woman by man, with +high estimation and observance by woman of the functions of motherhood +and of The Home. While neglect of the home, contempt for and evasion of +the duties of motherhood, immorality and general licence among their +women characterised their downfall. + +And comparing some modern developments with these records of Ruin, one +can but be struck by notable resemblances between these latter and the +present-day trend of all our greater civilisations. + + +In the decline of Rome, the Roman women went to two extremes. A tendency +that shows increasingly among our modern womanhood. They separated into +two main orders. "Blue-stocking" and "Rake," they were then designated. +"Mannish" and "Womanish," or "Feminist" and "Ultra-Feminine," better +characterise their latter-day presentments. + +In America, these two orders of women are known as the "College" and the +"Society" types, respectively. The "College" type makes a cult of +masculinity of body and of brain. The "Society" type makes a cult of +feminine graces and social accomplishments. + +In the poorer, as in the superior classes of all nations, similar +extremes are found. One order is virile and hard-working; and for the +most part plain and moral. The other is womanish and pretty; and for the +most part frail. + +With us--as with those earlier peoples--the demand for liberty and +unrestricted economic opportunities for women is occasioning contempt +for and evasion of the functions of wife and of mother, emancipation +from the home, increasing absorption in public affairs, fever for +pleasure, lapse of womanly traditions and morale. All of which +developments passed rapidly, in those others, into general laxity, +licence and corruption; culminating finally in total ruin. With them, +the claims of Home and of The Family became, as they are becoming more +and more with us, secondary merely and subsidiary to other pursuits; to +personal ambitions, public careers, to pleasures, excitements, crazes +for notoriety. Woman's inherent erraticism--defect of her intrinsic +spontaneity, her bent for novelty and strong sensation--degenerated, +under the licence accorded her in ancient Rome, into the appalling +orgies of The Bacchanalia; which were instituted by the sex. + +Women attended the displays of gladiators. They watched the wild beasts +tear their victims. They themselves dressed as gladiators, and held +mimic combats. By cult of muscle, they grew taller than the men. + +Sallust writes thus of a notorious Roman matron: + +"Sempronia had committed many crimes of a boldness _worthy of a man_. +Blest alike in family and beauty, in husband and children, she was +well-read in Greek and Roman literature; could sing, play and dance more +gracefully than any honest woman need; had many of the other +accomplishments of a riotous life. She cared for nothing less than for +decency and modesty." + +Fifty years later, Seneca takes up the story of a rapid decadence: "The +ladies do not reckon the years by the number of the Consuls, but by the +number of their husbands." + +Much the same licence, extravagance and viciousness of the sex +characterised the greater number of those other old-world wreckages. + +The higher Woman-attributes ceased to evolve; ceased to be exercised; +ceased to inspire. Women cultivated solely, or pre-eminently, the +male-side of their natures; muscle, intellect, ambition, concrete +activities, indulgence of sex-instincts. By power of which masculine and +alien proclivities, they increasingly dominated the men, in whom the +virile traits had proportionally declined. Thus, more and more, the +purifying, uplifting and inspiring potence of true Womanhood, together +with the softening refinements of The Home, became ever further +withdrawn from the national life. Thus corruption undermined; and chaos +finally engulfed. + + +III + +Things were different in Ancient Greece. + +It has been said that Greece fell because she did not give her women +liberty. For a time comes, in the development of every nation, when its +women must be freed. Or decadence sets in inevitably. And some of those +old civilisations declined, undoubtedly, from lack of progress in this +respect. + +It would seem that the first sips of liberty require to be administered +to the sex with caution, however; the effects observed carefully, the +doses increased warily. Otherwise, impulsive and impressionable as they +are, women lose their heads; become intoxicated, and get out of hand. +And once women get out of hand, it is next to impossible to bring them +again under control (as was seen in the outbreaks of Feminist +militancy). Civilisation forbids that men shall deal with them as with +masculine rebels. And fenced thus behind the privileges of their own +sex, when armed with the prerogatives of the other, they may prove +dangerously difficult customers. + +In ancient Greece, the wives and mothers and the other reputable women +had but little or no freedom. They lived, for the most part, in +seclusion; dull and unintelligent and uneventful lives. There was no +pure, wholesome, and inspiring social life. The only women who were free +were the _hetairai_, those famous ladies who shed a lurid brilliance +over the corruption and decline of this great State--a decline wherewith +they had, most certainly, much to do. A faction apart from the wives and +mothers--although many among them were courtesans, they stood apart too +from the courtesan class. Women who had found in the unfreed state of +the wife and mother of their epoch, inadequate scope for their impulses +and talents, they broke away from domestic conditions, to form a coterie +of free lances--a cultured, brilliant and alluring band of renegades, +sought and esteemed for their beauty and intelligence by all men; +aristocrat, philosopher, and pleasure-seeker. + +More likely than that Greece fell because she did not emancipate her +women, it is that she fell because the women who emancipated themselves +abandoned the roles of wife, of mother, and other reputable functions. +For these Grecian _hetairai_ comprised, in the main, the flower of their +generation. One sees them, indeed, as brilliant Racial poison-blossoms, +greedily appropriating and exploiting to their own purposes the nation's +beauty and the nation's talent, its aspirations, potence, +passion--without transmitting any of these racial attainments to a later +generation. In place of endowing their kind with such nobler light and +faculty, inspiration and sweetness, as supply a people's evolutionary +impulse, they abandoned the home and the sacred and spiritualising +functions of true wifehood, and of the motherhood of such higher living +types as are indispensable to lead a nation's progress. + +A kindred movement--modified, for the present, by the more enlightened +traditions of our Century--is foreshadowing itself across the higher +civilisations of our day. More and more, our better types of women (the +misinterpretations of the Feminist Movement having imparted a distorted +bias and direction to their powers) are similarly abandoning the Home, +or are withdrawing their best interests and talents from it; are evading +wholly, or are gravely restricting their maternal obligations to the +Race; regarding children as bye-products, merely, of life--vastly less +important than some hobby or career. In place of realising the new +generation as the Vanguard of Life and Evolution; that which beyond +every other human achievement counts in the Universe. + +Worse than this even, more and more, everywhere, women are failing in +the maternal power of transmitting to offspring the health, the beauty, +the abilities and aspirations which are the model and ideals of our age. + + +IV + +A menace to the Race more alarming than that of the hard and mannish +woman (who, because of her lack of womanly attractiveness, is debarred, +in considerable degree, from marriage) is another and less ungraciously +obvious deviation from The Normal--an order of the sex, modern and +artificial, and rapidly increasing in number, over-civilised and +highly-feminised both of physique and of temperament, which may be +described as an Ultra-Feminine, or, in contradistinction to the +Feminist, as a Feminist order. + +Their womanhood but lightly rooted in neurotic systems, the women of +this sect are unstable and erratic, seeking distraction for their +restless, ill-balanced forces, in cards, crazes, drugs; fads and freaks. +Unfitted for wifehood and motherhood--some by faulty heredity, but a far +greater number by educational strain and consequent warp--some of these +ultra-feminised and frequently interesting creatures absorb themselves +feverishly in public movements; religious, social or political. Some are +persons of irreproachable morale and ideals; devoted, gifted, wholly +admirable. And being wives not seldom of men as talented, it is +deplorable that warp of culture, unfitting them for motherhood, should +have left such to waste their powers and aspirations in beating the thin +air merely of Utopian propaganda. When, otherwise, they might have led +the true and only way of Progress by endowing the Race with living +presentments and evolving treasuries of the parental ideals and +endowments. + +The greater her charm, the nobler her character and talent, the more the +pity is when woman is defective in the power to transmit her high +qualities, or has power to transmit these in inferior degree only; thus +sealing up for ever, or gravely impoverishing a vital spring of living +faculty and individualism--a unique line of Human Ascent which no other +stock can supply, and one which may have been leading up to the +production of genius such as the world has not yet known. + + +Another--and quite different--sub-order of this neurotic (and +partially-sterilised) type, in losing its higher potential of motherhood +has lost the racial instinct wherein personal virtue is rooted. The +lives of these are free and irregular. Not measures, but men, are their +vogue; to serve as admirers of their charm and talents, as spectators of +their temperamental extravagances. Incapable of the emotions of love, +they seek, are discontented, and seek further when they do not find in +its excitements, the joys and contentment that reside alone in deep and +abiding emotions. The poise and repose, the charm, the refreshment and +the inspiration of true Womanhood are lacking in them. They demand +increasing novelty and change of venue for their ill-ballasted powers +and capricious sensibilities. And this precisely in proportion as they +are deficient in those womanly emotions and illusions which endue the +least and simplest things with glamour and with beauty. + +This type, which can scarcely be said to _live_, but merely to frolic +through life, is pre-eminently dangerous to progress. Because, while +possessing the psychology, the appeal and influence of women, some of +these have cast off, utterly, the traditions, the nobler aspirations and +the functions of the best womanhood. + + +V + +It is universally admitted that a bad woman is far more wicked than a +bad man is. She is more callous, ruthless, wanton and debased. The +irresponsibility regarding concrete affairs (innate in a sex whereof The +Concrete is only secondarily the province) makes her a dangerous and a +demoralising factor when her acquired male brain and activities (for the +clever, bad woman is always of masculine bent) over-ride her own natural +aptitudes. Because the powers she has artificially acquired--in +substitution for her native ones--do not alter her inherent constitution +of a creature builded upon instincts; instincts which her native higher +qualities are alone adequate to guide and inspire. One may acquire some +of the characteristics of an opposite sex, _but never the morale_; which +is inborn and inherent to the natural sex-characteristics. + +Faculty declines in the inverse order of its development. The bloom and +beauty of the peach and of the flower are the last things to come--and +the first to go. So, in forfeiting her womanly qualities, woman forfeits +earliest the best of these. Love and purity and spiritual aspiration +perish first; with the result that the lower-grade female Subconscious +emotionalism, instinct and palpitant with animal impulse, comes into +play. + +Man requires to degenerate to far inferior levels than is the case with +woman, before he so loses his normal rationalism as to forfeit his sense +of proportion and of his responsibility with regard to material affairs, +and that stern obligation to conform to environmental conditions which +has been the impelling force of male development. Irresponsibility is in +him an acquired--and a feminine--defect; not an inherent failing of his +sex. The very basis of the manly character is a recognition of the male +responsibility in life's affairs. It was the impulse of man's primal +struggle. It is the mark of his civilised manhood. + +Irresponsibility is, on the contrary, innate in woman. It is part of +that spontaneity, plasticity, and versatility which have engendered the +racial evolutionary mutations; and by way of these have engendered the +progressive transitions to ever higher forms. And indispensable as her +native mutability is in making her the agency of evolutionary change, it +is an insecure and a dangerous basis for too heavy a super-structure of +male characteristics, physical or mental; as also for too heavy a burden +of male responsibilities. It disqualifies her for liberty and scope of +action identical with man's, in material affairs. + +The further we fit her, moreover (beyond her normal capacity), for such +affairs, by artificially equipping her with masculine aptitudes, the +more we unfit her for her evolutionary role of spontaneous advance. Her +chiefest values lie in the spring and the plasticity which enable her to +adapt her nature to the evolutionary impulses of life inherent in her; +and thereby to engender further human evolution. For this, it is +important that she shall not be moulded on those firmer and more +definitely prescribed lines of masculine development which are +indispensable to the pioneering of material progress. Nor should her +powers be equally differentiated, or similarly expended. They must be +left, in far greater degree, conserved, unformulate and unadapted. + +Normally, she is the child of Nature, in whom (because she is the +mother of the human child, who shapes to the maternal model) Nature is +unfolding the type of our Perfecting Humanity. She should remain, +therefore, more or less in the native and spontaneously fructifying +state conducive to evolutionary unfoldment. When she adapts as closely +to concrete conditions as it is imperative for man to do, not only does +she exhaust the potential fertility indispensable to the further +evolution and growth of racial faculty, but her powers lose that mode of +flux which enables them to tide to higher levels. + +While man stands for Civilisation, woman stands for Nature. Generatrix +of Life, she is instinct with vital impulses. And when these are not +expended, as is normal, in the creation of and ministration to living +and beloved beings, they generate warped, erratic and chaotic +aberrations. Because, no matter to what degree she may acquire masculine +characteristics and aptitudes, she remains, at core, a creature of +instinct; not of reason. As a creature of instinct she is invaluable to +life--because Life is moulded upon instinct. But instinct and +rationalism function on different planes of mentality. To over-develop +rationalism in her is to quench emotionalism in her, and the higher +illumination of her Supra-conscious faculties; thus rendering her the +prey of smouldering subconscious impulses which burst fitfully and +mischievously into flame. + +For Progress, man must be always the leading half and controller in +politics and civic affairs. These are his province. His sex stands for +permanence and conformity--and, accordingly, for uniformity. And +uniformity is the model for Civilisation, making as it does for justice +and the common good. + +Woman's non-conformability adapts her admirably to the personal +relations of life, but not to the political. Man builds institutions and +administers them by more or less rigid impersonal rule. Woman transforms +them into homes, and humanises them by individual concessions and +exceptions. + +So the two are supplement and complement in the public as in the natural +sphere. But their respective roles are contrary in every mode and issue. +Man's conformity, political and civic, is continually leavened by the +element of non-conformity and change he inherits from his mother, with +her other Woman-traits. But in him, her spontaneity and impulse are so +intelligised and stabilised by his masculine rationalism and bent for +order that, in place of operating emotionally and spasmodically, they +become tempered and restrained. Under his administration, material +advance proceeds slowly, but surely and securely. His masculine +intelligence and sense of responsibility cause him to adjust the +maternal evolutionary impulses,--which he inherits as reformatory and +revolutionary impulses--to the exigencies of practicability, and the +requirements of circumstance. + + +VI + +There is no more difficult, or possibly mischievous, person than a +strong and clever woman whose over-developed masculine energies and +abilities are controlled neither by a man's reason and sense of +responsibility, nor by a woman's natural disabilities, affections and +restraints. She is sometimes prodigiously clever; adding to her male +talents a woman's fertility, versatility, adaptability, complexity and +intuitiveness. And yet with all their gifts, such women accomplish +little but harm--alike to themselves and others. + +Erratic, fickle, irrepressible, they are perpetually flying off at +tangents. Now they are one thing too much. Now they are the opposite--in +an equal extreme. + +Medleys of contradictions and perversities, they are no sooner repressed +in one direction, or become fatigued by the monotony of any single line +of action, than they burst forth in some other. Their abnormal +mentality and energy, allied to their innate impulsiveness and craving +for change, impel them to break loose from those bonds of affection, of +tradition and of aspiration, which are woman's safeguards. There is in +the nature of most women, this dangerous quicksand of irresponsibility, +which may, in crises, topple and submerge the soundest structure of +education and of habit builded over it. This is seen in the abandon and +anarchy of the sex in riots and in revolutions. + +Such women rebels become increasingly a law unto themselves, and see no +reason why all others should not do likewise. They lack the masculine +grip of concrete principles to recognise that general lawlessness and +individual liberty cannot co-exist. Because where every man is free to +do as he pleases, no man is free to do as he pleases, owing to some +other man's abuse of his liberty encroaching on that of his neighbours. + +Women of this order are the Cleopatras, Agrippinas, Messalinas and the +Catharines of Russia; the de Pompadours, de Staels, Georges Sands, and +the innumerable other self-centred, unconscionable female-egotists whose +extravagances shriek discordant down the ages. + +Lacking both a woman's morals and a man's ethics, they are freaks of +Nature; or are Frankensteins of abnormal culture. When they are not +Empresses, to indulge in shameful licence--their male abilities +exaggerating their woman-instincts to the dimensions of +megalomanias--their inordinate ambitions make them mistresses of crowned +heads, or of others whose rank or wealth supplies their mistresses with +means and scope for their unbridled prodigalities. Privileged by their +sex and by masculine favour, their lawlessness protected from its +merited penalties by the law-abiding of their fellows, they become +intoxicated--frequently insane--as result of their successes and +excesses. The famous courtesans have been (and are still) for the most +part women of this ilk; persons of steel brain and will, without a +woman's aspirations or emotions to soften their self-centredness; nor a +man's code to discipline their wantonness. They make men the instruments +and the victims of their feminine defects, which are all--or nearly +all--of woman they possess; self-consciousness distorted to a monstrous +vanity, emotions dwarfed to greeds and lusts. + +One after another, they exploit their victims, by exercise, precisely, +of the same masculine business-abilities and ruthlessness which make men +fraudulent company-promoters, profiteers, or sweaters of the poor. When +one has served their purpose, they cast him off for another. +Cold-blooded, clever, and emotionless, although sometimes sensual in a +fashion purely male (in keeping with their other male proclivities) they +are adventuresses, spies, poisoners, adultresses, monsters; abiding +reproach to a noble sex; terrible example of the fate awaiting that sex, +as penalty for abnormal development of masculine characteristics beyond +the capacity of its Woman-traits to counterpoise and guide. + +Power, which strengthens and steadies all but weak men, only too often +drives women to destruction. A factor in this is that those privileges +of their sex which have become, more or less, their civilised +prerogative, preserve them from the salutary harsh and stern rebuffs +which men in like circumstance inevitably encounter. + + +If women are to have scope and authority identical with men's, then they +must forgo all privileges; must come out from their fence behind strong +arms and chivalry to meet masculine blows in the face, economic and +ethical--if not actual, indeed, as Prevost has predicted. + +And then, Heaven help them--and men--and the Race! + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE + + "I am for you and you are for me, + Not only for your own sake, but for others' sakes, + Envelop'd in you, sleep great heroes and bards, + They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me." + + _Walt Whitman._ + + +I + +A French biologist has discovered that when a female oyster is starved, +and its constitution thus deteriorated, it becomes transformed into a +male. + +The male oyster must be inferior, therefore, in organisation to the +female. Its constitutional potential is less, since the constitutional +potential of the female contains both its own, and the potential of the +male. And the lesser, it is admitted, cannot contain the greater; +although higher evolutionary forms, when subjected to conditions which +preclude them from sustaining these their higher forms, may lapse to +modes less complex. + +Further and more striking examples of such Sex-transformation are +afforded by so-called "mules," or "neuters," which occur in other +species. A well-known case is that of a pea-hen belonging to Lady Tynte. +Having laid eggs from which chicks were raised, this pea-hen, after +moulting, developed feathers proper to the other sex; appearing like a +pied peacock. In the third year the same phenomenon occurred in her; she +developed spurs, moreover, resembling those of the cock. _She never bred +after this change in her plumage._ + +As already mentioned, kindred phenomena of sex-metamorphosis are +observed in women after operations involving removal of reproductive +glands. + +That the female is, indeed, a more complex order of organisation than +the male, is not to be doubted, since masculine characteristics emerge +from it when it lapses from its normal of condition. + + +Adolescence as it occurs in the boy and in the girl emphasises this +conclusion. + +To the age of twelve or thereabouts, the normal boy- and girl-child are +like enough to one another; smooth-skinned, active, simple creatures. +The boy is, normally, larger, sturdier, stronger and rougher than the +girl. But, save for the cut of their hair and of their clothes, the two +are very similar. + +With the transition to manhood and womanhood, respectively, notable +differences accrue, however. + +From having been a strong, young, active, boy-like creature, +now--provided her development be allowed to take the normal course--the +girl loses physical activity and strength. A phase of invalidation sets +in. Instinctively, she no longer runs and romps. New languors invest her +in mind and in body. She is indisposed to brain-work or to much +exertion. She lounges and muses. Her mind is clouded with the mists of +awakening sensibilities. She suffers from lassitudes. + +She becomes a complex of disabilities, indeed; disabilities which in +delicate, sickly or over-taxed girls, show in chlorosis, anaemia, +hysteria and other ills. Obviously, profound changes, with +re-adjustments of her constitutional resources, are taking place in her. +And most significant of these is that which shows like an _arrest_ of +development, physical and intellectual. Because, normally, she develops +but little further along direct lines of intellect and muscle. Yet that +she is still developing, and this upon wholly new--subtler, higher and +more complex lines, is manifest at the end of this transition-period +whence she emerges, a woman. + +Her developmental arrest and her disabilities (resulting from an +intensification of Recessive processes in her) are seen now to have +subserved a phase of higher evolution. Nature suddenly locked the door +upon her differentiating and escaping energies, in order that these +might be conserved and knit into organisation. The active muscularity +she has lost reappears in the new factors of symmetry and delicate +modelling of limb; in repose and grace of movement. The straight, slim, +boy-like lines of the hoyden girl have evolved into the curves and +rounded suppleness and beauties of a woman. The girlish, agile and +abrupt movements have passed into a woman's poise and grace. The +unformed features of the child have become now delicately modelled; the +curveless, emotionless lips have bloomed into the flower-like, rosy +fullness of a woman's mouth; passionate and tender. New mystery and +brilliance light her eyes. Eyes and brows are charged with potencies; +with seriousness, with modesty, serenity, elusiveness. Hair and hands, +voice and expression, have become transfigured by the magic of a +re-creative impulse which has regenerated her whole being. + +So too her brain development, arrested along lines of concrete +intellection, is seen to have evolved to higher, subtler forms of +mentality; to be instinct with delicacy, sympathy, tact, and with that +incalculable mode of supra-conscious cerebration which is intuition. In +so far as she is of high, womanly type, she is now warm and emotional, +sympathetic, intuitive; consciously pure, yet delicately passionate. +From a crude and sexless hoyden, she has evolved into an exquisite +complexity; invested all round with higher values, human and psychical. + +As in their earliest beginnings, however, so now again the Woman-traits +manifest as Unfitnesses. Her new departure has actually undone in her +much that had been achieved in physical adaptation. + +Biologists, observing this arrest of development in the female, have +interpreted it as sign of an organisation inferior to that of the male. +In point of fact, the contrary is the case. Her arrest of development +along lines of masculine inherence no more proves her inferior to the +male than does the human developmental arrest along lines of that tail +our ape-progenitor possessed, prove the human inferior to the +ape-species. + +This arrest of tail-development occurred first in the female, doubtless; +being one of those evolutionary mutations in the direction of advance of +Type which are engendered in her sex; and which are characterised by a +conversion to higher potential, of differentiations in respect of +adaptation to environment that have been achieved in the male. +Conversion of male Fitness to female Unfitness, therefore. + +Seeing that the ape is vastly more adapted than is man to natural +environment, it is obvious that the trend of adaptation to environment, +far from having been along lines of evolving ape to man, must have been +always, on the contrary, impelling reversion of the human to the +ape-type. Darwin relates how he and Huxley, watching some boys bathing, +"marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no +longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all +other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on earth." + +Hugo de Vries says: "Natural Selection (whereof Adaptation is _modus +operandi_) ... does not single out the best variations, but simply +destroys the larger number of those which are, from some cause or other, +unfit for their present environment. In this way it keeps the strains up +to the required standard." + +While Hoffding states explicitly: "Adaptation and Progress are not the +same." + +Clearly there are Dual Principles operating in progressive development; +one adapting the organism to environment, the other adapting it to the +Typal model inherent in species. + + +II + +In the male of stock impoverished by artificial conditions of +civilisation, the transition to manhood is attended likewise by some +languors, physical and mental. New powers are being developed and +occasion more or less strain upon the constitution--a strain wherewith +our present-day masters and pastors, in their zeal of intensive culture, +reckon far too little. In healthy boys this is in no way comparable, +however, with the constitutional stress which adolescence causes in +healthy girls. The youth continues to wax in strength of brain and body. +The arrest, or involution, normal to the girl, does not occur in him. + +While she becomes gentler and more tranquil, by reason of a new poise in +her of mind and body, he becomes forceful and restless by reason of a +new release in him of energy. Yet though he gains in strength of brain +and body by this further differentiation of his resources into concrete +faculty and virile energy, he lapses notably in organisation. From the +supple, fine-skinned boy--clear-eyed, sweet-voiced, womanly almost in +refinement and comeliness--he grows large and hard and muscular; more or +less sinewy and rough-hewn, according as he is, or is not, manly of +type. His skin loses its fine grain and smoothness, becoming coarser and +hirsute; thus reverting, in degree, to the inferior, animal grade of +skin. His voice falls nearly an octave, lapsing from sweetness and +purity to gruffness and volume. Obviously--although all this being +normal, the male has a virile charm and handsomeness of his own--man's +is notably a less highly and subtly-evolved organisation than is +woman's. + +In the boy, is seen a progressive adaptation of body and brain to +environment, in order to fit him for his man's task of coping with and +advancing the conditions of life, material and ethical. And for this, +the more delicate and sensitive woman-physique, demanding more of vital +conservation for its upkeep, would be a handicap. + +Biological adaptation for his part in reproduction occurs too. But the +male development at this epoch is pre-eminently one of adaptation to +environment; equipping him with bone and muscle, brain and enterprise, +aggressiveness, initiative and energy. Racially indispensable as the +reproductive function is in him, it is obviously incidental and +subordinate to his general development. + +The girl's transition to womanhood is seen, on the contrary, to be one +almost entirely of adaptation, physiological and psychical, to the +functions of wifehood and child-bearing. Her growth ceases. She loses, +in place of gaining, nerve and muscle-power. While, in becoming +emotional, her changed mentality unfits far more than it fits her to +cope with life at first hand; with life unadapted, that is, and herself +unshielded by the male. Her intelligence at eighteen is normally less +keen and active--although of higher and more subtle quality and +trend--than it had been at twelve. + +Indications of Nature which point unmistakably to diametrically +different modes of culture and of training for the sexes, and, in +consequence, to wholly different applications of their respective powers +and aptitudes in every department of life. + + +In the boy, the Male-traits receive, with adolescence, a great influx of +energy; wholly dominating the Woman-traits which had made him more or +less a feminine creature. + +More and more each day, the potential virile in his every cell asserts +itself in structure and in function; dominating the Woman-traits +inherent in him. He waxes big and strong of body; restless and active of +mentality. And the less, within normal limits, virility has been +prematurely forced in him by too hard strain of mind or body, the better +for the evolution of his manhood. Unless the Woman-traits have been +unduly drilled and hardened out of him, they will now refine, inspire +and fructify his awakening masculine powers. The too hard struggle for +existence put, by necessity, on boys of the poorer classes, and, in the +higher classes, forced on sensitive boys called upon, too young, to +fight for survival in the semi-savage communities that public schools +are, hardens them too soon and too summarily, and thus frustrates their +best development. + +It is said that there is no atrocity a boy-community will not commit. + +In this stage of development, the moral consciousness of the _genus_ is +at low ebb. The accentuation of Male-traits now occurring occasions a +recrudescence of primal instincts. And the collective atmosphere such +recrudescence engenders in a boy-community, marooned in school-life +apart from the refining, softening influences of home and womenkind, is +only too often an evil and a demoralising one. Boarding-schools should +be abolished; good day-schools substituted. + +More than at any other phase of his existence, the masculine needs now +the Woman-influences from _without_; because the Woman-traits _within_ +are, for a period, submerged beneath a surge of Maleness. + +Notwithstanding these obvious truths, however, during the years when +body and mind should be adapting gradually, consciously and +subconsciously, to the social environment wherein their lives are to be +passed; when the mental horizon should be expanding simultaneously with +the expanding intelligence, when the moral should be rising to the new +demands upon it, boys are imprisoned in scholastic institutions, where +they are hemmed in by routine and restrictions, in an atmosphere of +puerile conceptions, puerile traditions, puerile conventions and +associations; their chief outlet and respite the narrow rules and the +narrowing absorptions of so-called "Games," supervised by martinet +Games-masters. + +And then, when we bring them to the field of life, we are surprised to +find many of them unintelligent, unadapted, unadaptable; resourceless, +inept and incompetent. Cooped during those impressionable years in a +wholly artificial environment, when confronted by the world of living +actualities, which is not ruled by similar narrow restrictions, nor +shaped upon the artificial forms and puerile misconceptions in which +their young ductile natures have been run and have set--they show +themselves wholly unfitted for life, with its varied, difficult and +complex conditions and adjustments. They have become, in point of fact, +mentally and temperamentally "provincial." + +The good form which some of them acquire is derived less from +school-ethics or training than from an aristocratic strain of boys with +whom they have been associated. And being acquired, when it is not the +form of their own social order, it appears only too frequently as a +counterfeit; engendering insincerity and snobbishness, and marring +individuality. + + +It has seemed to me that, in both sexes, the first seven years of +life--during which native faculty and attribute are evolving at great +pace--are a phase in which the Recessive, or anabolic, mode, +conservative of the resources and vitalising of the tissues, is in the +ascendant. The true child of both sexes is normally, during these years, +a typification of the Woman-traits; receptive, plastic, gentle, +affectionate, trustful, intuitive, emotional; quickly fatigued, quickly +recuperative; more or less lovely and angelic. In this phase, native +intuitive faculty makes children sometimes phenomenal; lightning +calculators, musical prodigies, precocious poets, artists. So too, their +marvellously rapid apprehension of the complex meanings and +implications of life betokens Supra-conscious mentality. + +At seven years old and thence onward to fourteen, a male, and katabolic, +phase sets in. Phenomenal faculty vanishes. Concrete development of +body, brain and energy proceeds apace. The child becomes active, +intelligent, enterprising, inquiring. The boy becomes appreciably male; +the girl more or less of a hoyden, more male, indeed, than she is +normally at any other period of her existence. Unless, that is, this +hoyden phase is rendered permanent in her by masculine training. + +At fourteen, with the evolution of sex, the sex of boy and girl, with +its respective opposite modes of constitution and of function, makes for +marked development, each along its characteristic lines. + + +III + +The French have a saying: _La femme est une malade_. Woman is not, of +course, an invalid. Nature does not fashion invalids. Woman's +organisation is normally delicate and sensitive and highly strung, +because of its special and complex sex-differentiation. She resembles +the child, in that howsoever healthful (in proportion, indeed, as she is +normal and healthfully organised) her cells of brain and body re-act +resiliently and vitally to all the agencies, physical and psychical, +about her. + +This sensitive re-activity is not only a sign, it is, as well, a +_source_ of health. Because the greater delicacy and sensitiveness of +organisation which characterise women and children, resulting in their +quick re-activity to deleterious conditions, secure a permanently more +highly-vitalised condition of body than is the case with man, whose +cells are less sensitive, more tolerant of fatigue, of cold, and of +other injurious agents. Immunity against injurious factors is the +parent of degeneracy. Life being re-activity, in terms of living +processes, to the factors of environment, such immunity entails loss of +vital re-activity to _vivifying_ as much as against deteriorative +factors. + +We complain that Nature, in place of making our bodies of cast iron, so +to speak, makes them, on the contrary, vulnerable at every point. The +reason is, surely, that the less we are constituted like cast iron--the +more vital and complex, intelligent and responsive, our tissues are, +accordingly--the more conducive to change and advance (because the more +sensitively re-active to subtler and psychical stimuli) they are +likewise. We cannot be, at the same time, hardy and obtuse, yet +exquisitely sensitive. Living tissue-cells are characterised, beyond all +other developments, by a range of contrasting abilities. An arm serves +as softest cushion for a child's head, or, by stiffening of its muscles, +becomes rigid as steel. An eye that sees for miles will focus to a +pin-point. But being, as we are, still in the making, our tissues +necessarily have limitations--and the defects, accordingly, of both +their sets of qualities. High sensitiveness of function is necessarily +attended by corresponding complexity and delicacy of structure. Such +structural delicacy obliges us to adapt environment to its complexities. +It is thus an incentive to progress. + +It obliges us, as well, to moderate our activities, and, by thus +restricting the output of our cruder powers, our resources are husbanded +and directed into higher channels. + + +The purpose of the complex differentiations which handicap the +adolescent girl is obvious. The curving bones, the expanding pelvis, the +rounded contours, the inhibited muscles, the languors and recurring +disabilities, are designed to restrict activity, physical and mental. + +Physicists tell us that the Conservation of Motion and the Conservation +of Energy are one and the same thing. This must be true, as well, of +_Vital_ Energy. The conservation of Vital Activity subtends the +Conservation of Vital resources. The new developments are by no means +incidental merely to the new processes; they are an integral part of The +Plan. In half-closing the doors on avenues of active output, Nature +conserves the Woman-powers for more intrinsic use. Every brain and +body-cell is raised thereby to higher levels both of constitution and of +function. + +As stored _mechanical_ energy becomes transformed into the higher form +of _electrical_ energy, so the power stored in Woman's anabolic cells is +raised to higher evolutionary forms. Thus she becomes fitted to be +mother of the Child--the blossom of the Race. Her part in the child will +contain the inherence of these new higher evolutionary values, as the +father's part in it will contain the inherence of the concrete powers he +has developed. And while her body spontaneously raises all its issues in +order to fit her to be a Mother, so it develops powers and functions +adapting her to serve as soft environment, physical and attributal, for +the rearing of her child. + +All this complex differentiation and evolution are designed, as well, to +adapt woman for the love-passion, and to draw and bind her mate to her. +And Nature has so cunningly interwoven the two plans and the two +developments that, for the most part, those physical traits and +emotional attributes which best qualify for motherhood most potently +attract and closely attach the woman's mate to her. + +Woman is "_une malade_," because, throughout the more than thirty years +of her potential maternity, she suffers periodically those which, +biologically speaking, are _minor childbirths_; each entailing a cycle +of complex physiological processes, with more or less considerable +constitutional and nervous stress, debility and incapacitation. Nature +exacts from her this recurring toll to Life and to the Race, not only to +preserve in her, in healthful and efficient function, the power and +mechanism of actual child-bearing, but (only second in importance) +perpetually to recruit her emotional womanhood and wifehood. + +When girls in course of developing the maternal function, with all its +attendant psychical implications, are strained by athletics, by +over-culture or industrial exhaustion, the vital resources are so +diverted from the evolution of this function as to cause incapacitation +in them, partial or complete, for wifehood, and for the bearing of sound +and fine offspring. Sterilisation, absolute or partial, is induced; with +dwarfed structure, blighted emotions and warped instincts. Even in women +who have developed normally, disease or atrophy of reproductive organs +may follow constitutional strain or undue effort. + +Toll to Life, in genesis of potential lives, is exacted likewise from +the male. It is a reflex in him of the vital maternal function, inherent +in his Woman-side. And this perpetual Life-tax upon his energies so +reduces these as to temper his physical and nervous activities and his +bent for individuation, and thus inhibits him from squandering his whole +potential of Life-power in volitional output. Thus is preserved in him +that normal proportion between Individuation and Perpetuation which +Herbert Spencer describes as existing in inverse ratio to one another. + +Thus also is preserved in him the normal mental balance between the Male +and the Female departments of his dual brain. Men muscularly or +intellectually overactive become lopsided and ineffective; restless and +wasteful of their forces, chill and sterile of temperament; having lost +that fine fructifying calm wherein creative potential is engendered for +concrete achievement; having lost also that equipoise of faculty +whereon mental and moral stability depend. + + * * * * * + +The Life-tax levied on the male is incomparably less, however, than that +exacted of the female. + + +IV + +It is because of their _anabolic_ mode of tissue-cells, less wasteful +upon the material plane, that girls and women normally require less food +than boys and men do. Notwithstanding that their bodies are more highly +nourished than are those of males. Healthy young women continue to be +plump and pretty, healthful and active on bread-and-butter, fruits and +sweetmeats. While mannish women, whose physiology has deteriorated to +the _katabolic_, disruptive and forceful, male mode, possess frequently +the hungry appetites of men; not only for food but for drink. And yet +withal, they are lean and for the most part plain, and poorly nourished. + +With the wane in her of the _anabolic_ mode of cellular conservation, +and the release thereby of vital resources which, sealed up in her +tissue-cells at adolescence, remain invested in organisation during her +years of possible motherhood, woman in whom sex is not highly developed +reverts more or less (as does the constitutionally-deteriorated oyster) +to the masculine type. She lapses to a _katabolic_ metabolism. + +At middle-age, accordingly, provided she be still healthy, she derives a +considerable accession of energy, physical and intellectual. Now for the +first time relieved of the Life-tax upon her resources, her powers are +released from bond, and become more fully available for individuation +and personal activity. + +At the same time, with this conversion of constitutional investment to +the form of current and available energy, there occurs a +proportional--sometimes a very signal--impoverishment of organisation; +and, after a phase of recrudescent emotionalism, a cooling and thinning +of passional feeling. Because such realisation of invested vital capital +is inevitably the precursor of decline. Thenceforward her cells, no +longer sustaining their high evolutionary states, generate more of +concrete energy, and endow her with increased powers of action. But +their conditional deterioration is manifest in general deterioration of +physique, of looks, and frequently of health. + +Not seldom, indeed, when her constitutional reserves had been previously +depleted by over-expenditure, physical or mental, the cell-deterioration +of this epoch lapses to serious disease or disability; to rheumatism, +gout, cancer or other perverted forms. + +With the constitutional and biological changes come psychical changes +too. In women in whom sex is not highly-specialised, middle-age entails, +with its quasi-masculine physical phase, quasi-masculine mental traits. +They may become strenuous and combative, sometimes difficult and +domineering. Perhaps they attach themselves to political and ethical +"anti"-movements, as arena for their new combativeness, their augmented +intellection, and increased physical activity. + +In the most womanly of women also (as in men at a later epoch) there +occurs at this period a natural transposition of the parental traits of +Altruism and Chivalry to the impersonal plane; moving them to mother and +father the world in general, by way of Charity, Philanthropy, Reform. + + +V + +Is it not waste of power and faculty, is asked, for able and cultured +women to permit their development, physical and mental, to adapt to the +simple requirements of a nursery? + +Uncultured and more or less brainless women of an inferior class, it is +said, should be adequate, surely, to cope with the minds and the needs +of these immature beings. + +Immature they are, in truth. But they are nevertheless strangely +complex; exquisitely sensitive. And they are men and women in the +making--or the marring. Behind the eyes of any child that looks at you +in dumb and wistful impotence to express itself, to defend itself, to +provide and to care for itself, may lie the mind, in bud, of a +Shakespeare, of a Newton, of a Shelley; of a Florence Nightingale, a +Mrs. Somerville, a Charlotte Bronte. + +How the most ordinary child, indeed, of cultured parents suffers acutely +in feeling, and deteriorates in mind and character under the regime of +blundering rebuffs, scoldings and misapprehensions, he meets at every +turn in the nursery ruled by a crude, hard woman of the labouring +classes! + +How, when they have grown older in years but are still only young in +understanding, all youth suffers from the shallow motherhood that was +kind, maybe, and helpful to it in its childhood, but fails it utterly in +the stress and difficulties of its teens! + + +True motherhood is the greatest of the Creative Arts; Mother-craft, the +most vital and complex of the Sciences. Life has never received more +than a tithe of that which Nature destined for it, owing to lack of +mother-nurture. Genius has never fruited to full bloom and potence, +because the mothers have so seldom realised the greatness of their task. + +Nearly all the records of childhood that writers have given us are +annals of bewildered mental suffering and of moral torture, which have +left their evil mark in injured health or warped mentality--not seldom +in both. + +The home, with all the intuitive wisdoms, the powers and sympathies and +the maternal ministry of a true mother, is indispensable to the nurture +of Individualism, and thereby to the evolution of human character and +faculty. + +The true home is the temple of the soul. Souls are exquisitely +sensitive, infinitely shy. And only in the warm and fostering +atmosphere of kindred beings do they find courage to unfold in living +attribute. Every home should be a unique environment, pre-eminently +specialised and adapted to the evolution of the young and tender +nursling-individualities shaping in it. To uproot these prematurely from +their native soil and transplant them in an alien one, is to blight +nascent talent and to warp character. For the reason that it +necessitates too early individuation, with precocious development of +self-protective and other qualities of worldly expedience. + +To plant out the shivering, exquisitely sensitive seedling, the human +Babe, in the chill, communal atmosphere of a Creche or other +institution, is as inhuman a social crime as it is an inhuman social +crime to defraud its mother of her highest evolutionary impulse and +function in the nurture of her little one--a responsibility she has +incurred, a privilege she has earned by right of her maternity. + +In her nursery, the mind of woman opens new windows of illumination, +glimpses new vistas of thought and emotion, higher and lovelier +apprehensions of the profounder meanings of Life. In her nursery, her +eyes learn tenderness, her voice sweet modulation, her speech new purity +and fondness. + +In good and happy homes where young persons, in place of being banished +to schools, grow up in the natural bracing and inspiring atmosphere of +parental influence and affection, Sex evolves new issues, in those +attractions and sympathies of its Contrasting Traits which are evoked by +the relations of mother and son, of father and daughter, of brother and +sister. + +Under modern conditions, in which children and young persons renew +intermittent acquaintance merely with parents and brothers and sisters +during brief holiday visits--returning home, with every added term of +absence, more and more strangers to their kin, their personalities and +interests increasingly detached from those of the home circle--such +potent and inspiring developments of sex are vanishing. + +A wide gulf, truly, separates from their fathers these modern +self-centred, self-opinionated young sportswomen and over-academised +girls. The charming filial relation, engendering new and tender +sex-amenities in the daughter's hero-worship and reliance on the manhood +of her sire, in the father's protective chivalry and recruital of his +youth in the company and interests of his young daughter, is waning +toward extinction. The vast majority of fathers feel dismally +constrained, indeed, and out of countenance in the presence of their +girls--so smart and sophisticated, so superior, critical and +self-sufficing are our latter-day school and college-maidens. For the +most part, their own daughters are the last among womenkind to whom men +turn, to reap something of the freshness and fairness of the younger +generation they have sown and laboured for. + +While the up-to-date mother aspires to no higher or more beautiful place +in her boy's life and affections than that of "good chum!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE EXTINCTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE + + "We may outrun, + By violent swiftness, that which we run at, + And lose by over-running." + + _Shakespeare._ + + +I + +How now, in detail, does the Feminist creed lend itself to the +biological developments and indications of Nature described in the last +chapter? + +Unfortunately, as already intimated, it ignores, violently combats at +every turn, and only too frequently wholly frustrates them. + +Feminist leaders have shown themselves deplorably indifferent alike to +biological and to sociological law. Losing sight of the truth that the +intrinsic and eternal function of Humanity is Parenthood--and more +particularly Motherhood--they have made, all along the line, not for the +true emancipation of woman but for her commercialisation, merely. + +The economic viewpoint has obsessed them wholly. Not to free woman from +disabilities under which her womanhood, her wifehood, and her motherhood +were suffering, but to convert her powers into industrial and marketable +commodities has been the aim. That higher ideals are bound up with +economics, is true. The rights of honest self-support and adequate wage, +leading to kindlier, healthier and happier life-conditions, are, by +improving constitution and character, important assets on the side of +Evolution. But by far the most urgent and important consideration in +economics, as these affect women, is the fundamental biological +principle that, because their greatest of all values lie in their +evolutionary and racial endowments, rather than in their concrete and +commercial efficiencies, the sex requires and is entitled to such more +lenient and privileged social and industrial adjustments as admit of due +quota of its vital resources, physical and mental, remaining conserved +in the potential. In place of these being differentiated and expended to +the degree natural to man, and exacted of him by his prescribed role in +progress. + +In direct and violent opposition to Nature, the Feminist system does +everything possible, however, to frustrate that normal phase of arrest +along lines of concrete development whereon the higher evolution of +woman--and in woman, of the Race--depends. Just at the age when Nature +locks the door upon her constitutional resources, for the purpose of +evolving these to higher organisation, the schools and industries do a +strenuous best to keep the door forcibly open, and to wrest the +resources from the storehouse of potential. With a view to fitting woman +to compete with the male, in whom such arrest of individuation, in the +racial interests, is occurring to vastly less degree. + +In all ways, the natural languors and disabilities of the girl's +adolescent phase are vigorously combated. The unfortunate young +developing creature is exhorted, spurred--compelled by rigid rule, +indeed (whatsoever her physiological disabilities), to take her part in +strenuous exertions; hard drill, cricket, hockey, football; with the aim +of developing masculine muscles where feminine muscles should be. At the +same time, her brain is forced, crammed and exploited by perpetual +mental tasks; by competitive examinations, or by some or another strain +of specialism, intellectual or industrial. The result is that she is +forcibly precluded from evolving to those higher, subtler modes of body +and of mind, which are the essence, the charm and the inspiration of +the sex; and the model of the Race to be. + +Our school-girls and work-girls, in whose already impoverished, or +degenerate, bodies this battle for their resources between Nature and +Culture (or Industrialism) is waged--the one to make them normal, the +other to make them abnormal--are all more or less in states of disease; +are chlorotic, anaemic, neurotic, dyspeptic, hysterical; or suffer from +ailments special to their sex. While some are sturdy and florid and +buxom (prematurely middle-aged), more are neurasthenic and attenuated, +ill-nourished, spectacled, breastless, hipless, pale or pimply; are +restless, emotionless, joyless, cynical, discontented. In but few +are found the thrill and joy, the pulse and spring and natural +enthusiasms of healthy, happy young creatures in the dawn and grace of +maidenhood. Such as are charming and pretty possess these natural +woman-characteristics only too often in fragile and weed-like +form. The constitutional degeneracy of some shows in precocious +sex-development--all precocity being degeneracy, development too +rapid and exhaustive, and entailing therefore flimsy and unstable +tissue-cells, faulty functioning and premature decline. + +A proportion, one is thankful to say, are normal and healthful and +charming, endowed with the attributes and graces, personal and mental, +for which Nature is shaping in the sex. Others are, biologically +speaking, mere lamentable "spoiled copies"; amazons of the hockey, +football, tennis or hunting-fields, only just distinguishable in general +characteristics from the male, and lacking more or less wholly in +womanly psychology and aptitude, and in all the fairer and nobler +attributes of their sex. Still others, although handsome and finely +female of physique, are "splendidly null" in respect of the emotions, +and of the other subtler and psychical developments of natural +womanhood. + +The Greeks, with their intuitive apprehension, pourtrayed both Athene, +goddess of Intellect, and Artemis, goddess of Sports, as sexless, +passionless, unwedded and childless; scorners of men, devoid of all +womanly impulse and sentiment. (Strangely enough, as though anticipating +the argument of this book, Athene is described as having sprung, in full +life, from her father's brain. While Scripture tells of Eve derived from +Adam's side.) + +In _The New System of Gynaecology_, the latest and most authoritative +treatise by eminent specialists in women's diseases, the following +passage occurs, under heading, "Derangement of the Sex-Characteristics": + +"It is our belief that the more truly feminine a woman is, psychically +and physically, in instinct and in performance, so much the more +complete and normal will be the functions of her mind and body. We have +already alluded to inverted instincts. And in the perversion of +functions and characteristics (physical phenomena) we may observe all +grades from almost complete masculinity in appearance, _with the +disappearance of the feminine functions_, to the lesser degrees of +disordered function and characteristics." + + +II + +Nature is so complex, yet so subtly consistent in her workings, that +the neuter-state shows in the faces of many of our women as the +typical look of the mule--cross between horse and ass, a creature +incapable of reproduction. In the eyes of young women of strenuous +pursuits--academic, industrial, or athletic, this characteristic sterile +glint, part boldness, part antagonism, is common. + +The normal condition of woman is attended by the normal expression of +woman. The womanly biology entails the womanly psychology. And modesty +is one of the natural female secondary Sex-characteristics, attendant +upon healthy structural development and function. The hard, bold +glance--the "mule"-look--of some masculine girls and women by no means +necessarily implies conscious immodesty. It is mainly biological and +subconscious; sign of an attribute missing, as result of deterioration +of the function in which the attribute is normally rooted. + +With reduced values of that Reproductive function it is modesty's +province to defend, the attribute of modesty declines. + + +The girls and women of old Sparta, as ignorant of biology as women are +to-day, made a cult of athletics--good and zealous, but mistaken +patriots!--for the express purpose of mothering a fine, athletic race. +These high and praiseworthy aims failed signally. For Sparta, with all +her zeal of racial improvement (so drastic in its methods that she +killed her weakly girl-infants) fell upon decline and degeneracy. Noble +civilisation that she had been, she died in decadent corruption. + +And showing the relation between athletic pursuits and extinction of +womanly qualities, the Spartan cult of Maleness led to such decay of +modesty that it became the custom for women to run with the men in The +Games, naked as they. A custom that sprang less from actual immodesty +than from lapse of that normal Sex-specialisation, whence arises the +normal sex-consciousness which engenders wholesome reserve between the +sexes. Modern developments of a similar extinction of womanly modesty +are seen in the conduct of latter-day girls and women in public parks +and elsewhere; in the unseemly familiarities of mixed bathing; in the +decadent, unduly-familiar or frankly indecent dances, and the frankly +indecent modes of dress just now in vogue. As too in that so-called +"candour" which permits women of culture to talk openly of the most +intimate physiological functions, and, without sense of shame, to +discuss across the dinner-table prurient scandals and other unsavoury +topics. + +The mystery of the creative powers of Life occulted in her has ever +invested woman, for man, with glamour and reverence, enhancing a +thousandfold her charm and appeal to his chivalry and tenderness. In +stripping herself of womanly reserve and dignity, alike in demeanour and +dress, she shatters her mystery for him and forfeits her supremest claim +upon his manhood; while robbing him of his fairest illusions and most +inspiring incentives. + + +III + +In cases of sex-transformation in the lower creatures, the lapse to a +masculine type is found to be accompanied by atrophy of reproductive +glands. As recorded in a previous chapter, investigations by Roerig show +that when the ovaries of female deer atrophy from any cause, male +antlers develop. + +Mannish sex-characteristics in women are as abnormal and as unnatural, +and arise from a similar cause as do male antlers in female deer. + +With the wane of parental power, normal to middle-age, there occurs a +like--but in such case a natural--atrophy of glands. And this it is that +causes some women to acquire masculine traits at this epoch. + +Degrees, greater or less, of such a decline (natural to middle-aged +women) are being artificially, and prematurely, induced in our girls and +young women. Some of them become actually sterilised, and are wholly +incapable of reproduction. The greater number are only partially +sterilised. They are capable still of being mothers. But the function, +in place of being the crown and the fulfilment of their natures, is a +disability; is more or less of a morbid process, indeed. And their +offspring are more or less deteriorate. Not a few, after +marriage--called upon to fulfil functions the resources whereof have +been sapped by other and abnormal activities--become invalids; a number +require surgical treatment. + +Non-development, similar atrophy, or other deterioration of the mammary +glands precludes the vast majority of our young mothers from nourishing +their babes--a deplorable injury to these as well as to the mothers +themselves; physical and psychical function being closely and subtly +allied. + +Women who fence or play hockey and other rough games during girlhood, +become, owing to such degenerative atrophy, incapacitated for lactation. + +The following is an interesting example of the manner in which cruder +and lower-grade power may be increased at the cost of higher faculties. +A patient told me that, having been naturally a poor walker--two miles +having been her limit--she had determined to train herself out of this +which she regarded as an infirmity. Accordingly, by persistent practice, +she succeeded in raising her walking-power to ten miles daily. She +mentioned incidentally--seeing no relation of cause and effect--that, +for several years (the years during which her walking-powers had been +increasing) _she had become progressively deaf_. + +That she had been, in point of fact, sapping the potential of the +complex, invaluable faculty of hearing, in order to equip her +leg-muscles, was confirmed for me a few weeks later, when I +read of a number of cyclists, who, after one of those deplorable +pacing-exhibitions common to-day, came in, one and all, stone deaf: a +consequence of nervous strain. The deafness in these cases passed off +with rest. But it is easy to understand that from such temporary +functional depletions frequently recurring, permanent structural +deterioration must result inevitably. Thus it is that over-use, in +sports and games, of the muscles of shoulder and chest, occasions +atrophy of mammary glands. + +By no other way than by artificially inducing in them a premature +(partial) climacteric, by perverting their young organisations to the +quasi-masculine type of the middle-aged woman, and thereby releasing, +for available output, power which should have remained conserved for +many years in organisation, can women be fitted for masculine pursuits. +And such sterilisation, where it is not producing actually diseased and +degenerate offspring, is producing a pitiful race of pallid and +enfeebled babes and children; dyspeptic and spectacled, +adenoid-afflicted, unchildlike and generally deteriorate. + +That other factors contribute to the wave of Racial decline now menacing +our modern civilisations, great and small, is true. Yet mothers of fine +vital potential are able to counteract and to minimise the effects of +constitutional disease in the other parent to degrees but little +realised. Because such mothers are so lamentably rare. + + +IV + +It is the natural release of vital forces, consequent upon the normal +wane of mother-power at middle-age, that has been mainly responsible for +the errors of the Woman's Movement. + +In all its aims and methods it has been essentially a Middle-aged +Woman's movement. There are no young ideals in it; no concessions to +youth, to love, to graciousness or sentiment; none to wifehood or to +motherhood. It has been, for the most part, a grim, dour striving after +neuter standards, neuter models, neuter efficiencies, neuter lives and +neuter recompenses. + +Identity of brain and muscle, of aims and claims, of games and +avocations; equal rights and equal work and equal pay have been the +watchwords of its propaganda. "Fair play and no privileges!" its +promoters rigorously demand for these poor weedy girl-neurotics who, +beyond all else, require industrial concessions and the human clemency +of adequate rest and leisure, to allow of normal and healthful +development of their growing brains and bodies. + +Pioneered by strenuous, middle-aged women--with the best intentions, be +it said--Feminists have adopted the fatal policy of sternly impressing +the model of their own quasi-masculine middle-age as the standard of +youthful development. Without, for a moment, suspecting that such +wresting of male energies and efficiencies from its young women-victims +has inevitably entailed upon them degrees of that climacteric of +womanhood which is the herald of decline. On the contrary, this +middle-aged, quasi-masculine state, because of its release of power for +sterner purposes, has been hailed as a triumph of Emancipation and of +higher education; proof positive that woman is not man--only because she +has lacked opportunity to become so. + +In point of fact, these unfortunate young creatures have been, and are +being all the while ever further despoiled of their youth, of their sex, +and their fair heritage of life and happiness, of function and of +faculty. And the Race has been robbed of priceless living wealth in +human health and capability. + +The breasts of these despoiled have shrunk, in place of blossoming. +There are no founts of altruistic life in them. Never will they be +capable of nurturing babes, or of contributing their mysterious due to +psychical attribute. The pelvis remains narrow and puerile. Never can it +serve as hostel for a babe of normal, healthful type. + +In the vast majority of modern girls and women, the reproductive organs +are structurally immature or functionally defective. + +Dr. Gaillard Thomas, an eminent American gynaecologist, estimated, some +years since, that only about 4 per cent. of American women proper were +physiologically fitted to become wives and mothers. + +The United States have been and are all the while deriving fresh influx +of vigour and vitality in stock, from the continuous immigration of +simpler and more vitalised peoples. But American women proper have never +recovered from the strain and hardships of adaptation to a new +environment, which settlers in alien and undeveloped countries +necessarily encounter; the deteriorative influences whereof are shown in +constitutional impoverishment of the parent-stock. This is true, as +well, of our Colonial kin. Not only the strain of acclimatisation, but +too the hard and rough life-conditions women have to cope with in +undeveloped lands are responsible for the constitutionally-debilitated, +or, on the other hand, for the rawer and less highly-organised racial +types found in new settlements. + +In the United States, moreover, the standards of culture and of training +are pre-eminently artificial. Democratic sentiment and material +prosperity induce persons of working-class biological organisation to +over-tax their children's brains and constitutions by forcing these to +the educational standards and culture of stock that has evolved, by +generations of higher nurture, to higher evolutionary grades. The +"newly-rich," eager for their families to profit (as they regard it) by +opportunities denied themselves, invariably commit this radical error of +over-estimating academic education and social accomplishment. They fail +to realise that one can no more attain culture than one can acquire +breeding in a single generation. It takes _three_ generations of +culture--of comparative ease and freedom from the strain of industrial +labour and living--to evolve the crude muscular arm of a working woman +into the shapely, refined arm of a gentlewoman. And so it must be with +brains. In nineteen cases out of twenty, a 'Varsity education serves as +irreparable injury rather than as benefit to a working-class youth, +depleting health or warping character as it inevitably does. + +The strain of living above the evolutionary level is exhaustive and +harmful, physically and mentally, both to individuals and to stock. The +prudence of apportioning education to the grade of evolutionary +development is strikingly shown in the cases of negroes, who, when +over-taxed by the education normal to white races, not seldom become +blind or consumptive. And always the morale deteriorates. The forcing +upon our own labouring-classes of an education above that suited to +their natural powers has contributed largely to the constitutional +deterioration and the neurasthenia common among them to-day. + +One of the factors of modern Labour-unrest, indeed, is the physical +unfitness of debilitated and neurotic working-men to cope capably and +cheerfully with the tasks of earlier and sturdier generations. + +The urgent need of all our over-civilised races is not more education +but more _native faculty_. + +Every form of disease and degeneracy, physical and mental, is rampant. A +well-known authority on brain-diseases warns us that if mental +defectiveness continues to increase at its present rapid pace, soon we +shall be unable to support the asylums required to accommodate and +segregate the unfortunate victims thereof. They must remain at large--to +perpetuate and multiply indefinitely their terrible afflictions. + +Yet how is it possible that such weedy, half-sterilised creatures as are +so many of our modern mothers, should bear sound and sane and vigorous +offspring? + +Inherited debilitation and defect are further aggravated by present-day +educational methods. + +Our modern rendering of the training of the young is the _straining_ of +the young. + +Developing creatures should never be allowed to over-use function or +faculty. Because to over-tire an immature faculty is to deplete its +vital resources of development. Nor should young developing creatures be +permitted to do anything too strenuously or for too long a time. +Narrowness and mental warp result inevitably from too early and too long +periods of concentration in one direction, of the ductile shaping brain. + +In defiance, nevertheless, of this first principle of rearing, boys and +girls, after the morning's brain-work, are kept at strenuous games for +hours in succession. + +Body and mind, after having been cramped between the covers of +text-books, now are cramped within the narrow rules and rigid form of +such miscalled "games," supervised by over-keen experts--the whole +business exacting sustained muscular tension, temperamental excitement +and competitive nervous strain. The powers are stretched to win some +goal, in place of being unbent in leisure and in pleasure. True play is +spontaneous enjoyment of the moment, not fierce concentration upon +goals. This latter induces excitement, which may be pleasurable, but it +entails its tax in reactionary exhaustion. Because of the spur of +competition in them, sports and games, as now rendered, act as powerful +nerve-stimulants that deplete and waste the vital powers. + +School-boys and school-girls live, for the most part, in alternating +states of high tension in sports and reactionary languors from the heart +and nervous strain resulting therefrom. + +Since sports and athletics became a cult, heart-diseases have increased +by 50 _per cent._ We complain that our young men are limp and +unintelligent, lacking in initiative and enterprise. Apart from the +serious circumstance that, mentally, they have been trained for +cricket, not for life, most of them (to employ their own phrase) have +"gone stale" in heart and brain, in consequence of forced athletics, +long before they come to the momentous business of living. Even their +muscles have wasted, in place of developing. With the result that +instead of being finely-built and graceful, numbers of our youths are +stiff, stoop-shouldered and abnormally attenuated. + +Education should aim at keeping young persons fresh and unstrained; +charged with vital energies for growth of mind and body, filled with +zest and enthusiasm for the career before them. + + +Everywhere, mothers deplore bitterly that they can obtain neither duty, +obedience, nor affection from their girls. Many will not mend their +clothes even; refuse so slight a domestic concession as to arrange +flowers for the home. Lacking the morbid excitement of competitive rough +games, an abnormal craving for which has been artificially created, and +home-tastes extinguished, at school, modern girls are bored and +disaffected save when indulging in sports or in other excitements. The +more delicate, sympathetic, and humanising amenities have no appeal for +them. + +All the subtler, vital and inspiring impulses of natural womanhood have +been rudely smothered in tussles of big muscles, in sensational crazes +for making hockey-goals, and similar crude aims, quite alien to natural +girlhood. The recurring stimulus of such, in addition to over-developing +male muscles and proclivities in them, creates both the habit and the +craving for excitement; effects pernicious and demoralising as are those +of all habitual strong nerve-excitants. + +It is impossible to exaggerate the cumulative effect of habit upon +disposition--and this particularly upon the plastic, shaping +dispositions of young girls. + +Youth is at the mercy of its pastors and its masters, to spoil or to +foster its best growth. We feed the bodies and cram the brains of our +young people, while, in sending them away from the home which is their +natural environment, we starve and dwarf their emotions and affections; +giving these nothing to evoke, nothing to nurture them. The abnormal +cold-heartedness and self-absorption latter-day mothers bewail in their +girls are the inevitable outcome of their unnatural upbringing. + +The spectacle of young women, with set jaws, eyes strained tensely on a +ball, a fierce battle-look gripping their features, their hands +clutching some or other implement, their arms engaged in striking and +beating, their legs disposed in coarse ungainly attitudes, is an +object-lesson in all that is ugly in action and unwomanly in mode. The +so-called "tennis-grin," which on many women's faces does duty for +smile, shows how the muscular tension of forceful effort permanently +mars higher attribute. So too, the proverbial quarrelsomeness of +tennis-playing women results from the combative habit of mind. Light and +exhilarating, in place of strenuous competitive exercises, enable girls +to develop their womanhood in healthy structure, efficient function, and +beauty of body and mind. Dancing--the poetry of motion--particularly +conduces to health and to grace. True dancing, that is, not the +acrobatics of the professional dancer, which result in coarsened ugly +limbs and stilted action. + + +There is a well-known Girls college which makes pre-eminently for the +cult of Mannishness. + +And here are seen, absorbed in fierce contest during the exhausting heat +of summer afternoons, grim-visaged maidens of sinewy build, hard and +tough and set as working-women in the forties; some with brawny throats, +square shoulders and stern loins that would do credit to a prize-ring. +All of which masculine developments are stigmata of abnormal +Sex-transformation precisely similar in origin to male antlers in +female-deer; namely, deterioration of important sex-glands, with +consequent obliteration of the secondary Sex-characteristics arising +normally out of the functional efficiency of these. + +It has been said that the "hardening" process for children succeeds in +rearing sturdy families, by killing off those of more delicate (and +higher) organisation. And this and other such latter-day schools earn a +reputation for rearing amazons, by so breaking the health and +constitution of their more delicately-constituted members that these are +compelled to withdraw. Following the rule that healthy bodies rebel in +terms of illness against deteriorative conditions, it is the normal and +healthfully-constituted girls who fail beneath such injurious strain. +While organisations less sound of constitutional morale, in place of +sustaining their typal ideals, conform to these deteriorative methods, +and degenerate from higher to lower-grade standards of structure and +function. Precisely as happens to minds when exposed to demoralising +influences. + +And to what end is it all? The training of modern young persons should +fit them for Twentieth-Century existence in all its varied, complex and +psychical developments. Yet now-a-days we train our girls as though +their destiny were carpet-beating or the forge, rather than the higher +human amenities. It is not surprising, therefore, that they frequently +play hockey with the higher amenities. So impressionable and mimetic the +sex is, and such its bent toward extremes, that women trained to Sports +comport themselves in after-life as though playing a competitive game. A +mental warp which has been one of the sources of latter-day +strenuousness, as too of that fierce social rivalry which is wrecking +older and fairer ideals and methods of friendship and hospitality. + +Over-development of the large and cruder muscles dwarfs those smaller +and more delicate ones which adapt to the softer and subtler departments +of faculty. And while despoiling these smaller muscles which subtend +gentle and delicate artistries, the crude larger ones, hypertrophied by +athletic activities, become alike a burden and a curse to their +possessor. Because not only is their upkeep a continual and a +superfluous tax upon her vital powers, but their hunger for continued +function in further such crude activities afflicts her with turbulent +impulses, for which the more civilised vocations supply no scope. The +militant Feminist movement was as much an explosion of suppressed +muscularity in young women deprived of other outlet for accumulated +muscle-steam, as it was an ebullition of masculine mentality on the part +of its leaders. + +Hysteria and other neuroses, obsessing hobbies and crazes, are, more +often than not, morbid and distressing consequences of habits acquired +at school and college, of developing abnormal high-pressures of muscular +and nervous energy. Masculine war-occupations have similarly evoked male +muscularity and mentality in women. So that--War over--they find it +well-nigh unendurable to return to the more refined and humanising +womanly employments of their pre-war days. While on the other hand, +employers are bewailing the rough and coarsened manners, personality and +speech, as too the clumsy movements and ineptitudes of domestic +servants, nurses and others, de-sexed by War-work in respect of the +higher qualities and efficiencies of their sex. Many of these sturdy +motor-drivers, lusty W.A.A.Cs. and strapping Land-girls have lost all +taste as well as aptitude for the finer arts of life and of the home. +Efficient in the handling of plough or gun or lorry, woe to the hapless +babe or invalid subjected to their hard, forceful touch! + + +V + +Language is scarcely emphatic enough to characterise the painful (and +insane) exhibitions of Public-school and College "Sports," in which boys +and young men, whose vital forces are needed beyond all things for +development, may be seen with faces whereon is neither joy of action nor +pride of achievement, but only the pained rigidity of supreme heart and +nervous strain, as they strive for goals that are no test of true +physical fitness, but, on the contrary, prove physical lopsidedness. + +In confirmation whereof is the fact that many such athletes die young, +and die suddenly. Or they live the years when men should be still in +their prime--valetudinarian and hypochondriac. The secret of health and +nervous power is the constitutional capacity to _store reserves_ of +vital energy, for expenditure as required. Exhausting sports in youth +engender habits of _over-expenditure_ thereof. + +Trials of skill and of strength are admirable spurs to development and +self-discipline. But these should make for excellence in that fine poise +of Mind and Muscle which is the hall-mark of human achievement, not for +extremes of crude brute-force (muscle being the lowest grade of human +powers) which strain the living mechanism; and, straining, leave +inevitably weak and warped links, when not actually snapped ones +therein. The human body is a marvellous and delicate psychological +instrument, not a mere muscular implement. When the hearts of boys are +"sounded" after competitive sports, "murmurs" are heard; showing +valvular incompetency. Temporary in the majority of cases, but none the +less indicative of gravely-weakened states which can but permanently +injure the fine-spun valvular apparatus. "Dilated hearts" caused numbers +of our "fine young athletes" to be rejected as unfit for military duty. + +Young men "in training" suffer from albuminuria, showing serious +derangement of the kidney-function; derangement which inevitably entails +such permanent structural deterioration as lapses readily, in after +years, to grave disease. + +The fallacy that the excitement of games distracts the attention of +youth from the processes of sex-development has been disproved. While +all athletic boys are not vicious, it is now recognised that the most +vicious are the athletic. The languors of body and mind reactionary upon +the exciting strain of games are unwholesome languors; and breed +unwholesome self-absorptions. A fresh and active imagination, to keep +the mind interested at every turn, is the best of all safeguards. It is +in the imagination, moreover, that higher moral and ideals arise. + +It has been said that "the battle of Waterloo was won on the +playing-fields of Eton." It was far more likely won in the pages of +_Jack the Giant Killer_! Because in war, as in most other things, moral +is more potent than muscle. There is, it is true, a moral of Games. But +its outlook and its application are both contracted of range and +artificial of form. Games are useful in forming habits and in exercising +faculties of co-operation in concerted action. But being played in +company with others, and played in obedience to rule and regulation, +they allow no scope for the development of individualism in mind or +character, initiative or resource--outside the narrow boundaries of +cricket-pitch or football field. + +By perpetual absorption of the powers in the movements of a ball, the +mind becomes contracted and set in puerile mould, during years when it +should be germinating and expanding in response to the countless varied +and inspiring stimuli and factors of natural environment. Over-keenness +in sports destroys the sense of beauty, love of art and love of Nature. + +The grey matter of the brain--the medium of Mind--wherein arise +imagination, inspiration and those noble talents and the noble dreams of +enterprise which make for noble lives--this highest and most complex of +the human tissue-cells becomes starved and atrophied from continued +waste of brain-resources by those lower-grade cerebral motor-tracts +which control and energise the muscles. + +The popular impression, both lay and medical, that muscular exertion +supplies rest to the brain and recuperation to the nervous system, is a +sad delusion. One cannot raise a finger without expending brain and +nervous force, the muscles being implements by way of which the brain +transforms purpose into action--being _brain_-implements therefore. So +that brains--and particularly young brains--unduly taxed by muscular +activities are robbed of power to develop or to function in their +intellectual and other higher departments. + + +If my hypothesis be true, and the right side of the body with its allied +brain-hemisphere is the executive and expenditure side, while the left +is the Life and asset side, it is obvious that excessive brain-work, or +Sports, for which the executive power is supplied by this right side and +its allied brain half, must necessarily deplete and exhaust the left +side, which is the power-house and reservoir of Life and Mind whence the +executive half derives its mental, nervous and vital potential. + +It goes without saying that such careful economy of the powers is +superfluous in truly healthful and normally vigorous males. But +latter-day stock has been, for the most part, so far depleted by +generations of neglect of natural law as to require the strictest +husbandry of its vital expenditure, in order to apportion its means to +the best all-round advantage. + + +Object-lessons in such extremes of athleticism as destroy the normal +balance of the counter-poising Sex-traits have been supplied by War. + +The faces--as the natures--of some of our soldiers have become crude, +coarse and deteriorate in intelligence, others abnormally harsh and +fierce; the softer human qualities having been trampled out of them by +stress of militarism, some to degrees of brutalisation and criminality, +even. While a very great number show lined and haggard from heart or +nervous strain. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES + + "_My state is like the lightning's light-- + Now it shines forth, and now 'tis gone from sight. + At times, amid the heavens I find my seat; + At others, I am lower than my feet._" + + Sa'di (Persian poet). + + +I + +Of what order is this Woman-half of Mind which Feminism seeks to +extinguish? + + * * * * * + +The cerebral processes appreciable upon the Outer plane, and calculable +by Science, represent no more than a tithe of brain-activities. They are +but a single highly-specialised focus of brain-functioning. + +Behind concrete Volition, Intellection, and Action, are the silent, +ceaseless, inner and incalculable workings of innumerable brain-cells +concerned with the mysterious constitution and metabolism of Life, and +its strange, potent relation and correlation with Mind and with +environment; concerned with character and attribute and impulse; with +ancestral vestiges and personal experience; with memories and instincts; +with an infinitude of occulted and imperishable records of previous +terrestrial existences, perhaps; concerned, in a word, with all the +secret springs and complex potences of Individuality; which +differentiates every thought, emotion and action of any human person +from those of every other. + +And in these recondite mysteries fructifying in a hundred million +bi-sexual brain-cells, it may be that the subtle counter and +inter-operations of the Man and Woman-traits find their highest +activities, and make for their supremest issues. + +Every man and woman is to every other a Sealed Book, whereof no more +than a few pages have been glimpsed--even by those nearest and dearest. +We are Sealed Books to ourselves, indeed, because we do not know the +language we are written in. For of all the muted mysteries spinning +ceaselessly within the silent-functioning cells of twin +brain-hemispheres, Science affords us but the scantest and most sketchy +information. That the grey matter coating the brain-convolutions is the +site of mentality; that the higher the intelligence, the deeper and more +intricate these convolutions are; that disease of a certain area +destroys the power of speech; while disease of some other occasions +paralysis of this or that group of muscles, loss of sensation in this or +that tract of skin. Baldly it states that a portion of a certain +convolution controls a certain movement of a hand. But the thousand and +one emotions and incentives prompting such movement, and differentiating +the resulting action across the extensive range between the noblest +benefaction and the blackest murder, baffle every scientific method. + +The processes of Mind and Impulse occur on planes we have no means of +penetrating, possess no appliances whereby to estimate the ethereal +undulations thereof. + +What are we? Who are we? Whence are we? Whither do we go? + +All is locked within the occulted silence of our hundred million +brain-cells; each of which holds and keeps its own intrinsic secret; +each the mysterious record, it may be, of one of those countless +experiences, forms and phases, ancestral or individual, whereof every +living person is the last resultant. But the Twin-hemispheres, face to +face within the skull, like opposite pages of a book, are key to one +another; one page written in the mystical language of The Past and +Future, the other in the concrete language of The Present. + + +II + +Is that which I surmise to be the _Woman_--and emotional half of brain, +the site of the mysterious province known as The Subconsciousness, into +the strange powers and phenomena whereof scientists are now beginning to +inquire? + +Is it the seat of that which Myers designated "The Subliminal +Consciousness," but which might well be called the Supra-Consciousness, +because, in the regions of its higher functioning, it cognises things +beyond power of Concrete Consciousness to apprehend; intuitions, +premonitions, apparitions, telepathic messages? + +Is it medium of those inherences and that sub-intelligent emotionalism +known as _Instinct_; which may be regarded as the implanted religion of +rudimentary organisms, leading them upward in blind subconscious +obedience, at sacrifice of their self-interests and disposition? + +Respecting the regeneration of the crystalline lens of the eye of a +Triton, Bergson says: + + + "_Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing + principle in order to account for this convergence of effects._" + + +May it not be that this brain-half--seemingly functionless, albeit as +marvellously constructed and constituted as its fellow-half--is, in its +merely organic departments, the agency of such an "inner principle," +engendering the vital potentials of Life and Evolution, of health, of +nervous recuperation and of biological repair? While in its departments +of Mind, it functions as instinct, as intuition, as inspiration, +aspiration; serves as the subtly receptive medium by way of which The +Divine Influx wells in human attribute; whereby Divine Revelation is +communicated to the concrete brain-half, for interpretation in speech +and in writing. Bergson says also: "The consciousness of a living being +may be defined as an arithmetical difference between _potential_ and +_realised_ activity. It measures the interval between representation and +action." (Duality is indicated.) + +The trait essentially distinguishing the human from the brute-mind, is +Intelligent Purpose. And Purpose is the product of Impulse (or Instinct) +and Reason, (or Concrete Intelligence). (Duality again.) Impulse is an +emotion and is feminine. Reason is masculine. Intelligent Purpose may +well be, therefore, a resultant of the co-operation of the feminine half +of the brain, which supplies Impulse, with the masculine half, which +supplies Reason. + +Instinct, Professor James, the American psychologist, has pointed out, +exists independently of any recognition of its purpose. While Reason +exists apart from instinct--apart therefore from the emotional impulse +which gives it the personal motive-power to become purpose. Thus, either +mode of brain without the other to supplement it would be incapable of +function. + +_Self_-consciousness requires two departments of Consciousness--each of +which is aware of the other. So that a man may judge and restrain +impulses in himself that are contrary to reason and expedience, or, on +the other hand, may choose to sacrifice both reason and self-interest to +emotional impulse, noble and uplifting, or ignoble and debasing. + + +Describing Intellect as characterised by a natural inability to +comprehend Life, Professor Bergson further says: "Instinct, on the +contrary, is moulded on the very form of Life.... If the consciousness +that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge +instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could +reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of Life." + +Again Duality of mental processes is inferred. As too in the following +passage: + +"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also +reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations--just +as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into Matter.... +Intelligence, by means of science ... brings us, and moreover only +claims to bring us, a translation of Life in terms of inertia.... But it +is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us--by Intuition +I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable +of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely." + + +III + +The phenomena of Hypnotism seem to set the Duality of cerebral processes +beyond dispute. + +Dr. George H. Savage, Consulting Physician and late Lecturer on Mental +diseases at Guy's Hospital, in his Harveian Oration, October 1909, +testified as follows to the strangeness and authenticity of hypnotic +evidences: + + + "Wishing to follow our great master in not accepting anything + without personal investigation, I took advantage of the opportunity + offered by Dr. Wright, to test some of the points of most + importance to which I have referred. + + "A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by + Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various + stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down + and talk quietly about his relationship to hypnotism. Then he was + told to go to sleep. A few passes being made over his head, he + slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping + placidly. By the gentle stroking of his left arm this was rendered + inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal, + but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was + slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly). + After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of + fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done + during the period of hypnosis. + + "He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then + suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power + and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a + cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of + the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had + been roused, _his right arm fell useless by his side, he passing at + the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis_. _This is common + when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of + the right side, including the face, was insensitive_; the pupils + were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed + smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of + anything which had been said or done. He was later again + hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done + formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts. + + "It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts + performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are + fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side + by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he + heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While + unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark + upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a + cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong + smell of violets came. + + "I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it + seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory + existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting + was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he + had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when + once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just + dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is + in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during + sleep." + + +Be it observed that when at the end of seven minutes (as had been +"suggested" to him should happen) the subject lost all power and +sensibility in his right side and "_his right arm fell useless by his +side_," he passed "_at the same time into a partial state of hypnosis_. +_This is common_," Dr. Savage adds, "_when a post-hypnotic suggestion is +being carried out_." + +Here is strong corroboration of my argument that the right side of the +body, with its allied half-brain, is the agent of Material +Consciousness, of muscular action and of physical sensation, and that it +operates normally in fencing in the higher faculties of Mind from the +outer plane of concrete happenings, as also of interpreting them upon +this plane. + +Hypnosis is induced by devices occasioning muscular exhaustion, and thus +temporarily paralysing "voluntary muscles"--muscles, that is, which are +under conscious control. It is induced as well (as in the case cited) by +stroking, and thus putting to sleep the sensory nerves--nerves which +define the patient's consciousness of his material personality. It would +seem that by such inhibition, or paralysis, of the perceptions of the +outer consciousness, faculties of Subconsciousness--even of +Supra-consciousness--are exposed, so that Mind itself may be dealt with +direct. + +Every form of insensibility is closely allied with muscular relaxation +or paralysis. + + +IV + +Examples of the operation of the Supra-conscious faculties upon the +concrete plane are supplied by the marvellous feats of "lightning +calculators." + +The most intricate mathematical problems--calculations that would call +for lengthy and complicated intellectual processes on the part of expert +mathematicians to work out by ordinary methods--are solved +instantaneously by the genius of such natural "calculators." You cannot +puzzle them; you cannot baffle them. Scarcely have you stated your +problem than they have calmly presented you with the solution. As +Maeterlinck records in his interesting book, _The Unknown Guest_, this +genius for figures developed in Colbourn and Safford at the age of six, +in Mangiamele at ten, in Gauss and Whateley at three. All that and more +than expert mathematicians laboriously acquire by decades of study and +practice, these boy-prodigies achieved by way of native faculty. Such +have not the slightest notion how they arrive at their results. These +are obtained automatically--are products of unconscious cerebration. + +Maeterlinck observes of this, that the resultant "appears to rise, +infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and cosmic reservoir +wherein the answer to every question lies dormant." + +What is this "eternal and cosmic reservoir" if it be not Mind, or +Supra-consciousness, as distinguished from conscious intellection--a +native intuitive, but undifferentiate, or potential, consciousness which +holds the answer, "infallible and ready-done," to every question. + +Truth _Is_. There is but one solution--the true one--of a mathematical +or any other problem of exact science. + +A significant fact is that such prodigy boys generally lose their +mysterious faculty "_at the moment when the possessor begins to go to +school_." So soon, that is, as he develops the power of conscious +brain-processes--the power to work out his problems by concrete +methods--his native supra-conscious gift of solving them spontaneously +fails. + +Intuition, the woman-mode of arriving at conclusions, lightning quick +and true without reason or reflection, is a kindred potency of Mind. +"When a man," says a French writer, "has laboriously climbed a +staircase, he is sure to find a woman at the top--although she will be +unable to say how she came there!" + +He did not add the further truth, that--as with the prodigy boys--the +more you educate her to come at her conclusions by processes of +intellection, the more you rob her of her native woman-gift of +divination. + +With the rising level of Faculty engendered by progressive evolution, +woman's powers of intellection have developed too. + +While her own mental attributes are themselves of a very high order, and +give to her mentality an inductive subtlety and illumination lacking in +that of the male. And this high quality of brain it is that is now being +extinguished in her by straining her to masculine standards. + +Progress awaits, indeed, the new and quickening impulse Life and Faculty +should derive from the Woman-mind fostered along its own inherent +lines--to supplement the mind of man. For as Bergson says, "it is to the +very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us." + +And Intuition is the woman-mode of Mind. + + * * * * * + +The women intellectuals who have done great work have been women who +inherited talents so far above the average, as spontaneously to have +reached high mental levels, without need to have sacrificed those +womanly traits which gave the noblest values to such work. + +The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards +of the man of average brain only at cost of her health, of her emotions, +or of her morale. + + +V + +Herbert Spencer said profoundly, "_Mind is as deep as the viscera_." +Indicating it as being vital and intrinsic, at one with the occulted +sources of Life. + +Mind is of an order of mentality wholly different from that of +Intelligence or Intellect. Mind is of the nature of Emotion. It is +personal, is sympathy, is divination. It is the cerebration of the Soul. + +The Soul, or essential Individuality, must abide amid infinitely +delicate and delicately infinite brain-cells attuned to those spiritual +vibrations whereof Mind is the reflex. And if Mind is Emotion, the Woman +brain-half, which is the department of human emotion, must be the +mainspring of the human mind. + +Great intellect, pure and simple, may exist in man or woman without or +with only a fractional leaven of Mind. This is seen in the abstractions +of scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, astronomers, +financiers, and others. Such brains are special organs of a high order +of Intellection, clear, calculating and precise of observation and +reflection; rational, deductive; admirable in their unswerving +rectitude, pitiless in their impregnable emotionlessness; rejecting all +but incontestable evidences, scrupulously aggregating and faithfully +interpreting their dry bones of numbers and data and vestiges--skeletons +of Life long since extinct, or scaffoldings of Life that lives and moves +and laughs and weeps, and bears no more semblance to their bloodless +tabulations of its modes and processes than warm, creative Mother-Earth +resembles the geological strata they describe in her; or than a +beautiful flower-garden blooms in botanical treatises; or than living +men and women are pourtrayed in text-books of Anatomy and Physiology. + +Many men of Science--and all the great ones--have been men of Mind as +well as of Intellect. But the intellectual processes of Abstract Science +are no more operations of Mind than the paths by which we climb to +sun-illumined peaks are the Light upon those peaks. Mind is Spiritual +Illumination--a glimmering of The Infinite, reflected in the highest and +most subtle order of the brain-cells. Rays from it are deflected toward +the concrete, to function as Intellection. But these rays enter the +brain at a different angle from that of Mind-rays. + +Like woman its medium, Mind is inspirational, wayward and elusive. It +comes we know not whence. It goes we know not whither. Receptive, +intuitive, creative, colourful, it may be unwitting of Astronomy, yet it +roams amid the stars. Ignorant of Geology, in it Immortal, the dry-bones +of The Past become immortal--arise eternally in everlasting re-creation. +Its Biology is in the lives and loves, the hopes and fears, the throes +and tears of human souls and stories. It inspires the poet, priest, +historian, romancist, artist; the seer and statesman; the philosopher +and wondering child. It exalts the humble and meek. It may be lacking in +the cleverest and most learned of men. It is found in the most ignorant +and simple women; in whom it is dumb, however, failing the intellectual +talent of expression. + + +VI + +The Woman brain-half being medium, in its higher region, of that +_Supra_-conscious emotionalism which engenders Mind, and in its lower +region, of that _Sub_conscious emotionalism which engenders vital +impulse in the body, woman's range of mentality is wider than is that +of man; extending both higher and lower in its opposite reaches. + +But because her Intelligent Consciousness is not inherent in her own +brain-half, but is supplied by her borrowed masculine brain-half, her +intelligence is more superficial, is weaker and less deep and strong of +grip than is his. And when the gap between her upper and her lower +registers is not duly bridged and stabilised by an efficient +middle-register of male-intelligence, she tends toward two extremes of +mentality, both of which are emotional. Thus she lives on the plane of +her highest emotional impulses. Or she lives on the plane of her senses. +Some women act and re-act perpetually between these two extremes. + +In her highest _Supra_-reaches, she is athrill with Supra-faculties. In +her lowest _Sub_-register, she is instinct and palpitant with the +colour, the magnetic vibrations and the blind forces of Matter, which +her vital processes are evolving into Life. + +Extremes which are shown, at the one end, in the reasonless animal +emotionalism of hysteria, with its abandon of control, its +inco-ordinated muscular movements, its senseless weepings, cries and +laughter; at the other end, in catalepsy, in which she exists detached +from earth and its material needs and consciousness, subsisting, it may +be for weeks together, without food or drink, withdrawn into the Inner, +and potential, zones of Life and Mind. So that, no longer subject to +limitations of Matter, she perceives without aid of the senses, +apprehends without aid of intelligence, discerns without help of the +eyes, hears without instrumentality of ears. And Time and Space no +longer circumscribing her essential faculties, she visions happenings at +the Antipodes, overhears whispers across a Continent, recalls The Past, +foretells The Future. + + +It is because of the potence of the Subconscious medium in her, +instinct with the magnetic forces of Evolving Matter, that, in her +intelligence, she shows as more materialistic than man is, although +warmer and more quickened in her feelings. + +Living personalities and issues mean to her more than intellectual +abstractions do. She is more materialistic because she cares more for +the things that matter! The puddings which in her children's young +bodies will be transmuted into living flesh and function, are to her of +more significance than the Isosceles Triangle is. + +(All that is true of the Woman brain-half must be true of the Woman +brain-half in man. In him, however, his own hemisphere dominates the +bent and faculty of its female counterpart.) + +It is in the emotional impressionability of the Subconsciousness that +habit, good and bad, is formed. Hence woman's native susceptibility to +her environment--a susceptibility which renders indispensable due +protection of her mind and nature during years when habits of thought +and of conduct are shaping in her. Normal man, whose emotionalism is +(like woman's intelligence) a borrowed faculty, differs essentially from +her in this. His intelligence is inherent and more stably rooted. He is +far less mimetic, far less a creature of circumstance. His firmer will +and stronger intellect enable him to rise superior to environmental +conditions, to shake himself free alike of habit and of circumstance; +his pioneering spirit disposing him to new departures. + + +VII + +Dual Personality, Catalepsy, Epilepsy, Shock, Insanity, Chorea are +explicable as effects of abnormal dissociations or inherent discrepant +relations between the two brain-hemispheres, which represent, +respectively, Conscious (or objective) Intelligence, and +Subconsciousness (which is subjective). + +Such discrepancy occasioning confusion between the two planes of +mentality, perception becomes so blurred that, as in insanity, +_subjective_ impressions are perceived as _objective fact_. And some +idea or spectre of his own mind becoming thus objective, and being seen +out of all perspective with the facts and conditions of everyday life, +the patient may be so haunted and dominated thereby that not only his +mentality, but his actions too may take distorted shape. + +While the Conscious Brain-half is a lens that focuses the Concrete, the +_Sub_conscious Brain-half is a highly-sensitised mirror (or retina) that +reflects and retains, in terms of potential Memory, all impressions and +experiences. It becomes charged thus with a medley of strange and +incongruous imprints, which, so long as the lens keeps these submerged +and subconscious--because unfocused on the plane of consciousness--do +not obtrude upon mentality. Flaws or failures in the lens of reason +allowing certain imprints to emerge, these become fixed ideas and +obsessions. + + +It is by way of the Subconsciousness, that the hypnotist impresses +"suggestion." + +Clairvoyants and other "mediums" employ crystal-gazing and other devices +in order to fatigue, and thus to paralyse or inhibit the visual function +on the outer plane of Sight. By such means, the Subconscious visual +faculty comes into operation, and sets them _en rapport_ with their +client's subconscious mentality. This becoming _objective_ to them, +those endowed with the gift of "Second-Sight" (a faculty not to be +denied) are able to visualise in it misty impressions of the subjects' +character, thoughts and circumstances. Those rare clairvoyants who are +able to establish rapport with their client's Supra-consciousness may +catch glimmerings of future events, even. Because Supra-conscious Mind, +being Supra-Natural, is not bounded by the limitations of The Natural, +in respect of Time and Space. In it, that which Was still Is, and that +which Is-to-be already Has Been. + +"Spiritists" who see or hear phenomena they attribute to "spirits" are +(when such are genuine) for the most part visualising or overhearing +phenomena of their own (or of some other's) Subconsciousness, which, +owing to errors of refraction in the lens of Consciousness, have become +_objective_ to them. + + +It may well be by way of magnetic vibrations communicated to Ether by +the _Supra_ or the _Sub_consciousness, that apparitions and telepathic +impressions are transmitted from the brain of one person to that of +another. So too, apparitions seen of persons lately dead, and so-called +spiritist "communications" with these, may be (when genuine) phenomena +of such etheric vibrations communicated to the Supra or the +Subconsciousness of a living person, and apprehended by him in the +objective forms of "ghosts" or "voices." + +Kindred vital and powerful electric vibrations emanating, at the moment +of death, from the Subconsciousness of victims murdered, may so charge +the etheric element of houses and localities as to be communicable, for +long periods afterwards, to the Subconscious mentality of "sensitives," +which serves thus as "wireless receiver." Such sensitives derive the +impression that the scene of the tragedy is haunted by the actual +"spirit" of the murdered. + +It is as incredible, of course, that an immortal soul should be chained +to the scene of the violent death of a mortal body as it is incredible +that a "spirit" should be at the call of a "medium," who--perhaps, for a +fee--should be able, at will, to summon it back to the plane of concrete +conditions, in order that it might talk (for the most part) irrelevant +nonsense. + +On the other hand it is to be believed that, for a brief period after +death, a spiritual entity may remain sufficiently in touch with the +material plane as to be able, by way of those Etheric undulations +continuous through all the planes of Being, to manifest its existence to +one in close sympathy with it. + + +VIII + +In an article by me, "_Is Man an Electrical Organism?_" which appeared +in _The Nineteenth Century_, July, 1914, I showed--on the evidence of +careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert--that the two +sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different +electrical potential. The active, right side is _positively_ +electrified, while the passive, left side is _negatively_ electrified. + +Mental Telepathy and Telaesthesia prove, surely, that brain and +nerve-currents are electrical--one brain-hemisphere operating as +transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employs _one_ Law only +to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an +apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employ _two_ laws +for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively? + +The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles +of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or +potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night. + +Is Sleep a recession merely from the state of Consciousness to the +potential states of Sub- and Supra-consciousness? And do these two +states alternate normally in the opposite halves of the brain, +concurrently with the alternation of Day and Night? Night-blindness +suggests such an alternation in the dual factors of Vision--which +comprises the intrinsic _faculty_ of Vision and the concrete _function_ +of visualising the external. Every concrete function normally wanes with +the waning of Day. + +Hence increasing drowsiness, passing into Sleep. + +Morning and evening mentality differ greatly. Intellect, reason and +physical activity are paramount during the day. Emotion and imagination +intensify with the approach of night. + +Is this an alternation in function of the Male and Female +brain-hemispheres, coincident with the alternation of the dual +luminaries of our earth--the positive, unchanging Dominant Sun; the +changeful Moon, with her Recessive phases and her mystical influences +upon Life and Mind? The ante-natal life of the embryo is set in terms of +lunar months. The word "lunatic" expresses the effects of lunar phases +on persons of unstable mentality. + + +Whence do we derive our daily influx of Life? Though we have sunk to +rest with dissolution in our bones, we awake re-charged with powers of +living--a phenomenon for which Science has no explanation. + +Life does not originate in vital processes; vital processes originate in +Life. Do we, in sleep, when processes have exhausted our daily influx of +Life-power, recruit this again from a psychical source? Are living +processes the wick of a lamp which is filled with the Spirit of Life at +each recurring dawn, spent by the day's endeavour, and re-filled again +with the following dawn? + +Failure of sleep kills more swiftly than starvation. And +drug-insensibility will not preserve life unless natural sleep +supervene. + +If nervous energy is a complex form of electrical energy, then the brain +in which this is stored is an electrical dynamo. Is this dynamo +re-charged during sleep from some Occult Power-station? + +Since, in every equation of Science, an unknown factor reveals itself, +why not candidly confess this to be a Spiritual factor? + +Spirit is no more a hypothetical medium than Ether is. And Science has +been forced to assume the existence of Ether, as a basis for its +calculations. Ether and Spirit are conceivably the same medium +manifesting on different planes--the one of Physics, the other of Mind. + + +IX + +According to Professor Clarapede: + + + "The intellect appears only as a makeshift, an instrument which + betrays that the organism is not adapted to its environment, a mode + of expression which reveals a state of impotence." + + +A saying which supports three clauses of my hypothesis: First, that the +brain, with its tributary spinal-nervous system, is an instrument of +Consciousness wholly differentiated from, and supplementary to the +organism of Life. Secondly, that it is an instrument designed for the +adaptation of the organism to environment (the role I have assigned, +throughout, to the male). Thirdly, that the organism of Life is not +itself adapted to its environment, and that, accordingly, Adaptation to +Environment cannot be regarded as the impulse of Evolutionary +development, since the living organism has so far failed to adapt itself +to environment that it requires a highly specialised instrument to serve +as medium between itself and its surroundings. + +That Intellect--being an instrument by way of which Life is adapted to +environment, as also, on the other hand, by way of which environment is +adapted to Life--is a makeshift that "reveals a state of impotence" is +not to be admitted, however, in view of the fact that it is an +instrument which preserves Life from developing along the lines of its +environment; an adaptation which would necessarily involve lapse from +typal ideals. + +Intelligence taught man, in place of so adapting to environment as to +have developed the fist of a gorilla (which at a blow can crack a human +skull), to arm himself with a club. And by thus adapting environment to +his evolutionary requirements, he conserved his resources and applied +them to development along higher lines. Such impotence as may be, arises +out of the undevelopment of a rudimentary organism. Of an organism in +course of development, however. In the meanwhile, both man and woman are +provided, in their hybrid constitution, with the "makeshift" of an +instrument of opposite sex, which supplies both with the powers neither +has yet developed in himself or herself; but without which neither is +able to exist or to function. + + +Hybrid Humanity is still amphibious; a creature living between two +planes, the Without and the Within, the Material and the Spiritual. And +like all amphibious creatures, the human species is, in a measure, +clumsy and imperfect. Because while fitted still with organs and +faculties that have adapted to a lower plane, it possesses likewise +organs and faculties that are adapting to a higher. Its powers thus +handicapped by requiring to engender the vital potential and the +developmental power to equip it with two orders of implement, neither +order has attained perfection of construction or of function. And both +ministering to the requirements of the other, necessarily hamper the +operations and mask the characteristics of the other. + +The two sexes are making all the while for higher development, each +along routes of its contrary trend. Man develops human faculty in the +direction of the Outer and material plane of Being. Woman develops it in +the direction of the Inner and psychical plane. + +Man transmits to woman a brain-hemisphere and powers ever further +increased and intensified in their relation to the concrete. Woman +transmits to man a brain-hemisphere ever further indrawn and illumined +in respect of the emotional and intrinsic. Woman's brain-hemisphere, +adapting to its concrete fellow, becomes increasingly empowered to +manifest, upon the outer plane, its own essential Woman-traits in Life +and Consciousness. Man's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its diviner +fellow, becomes increasingly illumined and inspired thereby to leaven +and exalt its concrete outlook and activities. + +Man's brain, by way of its responsive adaptation to the brain of woman +interior to it in the zone of Mind, becomes thus ever more +sympathetically intelligent, or intuitive, in respect of human life and +conditions, of Science and the Arts; while losing nothing of its +Dominance and concrete power, but interpreting its operations in terms +of a profounder and a nobler Chivalry. Woman's brain becomes ever more +intelligently sympathetic and practically helpful; losing nothing of its +Recessiveness, or emotional impulse, but, on the contrary, intensifying +all its Woman-attributes by extending the range and the operations of +these in terms of a profounder and a nobler Altruism. + + * * * * * + +Because of their hybrid constitution, there is necessarily a borderland, +alike of faculty and function, wherein the organisation and the +characteristics of the sexes merge and approximate one another's trend +and traits. This borderland represents, however, the crudest and least +differentiated department of the personal and mental powers of both. It +is a zone of Neuterdom, and marks a grade of rudimentary organisation in +which the Sex-characteristics have not yet sufficiently diverged in +development, as clearly and finely to differentiate themselves as traits +of pure and unalloyed type. + +The cruder the species or the evolutionary stage of species, the less +Sex is specialised in it. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT + + "_In conjunction with any other beings but men, women would have + been angels; but with men they are just women, which when all is + said and done, is much the same thing._"--De Livry. + + +I + +Among many other misconceptions with regard to Sex-characteristics, is +the modern teaching that the sex-instinct is identical in men and women. + +Ignoring the truth that a higher moral code is the mark of psychical +superiority, and moreover that the exaction of it from women, under +social penalty, has done more than any other thing to purify and to +exalt the woman-character, impassioned fallacy now sees this higher +standard demanded of the sex as a stigma of inferiority, and as an +injustice. Accordingly it preaches equal liberty in this as in other +respects. The trend toward equalisation is unfortunately (but +inevitably) in the direction of lowering the woman-code rather than of +raising man's. + +No falser or more disastrous doctrine could be promulgated. As in all +its other attributes and functions, so in this, the woman-nature differs +wholly from that of the male. The primal male sex-instinct was one of +tyranny and subjugation. There was no element of affection in it, and +its bent was toward promiscuity. In the primal female, the instinct as +an initiative impulse was non-existent. The surrender was to fear, and +to habit engendered by fear. Fondness for her mate came to woman by way +of her love for his child, a source essentially monogamous in trend. + +Physical passion in woman is derived from the Male-traits in her. It is, +accordingly, a borrowed, not an inherent instinct. And in all natural +women, passion is secondary to love; love belonging to her own intrinsic +nature. Because of its heritage, there is, in a true woman's love, +always a maternal altruistic element: unselfish, ministering, devoted. +Love has come to be intensified in her by fire of passion and by force +of personal attraction. It is no longer a mere meek surrender, with fear +for spur and maternity for solace. In proportion as she is of high +organisation, it has become a complex of mind and emotion and sense; +intense and vital. But always, in proportion as she is womanly, her own +way of loving--the way of devotion and tenderness--is ascendant over +passion. + +In man, howsoever it be leavened by the higher love, passion dominates. +When in woman passion dominates love, she is loving with the Male-traits +in her--not as woman. And in the measure wherein she falls short of the +womanly monogamous ideal, she is less woman than she is male. + +Mr. Justice Hannen, for long President of the Divorce Court--and a +subtle expert in women--observed that it was not the passionate, +warm-eyed women who figured most before him, but, in far greater number, +the cold-blooded, greedy and emotionless. Because for one woman who +succumbs to love or passion, twenty transgress from motives of vanity or +gain; or from mere frivolous craving for excitement. + +It is the sexless women who are most immoral, for the same reason that +some dyspeptics are always hungry. Persons of healthy digestion eat, and +are satisfied. The healthfully-sexed love, and are content. The +emotionless woman is for ever seeking in novelty, emotions she lacks the +emotion to feel. Such women exploit passion for vanity, for +distraction, or for the primal male-instinct of subjugation. Their +desire for a lover is less a sentiment than it is of the nature of that +craving for drink, or for drugs, or for dress, which many of this order +also indulge. All are megalomanias--natural instincts distorted to vices +by warp of abnormal self-centredness. + +With its foundations laid in instinct, its organic emotionalism, its +streak of mental irresponsibility, and its hunger for approbation, the +Woman-nature, when lacking in the higher Woman-traits of affection and +selflessness, or when these are not duly absorbed in the natural +interests and functions of the sex, may degenerate to a very ugly thing. + +Some of our latter-day "smart" young married women, childless or with +one or two children consigned to hirelings, their passions excited by +marriage and not duly assuaged by maternity, their impulses unchastened +and their powers unexpended in affection and care for the family, seek +outlet and distraction in promiscuous philanderings, in intrigue or in +vice. + +Human faculty and impulse diverted from their normal channels readily +find crooked and dangerous courses. + +In the fourth year of War, the Prussian Protestant State-Church declared +that "immorality among German women has attained such a degree that the +very foundations of Society are threatened." This and kindred +developments in other War-ridden countries are not due to women having +changed their natures, but are the outcome of conditions so altered as +to have released them from the wholesome disciplinary exercise of their +accustomed duties, relaxing thus the salutary curbs of habit and +convention. Child of Nature that she is, woman is a born rebel; for ever +in revolt against the law and order and restraints which man has imposed +as indispensable to Progress. Whereas men abhor, women exult in crises +and upheavals. Because these serve for outlet to their restive +emotionalism and supply scope for exotic sensation, while at the same +time giving them temporary mastery over the male--who is always at a +disadvantage in exhibitions of feeling. + +And this temperamental erraticism is valuably disciplined by the +masculine bent for rule and method, and normally finds admirable +safety-valves in wifely, housewifely, and motherly functions. + + +II + +To advocate a moral standard higher for women than for men is regarded +now as reactionary and regressive. + +Nevertheless, it is certain that beyond all the other virtues, personal +purity is essentially the highest, and is racially the most valuable of +all the Woman-qualities. Lapses in the other sex are in no way +comparable, as regards moral, biological, or sociological significance, +with kindred lapses in woman. Because of her native non-conformability, +once she has deviated from the monogamous code, she is dangerously +likely never after to conform to it. (It is a truism that _The woman who +has one, has many lovers_.) Her non-conformity requires, accordingly, to +be protected by a social ordinance more rigid than is that of man. Man +being less complex of psychology, moreover, that which in him is merely +biological is vice in woman. The fact alone that the male is able to +employ the sex-function as a weapon of brutality (as in violation) +proves him totally dissimilar to woman in this relation. + +Man disperses; Woman absorbs. And the consistency of Nature is such that +these two diametrically-opposite biological modes in reproduction are +reflected on the planes of mind and impulse. The diametrical difference +of the modes disposes outright of the Feminist demand for identical +moral codes for the sexes; the sex-functions of the two being so +intrinsically contrary in method and inherence, with correspondingly +signal differences in moral impulse and significance. + +Biologically, the masculine function concludes with its fulfilment. +Whereas the feminine function _begins_ mainly therewith, and continues +thence onward to operate in an ever-deepening, broadening, and +intensifying tide of issues; biological and psychological. And so potent +and subtle is Nature's consistency with regard to this primary and vital +function of woman in Life, that whether or not biological issue results, +psychological issues do inevitably. Woman's mode and mood of +_receptiveness_ in this mysterious union so operate that, in her +surrender, she admits to the inmost sanctuary of her being an alien +presence--which remains with her till death. Fade as it may from her +consciousness, it remains, nevertheless, impressed for ever after on the +vibrant records of her sensitive Subconsciousness, as vitally as in the +hour of her surrender. And underlying mind and character and conduct +ever after, it for ever after contributes its quota to these. + +Because of the vivifying potence of her creative womanhood--the function +whereof is to engender Life--the stranger admitted to her citadel +becomes endued with Life, and takes up his abode with her to the end of +her natural term. For this reason, the adulterous woman is adulterous in +a sense impossible to man--adulterous in both a vital and an intrinsic +psychical sense that is revolting. + +With the increasing intensification in the male, with advancing +evolution, of his inherited Woman-traits, he has become ever further +endowed with Woman's Sub- and Supra-conscious faculties. So that the +function which was, in its primal moral, but brief and cursory, ending +summarily with its biological fulfilment, has become increasingly endued +in him with the vital emotionalism, and accordingly with the moral +significance inherent to the Woman-nature. If his experiences fade more +quickly from his consciousness than hers do, they remain nevertheless +(in the degree of his psychical development) potent still in his +Subconsciousness--as possibly adulterating and debasing factors. But +since his Subconscious emotionalism is an acquired and not an inherent +part of his male mentality, it is a medium vastly less sensitised and +operative in him than it is in her; of whom it is the very basis of her +being. + +This is no apology, of course, for masculine aberration, but a counsel +of feminine virtue--a counsel making indirectly, therefore, but none the +less surely for masculine virtue also. The reasons for chastity in the +one sex differ diametrically from those which should be the motive +thereof in the other, however. + +Chivalry and Prostitution are incompatible. + + +It must be confessed, however, that deterioration of the +woman-organisation and temperament conduces greatly to masculine +promiscuity. Not only because this entails loss of power to charm and +bind the mate, but because with the sex-immaturity, on the one hand of +the over-Feminised type, on the other, of the Mannish woman, women lose, +in greater or less degree, the natural power of one sex to assuage +passion in the other. + +Man is deteriorated, moreover, by moral and psychical deterioration in +that sex whence moral impulse springs, because, in such case, the appeal +of woman ceases to be, as is normal, to the emotional and chivalrous in +him, but evokes, on the contrary, biological instinct mainly, or merely. + + +It is well-established truth that her first lover (or her husband, +supposing she had loved him) retains a unique hold upon a woman's mind +throughout her after-life--his personality or memory dominating her +imagination as no later-comer is able to do. This is because that first +enters into possession of both Consciousness and Subconsciousness while +the tablets of these are still virgin and unblotted. This first +impresses himself, therefore, clearly and strongly defined upon her +exquisitely-sensitised tablets of remembrance. + +Latter-day young girls, permitted the injurious licence of free and +unchaperoned association with the other sex, even when they come to +marriage, inviolate, have, many of them, passed through experiences +which so have blurred and sullied their young highly-impressionable +temperament and senses as to have despoiled these of that fair purity +and freshness indispensable alike to potent impressions and to deep +attachments. In natural woman who has arrived at womanhood without +premature arousing of the senses, soul and sense are at fine poise, and +respond in vital unison to love. In girls whose innocence and conduct +have not been duly safeguarded, the prematurely-excited senses have +become detached from the soul--from the higher emotions, that is. With +the result that this fine poise of mind and body, which is the Hall-mark +of Woman-development, and whence romantic passion issues, has been +irretrievably lost. + +The same is true, in degree, of young men. They too deteriorate when +biological instinct is dissociated in them from the higher impulses of +passion. But in men, the poise, being less delicate, is not only less +readily lost, but it is more readily recovered. In this, as in other +things, the normal male makes for means; while woman's bent is toward +extremes. Further, physical passion being normally far stronger in him, +and _initiative_ in impulse--whereas in her it is mainly +_responsive_--the senses assert sway over him spontaneously. While in +natural girls these lie more or less dormant, unless artificially +roused, or until aroused in natural response to love. + +Early philanderings (more serious than boy-and-girl comradeship and +innocent flirtation) prevent women not only from ever attaining their +highest levels of organisation and temperament, but they destroy +effectually their power to love profoundly and whole-heartedly. They rob +them, accordingly, of the greatest transfiguring potence and happiness +of life. + + +III + +Odious and startling evidence that because of woman's vital emotionalism +and sensitive psychology, her nature retains ineffaceable vestiges of +all that has happened to her, is the fact that a woman's children by a +second husband may resemble her first husband far more than they +resemble their father. A significant and repulsive adulteration of type, +and one so intrinsic that a woman who had been previously wife to a +negro or a Chinaman will present her second husband, typically European, +with offspring of negroid or of Mongolian type. That husbands and wives +come to resemble one another in physiognomy and characteristics, is +further indication of the subtle and potent temperamental fusion and +implications of the mysterious sex-union. + +The adulteration of type which may thus repulsively mar the offspring of +women twice-mated is seen, at first hand, in that adulteration of +personality which results from sex-promiscuity. Not only is the +individuality both of mind and character obliterated, but the +individuality both of form and feature is obliterated too. The features +of persons of irregular life become blurred and more or less mongrel; +character and expression so degenerating as to produce eventually that +which has been styled a "composite face"--the face resulting when a +number of portraits of different persons are printed one over another on +the same photographic plate. + +The degree to which in the sex-union--howsoever lightly entered +on--they twain become intrinsically and remain irrevocably one, in the +vital records of individualism and character, is wholly unsuspected. But +in this--which is a complex phenomenon of Hypnosis--indelible undying +images, such as are impressed upon the Subconscious mind in every other +form of Hypnosis, remain impressed thereon; to inspire and fructify, or +to weaken and vitiate nature and faculty. + +That vigilant supervision of her young daughters for which the early +Victorian mother is now decried, secured a purity of racial type, in +fine physique and constitution, in notable talent and enterprise, in +rare womanly beauty and virile handsomeness, which proves the unique +potentialities inherent in our Anglo-Saxon stock. No merely material +service a woman can render to the State approaches in value the +all-potent one of safeguarding the virtue of its young daughters. + +Each sex has its own morale to sustain. And personal virtue is woman's. +The desire for equal liberty in this respect is added proof of the +ascendancy, in modern women, of Male over their own natural +Woman-traits. It springs not from an intensification of passion, but, on +the contrary, from a waning of that power to love which holds a woman +true to one mate. + +Last and most cogent of reasons: In view of those long centuries of +suffering and aspiration, by way of which the evolution of the +Woman-traits of love and purity has been achieved in blood and +tears--albeit the monogamous ideal is far yet from attainment--beyond +all else, the sex should strive toward this, both personally and +socially. + +It is the soul of Love and Life, the impulse of Human advance. With +decline of this ideal, the emotions cease to centre in the Home and +Family, and civilisation relapses to barbarism. + + +IV + +Ellen Key, in _Love and Marriage_, observes: "Few propositions are so +lacking in proof as that monogamy is the form of sexual life which is +indispensable to the vitality and culture of nations." And further: "all +the progress that is ascribed to Christian civilisation has taken place +while monogamy was indeed the law, but polygamy the custom." + +She overlooks the portentous truth that a law is the expression of a +general aspiration toward an ideal for which a people is striving. That +a law is broken proves that the higher in man moves him to set a +standard beyond his power--or beside his inclination--to sustain +undeviatingly. Yet although he may not act up to it undeviatingly, it +stands, nevertheless, for the ideal he realises that he should reach. + +Abolition of a good and elevating law proves, therefore, not only the +serious lapse of a community from an established standard of conduct, +but it inevitably lowers the level of conduct by removing +barriers--self-respect and self-restraint, public opinion and so +forth--standing in the way of laxity. Despite the death-penalty, murders +are committed. But were the death-penalty to be abolished, murder would +increase by leaps and bounds. The human mind is strangely susceptible. +And the power of habits acquired under fear of penalties is an +invaluable force for good. The higher minds of a community evolve and +establish codes for lesser minds to shape by. And undoubtedly the +subconscious as well as the conscious shaping toward such standards +furthers development in the directions thereof. To make honesty a matter +of personal choice, with no penalties attaching to theft, would be in +itself an incentive to theft. + +Comparison with polygamous countries, of countries in which monogamy is +the law, refutes straightway Miss Key's discredit of monogamy; showing +the polygamous uncivilised, unenlightened, unprogressive, subject to +monogamous races, and in every sense, both materially and morally +decadent. And if, with a notion of establishing equality in all things +between the sexes by emancipating woman from the higher moral code, +leasehold marriage or other forms of wedded laxity should be +substituted--not only would national purity, but personal character and +happiness too would suffer grievously. + +If men have not kept the monogamous law, the instinct of jealousy, +reinforced by repugnance to supporting alien offspring, has seen to it +that wives should trespass as seldom, at all events, as was possible to +be guarded against. Custom and public opinion, furthered by personal +fear and fear of divorce, have all contributed toward advancing ideals +of womanly honour and conduct. And from monogamous mothers--whether +voluntarily or involuntarily so--progress has derived immense impulse. +Apart from biological considerations, the benefit to the family of the +mother's influence centred in her home and kept from straying thence, +either by her own aspirations, by public opinion, or by fear of the +husband, has been incalculable. + +During and since the War, crime among children has increased by 50 per +cent., largely owing to absence of mothers from their homes, working or +drinking, or otherwise dissipating, while their children have been left +to run wild in the streets. + +Our reformatories are full to overflowing with these neglected +unfortunates; deprived thus of the haven of homes and maternal control. +As a man is responsible to the State for the support of his family, so a +woman should be held responsible to the State for the proper care and +supervision of its future citizens, who, without due care and +disciplinary influence, become a burden and scourge to the community. + +In all these vitally-momentous issues, let us free our minds alike of +sex-bias and false sentiment, in order that we may see clearly, and may +act honestly and wisely in the interests not only of women themselves, +but in those of the Race. + + +V + +The sex-instinct in woman having had its origin in surrender, retains +much still of this primal element. And both middle-class men of lower +evolutionary grade, and men of the working classes, exercise still, to +considerable degree, the brute-trait of terrorism over women--moral +rather than physical terrorism. + +In rescuing young girls from molestation in the streets, one may see in +them the panic of such intimidation. They are pale and trembling, with +pupils widely dilated. In full daylight, it may be in a crowded +thoroughfare, with police at hand, primal instinctive emotionalism +paralyses reason, resource and will-power. Weak-minded women, who lack +their due share of masculine combativeness to stiffen resistance in +them, frequently marry, or otherwise yield to such men, far more because +they are afraid than because they are fond of them. And the terrorism +husbands have exercised over wives has nerved wives against the +terrorism exercised over them by other men; and has thus served to +protect them from their own weaknesses. + +The Woman-traits, always at a disadvantage in concrete affairs against +superior strength, have been buttressed thus and coerced--often cruelly +and tyrannously, 'tis true. But they have nevertheless been greatly +furthered in development by a mate who, if he did not recognise the +higher calibre of woman's nature, nor himself aspired to the code he +exacted from her, recognised, at all events, that this higher code he +exacted of her was that best adapted to progress. Thus has poor +mortality been beaten and shapen on the anvils of compulsion and +exigency. And always the woman has most suffered--to be beautiful of +nature. + +Were it not that an advance-guard of higher and chivalrous men stand, by +force of the laws they have made, between women and the lower and +coarser masculine orders, no woman's life would be worth the living +because of perpetual affront. With existing laws, indeed, which protect +even the most degraded of the sex, the women of the poorer classes are +everywhere subject to insult and unseemly jest, open or covert. Because +to many men of crude order, the eternal mystery of Sex shows mainly as +subject for levity. The crass and unimaginative frequently deride thus +things too high for their dense understanding. + +Women have come to take their chivalrous protection by law as mere +matter-of-course, precisely as they take it as matter-of-course that men +should labour, and should endow them with the benefits of their +industry. These things are by no means matter-of-course, however, but +are matter of chivalry--chivalry so innate as to have become convention. + +It would be occasion for laughter, were it not cause for profoundest +regret, that the hypertrophy of male-traits in woman has engendered +to-day a sex-antagonism which has set her in open revolt against man, +from whom, if she has suffered and suffers, and will continue to suffer +at the hands of his defects, she nevertheless derives, and has always +derived from his chivalries her most gracious human privileges. + +That the obligations and the recompenses of the sexes are reciprocal, +is true. It is equally true, however, that the choice has lain +with men to have ignored the nobler issues of the compact. As the +seraglio-imprisoned women of the less manly and progressive peoples +prove. + +All our civilisation, with its complex sociological, intellectual, and +moral developments, rests on a basis of Force. Men must still prove +their right to each and all of their laboriously-won achievements by +arms and the valours of war. In peace, the laws--which alone make life +tolerable--rest equally upon the powers of masculine will and strength +to inflict due punishment for violation thereof. + +And laws having been made by men, it was clearly optional with them to +have left women unprotected, or far less protected than the other sex; +in place of having extended special protection to their more delicate +attributes. + +In safeguarding women in general, men safeguard their own individual +women, of course. Human motive is involved; is the product of a number +of factors. That this is so is reason for eliminating no single one of +these factors, lest the resultant undergo a wholly unexpected and +disastrous transformation. + +The Plan sets most women at the mercy of most men, by reason of the +greater physical strength of males, and by temptation of their more +urgent sex-instinct. In view of her inherent disabilities, it would have +seemed, _a priori_, that no woman could in ruder days have attained to +womanhood, inviolate. + +And yet that her very disabilities have served for her increasing +protection is shown by the fact of her increasing protection as, with +the evolution of her higher organisation, her disabilities have +intensified. + +Civilised woman, with her more delicate organisation, is far more +defenceless than was savage woman. But in response to the claims of her +increasing defencelessness, the instinctive chivalry of the stronger +male, her natural protector, has become progressively the intelligent +and moral chivalry of higher man. No strength or capability of woman's +own to defend herself could so have served her; nor could so have served +the other sex for fine incentive. + +To free woman of her highly specialised and inspiring disabilities by +substituting in her, powers, muscular and mental, that would fit her to +meet the male on equal terms, would be to frustrate the method of the +male evolutionary ascent, by eliminating the humanising and uplifting +appeal to his manhood of these her inspiring unfitnesses. + +The deplorable decadence in masculine regard for and bearing toward +women, which has resulted in direct proportion as the sex has +substituted male efficiencies for womanly ineptitudes, serves for one of +many other valuable object-lessons of the War. + + +VI + +Among other Feminist fallacies, the _demi-mondaine_ has come to be +regarded as victim merely, on the one hand, of an unjust, +man-administered economic system, on the other, of masculine +libertinism. The truth is that the vast majority of immoral women are +under no compulsion, but voluntarily adopt this mode of life either to +escape work, or because of a natural vicious proclivity. A number are +mental defectives; some actually feeble-minded, others only morally +deficient. + +It must always be remembered, moreover, that, biologically speaking, the +separation of the _genus_ woman into the folds, respectively, of sheep +and goats is of signal racial and social service. That some goats are in +the sheep-fold, some lambs among the goats, is not to be denied. +Fatalities, injustices, and incongruities are inevitable to all broad +human classifications. In the main, however, the women who resist +temptation and remain virtuous are obviously better fitted to be the +wives and mothers of the Race than are they who fall. + +And although this is not, of course, the calculated purpose of this +lamentable under-world, the rough division of the sex thereby into two +main classes has been of service, by supplying a sociological backwater +wherein the worst of our racial derelicts--mental and moral +defectives--are segregated; and are precluded, for the most part, from +perpetuating their mental and moral defectiveness. + +Women, like men, must uphold and battle for their standards in the +teeth of circumstance. The most notable types of parasite-women, +selfish, slothful, worthless, venal, vicious, whose standards are jewels +and clothes, their goals luxury and pleasure and the evasion of all that +is difficult and distasteful in life, are found among the aristocratic +and the plutocratic orders; safely secured against economic necessity or +lack of scope and outlet for their powers. + +The Feminist fallacy that prostitution is almost entirely a product of +male economics has been strikingly refuted, too, by War-conditions, +which opened numerous well-remunerated employments for the sex. Yet, +coincident with a sad deficit of women to fill these, prostitution has +waxed rampant. + +Wise and discreet were those early Victorians, with their uncompromising +ostracism of loose women. Apart altogether from such salutary expression +of their condemnation of impure living, they were vastly too clever and +far-seeing to admit persons of notoriously evil habit, peeress or +actress, to association with their clean young girls, as modern mothers +do; to meet and to mix freely with them socially or at Charity Bazaars, +on Flag-Days, and so forth. With the result that girls all the world +over have become increasingly lax and decadent in tone and manner, in +dress and morale, from confusion of their young standards by social +tolerance and recognition of such persons, as also from corruption by +demoralising contact with and observation of such. + +Intolerance? Pharisaism? By no means! + +The strong and straight, uncompromising moral standards of its women +serve as landmarks of, and impulse to a nation's progress. Clear and +definite lines of demarcation between good and evil, between possible +and impossible modes of conduct, point the moral of advance, and turn +the scale in the upward direction for the weak, the hesitating, and the +imitative. + +Dread of consequences went far, in less sophisticated days, to +safeguard and foster womanly virtue. Modern expedients have, +unfortunately, removed all cause for fear in this relation; permitting +an impunity of action demoralising to the weak in will or principle, who +require every possible aid and check to guide them aright. In simpler +days, girls who had lapsed were steadied and strengthened in character +and self-restraint by the compulsion to support, as too by their natural +fondness for the unwanted child. Now the first step--having cost them +nothing--predisposes to further backslidings. And both character and +self-control degenerate increasingly. + + +VII + +To weaken the marriage-bond by setting it for a term of years only, or +by making it terminable by consent, would virtually destroy marriage and +family-life. The fact that the bond would not be binding would make +persons more careless even than they are at present in selection of the +mate, and would thus multiply the number of mis-matings. Which would be +still further to deteriorate species, since the finer types of children +are born only of well-mated parents. + +The finality of the bond, if it does not always prevent one or both from +meeting some other they prefer, prevents the scrupulous, at all events, +from seeking such. Or having found, it keeps many from fostering and +from yielding to temptation. Were marriage terminable, or, as is +sometimes proposed, were it abolished wholly, and love the only bond +between the sexes, there would be no confidence, no sense of security +between the partners, no stability of family life; no centring of +interests in this, and but small endeavour to retain affections which +for the many could be easily replaced--and replaced, moreover, with the +zest of novelty. On the contrary, a curse of unrest would afflict the +vast majority of married folk with the unsettling--mayhap with the +alluring--prospect of meeting their further "Fate"; perhaps their +second, possibly their third, it might be, their seventh "Fate." + +Only the few are strong enough of heart or stable enough of character to +remain steadfast for a lifetime in any undertaking, unless bound +stringently thereto by authorised obligations, incentives, and +penalties. Only the few are deep enough of nature to love for a +lifetime; or are deep enough of nature to love so intensely as to +justify altering the marriage-code in order to spare these few +suffering. The wane of nine out of ten honeymoons impresses the value of +an inflexible decree that declines to reckon with disillusion, but +sternly bids the disillusioned take up their burden and make the best of +it. And having no choice, many do this and make a success of it--on new, +and, it may be, on far higher lines than those they had set out upon. + +That but few love so deeply as to love for life by no means implies that +marriage for less than a lifetime should be substituted. It shows, on +the contrary, that the majority of persons would prove as incapable of +loving No. Two for long as they had been incapable of loving No. One; or +as they would be incapable of loving No. Three, or No. Ten. A bond that +rivets them for life to No. One therefore, and entails loss or suffering +when they fail to abide by it, is safeguard for them against such a +succession of loves as would be as demoralising to the individual as it +must be destructive of society. + +Examples of this tendency to amorous licence have been furnished by the +complications of War-"widows," who, on report of the death of +soldier-husbands, remarried in unseemly haste--only to find the husband +return. So too, by the widespread infidelity of wives to absent +soldier-husbands. If the grave and moving circumstance of a husband +facing death or mutilation in the trenches, for his country's defence, +was not grave nor moving enough to keep his wife faithful to him, then +we should congratulate ourselves upon a marriage-law which, by exacting +penalties whereby such a wife suffers material damage, supplies the only +argument likely to stiffen the morale of so light-minded and callous a +creature. + +Nothing less binding than a lifelong contract is coercive enough or is +sufficiently chastening to bridle woman's native changefulness and curb +her instinctive emotionalism. The realisation that there is no way out +of a situation is her finest incentive to nobility. She bruises her +impulses against the iron of circumstance, and the essences of her +intrinsic Woman-soul distil in patience and in sweetness. Under the +harrow of sacrifice, she feels herself martyred. And yet without the +sense of martyrdom, as may be also without the conditions thereof, no +true woman is ever wholly content that she is fulfilling her destiny. + +Ellen Key writes of "_all the impurity that the sexual life shuts up +within the whited sepulchre of legal marriage_." She falls here into the +common error of assuming such evil to be restricted solely to the state +of marriage. Whereas the higher interests, the duties and affections of +the family life--purifying and inspiring influences lacking in +unsanctioned unions--make inevitably for the uplifting of the relation. +That some husbands and wives fall short of the pure intensity of passion +possible to some others between whom love is the sole bond, is true, of +course. But as are most other human developments, this is a matter of +the character of individuals rather than of the terms of the bond +uniting them. Certainly, high and tender passion is scarcely to be +expected in a union for no better reason than that this is illicit. + + +VIII + +Were life designed for happiness and pleasure merely, the case would be +different. Were one life our sole portion, it might be different too. +Having one life only, we might be justified in claiming for it the joy +of the best love available. An unhappy or a less than happy marriage is +only one, however, of the many expedients for the evolution of faculty. + +If the evolution of the individual progresses by way of countless +earth-existences strung upon a thread of spiritual continuity, one life +is but a brief and single page of everybody's great Life-serial. +That is, doubtless, why all feel their lot to be an episode +merely--unexplained, and incomplete, rather than a finished story. And +in our innumerable pages and innumerable episodes, we must resign +ourselves to sundry matrimonial vicissitudes. + +Says the author of _The World-Soul_, "The more function is specialised +in either sex the less able either is to stand alone." This is argument +for further and fuller specialisation of their respective functions, in +both sexes, because so great is the happiness of fulfilling for that +other his or her great need of us, and of being blessed by that other in +our own need. But too, it raises the voluntary surrender of such +happiness for honour's sake, for holiness' sake, for God's sake, or for +children's sake, to the height of a renunciation which transfigures +human life and character, and proportionally ennobles both. + +That both man and woman should be entitled to divorce for infidelity, +for incorrigible drunkenness, criminality or insanity on the part of the +mate, would be just and reasonable clauses in the marriage-code. +Because, apart from the unmerited cruelty and shame of such bondages, is +the risk of entailing degenerate offspring. Otherwise, it appears that +relaxation of the Divorce-Law would result in evils far worse than any +it would remedy. And these evils would re-act inevitably far more +cruelly--both temperamentally and materially--upon women and children +than upon men. + +The conjugal and the paternal instincts being traits the sex has +acquired by long ages of developmental progress, for men to lose these +would be as easy as the loss would be degenerative to themselves and to +those others. Folly to suppose that having reached a certain stage of +human character-building, we can, with impunity, kick away the +foundations whereon our house of evolution has been raised; and on which +it must rest for all time. + +The irrevocability of the marriage-contract is woman's greatest +security. Realisation of that sex-lawlessness which is an innate +Male-trait--relic of the promiscuous and cursory nature of the primal +male-instinct--should set us on guard against weakening, in the least +degree, this covenant, which is the best among those privileges whereby +man, in the teeth of his inherent instincts, has chivalrously protected +woman and the family. In the teeth of these, he has applied his natural +intelligent bent for Conformity in concrete affairs to the repression +and regulation of his impulses by the institution of Marriage. And +this--the apotheosis of masculine conformity to the exactions of +Progress--is now menaced by the native Non-conformity of woman, +exploited by Feminism. + + +It is notable that men are but seldom truly fond of, nor are they +faithful to the wife who works outside the home. In France, where the +clever, industrious wife of the middle and lower classes is more a +business-partner than she is a wife, conjugal fidelity is not expected. + +Not only is a house without a woman in it to devote her best interests +and powers to the arts of home-making, not a home, but the bond of that +fraction of interest and affection left over to her from her work +outside it is a thing too slight to bind her husband to her. He finds no +difficulty in substituting--should he seek this--a haven with more +atmosphere of home and sentiment in it, companionship with more of +temperament in it, more resiliency and freshness, than that of the +industrious and wage-earning, but fatigued and jaded working-wife. + +The children of such a union--if such there be--supply no bond either to +draw together and unite their parents. Children reared by servants, +without understanding or affection, are but seldom affectionate or +charming. Moreover, the children of hard-working mothers are but seldom +true children. They bring to the home nothing of the freshness, the +vitality or charm of natural childhood. + +If father and mother possess aesthetic sensibilities, these are offended +probably by the plainness and the lack of graces in their +offspring--bye-products merely of their economic assiduities. Perhaps +the big spectacles through which the young eyes gaze forth like doleful +prisoners from behind bars, make them feel strangely uncomfortable; as +in the presence of weird and reproachful intelligences. + +Neither derives interest or joy enough from the family circle to repay +them for their parental obligations and responsibilities. + + +IX + +Love between the sexes, being a need alike of souls and biogenesis, is +regarded by some as reason enough in itself for relaxing the +Marriage-law--even for the abolition of Marriage; making affection the +sole bond between the lovers. + +We cannot, logically, abolish the legal contract uniting two persons in +marriage, however, without at the same time abolishing every other form +of legal contract, and the legal liabilities thereof. Logically, we +cannot make conjugal duty and family responsibility mere matters of +personal conscience, unless we are assured that the human species has +reached such a phase of moral integrity as to need no other incentive +than its own integrity to secure fulfilment of its obligations, moral +and material. If we abolish the legal factor in marriage, to be +consistent we must abolish the legal factor in business partnerships and +in all other sociological compacts. We must make the payment of rent, of +rates and taxes, of tradesmen's bills and so forth, debts of conscience +and of honour merely; for the discharge whereof conscience and honour +must alone suffice. + +It may be objected that these are purely material obligations, while the +bond between the sexes is an emotional one. And yet--Have we reached +such a stage of development that emotional considerations are more +binding on us than material ones are? + +Moreover, if we are to make love the sole bond--clearly the waning of +love must release from the bondage. Further, when we sift out the purely +emotional element in the vast majority of unions, we shall find it but a +very slender factor among other more binding reciprocities. Certainly a +far more slender thread to trust to in the safeguarding of a contract +than is, for example, the factor of commercial honesty. Commercial +honesty is not, perhaps, a conspicuous virtue of the times. +Nevertheless, the sense of honesty in business is a good deal stronger +in most men than is their sense of honour with regard to love. And their +sense of honour in love has developed mainly as a direct consequence of +those legal compulsions and responsibilities of love which have been +exacted and fostered by the legality of marriage. + +How many men are there, for example, who, having come to care for some +other, hold themselves bound in the least by an illicit tie; howsoever +much they may have cared at one time for the woman in the case? Lightly +come--lightly go! And if the terms, marriage and love, are by no means +necessarily synonymous, it has been, nevertheless, greatly by way of the +obstacles and compulsions and the social penalties attaching to +violation of the marriage vows that the love-passion has been purified +and uplifted out of the barbarism of mere instinct and promiscuity, +into the graces of emotion and the virtues of monogamy. + +Had any man and woman, reciprocally attracted at their first meeting, +been free always to have carried this attraction straightway to its +biological conclusion, the sex-relation would be still the merely +physiological incident it was in primal forests. The circumstance that +such attraction has been debarred from ready consummation by the +obligations and the obstacles engendered by a recognised and legalised +bond between the sexes, has been debarred, moreover, in innumerable +cases, by one of the attracted couple being subject to this bond--all of +this has preserved the nascent emotion from straightway relapsing to the +basic level whence it sprang, and has fostered the evolution of love in +the higher reaches of emotion; of imagination, of controlled and +chastened passion. + +It may be said that modern men and women, loving one another with the +more highly-evolved passion of our enlightened epoch, would love as +devotedly and would remain as constant in an illicit as in a legalised +union. If so, such constancy would be an echo mainly of the +long-dignified state of wedded constancy; and the greatest of all +tributes to the values of this. Nevertheless--For how long after the +clarion-note of aspiration sounded by Marriage should have ceased to +vibrate, would the echo of it last? + + +Should woman, in her short-sighted efforts to "emancipate" herself still +further, release herself wholly (as she now inclines to do) from the +marriage-bond, she will have thrown back in man's face the very +tenderest guerdon of his worth and of his high regard for her. And she +will have destroyed, at a blow, his most vital incentive to further +advance, her own and her children's most powerful safeguard, and the +main buttress not alone of national but, as well, of Natural human +progress. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DISASTROUS TO INFANT-LIFE AND HUMAN +FACULTY + + "_A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to + make a home._"--Chinese Proverb. + + +I + +The paths alike of progress and of happiness lie, obviously, in the ever +further dignifying and enhancement of the functions of home and of +wifehood, by way of every further interest and charm that higher, fairer +Womanhood confers. + +The chief cause of latter-day conjugal unrest and disaffection is to be +found--not in the natural state of marriage, but in a decline of those +personal traits which make for happiness therein. Girls brought up as +now, without home-interests or training, but, on the contrary, with +mainly self-realising and self-absorbing aims and pursuits, are +deficient not only in domestic aptitudes but lamentably also in +emotional qualities. And the home-life without the emotions to give +values to it, is like a fine air played on the keyboard of a piano from +which have been removed the strings that transform the movements of the +fingers into melody. + +So keenly self-centred the majority of women have become, so bent upon +their hobbies and careers, as to have lost nearly all of that +sympathetic adaptiveness natural to woman, which enables her to +forget--and to forget with pleasure--her own in the personality and +interests of others. + +How eagerly latter-day girls seek refuge from their boredom in the +tennis-court, the Bridge-table, the dance, or in some other mode of +direct action which entails but little temperamental tax or output! + +To such degree the sexes are now drilled to the same standards, +interests, and points-of-view, that neither brings to the other any new +thing, of freshness, of colour, or of inspiration. The interchange is +only too often a competitive struggle, indeed, as to which shall know +(or shall appear to know) more than the other knows (or appears to know) +of topics equally trite to both. There is little or nothing of the zest +and glamour of a delightful picnic of two; whereat each keeps producing +some new and unexpected thing to supplement the new and unexpected of +the other. Modern woman has no novelty in language even for her mate, +but deals him back his own slang--a vernacular which among women of the +working-classes not seldom takes the forms of blasphemy and obscenity, +wholly disqualifying for the rearing of children. As, indeed, do the +coarse and vulgar phrases in vogue now among the cultured of the sex. In +view of woman's native faculty of music and her subtle aptitude for +naming (as for nick-naming), one cannot doubt that she it was who +mothered Language. Yet now-a-days, adopting virile lingo, her "rotten," +"stick-it," and the like are murdering the infant of her quondam genius. +And what genius it was, that gave birth to our surpassing mother-tongue! + + +In case of engagement between a young man and his bored one--whom, by +the way, although he may suspect that the relation is not all that it +might be, he never suspects of being bored--manlike, he trusts to +marriage "to put everything right." Yet although the newly-wedded more +and more relieve themselves of the strain of a honeymoon, with its +unmitigated (or inimitable) company of two, a month or six weeks of +wedlock find most young modern couples wofully at cross-purposes. +Possession has freed the man of the obligation to woo. And when the +wooing--which had engendered for the woman a flattering and intoxicating +sense of being a coveted prize--comes to a more or less abrupt ending, +she feels herself defrauded. + +He too! Because while Courtship is man's affair, Marriage is woman's. +And where love is not, to recruit and quicken passion and to take the +place of novelty, the wane of honeymoons is sad indeed. + +(There are faults and failings on the bridegroom's part, 'tis true. That +belongs to another story, however. Sufficient for these pages is the +unpleasing task of holding a mirror to the faults of a single sex.) + +It should be remembered that men, for the most part, are not eager to +marry. Considering the nature of the bond, with its lifelong +obligations, responsibilities and sacrifices, this is little to be +wondered at. A week after marriage a wife may be crippled by an +accident, may become insane; or may otherwise be thrown, more or less a +burden, on her husband's hands. Or she may develop disagreeable and +wholly uncongenial traits. In spite of which, even though they wreck his +happiness, he will have bound himself to her--and will have bound +himself to maintain her--till death them parts. + +He too, of course, may turn out wholly unsatisfactory. That belongs +likewise to the other story. But from the material standpoint, the onus +of support which falls on him, and which, in the case of an invalided or +of an obnoxious wife, may prove nothing but a carking care, makes the +liabilities unequal. + +It is, doubtless, because of these his greater material obligations and +responsibilities, that passion has been planned to beset man more +urgently than woman. And had Church and State not taken advantage of his +inherent, chivalrous instinct, and so turned it to account, both for his +own moral uplifting and for the founding and maintenance of the family, +woman and society--and man, accordingly--would have remained at very low +grades of development. + + +II + +Among other "wrongs" resented by women is that his obligation and his +economic means to support a wife have endowed the male, in the majority +of cases, with the lordly prerogative of selecting his mate. On her +side, while having much to gain materially by marriage, unless she is +unusually attractive she has but little range of choice. + +And yet this masculine prerogative of selection has served as the +strongest incentive to the culture both of higher attribute and charm in +woman. Failing that economic struggle which has been man's spur to +development, this incentive has operated vastly to her benefit; inducing +her parents to educate and to enhance her gifts, and influencing her to +do the like for herself. A proportion of women have always been +self-supporting, of course. But their work has been mainly in fields of +unskilled labour, and has lacked, accordingly, the stimulus of +competition. The goal of marriage has not only supplied thus the element +of emulation, but it has turned Woman-culture in the direction of +developing personal traits and morale, rather than industrial or +professional specialisations. And this has been the right direction, +seeing that the role of the sex is one demanding personal qualities and +virtues rather than economic technicalities. + +As regards human values, it is a higher privilege to be a charming +personality than to be a successful stockbroker. So that in this, as in +other things, woman has been privileged by her disabilities. + + +III + +An ever-increasing number of working-class girls, on leaving school, +enter a work-shop, a factory, or an office, and spend their time and +powers in minor mechanical tasks; gumming labels on jam-pots, making +match-boxes or tags for boot-laces, addressing envelopes, and other such +employments, deadening to female intelligence, impulse and temperament. +Their minds and natures become too warped and narrowed to adapt later, +with ease and interest, to the many and varied intelligent functions of +the home. They escape thence, accordingly, after a few months or years +of marriage (supposing them to have given up their industrial tasks for +a space even), and abandoning home and children, return to the old +narrow, mechanical routine, to which alone their poor stultified brains +have been shaped. In the education of girls, the Subconscious mimetic +element in their impressionable natures should be borne in mind. It may +be turned to excellent, as to disastrous account. + +M. Vologotsky, head of the Omsk Government, has called attention to a +significant phenomenon of modern Russian life--namely, that the women +take no interest in their homes. This he attributes to their low states +of culture. Could they but be persuaded to become "house-proud"--with +all that this means and entails--he considers that the task of the +Regeneration of this vast unhappy, although singularly gifted, people +would be greatly furthered. + +Constitutional deterioration, inherited or acquired, entailing defective +sex-development, causes many young working-women to be deficient in the +maternal instinct, whence spring fondness for and interest in children. +The same defective sex-development, disqualifying them for wifehood, +results in the vast majority of working-class wives lapsing, after a +few years of marriage with normal, virile young men, into haggard, +neurasthenic wrecks. + +The whole of this vital and important department of the +woman-organisation is not only ignored in so far as scope for normal +development is concerned, but, despised as subserving inferior and +"merely physical" functions, every other capacity and aptitude is +fostered or forced at the expense of constitutional reserves and +resources which belong, by rights of Life and Love, to this. With the +result that the vast majority of modern women are physically unfitted +for, as an increasing number are temperamentally averse to the +sex-relation--_fons et origo_ of Life. + + +IV + +To such degree the doctrine of Expedience and Self-for-Self-solely has +spread that there are women who seek now to escape wholly the natural +pangs of childbirth. Such persuade their doctors to induce labour a +month or more before term; in order that the smaller-sized infant may be +born with less discomfort to themselves. Others restrict their diet or +abstain from certain foods, in order that the babe, starved thus and +ill-nourished before birth, shall be soft and frail and easier of +delivery. Dread of pain at whatsoever cost to the future of a human +being--and that being their own child--actuates these unnatural and +pusillanimous practices. + +It is becoming a vogue for expectant mothers of the wealthier classes to +enter Maternity-Homes, where, in luxurious surroundings, they are +enabled, under spinal anaesthesia (Twilight Sleep), to conclude their +mother-function without suffering or inconvenience; lying in a torpor of +crass insensibility while the greatest of Human Events is taking place +in them. Meantime, the sensitive infant-body is dosed with the powerful +drug circulating in the maternal blood. + +But--whither is all this trending? Can we believe that true intelligence +and progress consist in grasping greedily all the pleasures and the +privileges to be had from life, and basely shirking all the hardships? +Can we believe that--suffering and effort being the laws alike of Life +and Progress, and the rungs whereby we have climbed the Evolutionary +ladder--we can continue to climb when, with short-sighted selfishness, +we shall have stripped the ladder of its rungs? The humane use of +chloroform duly assuages the worst pangs. While the fine courage, +fortitude and sweetness wherewith the soul of woman fares forth +naturally upon her Great Adventure, to meet this the Apotheosis of human +pain, prove and still further enhance her nobility. Even weak and flimsy +women rise to greatness at this crisis. Powers they had never glimmered +in themselves emerge and armour them, and--be it remembered--leave +eternal records upon mind and character; striking spiritual roots still +deeper into living function. + + +V + +With characteristic Feminist materialism, Olive Schreiner lightly +dismisses Maternity as a merely "passive" form of labour. + +Heaven save the mark! Is it passive so to equip a microscopic cell with +living human powers and aspirations that, within the space of months, it +makes that miraculous pilgrimage of the pre-natal evolutionary ascent +whereby it becomes Man? Passive--so to serve for living environment to +this developing organism as to supply it with the multiple, complex and +diverse elements, material and vital, biological and psychical, required +for the manifold needs and adjustments of its evolving life and +faculties? + +During the ante-natal months of this miraculous Ascent, the embryo +"climbs its genealogical tree," as biologists style it. That is to say, +it passes, in turn, through all the countless evolutionary phases of all +the countless evolutionary ages whereof Humanity is the culminating +product. Fashioning out of formlessness, slowly it attains to form. +Shaping, shaping, ever marvellously shaping, it evolves, in succession, +through fish, amphibian and other rudimentary life-grades. Climbing, +climbing, ever marvellously climbing, day by day, to nobler heights, it +is transformed at last to human shape; lower human first, then higher +human, and finally to the highest human possible to its stock, its +parentage, and the resources, physical and psychical, available to it. + +It is the most stupendous miracle in Nature; a miracle so sacred and so +tender that every man in passing an expectant mother should mentally bow +the knee. Individually, socially, morally--she may be a person of but +small significance. But because of the mystery of Life enshrined within +her, she is a living Testament of Evolution. The pregnant woman is, +moreover, pregnant with the destiny of Races. + +During those ten lunar months there is enacted in the tender darkness of +the mother's womb the whole wonderful drama of the Human +transfiguration. With lightning swiftness, the evolving babe climbs in +the footsteps that its countless ancestors had trod, in forms +innumerable, along the route interminable of the Human Advent. In +flashes of progressive, infinitesimal transitions, through incalculable +phases and mutations, the single cell of double parentage unfolds the +marvel occulted in it. Until at last, the living product stands +triumphant on the topmost branch of its genealogical tree, a perfect +human babe awaiting birth; the last achievement of its Race, the latest +and most perfect bud of its hereditary stock. + +In so far as all this occurs subconsciously within the mother, the +materialist may lightly dismiss the evolutionary marvel as a "passive" +form of labour. But although subconscious, these unceasing processes +demand inevitably such proportional vital potential and activities on +her part from whom the powers energising it are derived, as to be a +continued tax and strain upon her strength and health. There are women +who feel this strain but little. A rare few of these because they are so +richly endowed with maternal potence that the subconscious processes +have remained, as Nature doubtless intended, for the most part +subconscious and painless. Far more often, however, when Maternity +exacts but little from the mother, _it is because she is contributing +but little to the child_. I have observed that the finer a child in +physique and in brain, the greater the stress and disability the mother +had suffered prior to its birth. + + +VI + +Indifferent, notwithstanding, to all the vital activities and psychical +evolutions taking place within the mysterious laboratory of the mother's +body; reckless of the circumstance that any interference with, or +hampering of the least of these must inevitably jar, and warp, the +delicate complexes of infantine development, we scruple not to strain +and burden, to harass and deplete, the prospective mother even further +by strenuous breadwinning. Her whole physiology and psychology are +profoundly altered by her momentous condition; by the new adjustments to +the needs of the developing babe, of the maternal circulation and +digestion, assimilation and elimination, mentality and intricate nervous +constitution and processes. Fatigue, noise, turmoil, effort, shock--any +one or all of these which are inseparable from industrial +employment--cannot but injuriously re-act upon the delicate evolutions +mysteriously occurring in her. + +The infant brain is complete at birth. From its lowest to its highest +departments, all the marvel of exquisitely-delicate construction and +association of its complex cells is achieved pre-natally. And according +or not as her vital powers have been rich and otherwise unexpended, and +according or not as the embryological processes of development have +occurred in quietude and freedom from strain upon the mother's part, +will be the quality for life, in vigour and in sanity, of her child's +intelligence and character. + + +VII + +In view of those lower biological grades through which the embryo passes +before arriving at the human stage, it is inevitable that maternal +over-fatigue, shock or undue effort may arrest its physical development +temporarily upon any of these lower levels. And such arrest must +inevitably entail some warp or bias of a lower animal phase; which may +so impress itself permanently on embryonic development as to detract +more or less gravely from the final transition. + +It is, doubtless, for this reason that many modern humans show in their +configuration, degrees of reversion to ape, sheep, fish and other lower +species. + +Shock or nervous perturbation in the expectant mother may occasion, in +the babe, appalling monstrosity, or such minor defects as cleft-palate, +hare-lip, and other deformities. Showing the vital and--inevitably--the +psychological effects on offspring, for good or for evil, of maternal +conditions and impressions. + +The Germans record that of infants born during the war, a number are +gravely degenerate of type, an infant-degeneracy attributed by some to +the creed of Hate obsessing German mothers. The same phenomenon is seen +however in the offspring of mothers exhausted by religious preachings +and marchings, in furtherance of their creed of Christian Love. + +For Biology recognises no Theology except its own--that of Evolution. + +At a representative meeting of London doctors, it was stated recently +that the number of imbecile infants now coming into existence with us is +no less than appalling. + + +A medical wiseacre has adventured the amazing dictum that _Every infant +is born healthy_! He might, with equal truth, have said that every +infant is born wealthy, or is born a Chinaman. Some infants are born +alive, a great number are born dead. And between those born alive and +healthy and the still-born, lie all the infinite gradations of +constitutional condition between life and health, between disease and +death. + +One child inherits from its parents a tuberculous tendency; another a +neurotic, another a strain of alcoholism or other taint. One is born +blind or a hopeless idiot; another with hare-lip or clubbed-foot; +another with congenital heart-disease. One babe is born with a beautiful +head; all its brain-faculties nobly developed and splendidly balanced. +Another is born headless, or with a skull which, from crown to brows, is +a rapid descent--showing lack of all the brain-powers involved in higher +mentality; is born, in short, of criminal inherency. + +The degrees in which individuals strive against inherited tendencies +differ greatly, as do the life-conditions wherein their will and moral +power are tested--to make or to break them. Man is not, of course, _the +creature_ merely of his heredity or of his environment. But he whose +mother has equipped him with physical defects instead of with qualities, +even though he fight against his disabilities, is obviously handicapped +for the life-struggle. A great musician may charm fine music from a +poor fiddle, but in no degree so fine as he will bring out of a more +perfect instrument. + + +VIII + +A phenomenon which has baffled vital statisticians is a curious relation +between the Birth-rate and Infant-Mortality. A high birth-rate is found +to be associated with a high rate of infant-mortality; while with a +lower birth-rate, the death-rate among infants and children decreases. + +Long and careful observation has left me in no doubt as to the cause of +this phenomenon. Which is, that under strain of disease, of industrial +exhaustion or strenuous activities of any sort, but particularly as +result of _the constitutional drain entailed by pregnancy_, mothers may +so draw upon the vital powers of their children in order to recruit +their own, as to occasion fatal illness in their families. + +The evil is so great in its effects, not only upon the health and +constitution of the rising generation, but, as well, upon the physical +and mental development thereof, that such maternal depletion is, I am +assured, a cause of widespread disease among children; of infantile +paralysis, degeneracy and mortality. It is reason enough, in all +conscience, to call for the legalised prohibition of all mothers with +young families from engaging in professional or industrial employment. + +Because although such depletion of her children's health is graver in +degree during a mother's pregnancy, at all times over-worked, sickly, or +strenuous women recruit their powers from the constitutional resources +of others. Only, indeed, by such depletion of their neighbours can many +of our present-day neurotic, overactive women (some of them with +ill-nourished bodies and feeble assimilation, but with, nevertheless, +indefatigable energies) contrive to keep going. + +Strong-willed, self-centred women, keen in pursuit of business, +athletics or pleasure, will, by sapping the nervous forces of these, +keep all the members of their households--husband, children, +servants--more or less de-vitalised, neurasthenic and characterless; one +or more actually invalided, perhaps. + +If nervous energy is, indeed, a complex form of electrical energy, this +nervous interchange is intelligible; obeying the law that bodies +under-charged with electricity charge themselves from bodies more highly +charged, until equilibrium is established. + +Who among doctors does not know the wan and listless, semi-paralytic +babes that working-mothers--and most particularly _pregnant_ +working-mothers--bring to the consulting-room? The hapless victims lie +limply, or sit hunched upon the woman's lap, nerveless, wasted, +apathetic; faces white and hopeless, abdomen lax and tumid; the blenched +limbs soft as butter, weak and dangling. They are suffering, perhaps, +from some specific ailment, bronchitis, paralysis, gastric or intestinal +troubles; perhaps only from mysterious wasting and inanition. Not seldom +there is an elder child too, white and weak and fretful, and the subject +of "infantilism"; growth stunted, development arrested. Such children, +in their mental hebetude and physical degeneracy, suggest a degree of +cretinism. And in the suggestion, a possible cause appears for the +cretinous offspring of the hard-living, over-worked mothers of Swiss +cantons. + + +IX + +Drummond says of Motherhood: + + + "_Even on its physical side ... this was the most stupendous task + Evolution ever undertook._" + + +While on the physical side, we see that Nature has made infancy and +childhood increasingly helpless as species advances in evolutionary +values, in order to call forth increasingly intelligent, and sympathetic +response and resource in the mother. Feminism in _un_making the mother, +is undoing the labours of countless ages of evolutionary advance. The +intensifying mentality of woman, destined for the more subtly +intelligent and sympathetic nurture of the Race's increasingly valuable +and complex offspring, is being diverted, more and more, by Feminist +counsel and practice from human and vital into merely economic channels. + +Life is so constituted that its most cruel disabilities and evils are +borne inevitably by the children in the van of the Great March. These +hapless ones it is--soft buds pushing from the Human Tree--that bear the +brunt of the evolutionary impulse. + +In the main, the very finest children of The Poor succumb. Because the +higher the organism, the more complex and delicately-fitted to its vital +needs its life-conditions require to be. Briars flourish where +rose-trees die. Degenerate children struggle through where better types +go under. We are not ready, it is true, for exotic humans. But we need +urgently, indeed, all the healthy, intelligent, well-balanced stock we +can produce. + +A certain uniformity of type is secured by the expedients of Natural +Selection; by that continual correction of premature evolutionary +unfoldment which results from the checks and prunings of developmental +exigencies--in the necessary acclimatisation and adaptation of the young +and tender organism to environment. And Nature herself provides all the +checks and prunings required, in her tests of teething, of measles, and +the other diseases and trials of infancy and childhood. + +The respiration-curves and the brain pulse-waves of young infants show +serious disturbance as result of sudden loud noises. The consequent +nervous jar perturbs both breathing and circulation. + +The whole organisation of an infant is so delicate and is so subtly +balanced as to require the gentlest possible treatment. One sees on the +faces of infants and young children a chronic look of painful +expectancy. Their brows are knitted as though to brace their +hyper-sensitive systems for the next distressing shock. Women accustomed +to hard, laborious work (or sports) lose power to adjust their movements +to these delicate needs. And when, unkind and impatient, they fly at the +unfortunates and shake or beat or scold them violently, they have no +suspicion that for hours afterwards, perhaps for days, the children's +nervous systems may be so shattered and disorganised, digestion and +assimilative powers so impaired, as to interfere gravely with growth and +development. Degrees of "shock," akin to shell-shock, result from such +maternal violence and chronic terrorism; occasioning feeble-mindedness, +morbid timidity, mental hebetude and, moreover, subconscious +impressions, which, later in life, may emerge as obsessions, or as other +forms of insanity. Fear is the most shattering and paralysing of the +emotions. Yet not only brought up by hand, the majority of our little +ones are brought up by _violent_ hand. + +All day long and during every moment of it, a thousand delicate +processes of growth and unfoldment and of intricate adjustments are +going on mysteriously within the shaping brain and body of a child. +Subconsciously, these are a continued tax and strain; making him +hyper-sensitive, irritable, cross, perhaps, for causes that appear +inadequate. A child is like a convalescent, in that he uses up rapidly +for growth and development all the nutritive material and vital energy +at his disposal. This is true of healthy, well-nurtured children. What +then of these child-martyrs of The Poor, who in addition to the strain +of growth, are ill-fed, poisoned by unsuitable foods; are sickly, +rickety, bronchitic, dyspeptic, syphilitic, phthisical? Nevertheless, +all the maternal care these miserables receive are such rough dregs of +kindness and of patience as may be left over from the toil of their +working-mothers' hard, exhausting days. + +It is no less than monstrous that our laws allow the nation's babes and +children--to whom are due all the best resources of maternal care and +tenderness and duly-trained maternal powers--to be thus martyred. As +substitute for the home and for their mothers--which are every child's +birthright--more and more, infants and young children are consigned now +to Creches; chill institutions of alien atmosphere, alien surroundings, +alien nurses, where, unmothered, they are ciphers among other unmothered +alien ciphers. Yet babies and young children are so pathetically +constituted that they prefer blows from their mothers to caresses from +strangers. + + +X + +The life-story written in the faces of the great majority of our +Twentieth-Century babes and children is a terrible one, in its +revelation of tortured helplessness, hopeless resignation, unnatural +fortitude, blank despair. See them sunk, limp and dejected, in their +prams or go-carts, eyes staring forward on the dreary waste their lives +are; limbs dangling, like those of toys with broken springs. + +In cities, mothers, ignorant of the shock and injury which noise and +turmoil inflict upon these sensitive brains and nerves, wheel them amid +jostling crowds--in order that they themselves may enjoy the excitements +of the shops. At the low level of their prams, they breathe air vitiated +by the passers-by; are in the exhausting whirl and press of swirling +nerve-currents. In their poor ill-made carriages, they are jerked +abruptly, now up, now down, at every kerb; with no more care or +tenderness than though they were baskets of clothes. They sit patient, +leaden, apathetic; cruelly strapped for hours together in one position; +neither pulse of health nor spirit in them. + +In cold weather, their heads but thinly thatched with hair are bare. So +too their limbs; though warmth is life to young, developing creatures. +In hot weather, the sun beats mercilessly down upon their hatlessness, +their exquisitely-sensitive brains but slightly shielded by their thin +un-ossified skulls. Degrees of sunstroke, with lifelong injury to health +and faculty, occur. They knit their pale brows in fruitless attempt to +defend their weak eyes from the glare. Many keep their lids close shut, +to protect both eyes and brain from the nerve-shattering solar rays, +which are far too powerful to be allowed to fall, untempered, upon an +infant's highly-sensitive body. With closed eyes, the poor things miss +all the joys of their ride; the colour and movement about them, and the +spurs to intelligence these should supply. Their unobservant mothers and +nurses suppose them to be sleeping! + +Children old enough to walk are walked to stages--sometimes to extremes +of exhaustion. You may see them dragging heavily along, with wan, +exhausted faces; peevish and cross, and scolded and shaken and slapped +for being peevish and cross. Exhaustion from such over-fatigue will keep +a child below par for days; checking its growth and development--to say +nothing of its happiness. Children derive but little benefit from their +holiday changes to sea or country, because of the exertions forced upon +them, or the too strenuous play to which they are exhorted. + +Children who go bare-headed suffer, in large number, from eye-strain, +with resulting permanent frown. As too, from ear-ache and from +ear-diseases; from headache and toothache. In as many as 75 per cent. of +school-children, vision is defective. + + +The obsessing aim of many mothers is to "harden" their children. Yet no +more than a clay model in the shaping may be hardened and set, should +the process be applied to children in the shaping. + +Healthy children are inevitably _delicate_ children, because of that +highly-sensitive re-activity to surroundings which not only +characterises but _conduces_ to the developmental state. (Such delicacy +must not be confused with _sickliness_.) The finer the organisation the +longer it takes (within normal limits) to come to full growth. Our +greatest men and women were delicate in youth. Hardy children are always +of inferior type--for the most part, plain and shrewd and unimaginative, +insensitive, unlovable. They have matured (have adapted to environment, +that is) precociously. Evolution of higher faculty has been prematurely +arrested in them. + +Modern children are described as "super-children," for their abnormal +sharpness and worldly perspicacity. They are merely precocious, which is +to say, they have missed their childhood. And too early development +entails inevitably early decline. Not only America, but England now has +produced a grey-haired boy of ten! + + +No less amazing than it is lamentable is the light neglect by the +majority of cultured mothers, of their grave maternal obligations. From +earliest infancy, they hand over their children, body and soul, to the +ignorance, the carelessness, the cruelty (not seldom to the viciousness +even), of stranger-women of the uncultured classes; women of whose +character and disposition they know nothing, and who are only too often +unfitted by nature, by upbringing, and by habit for this most delicate, +difficult and important of all human tasks. + +It is by no means uncommon to find prostitutes, grown too old for a +trade that has vitiated every cell and secretion of their bodies (to say +nothing of mental vitiation), officiating in the capacity of nursemaid +to children of culture. + +Every child is a new creation, with a highly specialised organisation of +mind and of body. For the nurture and best development of these, are +required high degrees of intelligence, of understanding and of sympathy +in treatment. To realise its idiosyncrasies, constitutional and +temperamental, and to adapt to these in its rearing and surroundings, +with respect to diet, exercise, play, sleep, moral supervision and +discipline, demand intuitive perceptiveness, intelligent discrimination, +and practical resource such as no other department of life demands--or +is worth. + +Notwithstanding all this, mothers who can afford to shelve their duty +upon paid substitutes abandon the most complex and sensitive, the most +beautiful and valuable, and moreover, the most helpless thing in +Nature--the mind of a child--to be shaped and coloured, during all the +most impressionable years of its development, by persons with neither +aptitude nor faculty for this supremely complex and difficult function. +In place of so adapting its environment to the child-organism as to +enable it, fenced within the tender mother-fold, to enjoy to the full +and to develop to the full the lovely, inspiring beliefs and illusions +of natural childhood, latter-day mothers now cruelly rob their little +ones of this fructifying phase, by prematurely forcing worldly knowledge +and distrusts upon them, in precocious adjustment to mature view-points +and conditions from which they should be carefully secluded. + +In that mysterious Mind-department, the Subconsciousness, with its +highly sensitised brain-tablets, every smallest happening of a +lifetime--scenes, experiences, mental impressions--are photographed, to +be stored for ever after as ineffaceable records. And though, perhaps, +wholly forgotten, these subconscious records nevertheless colour and +influence for ever after every thought and impulse and action. +Sometimes they flash up as memories. They can be recalled under +hypnotism. + +The young mind is like an unfurnished house. The rooms are empty. There +are no pictures on the walls. But its unblotted, exquisitely-sensitised +spaces are ceaselessly filming indelible records of everything seen and +felt and apprehended. One impression may correct, or may distort, +others. Or that right point-of-view which is judgment may focus all +impressions in the true perspective which reveals their true values and +proportions. But until such judgment has been formed by mental +development, it is vitally important that all the impressions absorbed +by young minds, whether of their life-conditions and associates, of +books or of plays, shall be fair and simple and wholesome. + +Thus, the foundations of mind and of character are laid in clean, +intelligising and uplifting influences. + + +XI + +While we deplore, as appalling, that during the first fifteen months of +War, 109,725 of our fighting men were killed or died, the returns of the +Registrar-General show that during the twelve months of the peace +preceding War, _there died 140,957 of the nation's children_, at less +than five years old; 95,608 of these at less than a year old. + +Consider it! War, with its destructive engines of bomb and shell, more +or less swiftly and painlessly kills just over a hundred thousand men, +in the course of fifteen months. Peace, with its destructive +transgressions against Nature, kills in less time a far greater number +of defenceless babes and children, by slow and more or less torturing +forms of disease. Babies, even when unhealthy, come into existence +endowed with a certain Life-potential. And they struggle hard and +painfully to live. It is amazing to see the odds against which the poor +things battle; and battle successfully. It is only the fearfulness of +the odds to which most of them are subjected that succeeds in killing +them. + +Pain and suffering are spurs to adult development. In children they are +as needlessly cruel as they are permanently injurious. Far from fitting, +they _unfit_ them for life. + +The ratio of mortality is no guide, of course, to the immeasurable +injuries wrought to mind and body by these same fearful odds upon the +children who survive; and who survive, maimed, diseased, degenerate, to +live out lives of disability, of joylessness and ineffectiveness. + +It will be said--and said truly--that much of this high infant-mortality +results, not from maternal omissions, but from paternal commissions. +Well, that alas! is another of the terrible wrongs against children +which lie at the door of the sex. Were there not women whose lives are +passed in engendering and transmitting the direst of all the diseases +human evil has bred, the hapless imbecile and paralytic, the blind, the +deaf, the ulcerous, the slowly-wasting, tortured little ones who fill +our asylums and hospitals would not be. + +At every turn the truth is more and more impressed, that the fate of +Humanity rests, in some or other form, with its women. Woman is +Redeemer; or she is Destroyer. Because, while man's province is the +material, with its roots in temporal things, woman's province is the +vital, with its roots and stem and blossom in functioning Life. + +The burning wrongs of women? Alas! what are they beside the burning +wrongs of helpless babes and children? + + * * * * * + + +XII + +An anomaly of Feminism is the admission, on the one hand, that +Motherhood was woman's most valuable function, and her greatest claim +on the community in days of barbarism, and the denial, on the other, +that it is her most important function in civilisation. + +The illogic of the position is patent. + +That the production of savages should be primitive woman's chiefest +claim to honour; while the production of highly-evolved and complex +human beings should be civilised woman's least. + +The potence and the values of fine motherhood are proven by the fact +that every great, or good, or clever man or woman has been the child of +a great, or good, or clever mother. Not of one who has made her mark in +the world of affairs. Such, for the most part, have not reproduced at +all. And when they have been mothers their children have been notably of +inferior calibre. + +On the other hand, bad men and bad women have in nearly every instance +been sons or daughters of bad women. + +Examples innumerable might be cited to show that both genius and moral +greatness are variations (mutations) of the human species which have +their origin in mother-genius and greatness. + +Great scientists, it has been noted, have been sons of women +characterised by intense love of Truth. The love of Truth in the +mother--for Truth's sake--became in the executive, concrete mentality of +the son an intuitive apprehension of the truths of Science, and an eager +and indomitable aspiration to render these in terms of intellection. + + * * * * * + +Shall woman leave to man no field at all of natural supremacy? Shall she +not be content with her beautiful part as generatrix of Faculty, but +must seek to be exponent too? + + +That all women do not marry--cannot marry, indeed, because of their +preponderance in number over the other sex--is no reason for dissembling +the truth that in wifehood and motherhood lie woman's most vital and +valuable roles. + +Nor is it warrant for training the whole sex as though none were +destined to fulfil this, their natural and noblest--if not always, their +happiest vocation. + + +XIII + +Feminism repudiates, from time to time, the charge against it of +belittling Motherhood. Yet how can it profess to credit the maternal +function with due values or significance when it denies the obligations +and responsibilities thereof, asks no economic concessions for it? And +when, in place of demanding privileges indispensable to its exercise and +complete fulfilment, it makes no distinction, in respect of work and the +worker, between childless and unmarried women and mothers and expectant +mothers? And this despite the fact that, for a period of eighteen months +at very least, the mother's best vital resources belong by rights, +biological and moral, to each babe she produces--nine for the pre-natal +building of its body and brain, and nine for lactation. + +Her moral obligation to nurse, and the criminality of her omission when +able to do so, have been emphasised as follows by Sir J. +Crichton-Browne: + + + "Dr. Robertson, Medical Officer of Health for Birmingham has shown + that while the infant-mortality of breast-fed infants is 7.8 _per + 1000 births_, that of infants receiving no breast-milk is 232 _per_ + 1000. And Sir Arthur Newsholme, Medical Adviser to the Local + Government Board, has shown that the probability of death from + epidemic diarrhoea is 54 _times greater among infants fed on cow's + milk_ than among those fed on breast-milk, and 150 _times greater_ + amongst infants fed on condensed milk. + + "But it is not merely in a high infant death-rate that the evil + effects of the want of breast-milk stand confessed. Where it does + not kill it often maims, and is responsible for malnutrition, + rickets, tuberculosis, and a multiplicity of ailments. Every doctor + is familiar with the alabaster babies, flabby, limp, languid, and + painfully pallid, who have never tasted their natural nutriment." + + +Dr. Truby King records the interesting fact that the finest calf-skin, +known as Paris Calf, is obtained from calves reared by their mothers, in +order to provide the finest veal for Paris. So supple and smooth-haired +and superior is the skin of these mother-suckled creatures that dealers +are able to distinguish it at once from the skin of calves that have +been artificially fed. + +About this, Mr. Horace G. Regnart kindly supplies me with the following +significant data: + +"If we feed a calf, 'on the bucket,' the calf's coat loses its shine and +becomes dull. We say it is 'dead.' A couple of days is sufficient to +deaden the coat. And it takes three weeks or a month 'on a cow' to get +the gloss back. _A quart of milk direct from the cow is as good as a +gallon of milk out of a bucket._ + +"We do not attempt to feed our female calves so well as we feed the +bulls. It is too costly. Our heifers are put on 'the bucket' when three +days old. I buy a cow to rear my bull-calves on. I once reared a bull on +'the bucket' satisfactorily. But I gave him twelve gallons of new milk +every day after he was five months old, and kept it up till he was +fourteen months. _One cow that gives three gallons does a calf just as +well as twelve gallons_ via _the bucket, and is much cheaper._ Some +crack bulls have three and four five-gallon cows at once, and go to +Shows with all their nurses in attendance. + +"Once I reared a bull as we rear the heifers. But he was a failure. His +daughters are only half the size they ought to be." + +(An example of direct developmental inheritance--in terms of +deterioration--from father to daughter.) + + +XIV + +Comparing a calf with a human baby, it becomes self-evident that the +diet suited for the large, crude creature which trots about on four legs +shortly after birth must be wholly unsuited to the delicate digestion +and the subtle psychological needs of the small and complex, +highly-organised human infant, which remains so long a helpless infant. + + +The all-important _proteid_ of every order of creature differs from that +of every other. Before any form of alien _proteid_ can be built into the +body of a living organism, the digestion and assimilation of this +creature must first have laboriously disintegrated and reconstructed it +to the form of its own individual _proteid_. + +The Irish tradition that persons not nursed during infancy by their +mothers are beings without souls has much to justify it. Even the +ill-nourished, sickly babes of working-mothers have an essentially +_human_ look in eyes and features, possess far more of nervous power, +and are of appreciably higher and more intelligent psychology than are +the bottle-fed infants of the cultured. + +The bottle-fed start handicapped for life, both in constitution and +mentality. It is safe to say that all great men and women have been +suckled by their mothers or have come of stock thus humanly nurtured. +That they were thus humanly nurtured during their momentous first nine +months of life, is the reason, doubtless, why so many of our greatest +men have sprung from humble origin. + +The incapacity of a mother to nourish the babe she has borne should be +known for a mark of degeneracy--sign, too, that she was unfitted to +have borne a child, because deficient in the vital reserve requisite to +carry her maternal function to its normal biological and psychological +conclusion. Just as a statesman or a general would be held unfitted for +_his_ function, if he should lack the physical and mental enterprise to +complete his national undertakings. + + +That for the nine months preceding its birth the infant obtains its +nourishment directly from its mother's blood, and for nine months after +birth it obtains this, normally, from her milk--_her_ digestive +processes having so assimilated the originally brute and vegetable +proteids of her food that these are now _human_ proteids, and are ready, +therefore, to be built into the infant's body with the least possible +tax upon its own assimilative powers--proves a number of important +facts. + +First: that an infant's digestive powers remain, normally, for nine +months after birth, in a more or less embryonic state; slowly and +gradually developing capacity to convert the products of the brute and +vegetable kingdoms into forms suitable for building into its human +organisation. (Just as we see the digestive organs of the child +progressively developing power to assimilate an adult dietary.) + +Secondly: that the infant's digestion remains thus undeveloped obviously +in order that as little as possible of its vital power may be expended +in the complex processes of assimilation, all available vital-power +being urgently required for its exhaustingly rapid brain- and +body-building. + +Thirdly: that where an artificial diet forces precocious development +upon the infant-digestion--since all precocity is degeneracy, all the +organs concerned in digestion will be, necessarily, more or less +structurally defective and functionally inefficient; as a consequence of +not having been permitted time and rest to develop slowly and stably +over the normal allotted period. (Proof is supplied by the premature +development of teeth, which occurs in artificially-fed babies some +months before dentition is normally due. And these teeth and those that +succeed them are of such perishable structure that present-day children +need perpetual dental repairs.) + +Fourthly: that such misapplication of vital resources for the premature +development and abnormal functions of precocious digestive organs +entails inevitably corresponding loss of vital power for general +development. + +Fifthly--and by no means lastly, but perhaps most important of all: that +since the infant-digestion is quite incapable of properly converting +brute and vegetable-proteids into human proteid, infants artificially +fed must necessarily _build into their brains and bodies lower-grade +proteids_--and proteids so imperfectly assimilated as to be something +less than human, and, accordingly, more or less brute or vegetable still +in their inherences. And since all living cells and tissues reproduce +upon the plan of the parent-cells and tissues they were derived from, it +is clear that the abnormal cells and tissues constructed of these +half-brute, or half-vegetable proteids must be abnormal; unstable and +degenerate, and prone to lapse readily to still further degrees of +deterioration and disease. + +Hence a source of our neurotic, neurasthenic, adenoid-afflicted, +mentally-defective and otherwise diseased children. Hence too the +increasing criminality--which is _animality_, of course--that +characterises a considerable proportion of the rising generation. + +Each further generation artificially fed in infancy can but deviate +still further from the Human Normal, becoming ever less human; brain and +body-cells reproducing themselves, throughout life, on the plan of their +infant-construction of half-brute or half-vegetable proteids. One sees +the ox in the dull, soulless eyes, in the bovine flesh, the stolid +faces, and in the crude animal natures of many modern little ones, to +whom calf-diet was fed before they had developed the digestive power of +transforming this into substance highly vitalised enough for human brain +and body-building. And the less their systems have rebelled against and +have rejected, but, on the contrary, have conformed to and have thriven +upon such brute-diet, the cruder are their organisations. Of this order +are the insensate child-monsters who win prizes at Baby-shows. + + +To one who realises that, of all the powers of Woman, the ability to +nurse her babe is second in importance only to her first and vital +function of producing it, the cry and clamour and impassioned fallacy +that have swirled around the trivial detail of her Suffrage-disabilities +show grotesque beside the human tragedy of her increasing biological +disability and her increasing psychical aversion to fulfil this +indispensable and sacred mother-office. To despise which, as being a +function woman possesses in common with the humbler creatures, is as +narrow-sighted as it would be to scorn the genius of Shakespeare because +both dog and pig, poor things! possess brains. Moreover, in forfeiting +this maternal faculty, woman reverts to the mode of those crude +rudimentary species _below_ the Mammalia. + + + "... _Each mother's breast_ + _Feeds a flower of blue, beyond all blessing blest._" + + +Notwithstanding all this, Feminism, in its grim materialism, blind to +the mystical beauty of Life and the sacredness of Individuality, regards +women mainly as parts of an economic machinery. And to serve as such, it +standardises all in body, mind and aptitude, to economic ends; the young +and tender girls whose shaping frames are shaping to become the mystical +looms of evolving Humanity; the young wives in whom love and marriage +have set mysterious processes in motion; the young pregnant mothers in +whom the shuttle of Life is already marvellously flying, interweaving +the luminous threads of a soul with a body of flesh. + +Nature made women ministrants of Love and Life, for the creation of an +ever more healthful and efficient, a nobler and more joyous Humanity. +Feminism degrades them to the status of industrial mechanisms, whereof +the commercial products are the chiefest values, and children no more +than bye-products. + + * * * * * + +And what bye-products they are! God help them!--Who alone can help +them--this pathetic rubble of pallid, sickly, suffering, and dejected +infant- and child-Life; the violet-hued babies, with their dull eyes +glazed by misery, their leaden, half-paralysed limbs; the blind and +crippled, halt and deaf, the imbecile and feeble-minded children, +apathetic, neurasthenic, joyless; as too, on the other hand, the +low-browed, sturdy and soulless, or the debased and evil--All the +generation of degeneracy which our deteriorate and enfeebled looms of +womanhood are grinding out to-day. + +Though shut from sight and thought, in the prisons, hospitals and other +institutions of our modern civilisations is an ever-swelling, +ever-rising, further-menacing tide of diseased, defective, insane and +criminal mankind, product of ours and of those others' violations of +Natural Law; clogging the River of Life, choking the Springs of +Evolution, damming the current of Progress. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +FEMINIST DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE DESTRUCTIVE OF WOMANLY ATTRIBUTES, MORALE +AND PROGRESS + + "A woman versed in that finest of all fine arts, the beautifying of + daily life." + + +I + +In _Woman and Labour_, Miss Schreiner laments as follows, picturesquely +but speciously: "Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge +buildings steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands +(often those of men) produce the clothings of half the world; and we +dare no longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our +peoples!" + +A scene is conjured of brute-men with clubs savagely attacking and +destroying hapless women's innocent spinning-wheels, as Mrs. Arkwright +ruthlessly destroyed her husband's cherished models. Yet who, regarding +the subject dispassionately, sees cause for anything but gladness that +modern woman has not still to spin the linen of her household and the +garments of its members--for anything but thankfulness for that +intelligent male-brain which carried the woman-invention of the needle +to its higher adaptations in the weaving and the sewing-machine? Who can +justly regret that the taking over by men, in factories, of wholesale +brewings and bakings, jam-makings, and so forth, has relieved the other +sex of ceaseless drudgeries; and in so relieving it of drudgeries of +house-keeping has left it free to develop the higher and the more +intellectual arts of home-making? + +"_Slowly but determinedly, as the old fields of labour close up and are +submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the new_," Miss Schreiner +affirms. And to emphasise our determination, the demand is printed in +her book, as I have reproduced it, in Italics. + +Losing sight altogether of the inestimable benefits to woman secured by +the intervention of men between her and the hardest and the most +debasing employments, she further protests, "any attempt to divide the +occupations in which male and female intellects and wills should be +employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and arbitrary +division." + +"Our cry is, _We take all labour for our province!_" + +Nevertheless, clever and intuitive woman as she is, she confesses (now +the Italics are mine), "_It may be with sexes as with races, the +subtlest physical differences between them may have their fine mental +correlatives_." And yet, oh why, having come upon so promising a vein of +truth, did she not follow it to its logical conclusions, and find in it +all the answers to her extremist demands, and, with these, the +refutations of her Feminist plea and claims? + +Men and women are unlike not only in "_the subtlest physical +differences_" which "_may have their fine mental correlatives_." They +are unlike in the most obvious and basic facts of physical constitution +and of biological function. And these must inevitably entail mental and +temperamental correlatives more intrinsic and farther reaching even than +the subtler physical differences she recognises as being possibly +modifying factors in psychical aptitude. + + +Advocating soldiering even for the sex, Miss Schreiner says: " ... +Undoubtedly, it has not been only the peasant-girl of France, who has +carried latent and hid within her person the gifts that make the supreme +general." + +Here is fallacy again. Joan of Arc was, beyond all things, woman. Not +the man in her, but the woman in her, and her Supra-conscious womanly +attributes it was which (inspiring her by way of mystical voices and +visions) impelled her so to transcend her woman-nature that without +knowledge of arts military or of strategic science, as, too, without +experience, she was able, by intuitive prescience, to lead her +compatriots to victory. For the soldiers, perceiving the Light in her +face, followed in awed confidence whithersoever she led. + +In earlier days of civilisation, this intuitive and visionary faculty of +woman was recognised and honoured. + + +II + +In _The Human Woman_, Lady Grove presents a wholly contrary view to Miss +Schreiner's. + +With her, woman suffers less in being shut out from the labour-market +than in having been driven from the home. + + + "The woman has been driven from her home into the labour-market. + The fact of 82 per cent. of the women of this country working for + their living is an ugly rebuff to the pretty platitudes about the + home," she says. + + " ... The stupendous mistake that has been made up to now is in + supposing that it is men's judgment only that should decide + questions, and hence the hopeless state of unravelled misery + existing in the world, side by side with all the wealth and wonders + of the age. + + "If we examine the conditions of the working-classes, after years + and years of male legislation, what a hideous set of conditions we + find. Intemperance, bad-housing and the cruel struggle for + existence among the poorer classes. And yet we spend over + L22,000,000 annually on the education of these people. Surely there + is something wrong somewhere. What is it that we, seeing this + condition of things at our very door, have, as women, to be so + grateful for in male legislation?" + + +The writer fails wholly to perceive that these factors she deplores as +due to defective masculine legislation are effects less of faulty +measures than of faulty Humanity. Measures are the gauge of the men who +frame them. And men are very much the measure of the mothers who bore +them. Those which she properly characterises as the "hideous" conditions +of the working-classes, "intemperance, bad-housing and the cruel +struggle for existence" are circumstances legislation cannot remedy +unless the hearts of legislators are moved to do this, and their hands +are empowered, moreover, to do it, by the collective will of those they +represent. + +Except all are content to subordinate their personal interests to the +general welfare, and to improve their personal morale for their own and +for the common good, Acts of Parliament can do but little. Drunkenness +can be penalised by legislation, difficulties put in the way of +obtaining drink. But intemperance can be effectually stamped out only by +individual men and women so rising to higher levels of thought and +self-control as voluntarily to become sober; or by men and women so +improving in brain and constitution that the craving for drink--now +recognised as a disease--no longer obsesses them. + + +Acts of Parliament may condemn insanitary and defective dwellings, may +compel landlords to repair them to degrees of decency and comfort; may +pull them down and build others in their stead. But none of these +measures will eradicate the bad housing of dirty and comfortless, or of +demoralised and demoralising homes. The best house possible becomes bad +housing for its occupants when the woman at the head of it fails to do +her duty therein, in consequence of industrial labour which leaves her +neither time nor energy to make a clean, well-ordered, cosy and +inspiring home of it; or because her own idleness or ignorance, her +drunkenness or worthlessness, results in her neglect of it. Human +conditions, like human measures, result from the personalities, good or +bad, capable or incapable, of those who create them. + + +III + +The Feminist's faith in the masculine prerogative of Legislation, as +being a possible panacea--had _she_ but part in it--for every ill +beneath the sun, is one of her gravest disqualifications for taking part +therein. + +Legislators who are over-confident in the efficacy of The Law express +their over-confidence in terms of premature and unduly-coercive +legislation. Procedure which, more often than not, frustrates the ends +to which it was designed by the methods taken to secure these. Progress +is personal, moreover. It is the sum of the advance of individuals. +Legislation is the statutory _formulation_ of public opinion; it is not +the _source_ of this. It merely crystallises public opinion. But before +crystallisation of thought (as of chemical) sets in, saturation-point +must first have been reached throughout the medium wherein it occurs. + +Were any other development required to show the utter inadequacy of +Legislation to attain its ends--when not reinforced by personal +co-operation and initiative--this has been supplied in that latter-day +demoralisation of young girls, the consequences whereof will be vastly +more baneful and farther-reaching in contributing to national decline +than even that other dire factor of the flower of our virile youth +struck down before its prime. + +Girls are fully protected by law to the age of sixteen. Yet many of the +demoralised girls seen consorting freely with Tommy or Reggie, according +to their class, are well below that age. Legislation is powerless, +however, failing parental vigilance and co-operation to invoke its aid. +Nevertheless, with its characteristic blind confidence in the male +prerogative of Law, Feminism now advocates raising "the age of consent" +to eighteen. But to do this would no more protect the girl under +eighteen than the existing law protects the girl under sixteen--or, for +that matter, protects the girl of twelve. Law can do little or nothing +unless, as happens so seldom and happens too late, parents requisition +its assistance for menace or for punishment. Mothers themselves should +see to it that their little daughters have neither temptation nor +opportunity to consent to their own ruin. + + +IV + +We saw lately a militant rising of women against men and their laws; the +object being to compel concessions from the male by way of violence. And +so short-sighted were the leaders of this Movement that not only did +they seek to prove their right to make laws, by breaking them, but they +showed themselves ignorant of the first rudiments of combat by electing +to fight the enemy with his own weapon--that weapon of Force which is +man's especial Fitness and Woman's Unfitness. Woman's Unfitnesses have +prevailed, it is true, in the counsels of progress, but, obviously, they +have not prevailed, nor can they ever prevail by being pitted directly +against masculine strengths. Her way of supremacy is one by far more +subtle and sublime. + +The leaders of Militancy seem never to have suspected, moreover, that +while they were demanding to be liberated from all womanly privileges, +they were, nevertheless, waging their deplorable skirmishes from behind +a strong wall of such privileges. Men who should have adopted such +tactics would have received but short and scant shrift. + +Were the sex to be confronted, indeed, with that "Fair field and no +favour!" for which some members of it are so clamorous, these would find +it a grievously different thing from the privilege they paint it. + +Marcel Prevost has said that when men find women competing with them in +fields of Labour, to degrees injurious to masculine interests, they will +turn and strike them in the face. There are indications to the contrary, +however. Among decadent races and savages, the emasculate sons of +deteriorate mothers assert their masculine authority otherwise. + +Far from combating their women's right to work, they force them to +work--and to work in support of the males! + +More and more every day, civilised men, indeed, released by +working-wives from their natural obligation to maintain the family, are +seen so to have lapsed from their sense of virile responsibility as to +be coming further and further to shelve upon such working-wives the +burden of the family support. Among the labouring and artisan classes, +the wife's contribution to the exchequer leaves the husband more money +to spend on drink or on gambling; or on both. In superior classes, too, +it leaves husbands with more money to spend on amusement--of one sort or +another. + +Responsibility and effort are natural spurs to masculine development. +Relieve the male of these and he degenerates. As woman released from +child-bearing and the duties entailed by the family, degenerates +rapidly. We can no more improve on The Plan than we can improve without +each and every appointed factor of it. + + +V + +Another disastrous blunder of Feminism is to make for equal wage for men +and women. + +The higher wage of men springs, economically, from the fact that the +industrial output of women is, normally, less than that of men. But +there is a deeper, and a biological significance involved. Which is, +that men's greater output of work results from more of their energy of +brain and body being available to them for work, because far less of +their vital power is locked-up in them for Race-perpetuation and +nurture. There is the implication also that man being the natural +breadwinner of the family, his wage should suffice for its support. + +A system of equal wages for the sexes would press as cruelly upon women +as it would be disastrous to the Race. Because it would compel woman, +despite the biological disabilities that handicap her economically, to +force her powers to masculine standards of work and output. It would, +moreover, by qualifying her to support the family, serve as cogent +excuse for her husband to shirk his bounden duty. + +The crux of the demand for equal pay for equal work is that, because of +her natural lesser strength and endurance, when a woman is doing work +identical in nature and equal in quantum to that of a man, it means that +_she_ is doing _more_ than a woman's work, and is overtaxing and +injuring her constitution, therefore; or it means that _he_ is doing +_less_ than a man's work, and is "slacking," therefore. + +A further important issue is that when rendered too easy by both husband +and wife earning wage, marriage is entered upon far too lightly, and at +too early and irresponsible ages, than happens when the whole burden of +support rests with the man. Moreover, in such case masculine selection +makes only too often for economic rather than for human values in the +wife. A man upon whom is to fall the whole tax of supporting the home +and the family regards marriage more seriously, and delays it until he +is more mature of years and of settled position. Moreover, he chooses +more carefully. And the Race benefits proportionally. + +In manufacturing towns, with opportunity for both husband and wife +earning wage, boy-and-girl marriages, feckless, discordant homes, and +sickly degenerate, neglected children are the rule. + +That women should be paid for work they do, a salary enabling them to +live honestly and in comfort, goes without saying. Economics should be +adjusted on a far higher basis than that mainly of a competitive +struggle which allows the employer to fix wages less according to the +value of work done, than by the number of persons at his mercy, who, in +their eagerness to live, will undersell their values and thus cheapen +labour. Nevertheless economics have, in a degree, adapted to the +evolutionary trend. Because, in the main, the more skilled and difficult +tasks are more highly remunerated than the less skilled, and are +performed by the more fit. And not only are these better qualified to +expend such higher remuneration intelligently, and with benefit to +themselves and to the community, but they are able to secure thereby +those better conditions which are the due and the need of families +higher in the scale of humanity, and requiring, therefore, higher +conditions of nurture. + +The cases of colliers and of other rough-grade humans who earn wage +beyond their mental calibre to expend intelligently, show how an income +too large for its possessor leads to coarse and demoralising +extravagances, rather than to personal happiness or elevation. (The like +is true of many plutocrats.) War has shown us boys' lives wrecked by the +same factor. No greater fallacy exists than that of supposing progress +to lie in freeing persons from all disabilities--poverty, and other +restrictive conditions. + +Wives should be legally entitled to a just proportion of their husband's +income, as a _right_, not merely as dole. This, in recognition of their +invaluable work in home-making, and of their invaluable service to the +State in producing and rearing worthy citizens for it. + + +VI + +Masculine legislation, making all the while, in the face of economic +difficulties, for the ever further release of women and children from +the more laborious and debasing tasks, has made compulsory, in their own +and in the interests of their unborn infants, a month of respite for +expectant mothers, and a further month for mothers after delivery. +Extending thus to these poor victims--beasts of the burden of toil, and +beasts of the burden of sex--a mercy and consideration wholly lacking in +the Feminist propaganda. For this latter repudiates indignantly all need +for concession or privilege to wifehood or to motherhood, equally with +womanhood. + +To justify the claim for equality in all things, women must be forced, +at all cost, to identical standards of work and production. To ask +privileges and concessions would be to confess, in the sex, weaknesses +and disabilities that must disqualify it from economic identity with the +other. + +Far, indeed, from such vain-glorious and disastrous straining for +equality, the leaders of the Woman's Movement should, before all else, +have demanded insistently still further industrial concessions and +privileges for a sex handicapped for industry, by Nature. First and +foremost, they should come into the open and boldly proclaim--what it is +useless to deny, indeed--that in the function of parenthood, at all +events, men and women are wholly dissimilar. They should reject outright +all tinkerings and half-measures for relief of this great human +disability, whereof one sex only bears the stress and burden for the +benefit of both, and for survival of nations and races. + +Not only for the pitiful respite of a month before and a month after +the birth of her child, should the mother be prohibited from industrial +labour. By that time all the damage will have been done. The power that +should have been put into the evolution of her infant will have been put +into the revolutions of a lathe. The life-potential that should have +gone to build its living bone and brain and muscle will have gone to +feed the life of a machine. The breath she will have drawn for it will +have been contaminated by the dust and fumes of toil. Its poor nascent +brain and faculties will have been dulled and depleted, stupefied and +vitiated by the stress and turmoil of its mother's labours. Only the +dregs of the maternal powers will have been invested in the Race. The +finest and most valuable will have gone to swell the balance-sheets of +Capital. + +The trumpet-cry of The Woman's Movement should be, indeed, _The Absolute +Prohibition of young Wives and Mothers from all Industrial and +Professional employment!_ + +Such a prohibition, by lessening the competition of the labour-market, +and by thus increasing the value of labour (which the flood of female +industry inevitably cheapens) would automatically so increase the wage +of men as to make of these true living wage, sufficient for the +maintenance of home and family. Such a prohibition would, moreover, so +diminish the competitive pressure among women as to make it possible for +unmarried women, the future wives and mothers, as well as for the older +spinsters and widows, to select in every fitting trade and industry, +work suited to the lesser strength and endurance of the female brain and +body. + + +VII + +Nothing has characterised the Feminist Movement throughout so much as +lack of knowledge of human nature (both masculine and feminine), lack +of prevision to foresee the trend of new developments, lack of intuitive +apprehension to gauge the issues of such trend. Its leaders have never +suspected, accordingly, that, in propaganda and in practice, they have +been tampering with a great biological ordinance; and that, in +obliterating women's Sex-characteristics, they have been destroying that +counterpoise of human powers and faculties whereon progress and +permanence rest, and that morale which is the inspiration of advance. + +Regarding their own masculine Rationalism as the ideal and standard for +all women, they have believed it possible to shape all women +successfully thereto. Nature is not to be thwarted, however. And when we +destroy the balance of the Normal, abnormal developments--gravely +mischievous and singularly difficult to deal with--crop up and require +to be dealt with. One may raise the familiar cry that some modern +developments are due to our being in "a transition stage." But from that +remote day when Nature first evolved us as a race of _amoebae_, further +to evolve into the human species, we have been always in "transition +stages." Normal transition upwards is so slow an impulse as to be +well-nigh imperceptible, however. Rapid change invariably betokens +regression--descent being vastly easier and swifter in movement than +ascent is. + +Deplorably mistaken has been a doctrine of Emancipation which, by +disparaging the arts domestic, has sent out young girls and women, +indiscriminately, from the sphere domestic, to de-sexing and +demoralising work in factories and businesses; and has engendered the +race of stunted, precocious, bold-eyed, cigarette-smoking, free-living +working-girls who fill our streets; many tricked out like cocottes, eyes +roving after men, impudence upon their tongues, their poor brains +vitiated by vulgar rag-times and cinema-scenes of vice and +suggestiveness. + +Some of our working-girls are charming-looking, pretty-mannered, pure +of thought and life, of course. A small minority--alas, how small!--are +normal of development and sound of constitution. But these are not the +average. And it is the average with which a nation has to reckon. + +Emphatically, men are not as women. In body and in mind they are by +nature rougher, tougher, and vastly less impressionable. A regime that +_makes_ a boy will wreck a girl. Of more sensitive calibre, she requires +more kindly, protective conditions, moral and industrial, than does he. +Notwithstanding which, little girls now run the streets and take their +chances as they may--in capacities of over-burdened errand-girl, +telegraph-messenger, and otherwise--at ages when their developing +womanhood requires due care of nurture, moral supervision, and freedom +from physical strain. Sedentary occupations are a natural need of their +sex, moreover, as is indicated by the breadth and weight of the female +pelvis and hips, as too by the delicate adjustments of those important +reproductive organs, the future products whereof are of inestimably +higher national values than are the industrial assets of these poor +children's labour. As Girl-guides and so forth, young girls parade our +towns in meretricious (albeit hideous) uniform; developing thereby that +love of publicity and of unwholesome excitement to which the sex is +prone. Small girls just fresh from school are even now employed in +barbers' shops to shave men; destroying thus in them, at the outset of +life, that natural diffidence and reserve toward the other sex which are +the first defences of womanly honour. + +In demanding absolute emancipation, industrial and personal, Feminists +had no other thought but that such new liberty would have widened +woman's scope for usefulness, for happiness, for self-development. Yet +what has been the outcome of it all? For one who has used her new +freedom for the ends designed, very many more have used it to their +serious injury; only too many to their moral downfall. + +Already everywhere such liberty has fast degenerated into licence. Our +girls were no sooner emancipated by their mothers from the usually +wholesome--if sometimes too severe--control of their fathers, than +straightway they have emancipated themselves from the indispensable +maternal rule. Strict supervision and guidance in a world they are +ignorant of--or if sophisticated are in far worse case--are essential to +the well-being, physical and moral, of the young and immature. + +Young girls, on first discovering their attraction for the other sex, +become intoxicated by the sense of their new dangerously-alluring power, +and lose their heads. Beyond all things, they require at this phase a +mother's strict and careful supervision, with sympathy and firm control; +to tide them over their perilous phase, and thus to preserve them from +consequences of their ignorance or folly, or from those of a pernicious +bent. Nevertheless, young girls of every class are granted now +disastrous latitudes of thought and action. The vigilant chaperonage +indispensable to protect them from the biological impulses--which they +mistake for "love"--of the careless or vicious young men to whom +(equally with the chivalrous and honourable) modern mothers abandon +their daughters, has become a dead-letter. The girl only just in her +teens is free to play fast-and-loose with boys and men--as too +with life, before she has learned the merest rudiments of living. +All too soon she learns her lesson. And becoming precociously +sophisticated--only too often precociously vicious--her nature and +future are wrecked at the outset. Because nothing wrecks a woman's +disposition so effectually as sex-precocity does. Sex is the very pivot +of her nature. On this she swings up--or down. And early habit decides +her bent. + +That many of these cigarette-smoking, decadent young creatures are no +worse than impudent, feather-brained and misguided, does not save the +licence allowed them from being as harmful to physical as it is perilous +to moral health; nor from the experiences resulting from such licence +wholly unfitting the majority for later wholesome restraint, and for +purer and fairer ideals of womanly conduct and living. + +For much of this Feminism is gravely to blame. Not only because it has +led to the absorption of the mothers in outside pursuits, as being of +greater importance than the fulfilment of their maternal duties and +responsibilities to their young daughters, but because, too, the partial +sterilisation of girls, by masculine training and habits, in robbing +them of womanly qualities, robs them of natural reserve and modesty, and +of the other more delicate instincts and aspirations of their sex. + + +Significant, truly, of latter-day maternal neglect of young daughters +was the disclosure by a doctor, in a recent _British Medical Journal_, +that of a hundred men infected with venereal diseases, more than +_seventy had contracted disease_ from "_amateur flappers_." Yet as with +a child badly burned by playing with fire, we blame the mother or +guardian who exposed it to danger of thus injuring itself for life, so +the mothers of these unfortunate girls were to blame for gross neglect +of their duty to safeguard these young lives. + +Nature avenges her betrayed girls, however. For medical authority shows +that these youthful unfortunates transmit disease in its most virulent +and destructive forms. It is as though all the vital potential of their +developing womanhood is perverted to a malign poison, charged with the +forces of their blasted youth. + + * * * * * + +The Victorian, who brought up her daughters to marry in ignorance of +biological fact, went to the other extreme. But it was a far less +harmful one than that in vogue to-day. + +Like that of the child, the immature, susceptible mind of a girl, +incapable of apprehending the sex-factor in its true perspective with +the other factors of life, becomes unduly dominated by consideration +thereof when too early instructed. She is far better left, for so long +as is practicable, ignorant or hazy concerning this vital phenomenon, in +place of being fully informed, as girls are now-a-days. So that they +know all that there is to be known about sex--except its seriousness and +sacredness. And divorced from the seriousness and sacredness of Love and +Birth--which mere knowledge of biological fact is wholly inadequate to +impart--such knowledge of fact presents a crude and bald distortion of +the truth; only too often imparting an ugly and demoralising warp to +mind and conduct. Ignorance is not Innocence, 'tis true, but it serves +the same purpose in safeguarding innocence that clothes do in +safeguarding modesty. And for one girl who falls in consequence of +innocence, twenty fall from sophistication. + +Unless masculine traits have been over-developed in her by abnormal +training, in which case (as occurs sometimes in the quasi-masculine +woman of middle-age) sex-instinct may acquire an unnatural and +quasi-masculine insistence, this instinct is, in the normal girl, +_responsive_ rather than _initiative_. (Wherein she differs +diametrically from the male.) And such natural dormancy may be +advantageously preserved by haziness of knowledge, and by the careful +surveillance required for protection of immature minds and powers. The +bald, matter-of-course view-point of many modern girls with regard to +sex, their knowledge of vice, and their cynical acceptance and +discussion thereof, as too of the vulgar intrigues of notorious dancers +and peeresses, to say nothing of the ugly and debasing personal +experiences only too many of them have incurred, are among the evils of +the injurious licence at present accorded to young persons. + +Feminism, having thrust such disastrous liberty on creatures as eager to +grasp as they are unfitted to cope with the dangers thereof, is striving +now, by way of women-patrols and police-women, to stem the evil with one +hand--while with the other, it continues to open the flood-gates still +wider. The only way to stem the evil is to stem it at its source. The +home, with the vigilant supervision and guidance of a mother whose duty +is publicly recognised and her authority strengthened thereby, whose +time and faculties are devoted mainly to the making of home and to the +safeguarding and disciplining of the young creatures she has brought +into existence, is environment and shelter as indispensable to the +impressionable youth of both sexes--but more particularly to the +impressionable youth of one--as it is for the rearing of infancy and +childhood. Such home-influences, reinforced by the strong hand of a +father who likewise recognises his parental responsibilities, are the +first of all the rights that matter for young womanhood. + +Later, should come a term of domestic service. Mistresses of households +should realise not only their human but likewise their national +responsibility to these young humbler members thereof. No other public +service possible to them would equally conduce to national progress. + +As fathers are legally responsible for debts of sons under age, mothers +should be responsible to the State for the virtue of daughters under +sixteen. + +In the _personal_, vastly more than in any other field of operation, +woman's chiefest value lies. When she exchanges it for public functions, +and seeks to further progress by officialdom and politics, by +institution of women-patrols, police-women, Mayoresses, and so forth, +the supreme importance of the personal factor becomes impressed by the +discovery of the utter inadequacy of any substitute to take its place. +"If mothers did their duty, there would be no need for us," a +woman-patrol stated recently. + +By the time young women have reached such phases of demoralisation that +their conduct in public demands the intervention of police-women, it is +too late to reform them, moreover. They will have lost the best promise +and hope of their womanhood. + +And so it is and must be ever all along the line. The home and the +family are the nursery of civic as they are of racial progress. We +regard it as proof of civilisation that Law-Courts for Children have +been instituted. Yet what a blot it is, in truth, upon both parentage +and parenthood that, in our day of enlightenment, such should have +become necessary. + +So have mother influences and maternal sense of responsibility declined, +however, that mothers on all sides openly confess their utter lack of +power to control boys and girls just in their 'teens. + + +VIII + +The fashion is to pity and deride the "poor" early Victorian because she +lacked the manifold and nerve-wracking outlets for that restlessness and +boredom from which modern women suffer. + +The "poor" Victorian was a more harmonious, better-balanced and more +tranquil being, however. And she was far less cursed with "nerves," with +feverish unrest and carking discontent, than women are to-day. + +Mrs. Craigie observed that the Victorian, with her backboard and gentle +accomplishments, produced (without the pusillanimous expedient of +"Twilight Sleep") notably stronger, finer, and more clever children than +do present-day over-educated or athletic women--athletic women, whose +muscles of arms and of legs have so sapped the powers of important +internal muscles that most of them are incapable of bringing their +infants into life without instrumental aid. + +One does not, for a moment, counsel reversion to the type or to the +methods of an earlier generation. Evolution and development must +advance, and are, of course, advancing satisfactorily in some stock. But +the Victorian served her generation nobly, producing splendid specimens +of men and women, and handing on a generous racial constitution--now +being squandered recklessly, alas! by her descendants. The tide of +greater freedom, of broader outlook, and fuller effectiveness for woman +has set in, however. Albeit, owing to Feminist misapprehensions, it is +not only moving too rapidly but it is moving in a wrong direction; +because in direct opposition to biological law. + +_By their fruits ye shall know them._ And the Victorian so preserved her +woman-powers and attributes that she was an excellent and a contented +wife, and could bring into existence--without instrumental aid--a family +of comely, clever boys and girls; nurse them all from eldest to +youngest; rear and discipline and put such stuff of health and sanity +and enterprise into them as shames some flimsy, feeble-minded, +characterless modern stock. We have far to look to-day, indeed, for +statesmen and soldiers, poets and artists, business and craftsmen, and +other such virile and talented personages as those early and +pre-Victorian mothers endowed their epoch with. + +And were further evidence needed that our great-grandmothers equalled +our own women in the qualities we pride ourselves upon as triumphs of +Feminism, the strength and courage, the resource and fortitude those +others showed throughout the stress and horrors of the Indian Mutiny are +proof sufficient that, beneath their gentler virtues, lay the sterner +fibre of nobility. + + +IX + +To prove to what a third-grade power Woman, once so potent an +inspiration of life, has lapsed, we need but go to The Drama--reflex +ever of its period. Consider Shakespeare's women--subtly wise, +profoundly clever, beautiful and gracious, true and charming, strong and +tender, chaste and gay; warm with temperament, crystal-sparkling with +wit and parry! + +And comparing these adorable beings with the posturing, tricky, +intriguing, slangy, spotty creatures--neurotic unfaithful wives and +erratic "bachelor"-daughters--of the modern stage, the deplorable +deterioration of our womanly ideals becomes patent. + +Women have sinned in every age, but they have sinned in some ages +picturesquely and pathetically, because Nature led them. While the +morbids and neurotics of our modern Plays are for ever noisily turning +out the dusty corners of their warped psychologies, in order to discover +some loose end of Nature in them to condone their erotic eccentricities. +Strange, that Twentieth-Century woman tolerates the mirror held to her +in these abnormal and distasteful creatures! + +The modern dramatist is handicapped in his art, it is true, by lack, in +our latter-day actresses, of that personal charm and magnetism, and the +vital power to render the higher and subtler emotions and passions, +whereby the actresses of earlier days held audiences spell-bound. + +Politics and Sports destroy alike the Muses and the Graces. One who +attempts to combine them with the delicate psychological arts and +artistries of The Drama is bound to failure--in her art, at all events. + + +Time was when the best men reverenced women as beings of more delicate +calibre, to be shielded from the rougher and grosser contacts of life. +Chivalry forbade that they should have taken these to coarse +exhibitions, prize-fights and the like. And to such restriction woman's +purer instinct and her finer taste assented. + +The male being practical and rational, however, since women themselves +are changing all that, he too is coming to believe that any and every +thing is good enough for a sex which more and more repudiates its +subtler quality. + +That native delicacy which preserved her once from masculine habits of +thought and indulgence, taught man to realise woman as belonging, by +nature, to a purer and daintier order. (Howsoever inferior to himself in +some other respects he may have held her.) + +It won his reverence and worship that these frailer and more +exquisitely-constituted creatures should possess, despite their +exquisiteness, such fine mettle of resistance in their softness as +withstood the fire and urgence of the masculine siege; that within their +(possibly) ignorant little brains was light that flashed straight to +intrinsic truths and right courses of action; such intuitive +apprehension of The Good and The Beautiful, without experience of the +base and ugly, as taught them to distinguish clearly, to select, and to +hold fast to the fairer in thought and in conduct. + +To encounter in woman his own traits touched to higher, subtler issues, +and transformed to novel and alluring quality by the charm and graces of +another sex, has made always an enchanting, an inspiring, and a baffling +enigma of her--to endue woman for man with eternal values and +impenetrable mystery. For he has visioned in her--without +formulating--the mystery of the Human Duality. + +Trembling in the delicate poise of her twofold being, between the soft +impressionable, variable woman in her and the man of steel aesthetically +sheathed within the velvet of her womanhood, the play of her swift +supple transitions, the kaleidoscopic changes of her perpetual new +combinations--giving ever fresh bewildering effects of colour, light and +mode--have made her infinite variety for him. While her soft, immediate +adjustments to his own moods and needs have been his wonder and delight; +presenting to him all that there is in himself, yet in modes impossible +to himself. All that he knows by acquaintance she knows by +intuition--and in a fresh and fairer way. All that he sees, her eyes +make him see again in new and more exquisite lights. All that he thinks +had been already in her woman-heart ere ever man began to think. All +that he loves she shows him a reason for loving--yet not by way of +reason. All that he craves with his soul, her soul can confer. All that +his body and sense have desired, her body and sense can bestow--But with +all the immeasurable differences and enhancements of her unlike sex. + +"_Away, away!_" cried Jean Paul Richter, apostrophising Music, "_thou +speakest to me of things that in all my endless life I have not found, +and shall not find!_" + +Wagner said, "Music is a Woman." + + +Dr. Havelock Ellis, himself a zealous Feminist, has said, that, in their +ardour for emancipation, women sometimes seem anxious to be emancipated +from their sex. While Ellen Key, most impartial of critics, observes: + +"But full of insight as they are into the _ars amandi_, have modern +women, indeed, learned how with all their soul, all their strength, and +all their mind to love? Their mothers and grandmothers--on a much lower +plane of woman's erotic idealism--knew of only one object; that of +making their husbands happy.... But what watchful tenderness, what +dignified desire to please, what fair gladness could not the finest of +these spiritually-ignored women develop! The new man lives in a dream of +the new woman, and she in a dream of the new man. But when they actually +find one another, it frequently results that two highly-developed +brains together analyse love; or that two worn-out nervous systems fight +out a disintegrating battle over love.... Of love's double +heart-beat--the finding one's self, and the forgetting one's self in +another--the first is now considerably more advanced than the second." + +The reason why the New man and the New woman, having found one another, +find no more inspiration or sweetness each in the other than to "fight +out a disintegrating battle" is because both are male of brain and +bent--one normally so, the other abnormally. + +And when two males meet, their nature is--to fight! + + * * * * * + +Into every clause of this book must be read the many inspiring +exceptions to be found among those modern men and women and children who +are advancing normally along evolutionary lines. Such are so fine of +type, in body and in mind, that they blind not a few to facts of racial +deterioration. We point to these and say: One cannot speak with truth of +the degeneracy of nations which produce such noble specimens! + +These exceptions prove the principle I am endeavouring to impress, +however. That were we to apply ourselves to correction of our biological +and social errors, we have with us stock of the noblest Race +conceivable, and the noblest possible future for that Race. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS + + "_Every child comes with the message that God is not yet + discouraged of Man._" + + +I + +Since women possess native gifts of highly-differentiated faculties and +aptitudes, not only their greatest effectiveness, but, too, their +well-being and happiness lie in finding highly-specialised and selective +application for these, in Life, in Art, in Science, and in Industry. + +Their role in every field of operation should be recognised as being +wholly different from that of man, however; and their own natural +view-points and special abilities should be fostered, accordingly, by +suitable training; in order to fit them for the special departments for +which they are essentially suited. + +The charming artistry and fancies, spontaneous and full of delicate +insight, feeling, and sense of line, which a woman puts into her +illustrations of a child's Fairy-story, are art as true, for example, +and if less great of achievement, are nevertheless as intrinsically +valuable in The Scheme of Things as are the virile masterpieces of a +Michael Angelo or Turner. + +Few men attain the exquisite artistry in colour that even indifferent +women-painters show. It is an expression, in mentality, of the +biological fact that the colour-sense is naturally so highly developed +in woman that Colour-blindness--comparatively common among men--is rare +indeed in her. + +On the other hand, woman is inherently weak in drawing. When she is +trained, however, to draw with masculine strength and precision, she +loses her natural freedom and delicacy of touch, her sensitive feeling +for line, her exquisite colour-sense, her fertile fancy. Rosa Bonheur's +horses are as strong in drawing as they are baldly deficient in +sentiment. Men have painted horses bolder still in line, but +nevertheless noble and beautiful in feeling. + +The same is true of Literature. Mrs. Browning would have been a great +poet had she not taken her husband for model. Some of her delicate +woman-fancies, tricked out in Robert Browning's over-virile style, are +like charming women masquerading in fustian trousers. + +George Eliot, too, affected the masculine both in viewpoint and +method--a bad habit which so grew upon her that her later novels are +ponderous as political treatises, and devoid of human interest. + +Far different, Charlotte Bronte. True to herself and to her sex, she +wrote and has written for all time--as those others did not--as a woman, +and as only a woman could have written. Jane Austen, likewise. + +The woman point-of-view and method are regarded, for the most part, +however, as mark of the amateur--the model aimed at being the eternal +masculine in mode and trend. + + +If the demand, "_We take all labour for our province!_" be safeguarded +by recognising and differentiating the province into two distinct and +separate--supplementary and complementary--departments, for the +respective labours of the two widely differing sexes, the claim comes +first within the range of reason and discretion. + +As woman was the first doctor, so she was the first artist. Man inherits +from her not only his artistic faculty, but he derives from her his +faculty of creative inspiration. Applying his native intelligence, his +executive ability and power of sustained effort, to this end, he has so +developed The Arts as to have carried these to their modern +realisations. And though woman, in her turn, may learn of him, it by no +means follows that his standards or technique are best adapted to her +modes of inspiration, to her ideals or attainments. + +Trained along the lines of natural inherences, and trained, accordingly, +without injury or warp to health or faculty by straining after standards +not their own, women would not be disqualified, as so many are now by +avocational specialisation, for wife and motherhood. They would, on the +contrary, be the better adapted. And health and charm and emotion not +having been sacrificed in them by de-sexing pursuits, such would be +eagerly sought. Thus Racial advance would be secured by its wives and +mothers having been drawn from the best orders of women; the women +naturally endowed with faculty and character; self-reliant, but +unspoiled by abnormal training. + +A number of latter-day women being unfitted, alike by nature and by +inclination, for marriage, two orders of the sex should be clearly +distinguished and administered for; as being wholly different types, for +whom wholly different creeds and employments are indicated. + +Those whose aims and talents incline them to public careers should be +content with the lot to which they are best suited; and content to +accept the privileges thereof, and the disabilities thereof. They should +not be greedy, and demand, at the same time, the liberty of the +free-lance and the privileges of the wife and the mother. + +So with the wife and mother. She, for her part, must forgo the liberty +of the free-lance. Because, with her privileges, she has undertaken +functions and duties which, for their complete fulfilment, demand her +best powers and activities. + +Men who marry are similarly restricted. The bachelor lacks the interests +and happiness of the husband and father. The husband and father lacks +the personal liberty and the freedom from responsibility enjoyed by the +bachelor. + +It is women, mainly, who demand both the prerogatives of the married and +of the unmarried states. Notwithstanding that it is wholly impossible +for them to fulfil the functions of both, because it is impossible for +them to possess either the aptitudes or the energies for both. + +In view of all that men have attained by devotion of their lives to the +civilised achievements which now dignify existence and ennoble faculty, +when one sees women more clamorously confident in their bounden right to +inherit lightly all that the other sex has so laboriously won than they +are reverently grateful for the inestimable human privileges and the +treasuries of Art and Mind-wealth available to them by way of these +surrendered masculine lives, it seems cause for indignation equal to +that aroused by the phlegmatic calm wherewith most men accept as +matter-of-course--instead of as matter for reverent gratitude--the gifts +of Life and Faculty, to evolve and to transmit which to them, their +mothers and all the generations of mothers before them surrendered their +lives and their powers. + +Recognition of the intrinsic differences, in trend and in function, +between the sexes, should go far to dispel misconceptions and points of +variance between them. The prevailing notion that the one sex is a sort +of muddled version of the other--and not a highly-specialised +presentment of an invaluable order of qualities, with inevitable +shortcomings in the complementary order of qualities--is greatly to +blame for sex-misapprehensions and antagonisms. + + +II + +Feminists anticipate that War-experiences will further and finally +eliminate all economic sex-distinctions, by having supplied convincing +object-lessons that their sex is able to do, and to do efficiently, all +that the other sex can do. + +Far from object-lessons in the suitabilities, however, the experience +has furnished terrible examples pointing the contrary way. Because +although women have shown themselves both willing and efficient in these +new capacities, results have proved at what cost to themselves and to +life they have done men's work. Apart from a deplorable deterioration in +morale, showing both in coarseness and in viciousness, the blight of age +which has swooped upon both young and old, as direct consequence of the +hardship and strain of masculine employments, robbing them of youth and +health and joy and beauty, of repose and higher appeal, and transforming +them into the grim, drab, harassed spectres many have become, should be +warning enough, in all conscience, of whither Feminism is leading us. + +Many of our young women have become so de-sexed and masculinised, +indeed, and the neuter state so patent in them, that the individual is +described (unkindly) no longer as "She" but as "It." + +Dire have been the disillusionment and bitterness among our fighting +men, upon returning to the homes and wives or loves they had long +dreamed of--to find the wife or love a shattered wreck, or a strenuous, +graceless, half-male creature; the home a place of nerve-racking unrest. + +It is consoling to know that a number of those who have been de-sexed +merely, and not disabled, will continue to find useful and contented +outlet for their masculine developments in filling still the places of +our fallen heroes. Cruelty lies in the fact, however, that the womanhood +of many will have been wrecked quite needlessly; by strain of +superfluously strenuous drill and marchings, scoutings, signallings, and +other such vain and fruitless imitations of the male. + +The greatest care should have been exercised to have selected the +strong and able-bodied, the older women and the women of the +characteristic worker-type (corresponding to the sterile female-worker +of the bee-hive), for the rougher and the more exhausting tasks. The +young wives and mothers and the young girls should have been rigorously +excluded from such. + + +Of all human prerogatives, the greatest is that of being preserved, by +class, by ability, by means, or by privilege, from gravitating to levels +of work that coarsen and debase; or that, at all events, do not exercise +and foster the development of higher tastes and faculty. And this human +privilege is, in proportion to their degrees of civilisation, accorded +to women by all civilised peoples. As men have stood between them and +the perils of battle and shipwreck, the slaying of wild beasts, +pioneering, exploring, and the like, so they have stood between them and +the coarsest, ugliest, and most debasing industrial functions. + +Nevertheless, Feminist anger at restriction whatsoever in the matter of +employment ignores all cause for gratitude on the part of the sex, that, +being at man's mercy as she is, civilised woman is no longer (as the +woman of inferior civilisations is still) a beast of heavy burden. Far +otherwise, indeed, Feminism aims at nothing so much as to repudiate her +established privileges, abolish all distinctions, and to make woman once +again that beast of burden the chivalry of man--at first instinctive, +later magnanimous--has progressively rescued her from being. + +And yet the degree to which sex is defined in Labour (as in Life) is at +the same time the gauge and the cause of human development. Wheresoever +are found low intelligence, crude morale and lack of progress, there the +women are employed in men's work. Wheresoever women are employed in +men's work, there are low intelligence, crude morale and lack of +progress. + +"Thank Heaven for the War!" Feminists have said, however, "because it +has enabled our sex to prove its worth--by enabling us to quit ourselves +like men. The world knows now that women can conduct omnibuses, drive +ploughs, clean stables, kill chickens, ring and slaughter pigs, quite as +well as men can." + +It is as painful as it is amazing to find intelligent and cultured +persons so blinded by the obsessions of their creed as to suppose that +in ploughing and hoeing and making munitions, women are doing finer and +more valuable work than they had been doing previously; that the woman +bus-conductor is a more important person than the children's nurse; that +to drive a cab or clean a boiler is a nobler occupation than the +teaching of music or the cleansing of clothes; that to spread manure is +more dignifying than to make beds; to amputate the limbs of wounded +soldiers is superior to the subtler, far more difficult art of medically +treating the complex ills of women and children. + +That these other employments have been demanded by the times, is +undeniable; as, too, that honour and credit are due to those who well +and capably responded to the exigencies of the hour. But this does not, +in the least degree, lessen the illogic of the claim that such response +to the cruder and less-civilised demands of War proved woman's value +more than did the devotion and efficiency she was previously showing in +the far more complex and progressive arts of Peace. The main value of +her War-work was that it fitted the times. But the times have been +woefully out of joint! + + +III + +At a recent Feminist Meeting, one of the leaders of Militancy detailed +to an audience of fierce-eyed, sombre-visaged members of her own sex, +and sundry meek-browed persons of the other, her latest exploits in the +matters of arranging Labour disputes and averting strikes of +working-men; of sending Governmental male officials to the right-about, +and of disposing, in general, of masculine concerns. + +The main issue of her story was lost sight of, alike by herself and by +her audience. This was--or so it seemed to one among the latter: What +manner of men were these who required or tolerated it that a woman +should take them thus in hand, and, as though they had been whipped +children, dispose of them and their men's affairs--between worker and +employer, between man and man? What order of creature will be the sons +and the grandsons of men ever further emasculated by every further +generation of subjection by such masterful persons; female-Dominants who +arrogate the virile rights and prerogatives of their menkind; their +initiative and enterprise; their capacity to think, to speak, to plan +and to act for themselves? + +The Subjection of woman by man--What was that evil compared with this +other enormity: the Subjection of man by woman, which is fast replacing +it? + +Men who--saving under stress of War--permit women to usurp the functions +and prerogatives of their natural domain, in capacities of Mayor, of +Chairman of Companies and so forth, are, frankly speaking--Muffs! + +Not of such sires were our great Anglo-Saxon Races gotten. Not such was +it who have made England what she is! And the England we look to will +never be the England we look to--until such effeminate blood shall have +been bred out of her sons. + +The male becomes emasculate when women invade his domain. And with the +increasing Hugger-mugger of the sexes, it grows, every day, more and +more difficult for men to escape into the bracing, invigorating +environment and moral of their own sex--a moral untempered by amenities +due to the other, and one indispensable to string them to the pitch of +virile thought and action. Our sailors and soldiers and aviators are +still _men_, because woman has not so far invaded the Navy, the Army, or +the Air. + +Feminine invasion everywhere else--in schools and colleges, in the arts, +in politics, in commerce and in sports--is undoubtedly enfeebling the +fibre of our manhood and the quality of masculine achievements. Man is a +pioneer; aggressive, progressive, ever breaking new ground; conquering +new territory and new forces of Nature. And this alike in politics, in +commerce, and in other material affairs. When he fails to pioneer, +reaching out to new horizons of thought and activity, engineering new +enterprises, while at the same time strengthening and consolidating all +he had already acquired--then the world, in place of progressing, +regresses. And for pioneering, whether in political or in geographical +regions, woman's presence hampers him. + +The less men are in a position to escape from the other sex, the more +they lose the impetus and characteristics of their own. + +The like applies to women. Women who mix too much and too freely with +men deteriorate signally in womanly values and quality. + +Both sexes benefit by segregation from the other, in order to +adapt--each to its own characteristic morale and moral. Neither sex is +wholly unconstrained and candid when in company of the other--unless +both are demoralised. + +Sex operates as a stimulant. And to be always under influence of a +stimulant is enervating. On the other hand, when, from over-indulgence, +Sex or any other stimulant ceases to release new inspiration and forces, +it is sign of a permanently enervated state. Or sex operates as a +hypnotic. And to be always under hypnotic influence is as destructive of +individuality as it is fatal to achievement. + +The sexes require to separate, accordingly, in order to derive fresh +impulse on coming together again. + +Both work more seriously and sincerely, more efficiently and more +effectively, apart; taking counsel, when need be, one of the other. + +The dilettante spirit and amenities of mixed companies, destructive of +"thoroughness," are greatly to blame for that decline of British +commerce which has followed on the Feminist invasion of business-houses. + +Significant of the trend is the fact that young and pretty and +inefficient girls are selected for business positions, as clerks and so +forth, while older women of experience and accredited ability are +rejected summarily. It is, doubtless, amusing and flattering to +masculine employers to be surrounded by attractive youth of the opposite +sex. But it is conducive neither to commercial enterprise nor to +achievement. + + +IV + +Because of the intrinsic variability underlying her duality of +constitution, the happy mean and balance (difficult to all humans) are +especially difficult to woman. + +Man, like herself, is of dual constitution. But he is more firmly, +because less finely, poised between his two orders of Traits. She, on +the contrary, tends to oscillate between the opposite extremes of her +two-sided nature. A bent which may be traced, throughout history, in the +excesses, in one or the other direction, that have characterised the +careers of many famous women-personages. + +The Ultra-Feminine extreme, which results from lack of due balance of +her woman-side by the masculine side of her, and the Mannish extreme, +occasioned by over-development of her masculine inherences, may be +regarded as, respectively, the Scylla and Charybdis--the rocks of the +Male-traits, or the vortex of the Female-traits--whereon, equally, may +be wrecked the noblest characteristics and the highest values of the +sex, when it fails to steer clear, _in medias res_, of either. + +In a number of women, the Feminist and the Femininist (Ultra-Feminine) +types alternate in the same person. In place of being stably and +permanently centred in the woman-side of them, with the masculine to +steady and intelligise, such persons act and re-act, in more or less +violent pendulum-swing, between their two orders of impulse. Thus we get +women, intellectual, progressive, strenuous, engrossed for part of their +time in serious, perhaps in public avocations--and then plunging, in +violent recoil, into social frivolities; vanities, dissipations, pranks, +intrigues, excesses. + +Men, too, act between extremes. In far less degree, however. Life +demands from most of them over-accentuation and concentration of their +male-abilities, in physical and mental specialisations. And in reaction, +they plunge into follies and vices. But the more virile keep their +heads, and preserve a certain stability and conformity in their +aberrations. While effeminate men, it is mainly who lapse into vicious +excess. + +Since woman supplies the inspiration and the morale of life, however, +and since her momentous function of motherhood empowers her to make or +to mar the Race whereof she is creatrix, a nation has a greater claim +upon its women, and has, at the same time, more reason and more right to +restrict their liberty of action, and to direct their bent, than it has +in the case of its men. Its survival and its downfall tremble in the +scales of Life which woman holds. To compensate her for such restriction +and limitation of her scope, obviously it owes her privileges, personal +and economic. And a subconscious recognition of this fact has been, +doubtless, the source of such privileges as she now enjoys. + + +There have always been, as history shows, women in whom, from faulty +heredity or culture, or from stress of circumstance, the Male-traits +have been abnormally developed; virile-brained, stout-hearted, muscular +chieftainesses, chatelaines, abbesses, matrons; or (in less agreeable +guise) amazons, shrews and viragoes. But always such were recognised as +being abnormal, and for the most part as being repellant. It was not +sought to manufacture them. It is only of late years that Mannishness +has become a serious Cult. + +And now a dangerous thing has happened. Because where formerly symptoms +of Feminism attacked individuals only--and these mainly the mature and +eccentric--now the young and the normal are being indoctrinated +wholesale. Young girls taken during the malleable phases of growth and +development, and forcibly shaped to masculine modes, become more or less +irretrievably male of trait and bent; losing all power to recover the +womanly normal. + +While on the other hand, there are assembling to-day, in an opposite +ever-increasing and menacing camp, those others for whom Feminism, with +its extremist, exacting, self-reliant codes and modes, has no appeal; +the pretty mindless, the idle frivolous, the pleasure-seeker, the +freakish and the conscienceless--in a word, the Ultra-Feminines; in whom +the woman-failings are unfortunately more conspicuous than are the +woman-virtues. Between these two extremes stand (and stand so far in +gratifying number) the natural, admirably-balanced, noble and invaluable +Moderates--normal women content to be normal women, and to fulfil the +destined role of such. And these are the saving grace of nations. + +Apart from these, the sex is ever further and more dangerously +separating into the two extremist camps; the Mannish and strenuous, and +the Over-Feminised and purposeless, more or less idle and frivolous, +selfishly absorbed in clothes, in luxury and pleasures; exacting +masculine tribute in mind and kind, with but little return in affection +or ministry. + +In place, accordingly, of that fine normal poise of the Contrasting Man +and Woman-Traits--which is the way of Evolution and of Progress--there +is being substituted in the sex this degenerative segregation of its +Traits in two wholly opposite, and equally lopsided types. And of these, +the purposeful and strenuous, all the while making for masculine +standards, are all the while further discarding the beauty, the +emotions, the delicacy and morale of true woman; while the mindless and +vain, the attractive and charming, are more and more divorcing +themselves from purpose, from seriousness, from noble endeavour and +usefulness. + +And since rights accorded to women are shared by all, every new +privilege Feminists win for the sex in the sweat of their assiduous +brows--liberty, latchkeys and general latitude--the Ultra-Feminines +snatch, and apply to frivolous and profitless, or to demoralising ends; +licence, extravagances, vices. + +The Ultra-Feminine, for the most part shallow and mindless (although +many clever women belong to this order), absorbed in complacent culture +of her oftentimes alluring personality, enhancing it, attiring it, +developing its charm and graces, eager of homage and of tribute, is +example of that Parasitism Miss Schreiner condemns in the sex; example +of qualities normally making for beauty, but from loss of balance, owing +to warp, hereditary or of misdirection, morbidly feeding upon +themselves. + +This Parasitism is seen in its worst guise in the vast armies of +prostitutes, who in every clime and epoch ravage the fair fruits of +human life and achievement. + +Against this Parasitism in herself, self-absorbing, self-indulgent, +enervating--defect of her reposefulness, of her aestheticism and vital +self-consciousness--every woman needs to be upon her guard; to repress +with firmness the smooth easy lapse it prompts toward sloth and +pleasure; to exorcise the soft dry-rot of it, by power of aspiration and +by prayer of ministry. (For noble truth it is that _Laborare est +orare_.) + +The Woman's Movement did good service for the sex in the early chapters +of its history, when it made for due education of woman's higher +masculine inherences; intelligence, application, self-reliance; as also +in finding further fields of usefulness and self-expression for her. + +But unfortunately in the later chapters, over-cultivation of these +traits has increasingly annulled and extinguished her own. And this with +the unforeseen, disquieting resultant that a compensatory movement has +set in apace among that other faction of the sex. So that the more +mannish the Feminists become in mode and aim, the more womanish become +the Effeminates. Thus, albeit sincerely despising and decrying this, +Feminism has nevertheless indirectly fostered the growth of Effeminacy. +While, by supplying it with ever further liberty and scope for the +indulgence of its freaks and failings, Feminist propaganda has directly +played into its hands. Motherhood strikes deeper roots of attribute even +in the Ultra-Feminine; brings thin streams of altruism to her +neurasthenic breasts. In her children she forgets clothes, grows less +greedy of masculine tribute, forgoes pleasures and excitements that had +been the breath of life to her. + +The increasing emancipation of the sex from home-functions and from +womanly and mother-duties, however--claimed and obtained with a view to +further economic scope and application of its powers--has been +exultantly hailed and exploited by the Ultra-Feminines for ever further +indulgence of and wider range of action for their dangerous defects. And +Feminism will find--and this soon to its dismay--that the battle it has +waged against the other sex has been as nothing to the battle it has yet +to wage against its own, in the person of the Eternal Effeminate; idle, +luxurious, parasitic and effete, who, with her brood, engenders the +dry-rot which crumbles mighty civilisations, or topples them in +Revolution. + + +V + +Of the two camps, the vast majority of masculines will always seek their +loves and wives among the Ultra-Feminines; frail and erratic, but +attractive and more or less womanly. So long as men are men, the +feminine graces, even in their spurious forms of Effeminacy, will +possess more vital appeal for them than do the intelligences and +utilities. + +The Feminist camp, further and further commandeering the intelligent and +self-reliant, the worthy and purposeful of the sex, while more and more +discarding the charms and the softness thereof, will be further and +further deserted by men. And of the happy mean--the well-balanced woman, +at once tender and intelligent, devoted and charming--there will be ever +fewer available. + +What then is the future, biological and sociological, of Races whose +wives and mothers will have been drawn mainly from the shallow-brained +and shallow-hearted, from the less dutiful, the less high and +right-minded? To say nothing of the less constitutionally-sound, the +Ultra-Feminine being, for the most part, a neurotic? The great majority +of such will decline part, indeed, in functions so dull and distasteful +as the mothering and rearing of children. + +The Feminist wife, with her intelligent grip of economics and her stern +sense of citizen-duty, would fulfil her racial function (in accordance +with Malthusius) during intervals of more absorbing and strenuous +activities. But when once the novelty--which gives a certain piquancy +for some men to a mannishness some women are able to wear quite prettily +and attractively in early youth--shall have worn away, the poor +Feminist's chances of marriage will be few, indeed; save with +men-weaklings, requiring the virile support of a strong-minded, +muscular wife. + +The Feminist makes a far more honest and reliable, sincere and helpful, +mate than does the Ultra-Feminine. But men prefer the latter. + +Male characteristics are to be found among their male acquaintance. And +it is not a normal, nor is it a wholesome instinct in a man, to seek in +sex the traits of his own. + +In the cult of Mannishness, woman loses her strongest, her noblest and +tenderest appeal for true men--the appeal of her womanhood. And losing +it, she abandons the male to the toils of the enemy camp; to those whose +womanishness partakes, at all events, of the attributes of a sex +complementary and supplementary to his own. + + * * * * * + +Unhappy wights! How Nature has handicapped them--in order to spur them +to their virile part of founding and providing for the family! + + +VI + +As innocent of misappropriating that which is Caesar's as they are +ignorant of the biological verities, some Women-leaders and Prime-movers +in Feminism exact and exult in the warm young, zealous adulation and +hero-worship of their followers; never suspecting that such tribute is +rendered, in fact, to the _male_ in them. Both they and their votaries +believe themselves loyal and thrall to their finger-tips to Woman and +The Woman-Cause. Whereas they are, in reality, hero-worshipping, on the +one hand, the Male in their Cult, and on the other, the Masculine traits +of its female exponents. Against man himself and the Maleness that is +his by natural right, many are filled with hottest distrust and +aversion. Yet while sex-antagonism is thus strong in them in fealty to +their creed, Nature is strong in them too. And with gentle irony she +exacts their homage for the traits of the foe--masquerading in guise of +a female! + +Heroes to worship, every naturally-constituted woman craves. And it is +the hero--far less than it is the heroine--in the Feminist leaders, +their qualities of fight and masterfulness, of virile brain and concrete +enterprise, which evoke their adherents' devotion and tribute. + +Some Feminist leaders bid, indeed, as strenuously for and claim as +jealously the undivided loyalty and subjection of their flock as ever +Tyrant-Man demanded of the sex. + +In schools and colleges too, the girls make gods and heroes of those of +their sex who excel in manly sports. They have never a suspicion that +their gods and heroes are not goddesses and heroines. Similars being +unattractive to one another, the exposition of woman-traits leaves woman +more or less unmoved. As Nature destined, the woman-heart goes out to +those virtues and valours which are the natural complement of her own. + +This latter-day vogue is not a normal, nor a pretty development. But it +is another of the inevitable consequences of disturbing Nature's +balances. Nature's plan and her methods of administration are so perfect +that when left to herself she preserves her equilibrium and secures her +aims by the safest and, at the same time, by the simplest expedients. +When man destroys the hawks which, normally, reduce the smaller fry of +birds to their allotted quotum in the Scheme of Things, however, the +smaller fry multiply inordinately and devour his cherries and his corn. +And when he destroys the smaller fry, the slugs and grubs and _aphides_ +multiply and devour his lettuces and roses. + +So it is with Human traits and faculties. The balance of The Normal is +the way alone of health and happiness and progress. + + +There is great boast now-a-days of friendship and comradeship between +the sexes. Yet though friendship and comradeship are good allies of +love, they are but sterile, uninspiring substitutes for the profounder, +higher, vital and undying emotions of the true love-passion. + +On the other hand, attachments between men and men, and between women +and women, are strengthening and intensifying; absorbing the emotion and +devotion formerly and normally bestowed on members of the opposite sex. +While attraction between persons of opposite sex becomes ever lighter +and triter in sentiment; serving more and more for brief distraction and +provocative pastime rather than for a living and abiding bond. + +This misplaced affection for members of the same sex arises from the +attraction of traits of the opposite sex unduly developed in them. While +indifference to members of the opposite sex results from lack in these +of the characteristics of their sex, normally accentuated. Thus a woman +is more drawn to one of her own sex possessing virile characteristics, +physical or mental, than she is drawn to a weak-brained, emasculate man. +Masculine women are attracted likewise by the womanly graces and quality +of feminine women. + +While men find in some members of their own sex, feminine traits of +sympathy and sentiment absent in women of male-proclivity. All is an +expression of the law of the Attraction of Opposites, which (normally) +causes persons of opposite sex to be strongly drawn to one another. + +On the other hand, the development in himself, or in herself, of the +characteristics of the opposite sex makes members of either sex +independent of and indifferent to members of the other, by supplying +them with a spurious counterfeit of qualities it is natural to seek in +those others. + + +VII + +Professor Drummond, from whom I quote frequently, as being one of those +biologists on the side of the angels, writes thus beautifully: + + + "Sex is a paradox; it is that which separates in order to unite.... + There is no instance in Nature of Division of Labour being brought + to such extreme specialisation. The two sexes were not only set + apart to perform different halves of the same function, but each so + entirely lost the power of performing the whole function that even + with so great a thing at stake as the continuance of the species + _one_ could not discharge it. + + "It is important to notice this absence of necessity for Sex having + been created--the absence of any known necessity, from the merely + physiological standpoint. + + "Is it inconceivable that Nature should sometimes do things with an + ulterior object, an ethical one, for instance? To no one with any + acquaintance with Nature's ways, will it be possible to conceive of + such a purpose as the sole purpose. + + "Had Sex done nothing more than make an interesting world, the debt + of Evolution to Reproduction had been incalculable.... What exactly + Maleness is, and what Femaleness, has been one of the problems of + the world. At least five hundred theories of their origin are + already in the field, but the solution seems to have baffled every + approach. Sex has remained almost to the present hour an ultimate + mystery of creation.... + + "The contribution of each to the evolution of the human race is + special and unique. To the man has been mainly assigned the + fulfilment of the first great function--the Struggle for Life. + Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet been named, is the + chosen instrument for carrying on the Struggle for the Life of + Others. + + "That task, translated into one great word is Maternity--which is + nothing but the Struggle for the Life of Others transfigured, + transferred to the moral sphere. Focused in a single human being, + this function, as we rise in history, slowly begins to be + accompanied by those heaven-born psychical states which transform + the femaleness of the older order into the Motherhood of the New." + + +Out of the misconception of Sex as having no other purpose or +significance than that of reproduction merely, there has arisen the +further misconception that, lacking other purpose or significance, the +sex-characteristics of Woman may be obliterated in her not only without +injury, but with benefit to her; as being superfluous and hampering +impedimenta merely, when reproductive issues are beside the question. + +Yet since Faculty lapses first in its latest and highest developments, +sex-deterioration manifests most in the higher mental and moral +Sex-characteristics. One result, therefore, of not fostering, by culture +and by avocation, sex-specialisations upon planes of mind and aptitude, +is that, while lapsing in its higher functions, Sex remains operative +still upon the physical plane, and functions crudely--perhaps viciously +thereon. Just as intelligence becomes dense and degraded when its finer +qualities are not exercised, and their development thus raised to finer +issues. Moreover, by denying to Sex and to the rites of love any but +parental issues, the individual, emotional and spiritual issues of the +human union are ignored; a limitation all the more dishonouring, because +of the present-day misconception of parenthood as being a purely +"physical," and, accordingly, an inferior function. + +There is not, of course, in all the complex marvel of human metabolism, +such an anomaly as a purely physical function. Digestion even is far, +indeed, from being such, since by way of this a slice of bread is +transformed into living personality, living thought and impulse, living +action. + +Sex is manifestly a Spiritual and an Eternal Principle. Because, by way +of its essential dual differentiations and intensifying operations, +Matter becomes endued not only with Life and Faculty, but, having become +Living Matter, it becomes endued, by power of reproduction, with the +potential of eternal Life and Faculty. Even more, it becomes endued with +the potential of the eternal unfoldment of ever-further intensifying +Life and Faculty. + +Sex is, in truth, for both genders, such a convergence of every +characteristic--physical, mental and emotional--in a highly specialised +focus, that the whole outlook upon life becomes highly specialised and +intensified thereby; every impression and experience becoming instinct +and charged with intrinsic meanings, vividness and colour. And this +apart wholly from relation to the other sex. Although, of course, the +focus and intensity of the traits of the one sex are _accentuated_ in +vividness and richness, in response to the complementary traits of the +other. + +It is Sex that energises men to be great; great leaders of men, great +writers, great statesmen, great soldiers, great sailors, +explorers--great sinners and great saints. + +Sex it is makes women great also; great mates for great men, great +mothers, writers, ministers to poor Humanity--great saints. + +The mystery of Sex is, surely, Master-key to all the other mysteries of +the Cosmos. + + * * * * * + + +VIII + +In aiming at Hermaphrodism, Feminism is contriving not only at +frustration of all that Evolution has achieved in Life and Faculty, but +it is making for the extinction of Life itself. + +The Hermaphrodite is incapable of parenthood. And in the degree to which +members of either sex lapse toward Neuterdom, in body or in mind, they +become incapable of transmitting to offspring all those higher +developments of form and faculty which are, essentially, +Sex-differentiations. The present-day decline in parental impulse and +affection, which shows, among other signs, in ever-decreasing +Birth-rates, is a symptom of temperamental Neuterdom; evidence alike of +Sex-decline, and, in this, of decline of that vital energy and spiritual +impulse whereof Sex is the manifestation. + +Such trend toward Race-suicide denotes, in the Race, that same +neurasthenia and pusillanimity, which, in the individual, impel him to +personal suicide. + + +Latter-day marriage, greedily grasping all that Life and Love bestow +while grudging any due to Life and Love, is not true Marriage--but is +sacrilege. + +Between this and the mating of true men and women, who, in gratitude for +Love, pay tribute joyfully to Life in lives to follow after them, is all +the vital difference, in impulse and emotion, between the Ship of +Love--with its mysterious freight--immured within a narrow lock whereof +the gate to the Beyond is sealed, and the Ship of Love launched free +upon the open sea of Human Destiny--a Shining sea of Faith and Hope, +which tides beyond the narrow mortal gateway toward a Great Unknown; +Remote, Illimitable, Veiled in Everlasting Silence. + +_This_ ship fares forth upon its voyage of Mystery, beatified by full +surrender of all lesser issues to that sacred one of the Eternal +Human--a surrender which endues true marriage with tenderness and awe +and beauty. + + * * * * * + +_Do we not pitch our songs too low, O sweet--my Singers?_ + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN + + "The Earth never tires.... Nature is rude and incomprehensible at + first; + Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well + envelop'd; + I swear to you there are Divine Things more beautiful than words + can tell." + +_Walt Whitman._ + + +I + +In the long and painful history of man's more or less total failure to +value and to honour woman for her greatest, her most vital and +self-sacrificing part in human affairs, none has approached in obliquity +his recent deplorable blunder of awarding her the suffrage and the right +to sit in Parliament, as recognition of her War-services. + +All the long ages of Mother-surrender, of quiet heroism and attainment, +all the best, beautiful years of women's lives which the burden and +sickness, the weariness, danger and anguish have devoured down the +centuries, while the mothers were giving themselves to be the nation's +bone and blood and brain, to nourish, cherish, and upbring it--All were +passed over without word or sign. + +Not for her long ages of devoted duty to the nation's sick and helpless, +for rearing and safeguarding its priceless infant and child-life, for +administering its homes--fashioning, cleansing, beautifying, contriving, +making the utmost of its means and ends--Not for her inestimable +services as man's good comrade and wise counseller, his love and friend +and faithful help, in sorrow, evil and adversity; not even for her +age-long, arduous labours and achievements in Religion, Charity, Reform. +For none of these, her great intrinsic and eternal ministries to Life +and to Humanity, has man now set her by him in the Van of Things. + +But for filling shells and felling trees, for turning lathes and driving +motors, ploughing fields and lighting street-lamps--all valuable duties, +it is true, in the crisis we have passed through, and indispensable to +carrying on the nation's business. Yet what a drop from the supreme and +tender to the trite and banal, from the vital and essential to the +merely incidental, is seen in this belated recompense. + +Not woman, Generatrix of Humanity and inspiration of all that is fairest +in Humanity, has been now honoured--but woman the bus-conductor, +ticket-clipper, clerk and agricultural labourer, woman in breeches and +workman's overall, woman whom German frightfulness had dislocated for a +space from her high lot and labours; twisting her powers awry to fit a +hideous revulsion of barbarism. + +How, if the gods ever laugh at the fantastic tricks of poor mankind, +they must now have laughed (or wept) over the opportunity that one sex +had--and forfeited--to requite the other's finest merit. + +How deeply-moving and far-reaching in its impulse and its inspiration +would have been the tribute, had it been made in reverent gratitude to +the mothers-of-men who had saved the world by mothering the men who +saved the Empire--For achievement stamped with the high and unique +quality of service that woman alone could have rendered. And not +because, when tested by men's standards, she proved herself a worthy +second-best in doing things that men have always done. + +The gods must long have wept, I think, that men had thought so lightly +of the women living every day beside them, surrendering their lives and +powers, their interests, desires and individuation; toiling over +cooking-pans and wash-tubs, tied for years to children's cots, for life +to some or another person's sick-bed; smothering talents, impulse, +hopes, impatiences, to find the soft and simple word; solacing, +inspiring, making-believe above an aching spirit and a breaking heart +that all was fair and well with the world. And, moreover, in every +generation making these beautiful fictions ever a fraction more truth +and less fiction. For the gods alone know how that kindlier, purer and +more tender Home-environment which women have created in men's +stony-hearted cities involves the most laborious, heart-wearing, complex +and widest exercise of faculty of any human task. + +Women themselves had long been tiring of it; stung to the soul and +mortified by centuries of man's ingratitude--when not contempt. +Nevertheless, where love and duty did not, chains of custom and +tradition bound them faithful to their oars. + +Till German Frightfulness releasing them, the cry is now: + +Since you can do something better and more profitable than merely to row +the old Galley of Life--since you can do men's work, forsooth, come out +into the market-place and help us pay our big War-Bill! + +And yet--Whither will drift the Galley of Life when its rowers put their +strength elsewhere? + + +II + +In the haze of false sentiment exaggerating--not the value of masculine +work done by the sex during War, because this was, of course, invaluable +and indispensable, but exaggerating, absolutely, the values of this work +as compared with the woman's work it had been doing previously, the +decision to admit women to Parliament was a precipitate and an +ill-considered measure, by no means innocent of party motive. + +Threatening, as it does, a drastic sweep of all political, economic and +every other difference between the standards, training, and employment +of the sexes, it was pressed forward, nevertheless, not only with +characteristic masculine failure to recognise the vital significance of +the other sex in Human Things, but in utter blindness to social and +racial consequences, immediate and remote, which make it possibly the +most momentous decision ever arrived at in the history of human +progress. + +Showing how little it was known for the turning-point in our great +destiny, the question was debated with unseemly levity, while less than +half the parliamentary members troubled (or had hardihood) to record +their votes; the abstention of the others proving which way blew the +straws of their faint wills. And of those voting in favour, half, +perhaps, did so (as some confessed) under intimidation of otherwise +losing their seats. (What would be said of the soldier who should turn +his back upon the enemy for fear of losing life even?) + +No more than twenty-five found courage to say their "No's" like honest +gentleman. + + +Yet far from Enfranchisement having been a burning need blazing in the +hearts of women, their newly-awarded vote required to be spurred and +whipped out of all but a small minority. Or coaxed from them by +abandoning appeal on all the wider issues of Imperial and national +policy, and, in so far as their interest was sought, by reducing the +programme to personal and domestic issues--electric lighting in their +parlours, hot-water taps in their kitchens, and so forth. + +And here was seen, at once, the threat of a grave and an increasing +diversion from that purely political outlook of men, which should be +impersonal in issue, broad in enterprise. Not that the human and +domestic side is a whit less momentous than the more abstract and +national. But appealing to a different order of mind, it demands that +different order of mind which characterises the woman-sex, to deal with +it effectively. + +The plea that women will acquire in time the masculine political +view-point threatens, on the other hand, the loss in them of their own +highly-specialised and invaluable interests, morale and qualities; +which, being womanly of impulse and of trend, make for the individual +welfare, happiness and elevation of the nation's members. + + +III + +As with every other human function, there are two departments of +politics. And the House of Commons represents man's. + +It stands for all that is best accomplished politically by his +highly-specialised order of brain; by his concrete energy and +initiative, his justice and rationalism, his power of administration, +and his uncompromising sternness--pitilessness, if need be--to deal with +and to punish crime and aggression, national and international. It +stands, in a word, for that virile outlook and the virile grip in +Statesmanship which are indispensable to materialise a people's +prosperity and to pioneer its progress. These are the functions of +_men_. Just as the Army and Navy, Science and Commerce, are the +functions of men. Because the male bent and intellect are those best +fitted to raise these developments to their highest and most effective +issues, just as the male physique and energy are best fitted to achieve +these issues in material results. + +Had anything been needed to emphasise the values of such virile +characteristics in the administration of a nation's policy, the War +furnished it. And the many blunders and vacillations marring the conduct +of the War emphasised the lack of these invaluable masculine qualities +in the concurrent House of Commons. Army, Navy, and Air-Services proved +their manhood doughtily in their respective provinces. Had they been +supplemented by an equally virile Statesmanship, the War, having begun, +would have been brought to a speedy termination. In point of fact, it +would never have begun. + +If now, our British politics are already so lacking in the manly ability +and grip indispensable to national permanence and progress, the presence +of women in Parliament can but further emasculate these. It may be said +that some women outside the House are more male of mind and mode (not to +speak of muscle) than are some men inside. But this is reason, surely, +for replacing these weak males by stronger ones, rather than for +adulterating British statesmanship with Femaleness. + +The presence of a masculine woman in a house--whether this be writ with +a small or a capital letter--far from stiffening the manly calibre of +weak men in it, only further enervates and paralyses them. To serve on a +committee of mixed sex is to realise this. + +Women should be represented in the counsels of the nation--but not in +the councils of men. They should have a House of their own, wherein to +foster the interests of women and children mainly, as well as to further +The Humanities and The Moralities; which are, at the same time, woman's +true political sphere and her chiefest concern--because she and the +child most suffer from failures thereof. Thus, the House of Men would be +relieved of problems their sex is unqualified to deal with. While more +time and energy would be left them to dispose of affairs they are best +fitted to administer. + +As already pointed out, the all-potent factor of Sex intervening, +members of neither sex are capable of doing their best work while in +association with the other. Sex-rivalries are stirred, or +sex-antagonisms. Either of which range the sexes on opposite sides; thus +precluding amicable co-operation. Or they engender sex-ascendancy. +Which, making one sex dominate or defer to the other, precludes +intelligent co-operation. Through all, moreover, only too often run +threads of intrigue, to entangle and hamper the powers of both. + +British politics have notably declined since woman's incursion therein. +British commerce, once supreme among the nations, has notably declined +since women entered business-houses. Good and thorough work demands, +beyond all things, undivided concentration of the powers upon it. And +for nine persons out of ten, this concentration is impossible while in +the presence of members of the opposite sex. And emphatically this is +true of the male, since woman exercises a hypnotic, and, accordingly, an +enervating influence upon him. Worse still, he poses for her: becoming +meretricious and insincere. It is held by some that women in Parliament +might elevate the codes and modes of latter-day politics, many of our +best men withholding themselves therefrom because of bad odour imparted +by self-seeking and unscrupulous politicians. + +But let us keep our House of Commons a House of men, and make it +representative of the nation's finest manhood. It is the first and +foremost function of the sex, the way of national success and progress. +And just as the presence of women would blunt the pioneering spirit and +cripple the action of a party of Arctic explorers, so women in the House +must blunt the enterprise and hamper the exploits of Statesmanship. + +So far, the good sense alike of women as of men has declared against the +innovation; rejecting, by large majorities, all but one of women +Parliamentary candidates. It remains to be seen, however, whether men +outside the House will later endorse the new departure, by electing +members of the other sex to represent them. A thing impossible for one +sex to do for the other, of course, seeing that not only do men and +women arrive at their different conclusions by wholly different routes, +but all questions bear wholly different values for them. + +It may be argued that the existence of dual departments of politics, and +dual points-of-view is argument for electing representatives of both +sexes to The Commons. Not so, however. Each sex is specialist in its +own domain. And an aurist wastes time, and most likely blunders, when he +applies himself to treat eye-diseases. An oculist wastes time, and +probably blunders, when delicate ear-operations are required of him. + +Since by his dual constitution, moreover, man possesses, by inheritance +from his mother, the quotum of woman-apprehension, foresight, and +altruism required to present the woman-bent and view-point in his +outlook and conduct of political and civic affairs, woman's personal +intervention in these is as superfluous as it would be harmful. + +Further, there are two orders of men: An order strictly male in trend +and talent, and an order whose mentality is tinctured with a higher than +average proportion of womanly conservatism, sympathy and intuition. And +these two orders of male--typified, respectively, by the Conservative +and the Radical parties--perpetually struggling to secure the measures +prompted by their respective orders of mind, and intermittently gaining +ascendancy, sustain a poise, or mean, between the unduly conservative +and traditional, and the unduly radical and transitional in our +political administration. + +These two orders of mentality are found again in Youth and Age. All +healthy and vigorous-minded young men are radical of bias; hot-headed, +precipitate and intolerant of crusted orthodoxy, keen to demolish old +institutions and established methods. While maturity makes for +conservatism. It _knows_. And having learned by experience the values of +institutions which have become institutions because of their values, it +is prudent in its counsels of slow and stable reform, in its distrust of +drastic, precipitate change, and, beyond all, in its wise misdoubtings +of the world in general as being better than it is, and ripe, +accordingly, for the best things. + +For the present, there are numberless problems and questions of women's +industrial employment, of children's employment, of the industrial +supervision of young girls and their moral protection; problems of +female drunkenness and prostitution, crimes of children, crimes against +infants and children; questions of health, of the education and +upbringing of the young, of dress and conduct, and of the general moral +purification and the mental elevation of the Race--with all of which +women are essentially qualified to deal; and the vital national +importance whereof men have proved themselves as incapable of +apprehending as they have shown themselves powerless to administer them. + +The two classes of national problems, or the two departments into which +most of these problems might be advantageously sub-classed, should be +recognised as being the functions, respectively, of the one or of the +other sex, and should be deputed for consideration to the House of Men +or to the House of Women. With the result that in both, every problem of +reform would be dealt with by the sex specialised by nature, by +sympathy, and by training, best to understand and best to legislate for +it. + +As with The Lords, either House should have power to question or to +reject the conclusions of the other. + +We need urgently, indeed, such a House of Women to employ its native +wisdom, its intuitive apprehension, and its moral and emotional impulse, +and, moreover, to bring its experience and tact to bear upon a +hundred-and-one tangled and neglected issues of moral and social reform. +In order to remedy evils that have come, from long neglect, to be a +cancer, slowly and surely sapping and vitiating our national life and +endangering our racial supremacy. + + +IV + +That women may do useful work in male departments of politics and +economics is quite beside the question. Far more valuable work is needed +and is possible from them in their own especial fields of aptitude. In +these latter, moreover, they would be fostering, in place of +sacrificing, that morale and those distinctive talents Nature has +specialised in them. While their withdrawal _in toto_ from male +political and economic functions would put men on their mettle, and +stimulate their efforts and achievement therein. + +Woman's influence, like that of Religion, is most potent when it is +indirect and inspirational. Like the Church, when she exchanges her +indirect and devotional ministrations for direct and material ones, +temporal or militant, she destroys herself or the peoples she dominates. +Or she destroys both. + +It is common fallacy that so long as the world's work is done and its +affairs tolerably well conducted, it is of no significance whatsoever by +which sex these ends are attained. + +Sight is lost of the intrinsic truth that Life exists for Man--not Man +for Life; its purpose being the evolution of the human Species by way of +the evolution of human Faculty. The world's work has no slightest value +save as spur and instrument of human education. And the evolution of the +dual orders of human Faculty having differentiated the human Species +into two sexes, each representing a wholly different order of +Faculty--obviously the perfection of both orders of Faculty and, +accordingly, the further evolution of both sexes wherein these orders +are respectively specialised, can be attained only by the exercise, by +each order, of the role and the functions that best evoke its powers. +If, therefore, the male sex repudiates its allotted role and functions, +and forfeits, in consequence, the education of its distinctive talents +and moral, by shelving its responsibilities upon the other sex, +howsoever capable a substitute this other sex may prove itself, man acts +as foolishly and fatuously as the schoolboy who shirks his schooling and +the discipline thereof, by enlisting his capable sister to do his +lessons for him. + +It is, at the same time, man's duty and his privilege manfully to +shoulder and ably to perform his own allotted part in Life's affairs. +Evading this, or from a false conception of chivalry allowing woman to +usurp a share therein, he degenerates inevitably; in default of his +natural spur to development. Moreover he obliges--or connives at woman +doing likewise, in respect of her allotted part. + +That he has already grown so slack, his virile pride and enterprise have +so far lapsed, as to reconcile him to woman's usurpation of his +masculine functions and prerogatives should warn him of incipient +dry-rot in him. As too, the portentous fact that had he not declined in +physical and mental calibre, she could never so readily and efficiently +have taken his place as we have seen her doing. So efficiently, indeed, +that he will be hard put to it to regain and to retain his lost +professional and industrial footing, by proving himself appreciably the +better man. + +As Dr. Havelock Ellis says, if they are to cope with the new Feminism, +men must needs look to their laurels and produce a new Masculinism. For +truly these weak-chinned, neurotic young men of the rising generation +are no match at all for the heavy-jawed, sinewy, resolute young women +Feminist aims and methods are giving us. + +On every side, in politics, literature, journalism, oratory, commerce, +even in scientific invention, women are swiftly coming up abreast of +men, and threaten shortly to out-distance them.--And this upon their own +ground. + +On the other hand, the finer and more exquisite womanly qualities and +aptitudes, the emotions and devotions; purity, sweetness, patience, +forbearance, tenderness, lovingness and lovableness, together with the +courtesies and graces, have fallen out of culture and are fast declining +toward extinction. And this, in the measure of the mushroom-growth of +masculine abilities and aims and bent, now substituted for them in the +sex. With which decline of womanly characteristics, the religion and +nobility, virility and chivalry, manly reverence and regard for women, +wherewith the true mother illumines the souls of her sons, and which are +man's response to the appeal of true woman, are waning rapidly also. + +There is, in all men worth the name, an instinctive recognition that the +world's most strenuous labours and the world's administration are their +natural functions, and that upon their sex, accordingly, rests the +responsibility alike of progress or decline in these directions. + +This sense of responsibility is both stimulating and uplifting, in the +degrees of its realisation and fulfilment. The yielding, by man, to the +other sex, of masculine essential rights and obligations is, at the same +time, a symptom in him of declining virility, physical and mental, and a +cause inevitable of his further speedy decadence. The position yielded, +and equality in all things ceded to woman, that pride in his sex, in +himself, and in his work, which were his strongest incentives to +progress, drop to ever lower grades. Until he comes at last to the state +of the decadent savage, who keeps as many wives to work for him as their +work for him enables him to keep. + +The spirit and pride of Sex are normal and inspiring, and are the +expression of that impulse which has directed, in both sexes, the +contrary trend of both. No man of mettle feels ever again the same zest +or spur to achievement in a role that has become equally woman's. +Arrogance? Possibly. But wholesome and energising. Defect of that pride +in his man's mission which inspired Drake, Columbus, Nelson, Caesar, +Shakespeare, Newton, to great conquest. Without it, man ceases to be +man. That it is a factor to be reckoned with, was proved by the recent +election, which was signalised by being woman's first authorised entry +into the political arena--and was characterised by nothing so much as by +man's indifference, even his neglect to record his vote. And that it is +a factor to be reckoned with, is further and seriously proved by the +slackness and diminished zest and output of masculine Labour, since the +other sex has invaded the field. + +Woman, for her part, is characterised by a similar spirit and pride of +her sex. Equally she loses it when men intrude upon her province. And +this Sex-pride and spirit in her would be nobly intensified and uplifted +to ever higher levels of expression and attainment, were she but assured +of the fine quality and issues of those woman-faculties and functions, +by way of which it is her privilege first to create Life, and afterwards +to minister to it. + + +A potent factor in man's impotence to hold his own either in moral or +achievement, when pitted directly against the other sex, is that power +many women exercise of recruiting their vital forces from those of +persons--and of men, particularly--in association with them. The highest +levels of work and inspiration are the product of _reserve_ and surplus +forces. When these are depleted, only languid and lower-grade aims and +capacities are possible. + +The extent to which over-worked women may impair the health and +constitutional vigour of men associated with them in work was strikingly +shown during the changed conditions of War. Surrounded by over-wrought +girls and women, who kept themselves going by stimulus of nervous +excitement, of strong tea or more dangerous drugs, many men, co-workers +or heads of departments, became neurasthenic wrecks. Others lapsed to +the condition of infirm old men. The like was seen in fathers and +husbands of such over-wrought War-workers. And nervous depletion +occasioned by working-wives has doubtless much to do with the inanition +and depression now crippling our industrial output. + + +I may be charged with holding a brief for the Enemy-sex. If so, it is +not only because man's cause is woman's, but, moreover, because his +present disposition to surrender his prerogatives all round shows him +dangerously blind to the truth of woman's power; misdirection whereof +from its natural channels menaces not only him, but woman herself, and +the Race. _Find the woman!_ said the French cynic. Jestingly: because he +no more than other men had gauged the profundity of the saying, in all +its deep and vast biological phenomena and implications. + +Our national survival stands in jeopardy already, indeed, from the +lower-grade males--narrow-brained neurotics or feeble-brained +neurasthenics--whom latter-day women are producing yearly in tens of +thousands. And the deplorable truth of this degeneracy is overlooked, +because no more than a fractional number of our doctors distinguish +between The Normal and The Average. With the result, that comparing an +abnormal with others more abnormal, they declare the less abnormal +satisfactory. Of the fine physique, the vital health and faculty, the +zest and joy of living which characterise true Normality--and which are +the birthright of every human being--only the few have any conception. + + +It is significant that the sole ancient civilisations now surviving, +India and China, have never hazarded their chances of survival by +emancipating their women. On the other hand, because their women are in +bondage, personally and psychologically, and because their women's vital +powers are exhausted by laborious and de-sexing occupations, the moral +and material progress of these peoples is at low ebb. + + +V + +Recruiting statistics have shown us the Damocles-sword of Decadence +suspended by a hair above our heads; have shown us our great people so +riddled with disease, defect and abnormality, that nearly _half our +manhood was declared_ unfitted for man's elementary duty of fighting for +his country (55.9 per cent. only being classed in Grade I.). All that +our centuries of evolutionary progress have achieved for us, all that +the Race has achieved for itself by faculty and enterprise, integrity +and industry, threatens now to be sacrificed to a Feminist fanaticism, +which, denying to woman any more vital or tender human faculties or +offices than those of man, has increasingly repudiated all else for her +than rights to pit her wits and muscles against his. + +England has long been, and has once again proved herself supreme among +the nations. Because England, more than any other land, had freed her +women from the more laborious industrial employments; leaving them, in +consequence, more vital power to put into the making of a splendid Race, +fine of body, stable of character; the men of it charged with virile +energy and enterprise, the women house-proud, home-abiding; faithful +wives and admirable mothers. + +Recruiting statistics have valuably emphasised the truth that in those +localities where women are most employed in labour, there disease and +degeneracy are most rampant. Significantly it was shown that +colliery-districts and the Universities (the latter with about 80 per +cent. of Grade I. men), were conspicuous in providing the greatest +number of men qualified for military service. Why? Because neither the +mothers of men enrolled in Universities, nor, for the most part, those +of colliery-districts, are employed industrially. + +While, on the other hand, the health and physique of cotton-mill +operatives proved so "alarmingly low" that of 184 weavers and spinners +only 57 could even be passed for Army-training. Of 290 examined, only 57 +men of one cotton-spinning town were graded I.; only 64 were graded II., +while 169 were graded III. and IV. + +Again, _Why_? Because, unlike colliery-districts where the standard of +health was notably good, in cotton-towns where physique and health were +"alarmingly low" the vast majority of wives and mothers are employed in +factories. It is important, moreover, to note that in such gradings of +men for military service, even those classed first were by no means +necessarily normal or vigorous. On the contrary, many passed were later +shown defective, by breakdown under stress of military discipline. + +Further, that so many as 20 _per cent._ of the young manhood of our +highest culture were disqualified for Grade I. is a serious +circumstance. + + +Mr. Lloyd George has said regarding this most vital question: "The next +great lesson of the war is that if Britain has to be thoroughly equipped +to meet any emergencies, the State must take a more constant and a more +intelligent interest in the health and fitness of the people. If the +Empire is to be equal to its task, the men and women who make up the +Empire must be equal to it. The number of B2 and C3 men is prodigious. I +asked the Minister of National Service how many more men could we have +put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had been +properly looked after. I staggered at the reply: '_At least a +million_.' A virile race has been wasted by neglect and want of +forethought, and it is a danger to the State and to the Empire. I +solemnly warn my fellow countrymen that you cannot maintain an A1 Empire +with a C3 population." + +This estimate of abnormality, by reason of a million of the nation's +young manhood disqualified by definite disease, defect or degeneracy, is +far below the mark. Because owing to the urgent need for fighting men, +the standard of fitness was compulsorily low. And the estimate takes no +account of the huge number of such low-grade "Fit," who succumbed in +death or incapacitation to the strain of military training, or to the +vicissitudes of active service. + +The _British Medical Journal_ has published figures showing that of +2,080,709 men examined by Medical Boards--the men constituting "a fair +sample of the male population between the ages of 18 and 43, and a +smaller proportion of the more fit between 43 and 51"--_only 1 in 3 +could be classed in Grade I_. That is, out of every 150 members of our +British manhood in its best years of life, _only 50 were up to the mark +in health and normality_. + +The _Journal_ comments on "this mass of physical inefficiency, with all +its concomitant human misery, and direct loss to the country." + +Sir Auckland Geddes, addressing the Federation of British Industries, +stated that "_appalling facts about the health of the nation have been +disclosed in reports of medical examinations carried out by recruiting +authorities_." One of the most startling and disquieting of these +disclosures was that of hundreds of thousands of our men, between the +ages of 18 and 43, dying of tuberculosis. + +Despite all this, however, because our authorities fear to face the +truth and the drastic economic upheaval involved in the prohibition of +all young wives and mothers from the stress of breadwinning, attempt is +being made to shelve the whole blame of this appalling state of national +health upon faulty industrial and hygienic conditions; too long hours of +work, imperfect ventilation, bad housing, inferior cooking, poor wages, +and so forth. All factors, of course, but only contributory to the great +vital one. And in order to placate the public conscience, reforms in +these directions are promised. Excellent and sadly needed reforms, it is +true--in so far as they go; but bound to failure because they will not +go to the root of things. They will be tried, no doubt, in our promised +Reconstruction-scheme. But being palliative merely, further holocausts +of human life and faculty and happiness will be sacrificed in the +experiment. + +Sooner or later--and Heaven send it be sooner lest it come too +late!--the truth must be confronted, and the crisis met. The further the +Feminism now threatening our downfall secures footing, however, and more +and more diverts the nation's life-resources into merely economic +channels, more and more squanders them in abnormal ambitions and output, +the more deeply-rooted and more desperate will have become the cancer of +our national decadence. And incalculably the more difficult and +dangerous will be the task of its eradication. + +The reform should have come while _man_ still held the reins securely in +his grasp--ere Feminism had entrenched itself and its deforming aims and +powers behind an enfranchised woman-sex; to intimidate and out-number +his own. Because women in general, misled by these false standards, and, +moreover, deteriorated by de-sexing training, become every year less and +less disposed toward home and family-life; less and less willing to +burden themselves with the duties and sacrifices indispensable to the +proper fulfilment of wife and motherhood. And now, more than ever, when +they are still further to be pitted against men in the industrial +struggle, woman-instincts and aptitudes will become ever more warped and +enfeebled in them. + +The Danger menacing us is the graver because, while Disease is the +expression of a healthy vital conscience protesting, in terms of pain +and disability, against conditions, environmental or personal, adverse +to normal states of health and development (and to which the healthy +living organism declines therefore to conform), Degeneracy is +characterised by a vital conscience of so low an order that it conforms +and adapts the type, without pain or protest, to conditions perversive +of healthy normality and of further evolutionary advance. + +There comes a stage, accordingly, in Racial decline, when the Racial +vital conscience no longer rebels, in terms of Disease, but conforms, in +terms of Degeneracy, to artificial, abnormal and evil conditions of +living, environmental and personal. And then as happened to those mighty +civilisations snuffed out before us--the major portion of the community +having lapsed from health and normality into decadent states of mind and +body, vice and corruption become its Normal both of mind and body. Evil +and chaos run riot. Till Nature, defied and transgressed at every turn, +opens the vials of her wrath, and pours forth her microbic myriads to +sow death and destruction wholesale. + +Thus she sweeps from the board of Life another great Race--that had +failed. + + +VI + +Already, there are disquieting signs that the physical disease and +abnormality among us have engendered such degrees of mental and of moral +aberration as may lead at any hour to grave disruption. Below the quiet +order of our British constitution are heard, from time to time, the +rumble of chaotic and disintegrating forces. With growing frequency, the +shriek of anarchy shrills. Red flags break. We shall be truly fortunate +if we succeed in bridging over, without more or less serious upheaval, +the critical gap between War and Peace. + + +Woman is Nature's peacemaker and welder. She it is who, in the home, +knits the loose ends of the multiple incongruous and turbulent human +elements into social unities--families, friendly communities, townships +and peoples--by her annealing powers of affection and sympathy, of +charity and intuitive understanding. + +"_Keep the Home-fires burning!_" sang our soldiers. No considerations of +The British Constitution, the London Stock Exchange, or Worshipful Civic +Company, fired them to heroism, spurred them to victory. But for the +Home-fires burning in suburban villas, in four-roomed cottages or +two-room lodgings--as equally in hereditary mansions--it was, our +gallants dared and died, and reaped their glorious triumph. + +My father, an early and an earnest advocate of Female enfranchisement, +used to counsel Lord Beaconsfield that to enfranchise women would be to +establish the Conservative party for a century, at least. Because nine +out of ten women were, in those days, Conservative. + +Since then, Feminism has been active, however. Less by way of direct +propaganda of anarchy or Bolshevism, be it said, than by fostering that +masculine bent and spirit of material unrest and discontent which +destroy in women all the finer, fairer ideals and attributes of their +intrinsic womanhood, and those self-denying ordinances which so sweeten +and dignify the humblest tasks as to content the doers of them with the +inspiring sense that they are worth the while. With the result that +nothing so characterises the great mass of latter-day working women as a +smouldering irrational and intemperate Socialism. And the Socialism of +working-women (as, too, of the majority of working-men) is based on +total ignorance of the impracticability and evil of making for +universal equality in a vast Scheme of Things, the values and the +ultimate successes whereof depend absolutely on preserving those +highly-specialised diversities and inequalities, alike of faculty and +bent, into which Life, with its countless degrees of evolutionary +development, has progressively graded living creatures, brute and human. +The innumerable orders and classes of our sociology are as inevitable as +they are invaluable. Because they serve for stages of faculty and +avocation upon that biological gradient of Ascent by which we climb. + + +As was pointed out earlier in this book, woman, although passive and +reposeful of inherence, is variable and unstable of temperament; her +powers being eternally at ebb and flux, in order that she may be the +medium of those evolutionary mutations which engender human progress. A +nature truly perilous when too great dominance is permitted the sex in +affairs so momentous as those of State-administration, upon the firm +stability and permanence whereof depend so many destinies. Because this +evolutionary impulsiveness of hers is dangerously liable to express +itself in irresponsible, chaotic and anarchical outbreaks. As history +shows, wreckage of many once mighty, but now extinct, civilisations set +in when the males thereof weakly, or basely, surrendered their manhood's +rights of rule to a sex disqualified by its native non-conformability to +rule in national and international policies. + +Should women ever come to exercise political power identical with man's, +they would be liable to subvert the whole national and international +administration of their country on an impulse. Not solely from craving +for novelty, but, too, as result of their inherent bent toward forward +and precipitate movement, and their implicit faith in change as being +necessarily _reform_. + +Nations in which the feminine element is strong betray the native +fickleness thereof in perpetual change of Ministry--even in frequent +revolution. This element of instability is Ireland's curse, the flaw in +her people's splendid Celtic faculty. + + +In view of the stern and strenuous and narrowly-rationalistic creed and +claims of Feminism, as too of the steel-brained, steel-willed fighting +women leading it, men may scoff, with sense of false security, at odds +of danger from feminine weakness and fickleness in Feminist ranks. They +scoffed just so at the menace of Prussianism--whereof Feminism is the +female rendering. + +It must always be remembered, moreover, that the civic and political +privileges ceded to Woman, the Feminist, are ceded alike to that +freakish, irresponsible creature Woman, the Femininist, who, to +counterbalance the decline of woman-quality in those others of her sex, +adds to her number and her freakishness as those others wax in number +and in stern determination. And in a House of Commons of mixed sex, +Feminists would find, to their undoing, that here as elsewhere the +Ultra-Feminines would speedily outnumber and out-power themselves. The +Movement, inaugurated in all the stern and sterile sex-insensibility of +the Feminist code, would soon be dry-rotten and corrupt with the +weaknesses bred of Effeminacy. + +Nor should it be forgotten that the present Feminist leaders it was who, +by their dangerous Bolshevist tactics of Militant Suffragism, proclaimed +the anarchy seething in themselves and their adherents. + + +So long as there survives within the breast of man a spark of that +Chivalry which has been both the inspiring and impelling power of his +virile development, he can neither meet, nor can he treat with woman +upon equal terms. + +Always the aspects of her in capacities of mother, wife or love (or +mistress) must intervene to disarm, and to incapacitate him from +exerting his full strength against her. Whether her appeal to him be +sacred or profane, accordingly--that of woman at her best or at her +worst--always so long as he is man, her highest and most tender (as her +basest) appeal will be by way of those woman-Unfitnesses which in every +age have served as highest incentive of his Fitnesses; that he might +win, safeguard and cherish her. This chivalrous instinct it was, in +part--for behind it lurked the recognition of more than half a nation +suffering from the wrong of Unenfranchisement--which disarmed and +paralysed his action in respect of those same Suffragist outbreaks. And +so long as he is man, will he be similarly disarmed and dangerously +inhibited from meeting and from battling successfully with woman. + +History repeats itself. And if men suppose that they have seen the last +of female Militancy, and overlook the menacing truth that their own +incapacity to cope with this must increase inevitably in direct +proportion to woman's waxing power, they are blind, indeed, to dangerous +breakers ahead. + +Having sown the fickle wind of woman's variability, they are like to +reap the whirlwind in her inherent non-conformability; a difficult and +parlous factor such as they have never previously encountered in +political and industrial administration. Such non-conformability as is +seen at an extreme in the anarchy of revolutions; in which women, having +lost control and balance, plunge deeper and deeper into excesses, +without power, it would seem, of recoil. While men reach a maximum, +recover poise, and then setting about to re-constitute order out of +chaos, more often than not evolve a higher form of order than had +previously obtained. + + +VII + +Secure in their traditional superior strength, however, and with +characteristic complacency in this relation, men have no suspicion of +the sex-antagonism--hatred even--seething against them in Feminism. And +this far from having been annealed or softened, has been, on the +contrary, greatly aggravated by the concessions and new privileges +lately accorded the sex. + +Strange to say, the chief talk of extremist women in their new +War-capacities was bitterest grievance and hostility against the male, +because, although installed in masculine positions, they were denied +rights identical with his; of rank and recognition, of responsibility +and pay. That they held these capacities temporarily merely, and as +novices and amateurs, while men held theirs as experts, for long service +or for superior values by right of masculine abilities, had no weight +whatsoever. Never in all her days of so-called subjection has woman been +so loud and denunciatory of the injustices of The Oppressor, of his +conspiracies and crimes against her, as since she has been yielded a +number of those rights which Feminism claims. + +Feminists will say this is because complete equality in all things has +not yet been granted--has yet to be fought for. The truth is, however, +that the interests and functions of men fail wholly to satisfy the +wholly dissimilar natures of women. But until they have realised +this--the true reason of their discontent--an ever-increasing number of +women will continue to make these their coveted goal, and to chafe with +anger and bitterest resentment against the other sex for denying them +full measure of things--without intrinsic value for them. + + * * * * * + +It needs no saying by me, that, apart from the Feminist extremist +faction, the Woman's Movement includes a number of the sex +characterised by the noblest ideals and impulse, as by the finest +achievements; their creed and aims being pure of self-seeking or +materialist ambitions for themselves or for their kin. And these it is +to whom we owe it, that, amid the clamour and the combat of those +others, the spirit of true Womanhood, devoted, wise and altruistic, is +making itself felt everywhere in modern thought and modern progress. +Such women for the most part discredit Feminism, in many cases directly +oppose both its doctrine and practice. + + +VIII + +The huge numerical preponderance of women must, of itself, presently +swamp all masculine power and initiative in State affairs unless the +political functions of the sexes be separated. Thenceforward, _Vox +populi_ must be the voice of Woman--man's having ceased to be heard. + +And man's chiefest menace lies, be it reiterated to the point of tedium, +in that momentous fact of the biological investment in woman, of the +Racial Trustfund. For this is, at the same time, his sole heritage and +that of the nation. And not only does it constitute her the custodian of +Human Life and Faculty but it makes her arbitress as well of man's and +of the nation's destiny. + +In yielding his House of Parliament, man has surrendered not only his +highest and most characteristic prerogative, but he has yielded the last +exclusive stronghold of his manhood. An entrenchment indispensable to +his difficult task of holding his own against a sex overwhelmingly +superior in number, and chartered, by right of womanhood, with +time-honoured baffling privileges which handicap and defeat him at all +turns. A sex Nature has armoured with charms, moreover, and with +weaknesses for his disarming; by appeal, on the one hand, to his +chivalry, on the other, to his senses. + +Entrenched in his last stronghold, he stood some chance of exerting his +allotted dominance in life's affairs. All his strongholds invaded, he +stands none. + +For the rest, it can only be said that men who should reject their own, +and elect members of the opposite sex to represent them in Parliament, +would by that vote alone of non-confidence in the ability or the good +faith of their kind, proclaim the human male a pitiful failure in +species; an order without specialisation of brain, of character, or of +moral, to give it essential values in Human concerns. + +Woman, on the other hand, would stand acclaimed a Super-Being. One not +only highly-specialised by God and Nature, as creatrix of the Race, and +endowed with gifts to be the Racial nurse and guide and teacher, but, +added to these most vital of human capacities, she would stand +accredited by man with such superior qualifications also for the +administration of the State as to lead him to adjudge her his superior +in this capacity likewise. While her still further pre-eminence is now +to be emphasised by pitting her on equal terms against the male, in all +the Arts and Crafts, the professions and the businesses. + +Truly--poor Super-Being that she is to be--burdened and spent by her +super-tax of faculties and functions, she will need, indeed, to break +into the Racial Trust-Fund, in order to equip herself for these her +multifarious exactions. Because not only will it be her affliction to +produce the Race and mother it, but she must provide for it too; +moreover, must doctor it, play lawyer, parson and accountant to it; +paint its pictures, mould its statuary, plan its architecture, build its +houses, compose its music, blow its trumpets, beat its drums; and, over +and beyond all these, must administer its politics, and serve it +presently, no doubt, as Premier, Primate and Chancellor. + +While it must be merely a matter of brief time, when, to her other +tasks, will be added the manning of its Army, its Navy and Air-Services, +and the serving of its guns. + +Should Feminist aims be realised--and already they are more than +half-won--it will be a case, truly, of _Exit Man!_ + +Rejected on all counts, as possessing no intrinsic sex-values, to offset +woman's vital and pre-eminent one of the creation of Life (for his +biological part in this is so slight and brief as to be unworthy of note +were it not indispensable, and will be insignificant, indeed, when he no +longer serves as highly-specialised agent and artificer of the Racial +faculty); possessing no distinctive qualities and no obligations of +fatherhood, to protect and to provide for offspring, and thereby to +offset woman's vital and important one of nurturing and rearing this; no +more than woman's equal (if that) in the Sciences and Arts, in Politics +and Commerce--Truly no alternative will be left him save to retire, +abased, into the dim background of the Human Pageant; a self-admitted +failure, without place or standing, by virile and exclusive right and +power of body, brain and office. + + +IX + +A more inspiring picture presents itself, however. + +Of a Manhood, worthy of its racial and national traditions, waking +timely to a recognition of its manhood's powers and duties, and, having +emancipated itself from woman's rule in all beside her natural province, +reinstating its supremacy in every virile field and function; and thus +re-shouldering bravely its allotted burdens in Labour, Faculty and +Administration. + +Of a Womanhood re-finding itself also, and finding itself and its +natural lot upon a fairer and a nobler plane--the plane of Life, as +ever, but illumined now by broader outlook, and instinct with higher +understanding. + +And these two working for the common good, of our Anglo-Saxon Race, +recruited by their sympathetic impulse and reciprocal achievement, +having been set, in course of a few generations, upon routes of such a +Human Renaissance as should carry it forward to fulfilment of its +splendid destiny. + + +In this New Human Dispensation would be a House of Women to serve as a +second--a balancing and an uplifting--wing to the House of Men. + +Thus in the national as in the natural life, The Sexes would be most +effectively operating and co-operating; travelling each along its own +inherent and allotted lines, employing each its own intrinsic powers and +fulfilling its intrinsic functions, apart from, but abreast of and in +continual touch with the other; inspiring, fortifying, supplementing and +complementing the attributes, the trend and the achievements, each of +each. + + * * * * * + +Said Mazzini, "_Man and Woman are the two human Wings that lift the soul +toward the Ideal we are destined to attain_." And the value and the +effectiveness of these two human, as of other wings, lie in the degree +to which, although they work in unison, _they move in different areas_; +apart from and independent, each of the other; balancing and +correlating, but, nevertheless, each sustaining its own side of the +body, Vital and Social. + + + + +APPENDIX + + FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL AND MENDELIAN + PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I. + + +I + + _The Male is the impelling force in Physical Development, or + Adaptation to environment_ + +Scientific stock-breeding supplies valuable practical examples of +applied Genetics, or the Science of Heredity. + +Although artificial, in the sense that the creatures of the Stock-yard +are not mated by law of Natural Selection, nor are they bred or reared +under normal environmental conditions, the circumstance that breeders +are breeding for special characteristics, and mate the parents with a +view to the transmission and the accentuation of such, provides +important indications regarding hereditary influence and its determinant +factors. + +Mr. Horace G. Regnart, who has done much to establish Stock-breeding on +a scientific basis, kindly furnishes me with the following interesting +and suggestive data: + +"We Breeders pay more attention to the bull because he can sire fifty +calves yearly; while the cow can produce only one. One can afford to pay +a thousand guineas for a bull, whereas one cannot afford fifty cows at +the same price. And the purchase of a first-class bull is the cheapest +way of getting a good herd. The history of practically every great herd +is the history of some particular bull. As we say, '_a bull is half the +herd_.' It is equally true to say that every great bull is the son of a +great cow. With one highly-prepotent bull we can raise a high-class +herd, even if we start with second-rate females; while a bad bull will +ruin the best herd in the county. It is for this reason that we 'put all +our money' on the bull." + +All of which supports my theory that the male is the impelling agency +in Adaptation to Environment, or evolutionary development on the plane +of physics, and that such progressive development is achieved by way of +the male traits being Dominant upon this plane, and manifesting, +accordingly, in the physical terms of stature and muscle and +force-production. + +The male being the determinant agent in the physical characteristics of +size and flesh and nervous energy--for which breeders of Live-stock are +making--the bull is "half the herd." "With one highly-prepotent bull," a +high-class herd may be raised, even though inaugurated with second-rate +females. Whilst "a bad bull will ruin the best herd in the county." Akin +to which is the circumstance that, in two generations, the improvement +which occurs in the offspring of a New Forest pony-mare when mated with +a horse, lapses; the descendants reverting to the type of the New Forest +pony. + +If, however, the male, being the agent of Adaptation, determines +progressive development in the direction of such physical traits as +further fit species to its material environment, the female it is, that, +being the agency of the Evolution of Life (and of the equipment of +species in terms of Life, accordingly) supplies offspring with the Vital +potential of living cells and vital organs--heart, lungs, digestive and +assimilative organs and functions--which, by engendering the multiple +functions and vital processes of Life, _sustain_ the existence and the +powers of the organism in relation to environment. The female, moreover, +provides it with the Vital potential of reproductive organs for the +transmission of types ever further evolved and adapted, in terms both of +Life and Adaptation. + +The male thus broadly sketches out the lines and supplies the initiative +of structural development. The female supplements the sketch with the +structural potential of living cells, whereby structural development is +achieved; as too with the vital potential of organs whereby living +organisation is sustained and transmitted. + +The great sire, bull or man, generates the great daughter. But since +Life is earlier in origin and precedes Development, the great mother it +must be who first _engenders_ the great son. Because, as I have already +pointed out, Life and Reproductive-Energy must exist in the potential +before they can evolve upon the plane of personal development. In other +words, function precedes structure. The potential of both function and +structure must precede the _development_ of either on the plane of Life. + +Woman, accordingly, is Creatrix of the Race, because in her the Race +becomes potential. Man is Artificer of the Race, however, because from +him the Race receives its powers of concrete development. + +For progressive evolutionary advance, therefore, every new generation of +females must contribute a new complement of Vital potential, equal in +potence to the new complement of Developmental initiative which the new +generation of males contribute, and by way of which the female Vital +potential is differentiated into further concrete powers. Fruitless for +one parent to supply a finer complement than the other is able to render +in terms, respectively, of Life or Development. The female potential +must be adequate to energise the male powers of differentiation. The +male powers must be adequate to differentiate the female potential. + + +II + + _The female supplies the Typal and Vital Potentials of Adaptation_ + +To Mr. Regnart, I am indebted for the following further data, which seem +further to support my view: + +"Ursula Raglan was a Beef-cow that milked heavily. To a Beef-bull, she +produced Gainford Champion--a great bull. While to a Dairy-bull, she +produced the dam of Priceless Princess--about the best Dairy-cow that +ever looked through a halter." + +Here we find the Vital-potential indispensable to the equipment of great +offspring, proved great in the mother, by her Female vital-function of +lactation. While her respective bull-mates appear as the determinant +factors which differentiate this Vital potential in offspring, +respectively, into the Beef-traits (stature and muscle, that is) or the +Milking-traits (Vital function, that is). The very term "Dairy-bull," +signifying a male with power to transmit to female descendants the +purely Female trait of milking, is evidence, in itself, of a female +trait, derived by a male from his mother, passing into the potential, +and lying dormant, or Recessive, for a generation, in his male +organisation, and then emerging again in his daughter. + +The great bull is sire of a great cow--_because he was son of a great +cow_. And he is a great bull because he received from his dam a great +female Vital-potential, for differentiation into greatness of the male +traits that characterise great males. And in his turn, he may sire a cow +greater than his mother, because in passing on to his daughter the great +female Vital-potential of his mother, he passes on a female potential of +greatness to which his own male inherence of greatness has added a +further power of Differentiation. This increased _Male_ power of +differentiation, descending in the female line, however, manifests in +traits of increased _Female_ functioning--the function of milking, that +is. + +The daughter inherits thus from her father the Female potential of her +paternal grandmother, with new power of Male differentiation acquired by +its residence during a generation (so to speak) in a male organisation. +Which new power, when reawakened to function in a female organism, +manifests in a further degree of Femaleness. + + +Male development having progressed along lines of increasing brain- and +nervous power, which the female has ever further inherited, Female +development has progressed along lines of such increasing brain-power as +has enabled her to transform her native simple and undifferentiated +Femaleness into ever further developed and more complex Female _traits_, +or functional and nervous characteristics. + +While, on the other hand, since Female evolution has proceeded along +lines of increasing Life, or Vital Power, which the male has ever +further inherited this increasing Vital power it has been that has +served as _potential_ for the evolution of his Maleness in terms of +higher brain- and nervous power. + +The great cow is mother of a great bull _because she was daughter of a +great sire_. And she was a great cow because she received from her sire +a great male complement of developmental power, which imparted to her +Recessive, and undifferentiated Femaleness, further power of functioning +as female characteristics. And she may mother a son greater even than +her sire because the great male Developmental impetus of her father +becomes in her a greater Vital potential; which, descending in the male +line, engenders further power for the further differentiation of male +characteristics. + + +III + + _Evolution of Species and evolution of the Individual occur on + different planes_ + +The Evolution of Species progresses in every generation by way of each +Sex having derived from the other Sex a new and opposite potential to +engender, in every alternate generation, the further evolution of its +Sex-traits along its own (and contrary) lines. + +It may be considered therefore that Type, or Species, evolves to higher +inherences by way of progressive divergences of Sex-characteristics. +While the Evolution of the individual progresses in every generation in +proportion as parents of both sexes had mated, in the previous +generation, with such members of the opposite sex as were best fitted to +supply, in the gametes contributed to offspring, complements which, by +union with their own, so matched and supplemented their own as to have +quickened and energised the development of offspring to the fullest and +the most efficient issues. In any line, however, a strain of greatness +or of other inherence descends in alternating succession, now in the +female, now in the male line; receding now into the potential, and then +evolving in development. So that while the Individual normally evolves +in every generation, the Type evolves only in alternate generations. + +The evolution of Type, or Species, is the intrinsic function of the +spontaneous Evolution of Life into two orders of Sex. It occurs on a +wholly different plane from that of the evolution of the Individual. But +by way of his, or her, complement to the biological constitution of +offspring, members of both sexes contribute alike to the evolution of +_Species_ and to that of the _Individual_--according as such complement +enhances the power of the traits of the opposite Sex to manifest, and +further to evolve in offspring. + +The intensification in the one sex of its own inherences stimulates a +proportional intensification of the opposite inherences in the other +Sex, both as regards the evolution of the Type and of the Individual. +The phenomenon would seem to be akin to that increase of one electrical +potential evoking a proportional increase of the other electrical +potential, to complement it. When one sex fails to supply its due +potential, or complement, to the other, the evolution both of Type and +Individual receives a check. + +And because the evolution of Type is achieved by the Germ-plasm derived +from a parent of one sex obtaining new increment from being invested in +the organisation of offspring of the opposite sex, it is not until the +new Typal-inherence of this Germ-plasm is revivified again in the +organisation of a member of the Sex from which the plasm was derived, +that such new impulse manifests. Hence the phenomenon of characteristics +being transmitted from parents to offspring of opposite sex. So that +daughters of normal womanly organisation reproduce the Typal +characteristics of their fathers' maternal line; while in sons of normal +male organisation those of their mothers' paternal line emerge. + +Hence too, the reversion of offspring of hybrid plants to the +types,--pure Dominant and pure Recessive--of their grandparents. + + +IV + + _Progressive segregation of Male and Female traits in opposite + sides of body ever further intensifies and differentiates their + intrinsic qualities_ + +The biological constitution of humans and of the other higher organisms +differentiating them into two opposite symmetrical sides, in which, as +development rises higher in the scale, the Dominance, or Maleness, in +them is ever further and more perfectly segregated from the +Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, secures the progressive +intensification, respectively, of Maleness or of Femaleness in them, by +ever further ranging the factors, or traits, of these on opposite sides +of the biological equation; and by thus more effectively centralising +the powers, according to sex, in one or the other side thereof. + +Mendel's peas, not thus differentiated into two sides, are bi-sexual and +self-fertilising. Of the original stock, that order in which Dominant +traits are prepotent is differentiating toward a male _genus_, however. +While the Recessives are differentiating toward a female _genus_. +Although regarded as "pure" Dominants and "pure" Recessives, they are +nevertheless hybrids in respect of Sex. Being self-fertilising, both +Dominants and Recessives are of low power, alike for reproduction and +development. Because the Dominance, or Male developmental power, of the +Recessives being inhibited by the Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, +is of low Vigour. While the Recessiveness, or Female vital power in the +Dominants being unduly expended by the Dominance, or Maleness, in them, +is of low Vitality. The male sex-cells of the self-fertilising Dominants +thus fertilise female sex-cells of low vitality. While the female +sex-cells of the self-fertilising Recessives are fertilised by male +sex-cells of low vigour. + +In cross-breeding, the conditions cease not only to be those of +self-fertilising, but they cease, moreover, to be those of the +close inbreeding of self-fertilisation. In the "hybrids" obtained +by crossing the higher-vigoured male sex-cells of the "pure" +Dominants with the higher-vitalised female sex-cells of the "pure" +Recessives, the Dominants--because Dominance is prepotent for exterior +characteristics--submerge the external traits of the Recessives, which +are prepotent for vital and internal functioning. Such Dominants are a +bi-sexual species in which the male is prepotent. And to be male, means +that they have expended, in terms of structural development, a great +proportion of the female Vital power inherent in them; thus masking the +Recessive female traits in them, as regards exterior characteristics. +But since reproductive power inheres in these Recessive traits, these +traits are preserved in the sex-cells, equally with the Dominant traits. +The plants being not only bi-sexual, but self-fertilising also, the +sex-cells must obviously be bi-sexual too; in order to provide the +organism with factors both of life and development. Every sex-cell is a +hybrid cell, therefore; bearing both Dominant and Recessive traits. But, +like their parents, in some, the Dominant, in others, the Recessive +traits are prepotent. And the Dominant sex-cells mating with Dominants, +the Recessives with Recessives, the original types of so-called "pure" +Dominants and "pure" Recessives reappear in the third generation. + + +V + + _Self-fertilising organism is a female organism with a male + organism differentiated in it_ + +Because the female represents the Life-potential of species and the +Vital potential of organisms, a self-fertilising plant or creature must +be regarded as a female organism, with a male organism of Adaptation, or +Differentiation, developed in it. This male organism energises both its +developmental and its functioning power, and fertilises it; although the +_potential_ of structure, of growth, of function and of reproduction are +engendered in the female organism. The female is the root-stock or +parent-stem of all species, therefore. + +If Dominance is Maleness, and Recessiveness is Femaleness, and if +Dominance energises structural development while Recessiveness engenders +reproduction, a Dominant self-fertilising plant is a female plant, with +a male plant of superior Dominance differentiated in it. While a +Recessive self-fertilising plant is a female plant of superior +Recessiveness, with a male plant of inferior Dominance differentiated in +it. In crossing stock of superior Dominance with stock of superior +Recessiveness, the Dominant prevails over the Recessive in the general +structural traits of the resulting "hybrid," but not in its reproductive +inherence. The new hybrids being male in inherence, nothing is added to +the female reproductive, or Vital, potential in them. The root-stock +transmits to its sex-cells therefore just as its grandmother +did--Recessives of her type, and Dominants of the type of the Dominant +male engrafted on her, of the male grandfather of this third +generation, that is. Hence reversion. + + +VI + + _Sterility of offspring of alien species proves evolution of + Species and of Individual are independent phenomena_ + +The fact that dog and wolf, when mated, breed fertile species, proves +them sprung from the same root-stock. While the hybrid offspring of +different species are sterile. Showing such an intrinsic incompatability +of the alien complements in the zygote as, while operating as no bar to +their immediate union and their development into a complete hybrid +individual, nevertheless bars the incorporation of the alien breed in +the Vital potential of stock. + +Such sterility in the offspring of creatures of different species is +weighty evidence that the Evolution of Type, or Species, and the +Evolution of the Individual are wholly independent phenomena; occurring +upon wholly different planes, and involving wholly different principles +and sets of processes. In the mating of alien species, the two +sex-cells, although of dissimilar species-inherence, unite nevertheless +and develop in the maternal environment into a living entity of mongrel +order. But the Germ-plasm contained in the gamete of one species will +not germinate in the alien environment of an organism of alien species. +No potential, either Vital or of Differentiation, is engendered, +therefore, for production of offspring. Hence sterility results. The +potential of a living individual is seen thus to belong to a wholly +different plane of phenomena from the potential of Stock. Conditions +which do not annul the powers of life and of function in the one, quench +life and function in the other with the seal of sterility. + + +VII + + _Possible explanation of "Sports"_ + +Mr. Regnart says: "We often meet with Sports. Second- and third-rate +parents may produce an exceptionally fine individual, but such animals +are always failures to breed from. The law of Filial Regression comes +into operation. Our aim is to find families that have produced a large +number of fine animals--we know then that we are on safe ground." + +In these cases, it would seem that the "fine individual" results from so +singularly harmonious and successful a complementing and fructifying of +the parental halves in offspring as conduce to develop the best points +of both; doubtless, too, to eliminate or to annul weak or faulty factors +of either parental strain. Neither of such inferior-grade parents +transmitting a fine _lineal_ potential, however, the exceptional +fineness of the individual is not inherent in the Germ-plasm he or she +transmits to offspring. The fine characteristics of such "Sports" are +not transmissible, therefore, to descendants. + +Proof again of two planes of Life and Evolution, that of Species and +that of the Individual. Moral, too, of the importance of fine selection +in mating, since the harmonious mating of second- or third-rate parents +may produce finer offspring than are born of ill-assorted matings of two +finer breeds of parent. + +The case is recorded of a pony about the size of a Shetland pony, which +was the offspring of pedigree Shire-parents on both sides, _both parents +being over 17 hands_. The most striking feature about the animal was +that there was nothing of the _horse_-type about him--he was a perfect +example of _pony_. + +Shire horses are typical examples of Vigour, or developmental power, +expressed in terms of stature, muscle and nervous energy. And for so +long as the breeding for these characteristics was supplemented in terms +of vital organs and vital functioning, by an equivalent maternal +complement of Vital potential, to sustain the constitutional expenditure +involved in stature, muscular equipment, and nervous energy, the breed +improved in these particulars. Pushed beyond this limit, by introducing +into stock further strains of Vigour, or developmental initiative, +without simultaneously providing the indispensable equivalents of these +in increasing Vital potentials, all at once the balance toppled, and +reversion to inferior type resulted. + +An excessive proportion of the Vital power of these two Pedigree Shires +of great stature and great strength had been expended in the +achievement of such great stature and great strength, and in the +equipment of digestive and assimilative organs required to sustain +these. But little had remained, accordingly, for Reproductive +investments. Hence reversion in the de-vitalised stock. + +One conceives of the counterpoise in Stock, of Male and Female +complements, as being akin to that of the opposite and complementary +curves of an arch. So long as equipoise is sustained by the perfect +balance of the contrary curves, so long each re-inforces the other to +support a heavy superstructure of development. Lopsidedness of either +curve leads to collapse. + + +VIII + + _Vigour is Male. Vitability is Female_ + +"Vigour," which breeders regard as a potent factor in heredity, is +commonly confounded with Vital Power, or Vitability; although the two +would seem to be diametrically opposite in cause, in nature and effect. + +An athlete, in so-called "condition," is in the prime of Vigour; his +muscular and nervous powers being at high levels of structure and of +functioning. His Vital powers are proportionally at low ebb, however; as +is proved by his notable lack of recuperative power in illness. He is +bad subject, indeed, in respect of progress and recovery from disease. + +Feeble-minded persons possess but little Vigour of brain or of body, yet +their Vital power, as shown in healthy organic functioning and +vitativeness, is often extraordinary. Vigour is an expression of nervous +energy, and is generated by the brain. Vitability is Life-power, and +results from vital organs efficient both in structure and in processes. +It is engendered in the Reproductive System; which may be regarded as +the power-house of Life and vital function. + +_Vigour_ is the power of Differentiation, or Individuation, of an +organism, structural and functional, physical and mental, in terms of +its relation to environment. _Vitability_ is the intensification of the +individualism and of the functioning of an organism in terms of +Life-power. + +Vigour, being katabolic, a male and a Dominant trait, manifests in man +(as in plants) as Tallness, or the expenditure of vital energy upon the +material plane, in growth and stature; as too in functional initiative +and activity, both physical and mental, on the material plane. + +Vitability, being anabolic, a female and a Recessive trait, manifests as +Dwarfness, or the conservation of vital energy upon the material plane, +in respect of growth and stature; as too in weakness, or inhibition of +vigour and activity, both physical and mental. + +The male trait of Vigour makes men larger, stronger, hardier, and more +resistant to disease than women are. The female trait of Vitability +makes women healthier, more charged with vital power and temperament, +more recuperative from disease, and longer-lived than men. The +complementary inherences of Vigour and Vitability, derived respectively +from the two parents, and supplementing one another in offspring, endow +him or her with fine form and structure, healthy vital organs and +efficient function, power of Life and nervous energy. + +In the normal male, Vigour dominates Vitability; the maternal potential +of Vitability being differentiated in him into its male equivalent. +While in the normal female, Vigour recedes within the Female traits of +vital power and healthy functioning, endurance and womanly faculty. + +The opposite modes of Vigour and Vitality are well shown in disease. In +vigorous men, disease may assume the type known as "sthenic"; +occasioning such violent re-activity, or rebellion, of the system, and +such consequent severity of symptoms as speedily exhaust the resources, +and tend to fatal ending. While Vital power, being anabolic and +conservative, meets the foe passively, and instead of wasting, +economises the forces by moderation of symptoms; bending to the course +and processes of sickness, and making thereby for recovery. Because of +the lesser vitability of their cells, disease in men tends toward +structural, or organic deteriorations. While disease in normal women is +more often functional, merely. + +In masculine women, disease is prone, as in men, to structural +degenerations. Masculine women are very liable to cancer; a liability +they transmit as heritage to offspring of both sexes. Hence the +increasing masculinity of latter-day women has entailed upon the race an +increased liability to cancer and to other structural degeneration. This +liability has assumed such grave proportions as to occur in children +even, showing in the abnormal growths, "adenoids" now so prevalent as to +have become "the normal" of modern childhood. + + +IX + + _The living body is a highly-vitalised Vegetative organism with a + highly-specialised Cerebro-nervous organism differentiated in it_ + +Professor Cuvier said, "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole +animal; the other systems are there only to serve it." + +Professor Bergson amplifies the statement: + +"A higher organism is essentially a sensori-motor system installed on +systems of digestion, respiration, circulation, secretion, etc., whose +function it is to repair, cleanse and protect it, to create an +unvarying, internal environment for it, and above all to produce its +potential energy for conversion into locomotive movement." + +In both statements, is recognition of the Dual differentiation of the +body into an organism of Life which functions in relation to its own +intrinsic being, and an organism of Consciousness which functions in +relation to exterior environment. That in death from starvation, the +brain and the nerves remain almost unimpaired, while all the other +organs and tissues lose weight, their cells undergoing profound +degenerative changes, is further indication of two distinct and separate +departments of development and processes in every animal existence. + +As in its Mendelian phenomena of the Segregation of its Contrasting +Traits, and the Dominance and Recessiveness of these in constitution and +heredity, so, in its living organisation, the human body is +extraordinarily and in a number of ways essentially plant-like. The +brain and the nervous system may be regarded, indeed, as a +highly-differentiated Cerebro-Nervous organism grafted upon a simpler +Vital, and vegetative body, from which, as from a soil, it draws its +life and energy: and from which, as age advances, it gradually withdraws +the power of further sustaining its existence. + +This Cerebro-Nervous graft perishes only because the Vegetative body on +which it is installed has come to the end of its power to sustain the +life of the Nervous organism picketed upon it. + +The close resemblances in structure and in processes between the Cells +of vegetable and animal organisms, when taken in conjunction with a +number of other biological indications, justify the conclusion that +living bodies are actually vegetative organisms to which have been +super-added, by progressive evolutionary differentiations, faculties of +Motion and of Consciousness. + +(Plants are recognised as possessing rudimentary consciousness. While +Growth is a mode of Motion.) + +The trunk, which contains the respiratory, circulatory, nutritive and +reproductive organs represents the Vitative, or Vegetative, system. The +brain with its tributary spinal cord and spinal-nervous system +represents the Sensori-motor organism. While the limbs are +highly-differentiated implements which the Cerebro-Nervous organism has +developed in the Vitative organism; to serve it with means of locomotion +and of action, for the achievement of intelligent purpose. + +The lungs, with their ramifications of tubes and their air-cells, +closely resemble the branches and leaves of a tree, which spread into +and absorb from the atmosphere the oxygen whereby it lives. While the +convoluted intestines are like the roots of a tree, absorbing nurture +for it from environment. + +The Vegetative organism, being the agency of Life, is female in origin +and inherence. + +The Cerebro-spinal organism, being the agency of Adaptation, is male in +origin and inherence. In both, however, the inherences of the other sex +are represented. + +The body resembles thus a bi-sexual plant, its root-stock being female +and Recessive, with a male Dominant and differentiating organism +incorporated in it. + + +X + + _Vegetative body has its own brain and nervous system and its + (involuntary) muscles_ + +This Vegetative body has its own separate (organic) brain, in the Solar +Plexus--or "Abdominal brain"--and its nervous system, in the intricate +"Sympathetic" system of nerves; which, in addition to administering the +nutrition of the body, is intimately and closely associated, in +psychology, with the brain and with the spinal-nervous system of the +Psychical organism. Itself subconscious, this organic brain nevertheless +contributes vital impulse and colour to Consciousness. + +It possesses also its own specialised system of muscles, the +"Involuntary muscles"; which are not under control of the conscious +brain and will, but operate automatically--by so-called reflex action. +The motions they subtend are concerned with vital functions; nutrition, +respiration, circulation, assimilation, elimination, reproduction. + +The Vitative organism, being vegetative of growth and passive of mode, +needs rest and sun and wind and air and water for its nurture and +development. With that rising of the sap in the world of vegetation +which occurs in spring, kindred processes occur within the human +vegetative body. It responds to the re-creative forces of its +mother-earth. + +With every recurring Spring-tide, youth turns again to thoughts of love, +because of this natural renaissance of its vitative resources, for +purposes of re-creation--both of Cells and individuals. + +Old age is a permanent winter of this plant-body. Summer suns revive but +little more than flickerings of its vegetative pulsings. Although the +psychical life, intellectual and nervous, may be still vigorous, the sap +of the plant-body no longer rises, quick and warm and fructifying, to +earth's perennial call. + +This plant-like body with its plant-like fruiting Cells, it is, that +when charged with the graces and magnetic potences of health and high +nurture, supplies the pleasing personality found not seldom in sinners, +while often conspicuously lacking in saints--a seeming anomaly which +has gone far to discredit the virtues. + +By way of it, human personality resembles a mystical flowering plant +that breathes and feels and moves; and a fruiting plant that reproduces. +The Cerebro-Nervous system animates and intelligises this beautiful +vessel of flesh wherein it subsists. + +The vigour of its Vegetative stock, supplementing brain and nervous +system by fine structure, fine stature, organic vigour, native faculty, +and reproductive power, has given the Anglo-Saxon race its world-wide +rule. It is to this that its women have owed their shapely frames, their +healthful constitutions and their loveliness; the warm tints of hair and +skin, the fresh and flower-like complexions, and the fruit-like form and +bloom of cheek for which they once were famed. + +Rich personal charm and sweetness of healthful condition which are all +too swiftly passing from our modern women, hag-ridden by a strenuousness +that is wrecking the flower-body, with its vital joy and warmth, its +grace of being and its bliss of sense, its temperamental thrill and +colour. + + * * * * * + +The doctrine of Evolution is signally incomplete unless we realise it as +a sequence of progressive developments, direct and without intermission, +from the simplest forms of Elemental Matter to the highest, living +orders of Creation--Mineral, Vegetable, Brute and Human being +progressive stages in the evolution of Life and of Consciousness; graded +by links so subtly and infinitesimally constituted as to belong equally +to the kingdom below and to that above them. + +The subject appears full of interest and suggestion, showing all the +planes of Nature, from mineral to man, linked in an unbroken line by way +of this half-vegetable body of flesh, with its roots in earth and its +branches in Consciousness. No more than this briefest of mentions can be +given here, however. + + +XI + + _Mysterious "Internal Secretions"_ + +Biologists tell of Dual planes of operation in the processes of every +organ of the body. Because some of these function on the external plane, +in visible secretions or in other ways calculable by scientific methods, +and they function, too, upon an Inner and occulted, plane; in the form +of mysterious "Internal Secretions," the mode and nature whereof have +long baffled and eluded the most intricate scientific appliances and +intellections. + +What is indicated if not an Inner, and Potential, plane of Life +and vital processes--a _plane of Involution_, or Recession +(centripetal)--whereon factors of environment, air, food, water and so +forth are transformed by vital involutionary processes, into +_potentials_ of living form and function? Which potentials remain +latent, or Recessive, in the cells and glands secreting them, and +available for transformation by evolutionary processes, into actualities +of physical form and function on the Outer (centrifugal) plane of +Life--the _plane of Evolution_. + +And Life and health, together with normality of faculty and function, +depend upon the perfect balance and co-ordination of these two contrary +orders of factors and processes, which, I assume, are engendered, +respectively, in the Male and the Female departments of living organisms +of both sexes. + +All the vital functions--Respiration, Circulation, Digestion, +Reproduction--may be classed as Recessive functions, because they are +characterised by a Recession, or withdrawal, from the Without to the +Within. This is a phenomenon of the _Involution_ of Environment, for +transformation thereof into potential Life, and potential Evolutionary +output. + +_Death_ is a centripetal withdrawal of the soul from the material +Without to an Inner zone of Spiritual, or Potential, Being. And in due +time, analogy assures us, having assimilated and transformed the +resultant of a terrestrial existence into a new potential of Life, Life +issues forth again, by the centrifugal impulse of re-Birth, to +differentiate itself once more in living form upon the Outer plane. +(_Re-incarnation_ is, obviously, the true interpretation of +_Resurrection of the body_, which otherwise is scientifically +impossible.) + +Winter withdrawal, or Involution, of the sap of Vegetation from the +outer plane of functioning to the inner plane of potential Life, whereby +it derives such new increment of Vital potential as, with the outgoing +of sap again in the renaissance of spring, evolves in increased growth +and new foliage, is further example of the principle and processes of +Dominance and Recessiveness--of the female Vital impulse and the male +Developmental impetus, operating in an eternal tidal rhythm of ebb and +flow. + + +XII + + _Dual planes of Mentality: Outer and Material, Inner and Occult_ + +As in the Domain of Life and vital processes, so in the Domain of +Consciousness and nervous processes, there are two planes of function; +an Inner and occulted plane of Mind, or potential Consciousness, and an +Outer plane of material Consciousness; representing respectively +afferent (or centripetal) and efferent (or outgoing) nervous currents. + +Faculty and sense may be regarded as having developed in one direction +along lines of the telescope, with increasing capability to horizon the +Without; while they have developed simultaneously along lines of the +microscope, to reveal an Invisible Within. + +The Senses, which adapt man's Consciousness to environment by the +functions of Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell, have become, with +evolutionary development, so increasingly sensitised in response to The +Without as ever further to have set him in rapport with the world +exterior. While, at the same time, so have they become sensitised in +response to The Within, as ever further to have deepened and quickened +his apprehension of an occulted Interior plane. Faculty has acquired +thus, simultaneously with its increasing power of focusing the Outer and +Objective, an increasing power so to invert its focus as to penetrate +ever more deeply into the Inner and Subjective, alike of man's own +constitution and that of environment. + +These two contrary, but co-operative, modes of mentality are, +respectively, Intellection and Intuition--Male and Female modes of mind. + + +XIII + + _Differentiation of the Zygote, or Mated Sex-cell_ + +I have described, throughout, the right side of the human body as the +male-side--that in which the Male-traits of Humanity are specialised in +the individual; the left as the woman-side, that in which the +Woman-traits of Humanity are centred. + +But the modes of constitution, as of inheritance, are more complex, of +course, than that one parent supplies the potential of one side, the +other parent that of the other side. + +As regards inheritance, the maternal ovum comprises, I believe, the +potential of the whole body, with the exception of the brain, the +spinal-cord and the spinal nerves. But because the mother is descended +from parents of both sex, and possesses, therefore, both Male and Female +elements, the ovum must contain (as must every other cell) both male and +female factors. These, it is conceivable, are grouped, by contrary +polarities, into two areas, or hemispheres; an upper and a lower. Of +these the upper is Male in inherency. It comprises the potentials of +shoulders and spinal column which are fulcra of action, and of lungs and +heart which are the _energising_ organs of Life. The lower hemisphere of +the ovum is Female in inherency. It comprises the potentials of the +pelvis, which is the cradle of Maternity, of the reproductive organs, +which engender Life and the emotions, and of the digestive and +assimilative organs, which engender vital processes. + +So too, because the male parent is likewise descended from parents of +opposite sex, his contribution to offspring must also contain both male +and female factors. But while the mother supplies, in the ovum, the +potential of the whole body--face and head, trunk, limbs and vital +organs, the father contributes the potential of the brain, the spinal +cord and the spinal nerves only, which adapt the organism, by way of +form and Consciousness, to environment. The limbs, which adapt it, by +way of Motion, to environment, may be regarded as differentiations +primarily of the brain and nervous system. + +The ovum is spheroidal; the sperm-cell rectilinear (following the rule +that the line of Maleness is a straight one; that of Femaleness, a +curve). And as in the spheroidal ovum, the factors of the opposite +sexes, grouped into two areas, separate it into hemispheres of opposite +sex-inherency, so in the rectilinear sperm-cell, we may surmise the +factors of the two sexes to be grouped lengthwise, and to separate it +thus into a male side and a female side. Such a sperm-cell penetrating +the ovum, and developing laterally, further differentiates this into +anterior, posterior and lateral areas. The two lateral developments of +this potential brain and spinal cord and nerves eventually constitute +the right and the left brain-hemispheres, and differentiate the body +into right and left sides. + +The left brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and nerves, +is derived from the _male_ side of the sperm-cell; while the right +brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and spinal nerves, is +derived from the _female_ side (by inheritance) of the sperm cell. + + +Weismann describes the Germ-Plasm as being transmitted in the female +line solely, from ovum of mother to that of daughter. + +This supports the above view; namely, that the Germ-Plasm proper is +inherent in the ovum, in which it exists in potential, or +undifferentiated, form, and that it becomes differentiated (in both +sexes) into a right and a left-reproductive gland of contrary +sex-inherence, by differentiative power of the dual-sexed sperm-cell. +The re-polarisation of the fertilised ovum, which is visible beneath the +microscope, would seem to represent this differentiative process. + + +Since the microcosm is as the macrocosm, the Dual constitution must be +repeated in every living cell of the body; the cell-plasma representing +the vegetative system, the cell-nucleus representing the cerebro-nervous +system. Possibly the nucleolus is the Supra- and Subconscious element. + + +XIV + + _Inorganic Matter is Dual and Hermaphrodite. Life breaks up this + Neuter counterpoise, and progressively unlocks and segregates, and + thus reveals and specialises the inherent attributes of Sex_ + +Phenomena of Duality characterise not Living Matter only, but Inorganic +Matter too. The elemental atom is never found manifesting singly, but +always as two atoms coupled together, in the form of "the molecule"; +these mated atoms being of opposite electrical potential. + +And since Living Matter has evolved out of Inorganic Matter--what is to +be inferred but that the duality of the living cell is the evolution, on +the plane of Life, of the duality of the chemical molecule? + +Further, that the duality of living forms in terms of +sex-characteristics is the evolution, on the plane of Living Faculty, of +the duality alike of the living cell and of the chemical molecule; the +two sexes representing, respectively, the contrary inherences of all +these dualities, specialised and ever further intensifying in the +contrary trends of the opposite Sex-traits of Male and Female. + +The elemental molecule is seen thus to be hybrid, or hermaphrodite, in +constitution, precisely as the living cell and the living body are. +While that both living cells and inorganic crystals reproduce, proves +factors of Sex differentiated and functioning in them. + +The inertia of Matter is due to the hermaphrodite state; its contrary +Sex-impulses interlocking and nullifying one another. Life breaks up +this neuter state of equipoise, by increasingly segregating the +dual-sex-inherences and evolving each along its own intrinsic trend; +thereby engendering between their dual factors fructifying +interoperations which result in the motions of Growth and other vital +processes. + +Growth is a phenomenon of Reproduction. Living cells increase their +substance by germination of their bi-sexual elements. Attaining +maturity, a cell divides into two cells, each of which by way of similar +processes develops into a mature cell. + +And since for all Change, two (or more) contrary impulses are +necessary, and since Reproduction is a function of Sex, what is to be +inferred but that Evolution and Growth and all other phenomena of living +cells result from oppositions, co-operations and correlations of the +contrary impetus and processes of two orders of sex-factors present +therein? By way alone of their bi-sexuality, are cells, both animal and +vegetable, able to reproduce the cell-offspring required by living +organisms for processes of growth, of function and repair. + + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY +RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, +BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E.1 +AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + * * * * * + +WOMAN AND LABOUR + +By OLIVE SCHREINER + +Demy 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d. net + +_SEVENTH IMPRESSION_ + + +"At last there has come the book which is destined to be the prophecy +and the gospel of the whole awakening.... Remarkable as this book of +Olive Schreiner's is, merely as an intellectual achievement, its +greatness and its life are in the emotional power which has found its +stimulus and its inspiration in a vision of the future.... A book which +will be read and discussed for many years to come."--_The Nation._ + +"It is a fascinating mingling of keen argument, scientific knowledge, +historical pageantry, rushing emotion, written (need it be said) in that +adorned prose which is Olive Schreiner's characteristic style.... The +book ... is an epic."--Mr. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD in _The Daily Chronicle_. + +"All the qualities which long ago won for Olive Schreiner the gratitude +and admiration of readers all over the globe are here in their old +strength. There is fierce satire; there is deep-souled eloquence. There +is the same quick reasoning, the same tenderness, the same poetic +insight into the puzzle of life.... The feelings which are behind the +various women's movements could not find clearer or more eloquent +expression than they do in this remarkable book."--_The Daily Mail._ + +"It is one of those books which are sunrises, and give us spacious and +natural horizons. Like Mazzini's essays, it is logic touched with +emotion, politics on fire. One may begin to doubt the cause of woman's +rights when the opponents of sex equality produce an equally glowing +earnest and prophetic book."--_The Daily News._ + + +T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C. + + +BABY WELFARE + +A GUIDE TO ITS ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE + +By W. E. ROBINSON, M.D. _Assistant Physician and Pathologist to the +Infants' Hospital, London_ + +Demy 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. net + + +"We congratulate the author on his careful study of the healthy infant, +about whom it has too long been difficult to obtain exact +information."--_The Lancet._ + +"A valuable addition to the literature dealing with the scientific +knowledge of infancy and early childhood.... The book starts with a +brief and easily comprehended exposition of physical characteristics, a +groundwork of great value to intelligent women who desire, from one +reason or another, to be self-reliant as far as possible where their +babies are concerned. A chapter devoted to 'The Healthy Infant' gives in +pleasingly lucid fashion a picture of what a baby should be doing at +each point of its development."--_The Queen._ + +"This book deals fully and clearly with the physiology of the infant; +with dietetics, based on a study of human and cow's milk, as supplied to +it; with the effects of faulty upbringing, more especially of faulty +feeding; the signs, causes and treatment of diseased conditions, and so +on. It should be a valuable aid to the intelligent mother or +nurse."--_Nursing Notes._ + + +T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace London, W.C. + + +WOMAN AND MARRIAGE + +A HANDBOOK + +By MARGARET STEPHENS + +With a Preface by DR. MARY SCHARLIEB, and an Introduction by Mrs. S. A. +BARNETT + +Large crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. net + +_SIXTH IMPRESSION_ + + +The direct purpose of this book is to explain very simply something of +the structure and the use of parenthood, and to show the possibilities +which arise from it--in short, to help women, and men too--in the +understanding of themselves. It endeavours to increase intelligence on +the subject of child-life by letting a clear light shine on those +everyday matters of birth and life which are so often furtively wrapped +in a mysterious and wholly distorting gloom. + + +"'Woman and Marriage' is an outspoken book which should be carefully +read by those for whom it is written. It is not a book for boys and +girls; it is a physiological handbook, thoroughly well written, orderly, +wholesome and practical.... We commend this work to all who want a full +account in simple words of the physical facts of married life. All the +difficulties of the subject are handled fearlessly, gravely and +reverently in this book, and as it must be kept out of the reach of mere +curiosity, so it deserves thoughtful study by those of us whose lives it +touches."--_The Spectator._ + +"If more such books were written, and more such knowledge disseminated, +it would be a good thing for the wives and mothers of the present +day."--_The Times._ + + +T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1 Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C. + + * * * * * + +IMPORTANT NOTICE. + + All the works mentioned in this list may be purchased through any + bookseller. They are also obtainable at all Libraries. + + Any book-buyer wishing to see any of the books mentioned before + purchasing them may, on sending to Mr. Unwin the name of his local + bookseller, have the opportunity of so doing. + +T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., 1, ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON, W.C.2. + +CONTENTS + + +HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY pages 1 to 8 +TRAVEL & DESCRIPTION " 8 " 9 +POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY & ECONOMICS " 10 " 13 +BELLES LETTRES " 14 " 16 +POETRY AND DRAMA " 17 +MISCELLANEOUS " 18 +FICTION " 19 to 21 +NEW EDITIONS AND IMPRESSIONS " 22 " 27 + + + Life and Letters of Silvanus Phillips Thompson, F.R.S. By JANE S. + THOMPSON and HELEN G. THOMPSON. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth. + (Spring, 1920). + +21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d. + +This is a straightforward and somewhat intimate account of the career of +a man of great and varied gifts. Born into the family of a simple Quaker +schoolmaster of York his extraordinary energy and devotion to science +carried him into the foremost ranks of physicists, an acknowledged +leader in electro-technology and optics. Both as popular lecturer and as +trainer of technical college students his skill was unrivalled, and +wheresoever he went his enthusiasm for men and things won him +friendships, alike in his own country and abroad. Many of the letters +describe experiences on his journeys, others adventures of the +antiquarian in the pursuit of sixteenth and seventeenth century +scientific literature, and yet others tell of battles for truth in some +field or other. + +The book contains appreciations of his works as original investigator, +teacher, writer, artist, and "prophet," and indirectly testifies to the +warmth of personal regard which the frank geniality of his nature won +for him in many spheres. + + + All and Sundry: More Uncensored Celebrities. By E. T. RAYMOND, + Author of "Uncensored Celebrities." Demy 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Few books this year have attracted more attention or been more widely +read than Mr. E. T. Raymond's "Uncensored Celebrities," a work as +caustic as it was impartial. In his new work Mr. Raymond does not limit +himself to political personalities only, but includes figures in the +Church, such as the Bishop of London and Dean Inge; in literature, Mr. +G. K. Chesterton, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling; in +journalism, Mr. Harold Begbie, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and Mr. Leo Maxse; in +art and music, Mr. Frank Brangwyn and Sir Thomas Beecham. Mr. Raymond +includes also character sketches of President Wilson, M. Georges +Clemenceau, the Duke of Somerset, Viscount Chaplin, Viscount Esher, Sir +Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Ernle, Mr. Speaker, and many other prominent +people. Wider in range than "Uncensored Celebrities" and equally +brilliant, this work may be expected to appeal to even a larger public +than its remarkable predecessor. + + + The Life of John Payne. By THOMAS WRIGHT, Author of "The Life of + William Cowper," etc. With 18 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +28s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Few great authors appeal more to the imagination than John Payne, the +hero of "The John Payne Society," who shrank from the lime-light of +"interviewing." Recognised as a true poet by Swinburne, he was probably +the most skilful translator of the nineteenth century, for we owe to him +a version of Villon's poems which is itself a poetic work of consummate +art, the first complete translation of the "Arabian Nights," the first +complete verse rendering of Omar Khayyam's quatrains, to say nothing of +translations of "The Decameron," etc. Among his friends were Swinburne, +Sir Richard Burton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, French +authors such as Victor Hugo, Banville, and Mallarme, and the artist who +ventured to depict "God with eyes turned inward upon His own glory." Mr. +Wright by an extraordinary exercise of tact and sympathy was able to +pass the barrier which shut Payne off from anybody who sought to know +the man behind the books. For twelve years before Payne's death in 1916 +he was his most intimate friend, and as, during all that time, he had in +view the writing of Payne's Life he lost next to none of his +opportunities for obtaining at first hand the facts and opinions needed +for his work. Moreover, Payne made him a present of a MS. autobiography +and supplied him with valuable material from his letter-files. Mr. +Wright was, in fact, Payne's Boswell, and no life which may be written +hereafter can have the weight and interest of this vivid book, much of +which gives us the sound of Payne's own voice. + + + A History of Modern Colloquial English. By HENRY CECIL WYLD, B. + Litt. (Oxon.), Baines Professor of English Language and Philology + at the University of Liverpool. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.) + +21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +The book deals more particularly with the changes that have taken place +during the last five hundred years in the spoken forms of English. The +development of English pronunciation and the changes in grammatical +usage are dealt with in considerable detail, and there is a chapter on +idiomatic colloquialisms, modes of greeting, forms of address in +society, conventional and individual methods of beginning and ending +private letters, expletives, etc. The main part of the book is based +almost entirely upon new material collected from the prose and poetical +literature, and also from Letters, Diaries and Wills written during the +five centuries following the death of Chaucer. A sketch is given of the +chief peculiarities of the English dialects from about 1150, to the end +of the 14th century, and special chapters are devoted to a general +account of the languages of the 15th, 16th, and 17th and 18th centuries +respectively. Many questions of general interest are dealt with, such as +the rise of a common literary form of English, and its relation to the +various spoken dialects; the recognition of a standard form of spoken +English, and its variations from age to age, and among different social +classes. The various types of English are illustrated by copious +examples from the writings of all the periods under consideration. This +will be a work of much interest for the intelligent general reader as +well as for the scholar. Professor Wyld is the author of many well-known +and widely read books of which this ought to prove not the least +popular. + + + Zanzibar: Past and Present. By MAJOR FRANCIS B. PEARCE, C.M.G. + (British Resident in Zanzibar), With a Map and 32 pages + Illustrations. Super Royal 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.) + +30s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +This important work deals with the past and present history of Zanzibar. +From the earliest times this island, owing to its commanding position +off the coast of Africa, controlled the great trade-routes which +traversed the Continent from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans, and it +has remained to the present day the Metropolis of the East African +Region. It has known many over-lords, and the author, who is His +Majesty's Representative in Zanzibar, traces the story of this romantic +island-kingdom down the centuries. The close association of this African +island with ancient and mediaeval Arabia is demonstrated, and the advent +of the old Persian colonists to its shores explained. Coming to later +times such names as Vasco da Gama and Sir James Lancaster, that famous +Elizabethan sea-captain, are met with; until leaving beaten tracks, the +author introduces the reader to the hoary kingdom of Oman, whence came +those princes of the Arabian desert, who subdued to their sway the rich +spice-island of Zanzibar, and the adjacent territories of Central +Africa. Modern Zanzibar is fully dealt with, and the enlightened Prince +who occupies the throne of Zanzibar to-day is introduced to the reader +in a personal interview. The latter portion of the work is devoted to +descriptions of the ruined Arab and Persian stone-built towns--the very +names of which are now forgotten--which until cleared by the author, lay +mouldering in the forests of Zanzibar and Pemba. The text is elucidated +by a series of beautiful photographs and by specially prepared maps. + +This volume must be regarded as the standard work on the Sultanate of +Zanzibar. + + + The Canadians in France, 1915-1918 By CAPT. HARWOOD STEELE, M.C., + late Headquarters Staff, 2nd Canadian Division. With Maps. Demy + 8vo. (Spring, 1920.) + +21s. 0d. NET. + +Captain Steele, who is already favourably known as the author of the +spirited volume of poems entitled "Cleared for Action," here recounts +the deeds of the famous force sent by Canada to take part in the Great +War. What St. Julien, Ypres, St. Eloi, the Somme, Passchaendaele, Lens, +Vimy, Amiens, Cambrai and Mons, 1918 mean in the glorious record of the +Allies will be fully understood by the reader of this book. + +This is the first complete record of the achievements of the Canadian +divisions to be published. Captain Steele served three years in France, +and participated in most of the important engagements in which the +Canadians took part. + + + Drake, Nelson and Napoleon: Studies. By SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN, Bart., + Author of "The Tragedy of St. Helena," etc. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, + cloth. + +12s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +In this work Sir Walter Runciman deals first with Drake and what he +calls the Fleet Tradition, of which he regards Drake, the greatest +Elizabethan sailor, as the indubitable founder; next the author deals at +considerable length with Nelson, his relations with Lady Hamilton, and +the various heroic achievements which have immortalised his name. From +Nelson the author passes on to Napoleon, and shows how his career and +policy have had a vital relation to the World War. As himself a sailor +of the old wooden-ships period, Sir Walter is able to handle with +special knowledge and intimacy the technique of the seafaring exploits +of Nelson; and Sir Walter's analysis of the character of Nelson, a +combination of vanity, childishness, statesmanlike ability, and +incomparable seamanship and courage, is singularly well conceived. + + + Bolingbroke and Walpole. By the Rt. Hon. J. M. ROBERTSON, Author of + "Shakespeare and Chapman," "The Economics of Progress," etc., etc. + Demy 8vo, cloth. + +12s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +Many years ago, in his "Introduction to English Politics" (recast as +"The Evolution of States"), Mr. Robertson proposed to continue that +survey in a series of studies of the leading English politicians, from +Bolingbroke to Gladstone. Taking up the long suspended plan, he has now +produced a volume on the two leading statesmen of an important period, +approaching its problems through their respective actions. The aim is to +present political history at once in its national and its personal +aspects, treating the personalities of politicians as important forces, +but studying at the same time the whole intellectual environment. A +special feature of the volume intended to be developed in those which +may follow is a long chapter in "The Social Evolution," setting forth +the nation's progress, from generation to generation, in commerce, +industry, morals, education, literature, art, science, and well-being. + + + Seen from a Railway Platform. By WILLIAM VINCENT. Crown 8vo, cloth. + (Spring, 1920.) + +3s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Mr. Vincent must from his early years have cultivated his faculty of +observation, and he has a marvellous memory for what he has seen or +heard. His recollections start from the early 'sixties, when, as a boy, +he got a situation as bookstall clerk, from which position he rose to be +bookstall manager in various parts of the country. His experiences as +bookstall manager on a railway platform, with its continuously shifting +crowds and contacts with various idiosyncracies, are highly interesting, +but he recalls many events that have happened in his time away from the +bookstall, the notorious Heenan fight, the remarkable exhibition of the +"Great Eastern" and others. He gives curious accounts of the early +railway carriages, the treatment of the third-class passenger and much +other lore concerning railway travel in the now distant days. +Altogether, Mr. Vincent has produced a valuable volume of reminiscences. + + + Life of Liza Lehmann. By Herself. With a Coloured Frontispiece and + 16 pp. Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Shortly before her death, Madame Liza Lehmann completed a volume of +Reminiscences. A charming and gifted woman her life was spent in +artistic and literary surroundings. She was the daughter of an artist, +Rudolf Lehmann, the wife of another, Herbert Bedford, one of her sisters +being Mrs. Barry Pain, and her cousins including Muriel Menie Dowie +("The Girl in the Carpathians") and Mr. R. C. Lehmann, of "Punch." Her +memories include a dinner with Verdi, conversations with Jenny Lind, +anecdotes of Edward VII, Brahms, Mme. Clara Butt, and other celebrities. +As the composer of "A Persian Garden," she became world-renowned, and +her self-revelation is not less interesting than her tit-bits about +other artists. + + + Men and Manner in Parliament. By SIR HENRY LUCY. With a + Biographical Note and about 32 Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo. + +10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage, 6d. + +As "Member for the Chiltern Hundreds" Sir Henry Lucy published an +interesting volume on the Parliament of 1874. The book has been long out +of print, but it again came "on the tapis" as it seemed to the publisher +so thoroughly worth bringing to life again. It is recorded in the +authorised Life of President Wilson that study of the articles on their +original publication in the "Gentleman's Magazine" directed his career +into the field of politics. He wrote to the author apropos this book: "I +shall always think of you as one of my instructors." The book is +essentially a connected series of character-sketches written in the +well-known witty manner of the famous _Punch_ diarist. Gladstone, +"Dizzy," Dilke, Bright, Auberon Herbert, Roebuck, Sir Stafford +Northcote, etc., are some of the leading figures, and lesser-known +M.P.'s resume a vigorous vitality, thanks to Sir Henry's magic pen. + + + Anglo-American Relations, 1861-1865. By BROUGHAM VILLIERS & W. H. + CHESSON. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +This book deals with the causes of friction and misunderstandings +between Great Britain and the United States during the trying years of +the Civil War. The reasons which, for a time, gave prominence to the +Southern sympathies of the British ruling classes, while rendering +almost inarticulate the far deeper feeling for the Cause of Union and +Emancipation among the masses of our people, are examined and explained. +Such dramatic incidents as the Trent affair, the launching of the +"Alabama," and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation are dealt with from +the point of view of their effect upon opinion in this country as +illustrated by contemporary correspondence and literature. Interesting +facts, now almost forgotten, of the movements inaugurated by the English +friends of the North to explain to our people the true issues at stake +in the conflict are reproduced, and an attempt is made to estimate the +influence of the controversies of the time on the subsequent relations +of the English-speaking peoples. + +Mr. W. H. Chesson, grandson of George Thompson, the anti-slavery orator, +who was William Lloyd Garrison's bosom friend, contributes a chapter +which attempts to convey an impression of the influence of Transatlantic +problems upon English oratory and the writings of public men. + + + Woodrow Wilson: An interpretation. By A. MAURICE LOW, Author of + "The American People: A Study in National Psychology," with a + Portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Mr. A. Maurice Low has long been recognised as, next to Lord Bryce, the +most acute, discriminating, and well-informed of the English critics of +America. His long residence in that country and his exhaustive study of +certain phases of American life have given him a background for the +interpretation of their political life. + +Mr. Low has written this interpretation of President Wilson "because the +man to-day who occupies the largest place in the world's thought is +almost as little understood by his own people as he is by the peoples of +other countries, and still remains an enigma," but his point of view as +an interpreter is that of a contemporary foreign observer who, while +having the benefit of long residence in the United States and an +intimate knowledge of its people and politics, may justly claim a +detached point of view and to be uninfluenced by personal or political +considerations. + + + Peace-Making at Paris. By SISLEY HUDDLESTON. Large Crown 8vo, + cloth. + +7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Mr. Huddleston has been one of the most independent commentators of the +proceedings at the Paris Conference, with a keen sense of the realities, +and his despatches have, in the phrase of one of our best-known authors, +made him "easily the best" of the Paris correspondents. This book aims +at giving a broad account of the seven months which followed the +Armistice; but the writer has a point of view and has not told the story +of these memorable days objectively, such as might have been done by any +compiler with the aid of the newspapers. A resident in Paris, he has +lived close to the heart of the Conference, and throws a vivid light on +certain events which it is of the utmost importance to understand. Thus +the famous "moderation interview," which was followed by the telegram of +protest from 370 M.P.'s and the return to Westminster of the Prime +Minister, who made the most sensational speech of his career, came from +his pen. The attitude of Mr. Wilson is specially studied; his apotheosis +and the waning of his star and his apparent lapse from "Wilsonianism" is +explained. There is shown the dramatic clash of ideas. Special attention +is devoted to the strange and changing policy in Russia, and some +extremely curious episodes are revealed. This is not merely a timely +publication, but the volume is likely to preserve for many years its +place as the most illuminating piece of work about the two hundred odd +days in Paris. It is certain to raise many controversies, and it is one +of those books which it is indispensable to read. + + + Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman. Edited with an + Introduction by THOMAS B. HARNED (One of Walt Whitman's Literary + Executors). Cloth. + +8s. 6d. Net. Inland Postage 6d. + +Anne Gilchrist, a charming woman of rare literary culture and +intelligence, who was born in 1828 and died in 1885, was Whitman's first +notable female eulogist in England, her essay on him being a valuable +piece of pioneer-criticism. Admiration in her case became identified +with love; in the 'seventies she wrote Whitman ardent love letters, the +contents of which would have surprised any literary man less acquainted +than he was to heroic candour. Whitman was not insensible to the +affectionate feelings of Mrs. Gilchrist (her husband died in 1861), and +his share of their correspondence is of considerable interest to +students of "Leaves of Grass." + + + Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) + Division. By RAYMOND E. PRIESTLEY, Author of "Antarctic Adventure." + Illustrated. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. (Second Impression.) + +7s. 6d. Net. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Written by a member of the Division for his comrades and their relatives +and friends, the book is first of all intended to place on record for +the North Midland people the deeds of their men during the weeks which +crowned four years of steadfast endeavour during the Great War. + +It has, however, a wider significance, and thus deserves a wider +circulation. The North Midland county regiments were composed mainly of +miners, machinists, operatives and agriculturists: men without military +traditions or militant desires. The last men to take to war without an +all-compelling reason. + + + The Transvaal Surrounded. By W. J. LEYDS, Litt.D., Author of "The + First Annexation of the Transvaal." With Maps. Demy 8vo, cloth. + (Spring, 1920.) + +21s. 0d. Inland Postage, 6d. + +This work is a continuation of "The First Annexation of the Transvaal" +by the same author, and like the previous volume is based chiefly on +British documents, Blue Books, and other official records. References +are given to these, and the reader can form his own opinion from them. +To find his way through the overwhelming mass of documents is only +possible for the man who for long years drew up and signed most of the +papers issued by his Government. For the official records accessible to +the historian are incomplete; they must be supplemented by the archives +of the Republic. Only when this has been done--as it has now by one who +knows--will the history of the relations between England and the Boers +be freed from falsehood and slander. + + + Modern Japan: Its Political, Military and Industrial Development. + By WILLIAM MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN, Ph.D., M.R.A.D., F.R.A.I., M.J.S., + etc. Lecturer on Japanese, School of Oriental Studies (Unv. of + Lond.), Priest of the Nishi, Hongwaryi, Kyoto, Japan, (Spring, + 1920.) + +21s. 0d. Inland Postage, 6d. + +Unlike the book of casual impressions by the tourist or globe-trotter or +a tedious work of reference for the library, Mr. McGovern's book on +"Modern Japan," gives for the average educated man an interesting +description of the evolution of Japan as a modern world Power, and +describes the gradual triumphs over innumerable obstacles which she +accomplished. The book relates how the Restoration of 1867 was carried +out by a small coterie of ex-Samurai, in whose hands, or in that of +their successors, political power has ever since remained. We see +portrayed the perfecting of the Bureaucratic machine, the general, +political and institutional history, the stimulation of militarism and +Imperialism, and centralised industry. It is a vivid account of the real +Japan of to-day, and of the process by which it has become so. Though +comprehensible to the non-technical reader, yet the most careful student +of Far Eastern affairs will find much of value in the acute analysis of +the Japanese nation. The author is one who has resided for years in +Japan, was largely educated there, who was in the Japanese Government +service, and who, by his fluent knowledge of the language, was in +intimate contact with all the leading statesmen of to-day. Furthermore +his position as priest of the great Buddhist temple of Kyoto brought him +in touch with phases of Japanese life most unusual for a European. While +neither pro nor anti-Japanese, he has delineated the extraordinary +efficiency of the machine of State (so largely modelled on Germany), +while, at the same time, he has pointed out certain dangers inherent in +its autocratic bureaucracy. + + +_TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION_ + + + Byways in Southern Tuscany. By KATHERINE HOOKER. With 60 full-page + Illustrations, besides sketches in the text and a removable + Frontispiece, the end papers being a coloured map of Southern + Tuscany by Porter Garnett. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +18s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +In addition to its absorbing historic interest this book has the claim +of recording the impressions of a vivacious and observant lady who +describes what she has seen in modern Tuscany from San Galgano to +Sorano. + +Those who like books which conjure up beautiful historic places and +fascinating romances of real life will be sure to enjoy this handsome +volume. Among the stories related by the author is the harrowing one of +Nello Pannocchieschi told by Dante, the scene of which is the ill-famed +Maremma, mentioned in a proverb as a district where "You grow rich in a +year, but die in six months." + + + The Romantic Roussillon: In the French Pyrenees. By ISABEL SAVORY. + With Illustrations by M. LANDSEER MACKENZIE. Super Royal 8vo. + +25s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +This book is written for a double purpose: to reveal to lovers of +sculpture the beauties of certain Romanesque work hitherto hidden in +remote corners of the Pyrenees, and to suggest to travellers the +attractions of a little country formerly known as the Roussillon, which +now forms part of the Pyrenees Orientales. + +Well off the beaten track, though within easy reach of London, it should +appeal to lovers of fine scenery and to students of Romanesque and +mediaeval architecture. + +Miss Isabel Savory, author of "The Tail of the Peacock" and "A +Sportswoman in India," has explored every inch of it. Each chapter is a +witness to the writer's research in the Library at Perpignan, coupled +with a graphic description of the country from an artistic point of +view, and lively portraits of the Catalam as he exists to-day. + +Miss Muriel Landseer MacKenzie, sculptor and great-niece of Sir Edwin +Landseer, gives a series of pencil drawings of which the collotype +process makes faithful reproductions. Apart from their own merit, they +represent subjects of which apparently no records exist, details of +Byzantine and Romanesque architecture discovered in neglected abbeys, +old churches, and ruins in the hills. + +At the end of the book there is a map and a few practical notes for +travellers which indicate that prices are moderate, and that there are +good roads for motorists, though the country is pre-eminently adapted +for those who like the informality of the knapsack and the mountain +path. + + + In the Wilds of South America: Six Years of Exploration in + Colombia, Venezuela, British Guiana, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, + Paraguay, and Brazil. By LEO E. MILLER, of the American Museum of + Natural History. First Lieutenant in the United States Aviation + Corps. With 48 Full-page Illustrations and with maps. Demy 8vo, + cloth. + +21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +This volume represents a series of almost continuous explorations hardly +ever paralleled in the huge areas traversed. The author is a +distinguished field naturalist--one of those who accompanied Colonel +Roosevelt on his famous South American expedition--and his first object +in his wanderings over 150,000 miles of territory was the observation of +wild life; but hardly second was that of exploration. The result is a +wonderfully informative, impressive, and often thrilling narrative in +which savage peoples and all but unknown animals largely figure, which +forms an infinitely readable book and one of rare value for geographers, +naturalists, and other scientific men. + + + Millions from Waste. By Frederick A. TALBOT, Author of "The Oil + Conquest of the World," "All About Inventions and Discoveries," + "Moving Pictures; How they are Made and Worked," "Practical + Cinematography," "The Building of a Great Canadian Railway," etc., + etc., etc. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d. + +In this book, Mr. Frederick A. Talbot, whose many volumes dealing with +invention, science, and industry in a popular manner have achieved such +a successful vogue, introduces us to what may very appropriately be +described as a fairyland of successful endeavour in a little known +field. The present work does not aim at being a treatise upon the whole +subject, because it is far too vast to be covered within the covers of a +single volume. He takes us, as it were, into the less frequented, yet +more readily accessible by-ways, where exceptional opportunities occur +for one and all sections of the community to contribute to one of the +greatest economic issues of the day. + +Every industry, every home, contributes to the waste problem; each +incurs a certain proportion of residue which it cannot use. This +circumstance, combined with the knowledge that it is our duty to +discover a commercial use for such by-products, has been responsible for +many happy stories of success achieved during voyages of discovery which +the author duly records. + +Mr. Talbot does not confine himself to a mere recital of the so-called +waste products. He describes how their recovery and exploitations may be +profitably conducted, so that the present volume is of decided practical +value. He treats of the fertility of thought displayed by the inventor, +chemist, and engineer in the evolution of simple ways and means to turn +despised materials into indispensable articles of commerce. Many of the +appliances are of a striking and highly ingenious character and cannot +fail to excite interest. + + + The Nations and the League. By Various Writers. With an + Introductory Chapter by Sir GEORGE PAISH. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +This important work presents the views of eminent men of different +nationalities upon one of the most burning questions of the day. French +views are supplied by M. Leon Bourgeois, President of the Association +Francaise pour la Societe des Nations, and the famous French barrister, +M. Andre Mater, whose historical account of experiments already made in +International Leagues, is of high interest. The President of Columbia +University, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, supplies an essay on Patriotism +in which this noble quality is rightly adjusted to a larger idea of +human brotherhood than has formerly been connected with it. Sir Sidney +Low presents a British view, and Messrs. Louis Strauss and A. Heringa +contribute Dutch and Belgian views respectively. Mr. Johan Castberg, +President of the Norwegian Odelsting, and the celebrated explorer, Dr. +Nansen, write for Norway, and the Germans have a spokesman in Professor +Lujo Brentano, of Munich. Sir George Paish brings his long experience +and expert knowledge to bear on the economic questions that confront the +League. + + + Local Development Law: A Survey of the Powers of Local Authorities + in Regard to Housing, Roads, Buildings, Lands and Town Planning. By + H. C. DOWDALL, Barrister-at-Law, Lecturer on Town Planning Law in + the University of Liverpool and Legal Member of the Town Planning + Institute. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +This book, which incorporates the important legislation just passed on +the subject, has been written at the request of architects and surveyors +as well as lawyers, council clerks, and councillors, who have complained +that they have been unable to find the kind of information which it +supplies in a brief, comprehensive, and intelligible form. + +For the law of housing, roads, parks, open spaces, allotments, public +buildings, town planning, private Bill procedure, compensation, and +kindred matters bearing on the public control of land and the use of +land for public purposes is contained in many large volumes through +which even a skilled lawyer finds his way with difficulty. Mr. Dowdall's +work deals with all these subjects systematically and fully, almost in +the form of a code, but it is held together and enlivened by a certain +measure of historical and illustrative matter, and avoids unnecessary +detail by giving references through which the fullest information is +made readily accessible to those who desire it, but perhaps do not know +where to look for it. + +The author is of opinion that local authorities are often imperfectly +aware of the full range and scope of the powers which they enjoy, or of +the manner in which they might be co-ordinated and brought to bear upon +what is, after all, the single and indivisible problem of town planning +and town improvement. + + + My Italian Year. Observations and Reflections in Italy, 1917-18. By + JOSEPH COLLINS. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage. 6d. + +In the latter part of 1917 the author was assigned to military duty in +Italy. The nature of his duties brought him in close contact with +Italians in every walk of life and every part of the kingdom. Italy was +not previously unknown to him, as he had made already frequent visits. +He presents a study of the Italian temperament, describes the different +social classes, gives a study of the governmental machine, describes +various sights and monuments (not at all in the tourist manner), and +altogether writes a very original book. The author has been trained by a +life of observation, examination and deduction, as the work itself +clearly shows. He writes with lucidity and charm, and though, as he +says, he has been since childhood a lover of Italy, he writes with great +impartiality of certain features of the Italian people. Despite the fact +that the war enters the book to a certain extent, its main interest is +by no means the war, but the fascinating study it presents of the +Italian character, ways and manners, and of Italy generally. + + + Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. By W. TROTTER. New Library + Edition. Revised and Enlarged. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. + +8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +PRESS OPINIONS OF THE FIRST EDITION. + +"An exceedingly original essay on individual and social +psychology."--THE NEW STATESMAN. + +"It is a balanced and inspiring study of one of the prime factors of +human advance."--THE TIMES. + +"The main purpose of Mr. Trotter's book, which may be commended both for +its logic and its circumspection, is to suggest that the science of +psychology is not a mass of dreary and indefinite generalities, but if +studied in relation to other branches of biology, a guide in the actual +affairs of life, enabling the human mind to foretell the course of human +action."--DAILY TELEGRAPH. + + + Boy-Work: Exploitation or Training? By the Rev. SPENCER J. GIBB, + Author of "The Problem of Boy-Work," etc. Large Crown 8vo, cloth. + +8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Mr. Spencer Gibb Is well known as a writer on the social and economic +problems which arise from the employment of boys. His new book, is a +systematic consideration of these problems, as the conclusion of the War +has left them, and of the remedies which are being proposed. It seeks to +co-ordinate these reforms so as to lead to a solution of the problem. +But the book is of wider than merely economic and industrial interest. +The problem as Mr. Gibb sees it is not only one of boy-work, but of the +_boy at work_. He therefore examines, with close analysis and +sympathetic knowledge, the psychology and physiology of the boy at the +age of entering upon work and in the succeeding years, and traces the +reaction of working conditions, not only upon his economic future, but +upon his character. + + + The Land and the Soldier. By FREDERICK C. HOWE, Author of "The Only + Possible Peace," etc. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +8s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +The author believes that this is the moment for extensive social and +agricultural reconstruction: the large bodies of returning soldiers on +the outlook for work gives an unparalleled opportunity for experiment +toward this; and the war experience of the Government gained in +financing and organising war industries and communities could be applied +with great advantage and effect. The plan is based on the organisation +of farm colonies somewhat after the Danish models, not on reclaimed or +distant land, but upon land never properly cultivated, often near the +large cities, and aims to connect with the communities thus formed the +social advantages of, for instance, the garden villages of England. In +fact, the author advances a broad and thoughtful programme, looking +toward an extensive agricultural and social organisation, and based upon +a long and careful study of experiments in this line in other times and +countries as well as here. + +It is a book that no one concerned with reconstruction can afford to +neglect. + + + The Only Possible Peace. By FREDERICK C. HOWE, Author of "Privilege + and Democracy," "The City," "The Hope of Democracy," etc. Large + Crown 8vo, cloth. + +7s. 6d. NET Inland Postage 6d. + +Under modern industrial conditions it is conflicts springing from +economic forces that are mainly responsible for war forces that seek for +control of other people's lands, territories, trade resources, or the +land and water ways which control such economic opportunities. Mr. +Howe's work, keeping these essential points in view, is an attempt to +show how to anticipate and avoid war rather than how to provide means +for the arbitration of disputes after they have arisen. Mr. Howe, a +widely known student of economics and international questions, has here +produced a book of the highest importance. + + + Nationalities in Hungary. By ANDRE DE HEVESY. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +6s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 4d. + +This is a study of the many and various nationalities of which Hungary +is composed, of their respective characters, and of the problems which +confront these nationalities. The author advocates a sort of United +States of Hungary, giving each nationality the fullest liberty of +internal self-determination. Included in the work is an ethnographical +map of Hungary which is of great assistance to the reader. + + + The New America. By FRANK DILNOT, Author of "Lloyd George: the Man + and His Story," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage 4d. + +This volume presents in a series of short, vivacious sketches the +impressions made on a trained observer from England of life in the +United States during 1917 and 1918. Manners, outlook and temperament are +dealt with appreciatively, and there is a good-humored analysis of how +Americans eat, drink and amuse themselves. The chapters include "The +Women of America," "American Hustle and Humour," "President Wilson at +Close Quarters." There is an intimate character-sketch at first-hand of +General Rush C. Hawkins, who raised and commanded the New York Zouaves +in the Civil War, with a narrative of some of his conversations with +Lincoln. + + + Home Rule Through Federal Devolution. By FREDERICK W. PIM. With an + Introduction by FREDERIC HARRISON. Paper covers. + +1s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 2d. + +The author assumes that there is a general consensus that extensive +modifications of our existing legislative and administrative systems are +urgently required, and that all indications seem to show that the +present time offers an exceptional opportunity for dealing with them. He +offers federal devolution as the solution of the Irish question. Mr. +Frederic Harrison makes a valuable contribution to the pamphlet. + + + Bye Paths in Curio Collecting. By ARTHUR HAYDEN, Author of "Chats + on Old Clocks," "Chats on Old Silver," etc. With a Frontispiece and + 72 Full Page Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth. + +21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +The broad way of collecting is crowded with bargain-hunters. Competitors +are keen and prices are high. All real collectors love peregrinations +into the unknown, and have often stumbled upon quaint and long-forgotten +objects which were once in everyday use, but are now relegated to the +attic or the lumber-room. In furniture there are many objects not deemed +desirable by the fashionable collector; in porcelain and earthenware +there is still much that has not reached the noisy mart to be chaffered +over as being rare. There are precious and beautiful things +comparatively unsought and unconsidered. Modernity has forgotten many +by-gone necessities. The tinder-box with its endless varieties has not +escaped studious attention but it has not come into the forefront of +collecting as has the ornate and bejewelled snuff-box with its more +highly attractive appearance. Old Playing-Cards, Old Fans, Silhouettes, +Patch-Boxes, Snuffers, Old Keys, Old Chests and Coffers, Earrings, Brass +Table-Bells, Carved Watch-Stands, Curious Teapots, Tea-Caddies and +Caddy-Spoons, Tobacco-Boxes, Tobacco-Stoppers, have their appeal to +collectors who have specialised and have become experts--that is, have +left the highway of collecting and pursued a delightful search in the +bye-paths. This volume deals with these, among other subjects. + +The author has drawn upon his notebooks for twenty-five years, and has +opened to the reader a wonderful storehouse of miscellaneous information +illuminated with a gallery of photographic reproductions. As a pleasant +guide in the bye-paths of collecting, Mr. Hayden will fascinate those +real collectors who love collecting for its own sake. + + + Shakespeare and the Welsh. By FREDERICK J. HARRIES. Demy 8vo, + cloth. + +15s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +The author has dealt with his highly interesting subject in a manner +both critical and attractive. Not only has he examined Shakespeare's +knowledge of Welsh characteristics through a study of his Welsh +characters, but he has also collected much valuable information +regarding the Celtic sources from which Shakespeare drew his materials. +The opportunities which probably presented themselves to the poet for +studying Welshmen at first hand are suggested, and an endeavour is made +to arrive at an explanation of Shakespeare's singularly sympathetic +attitude toward the Welsh nation. What will strike the general reader +most, perhaps, is the variety of topics which arise around Shakespeare's +Celtic allusions, and a subject of great interest to the Welsh reader +will be the claim that Shakespeare was descended through his paternal +grandmother from the old Welsh kings. The claim is not a mere +speculative one, for a pedigree is given. The work is unique in many +respects, and should find a welcome not merely among Welshmen, but among +all Shakespeare students. + + + My Commonplace Book. J.T. HACKETT. Dem 8vo, Cloth. + +12s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +The title of this bock, it is needless to say, does not mean that the +contents are commonplace. It is a very rich collection of choice +extracts from the verse and prose of famous writers, and writers who +deserve to be famous. Swinburne is particularly well represented, as is +seldom the case in anthologies. The arrangement of the book and the +accuracy of the matter have been the subject of careful consideration. + + + Some Greek Masterpieces in Dramatic and Bucolic Poetry Thought into + English Verse. By WILLIAM STEBBING, M.A., Hon. Fellow of Worcester + College, Oxford, and Fellow of King's College, London. + +7s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d. + +The author, who is a scholar, presents in this volume an English verse +anthology of two departments in Greek poetry. Among the passages and +poems which he has rendered are the charge against Olympus by +Prometheus, the "Hymn of the Furies," Iphigenia's appeals to her father +and mother, "Hue and Cry after Cupid," etc. To convey the poet's thought +has been the translator's purpose, and his versions are particularly +intended for the reader who has classical tastes without having had a +thorough classical education. + + + The Legend of Roncevaux. Adapted from "La Chanson de Roland," by + SUSANNA H. ULOTH. With four illustrations by John Littlejohns, + R.B.A. Small 4to, cloth. + +5s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d. + +Of all the legends circulating round the name of Charlemagne none is +more famous and popular than that of the Paladins Roland and Oliver. The +poem known as "La Chanson de Roland" is the earliest epic in the French +language, dating in all probability from a period not long after the +conquest of England by William of Normandy and before the first Crusade. +Mrs. Uloth has written a metrical and rhymed version of the most +important part of the "Chanson," namely, the story of the treachery +which led to the battle of Roncevaux, and the thrilling series of +encounters which terminated in the heroic death of Oliver and the lonely +and mystical death of Roland. There are not many rivals in the field, +and her work should, therefore, command a good deal of interest. It may +be added that Mr. John Littlejohns, who illustrates the work, has won a +considerable reputation for originality and charm in drawing and +painting. + + + The Collected Stories of Standish O'Grady. With an Introduction by + Ae. First 3 volumes now issued. Crown 8vo, cloth. + +4s. 6d. NET EACH Inland Postage 6d. + +THE CUCULAIN CYCLE. + +(1) The Coming of Cuculain. +(2) In the Gates of the North. +(3) The Triumph and Passing of Cuculain. + +These three books contain the essential and most beautiful portions of +Mr. Standish O'Grady's "Bardic History of Ireland," the work which +proved to be the starting-point of Ireland's Literary Renaissance. That +work has long been unobtainable, and is now offered for the first time +in a convenient and popular form, which will enable every reader to make +the acquaintance of the most striking figure in contemporary Anglo-Irish +literature. The debt which a generation of brilliant poets and +dramatists owe to the author of these Cuculain stories has well been +described by one of his disciples, who wrote:-- + +"In the 'Bardic History of Ireland' he opened, with a heroic gesture, +the doors which revealed to us in Ireland the giant lord of the Red +Branch Knights and the Fianna. Though a prose writer, he may be called +the last of the bards--a true comrade of Homer." + + +A NEW VOLUME OF THE TALBOT LITERARY STUDIES. + +Irish Books and Irish People. By STEPHEN GWYNN, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth + +4s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage 6d. + +Whatever Captain Gwynn writes is worth reading. He has a knowledge of +the literary value of Irish books, and the complex personality of Irish +possessed by few present-day writers, and he imparts his knowledge with +that peculiar detached conviction of the hurler on the ditch. Whether +one accepts or rejects the opinions expressed, they are always worthy of +consideration, while the fine choice of language and beautiful literary +style will well repay a second reading. Capt. Gwynn deals with such +subjects as Novels of Irish Life, A Century of Irish Humour, Literature +Among the Illiterates, Irish Education and Irish Character, Yesterday in +Ireland, etc., etc. + + +To Book Lovers. + +If you would like to receive future issues of this catalogue you are +invited to send a post card to that effect to T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd. 1, +Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.2. + +_Please write your name and full address clearly._ + + + Swords and Flutes. Poems. By WILLIAM KEAN SEYMOUR. Crown 8vo, + cloth. 4s. net. + +4s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 3d. + +WHAT THE CRITICS SAY OF MR. SEYMOUR'S WORK. + +"We recognise not so much audacity of experiment as a sound loyalty to +the best standards of the past, and an almost acute appreciation of +beauty both of vision and form.... Mr. Seymour's poetry is full of rich +and multi-coloured pageantry, a sheer delight to the eye and +imagination."--THE BOOKMAN. + +"Mr. Seymour's verse is full of a haunting, fugitive sense of beauty, +and owes allegiance to a school of lyric craftsmanship which is rapidly +falling out of date. But it is something more than this. Mr. Seymour +believes that poetry should not only beautify, but interpret +life."--DAILY TELEGRAPH. + + + "The Measure" and "Down Stream." Two Plays. By GRAHAM RAWSON, + Author of "Stroke of Marbot," etc. Crown 8vo. Paper Cover. + +4s. 0d. NET. 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