Part II

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WOMAN

A Vindication

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

A DEFENCE OF ARISTOCRACY

MAN’S DESCENT FROM THE GODS

THE FALSE ASSUMPTIONS OF DEMOCRACY

ETC.

WOMAN

A Vindication

By

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI

CONSTABLE · LONDON

BOMBAY · SYDNEY · 1923

_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

Part I

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

I POSITIVENESS—THE SAYING OF “YEA” TO LIFE 3

II THE SUBJECT TREATED GENERALLY 24

III WOMAN AND HER UNCONSCIOUS IMPULSES 37

IV THE POSITIVE MAN AND THE POSITIVE WOMAN 54

V VIRGIN LOVE IN THE POSITIVE MAN AND THE POSITIVE GIRL 80

VI THE POSITIVE ENGLISH GIRL 104

Part II

INFERENCES FROM PART I

VII THE MARRIAGE OF THE POSITIVE GIRL AND THE POSITIVE MAN 125

VIII BREACHES OF THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT AND DIVORCE 178

IX THE OLD MAID AND HER RELATION TO SOCIETY 229

X THE VIRTUES AND VICES OF WOMEN 280

XI WOMEN IN ART, PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. THE OUTLOOK. CONCLUSION 346

INDEX 369

INTRODUCTION

“The most disgusting cant permeates everything. Except for the

representation of savage and violent sentiments, everything is stifled

by it.”—Stendhal, _De l’Amour_.

The object of this volume is twofold: in the first place to

raise certain weighty objections to that industrialization and

commercialization of woman, which has stamped the “progress” of Western

Europe during the last fifty years; and, secondly, to reveal woman, not

only as a creature whose least engaging characteristics are but the

outcome of the most vital qualities within her, but also as a social

being in whom these least engaging characteristics themselves only

become disturbing and undesirable when she is partially or totally out

of hand.

While trying to escape the influence of all that “tinsel of false

sentiment” which in the atmosphere of Democracy and sentimentality has

gathered about the subject of Woman in modern England, it has been my

endeavour to defend her against certain traditional and well-founded

charges, by showing that the very traits in her character which have

given rise to these charges form so essential a part of her vital

equipment that it would be dangerous to the race to modify or to alter

them. Thus, despite the fact that there is much in this book that

may possibly strike the reader as unfriendly, if not actually harsh,

I am aware of no other work in which so complete and so elaborate a

plea (from the standpoint of Life and Life’s needs) has been made in

defence of Woman’s whole character, including all that side of it which

the wisest of mankind, and the oldest traditions of mankind, have

consistently and unanimously deprecated.

Couched in the briefest possible terms, my thesis is practically this,

that, whether we contemplate Woman in the rôle of the adulteress, of

the heartless stepmother, of the harlot, or of the creature whose

duplicity has been the riddle of all ages; or whether we contemplate

her as the staunchest of lovers, as the most reliable of allies, as

the mother whose noble devotion to her offspring will drive her to any

extreme of danger in defence of them, and as the representative of that

sex which has given us a Joan of Arc, an Emily Brontë, and an Emily

Davison of Derby fame; we are always confronted by a creature whose

worst can, on final analysis, be shown to be only the outcome of her

best and most vital qualities, turned to evil by mal-adaptation; and

whose best is but the normal and effortless expression of her natural

endowments.

Seeing, however, that among the mal-adaptations which cause Woman’s

best to manifest itself as her worst, I include lack of guidance and

control from the quarter of her menfolk, I range myself naturally

among the Anti-Feminists, though at the same time I most emphatically

disclaim all anti-feminine prejudices. Indeed, so far from this being

the case, I am a deep and passionate admirer and lover of Woman. In

order to love her, however, I do not find it necessary to exalt her to

a plane on which all her sturdier, more vital, and more “dangerous”

characteristics are whittled down to mere sweetness. Those to whom the

love of woman depends upon so gross an idealization of her nature as to

cause them to overlook or deny that “wickedness” in her, which is at

once her greatest vital strength and her most powerful equipment as the

custodian and the promoter of life, will find very little to sustain

them in this love throughout the present volume. And, if in this age

of “Safety first,” they fancy that it is expedient to rear and to love

only those women from whom all “danger” has been removed, they will

find that I have endeavoured to demonstrate to them the extreme peril

even of this plausible ideal.

As far as I know this work represents the first radical attempt that

has been made to differentiate two very definite and dissimilar types

of women—the positive and the negative—and to account for their

respective virtues and vices on the grounds of their peculiarities of

health, tonality, vigour, and constitutional bias in favour of life. It

is my belief that this is a necessary and useful differentiation, that

without it there can be no clarity about Woman, and that the fact that

it has not been attempted by previous writers, accounts for much in

their work which is both unfair and untrue. It must be quite plain to

everyone, that in a world where so-called virtue is all too frequently

the outcome of a _minus_ rather than of a _plus_ in vitality, it

would be grossly inaccurate to class all women together; for while

in the case of one woman chastity may be a great feat of discernment

and self-overcoming, in the case of another whose body is less tonic

and less vital, it may be the easiest of human accomplishments. All

reactions are known to differ according to the vitality of the organism

stimulated. To overlook tonality and vitality in any description of

human beings would therefore be a most unpardonable omission. Thus,

Weininger’s and Schopenhauer’s failure to differentiate between

positive and negative women effectually invalidates, in my opinion,

most of what they have said about her; while a good deal of the rest

of the literature dealing with the subject of sex seems to me to fail

owing to the fact that it makes no attempt to describe a standard or a

norm before it proceeds to expatiate upon sex characteristics and their

consequences.

The fact that a classification on these broad lines does not prevent me

from occasionally bringing charges which will seem severe against the

very type that I most warmly recommend, is in no way inconsistent with

my claim that my work is a vindication; for while I show that all the

charges that I myself advance are only an indictment of Woman in so far

as she is unguided and uncontrolled, I also defend her against many

other harsh judgments which are commonly passed against her, and with

which I will have nothing to do.

Thus in the course of this work, the reader will find that I defend

even the so-called “male” woman against the gibes which recently it

has been the fashion to level against her. And on what grounds do I

undertake her vindication?—I point out that, in a nation that can

boast, as England undoubtedly can, of great and worldwide masculine

achievements in the past, such achievements can only have been possible

because the women of the nation did not too seriously dilute the

masculine qualities of the race, with the element “effeminine.” But for

this to have been the rule, these women must have had a large share

of masculine virtues. I show that other nations, such as the Romans

and the Red Indians, also reared generations of masculine women, and

always to the advantage of the community. These male women, against

whom so much has been said, are therefore merely the vestiges of our

great masculine past. Now they are ill-adapted, because they can no

longer find the men to whose greater masculinity they might adapt

themselves. It is the degeneration of man that is the cause of their

mal-adaptation. Women, or at least the best women, nowadays, are no

longer inspired or uplifted by their association with him.

To reply to this, as most people all too hastily do, that the last

War was a proof that Englishmen at least have not degenerated, does

not constitute a serious objection to my statement. For, after all,

successful fighting is only one—and the most primitive—among the many

desirable qualities that the masculine civilized being has cultivated.

Degeneration may be defined as a departure from the high qualities

of a race or a kind. But it is possible to depart from a very great

number of cultivated qualities, and still to retain the moral and

physical equipment of the good fighter. When, therefore, I seek to

explain a good deal of Woman’s discontent with Man, and most of her

very justifiable contempt of him, by pointing to his degeneration, I

mean that, despite the evidence of the great War, in which the modern

European admittedly revealed the primitive fighting qualities in all

their pristine strength, the man of to-day in many other respects—in

the matter of catholicity of tastes, for instance, versatility of

gifts, will-power, vigour, character, and health—shows a marked

departure from the higher endowments of his ancestors. The fact that

this degeneration is due to the devitalizing, cramping and specialized

labours which several generations of Commercialism and Industrialism

and excessive “Urbanism” have imposed upon the male sex, can hardly be

questioned; and if we are in search of an explanation of Feminism, if

we are anxious to discover how and why it is that women are now coming

forward in large numbers to measure their strength against men in all

those callings and offices which hitherto have been regarded as Man’s

special spheres, we may be sure that the true cause of all this does

not lie so much in a desirable change in Woman’s nature itself, as it

does in an undesirable depreciation in our own general abilities, which

women have been only too slow to observe.

To point to the great War in such circumstances, is only cant; but like

all cant, it is the outcome of a desire to spare our vanity at a moment

when everything points indubitably to our humiliation.

There is, however, no subject in the whole world, or at least in the

whole of our English world, around which more cant has collected, than

the subject of sex and the relation of the sexes. But perhaps it would

be as well to make quite clear what is precisely meant by “cant” in

this respect. With Stendhal, I am of the opinion that cant is created

more by vanity than by Puritanism, or the sense of propriety. And it is

because vanity is involved, that the fight against cant is so stubborn.

If Psycho-Analysis had really assailed our vanity, instead of merely

offending our sense of propriety, we should have heard much less about

it. Also we have only to think of the huge popular success of writers

like Zola in order to assure ourselves that for a man’s work to be

hushed up and ignored, he must be guilty of a greater crime than the

mere violation of the proprieties or conventions.

As a rule, mankind will listen patiently when it is told of the

material and not infrequently sordid animal background to some of its

dearest emotions; for, after all, it is only disturbed in its prudery

by such revelations. But proceed to tear away the tinsel of cant from

those activities, for instance, which are alleged to be humanitarian,

“unselfish,” or to belong to the class known as “self-sacrifice,” and

point out how all these activities themselves invariably arise from

purely egotistical emotions and desires, and mankind will immediately

become both incredulous and indignant. Why is this? Obviously because a

very large section of the population of the western world find the very

basis of their self-esteem in the activities enumerated. To show the

egotistical root of these activities, as Hobbes, Helvetius, Stendhal

and Nietzsche consistently did, is therefore to wound these people in

the very sanctuary of their vanity; and those against whom this kind

of violence is attempted nowadays usually retaliate with both rancour

and rage. Hence the determination with which writers like Hobbes,

Helvetius, Nietzsche and Stendhal are forgotten and ignored.

Over the writings of all these men there hangs a very pronounced and

unmistakable fragrance, which may be almost painful at the first

inhalation, and a certain atmosphere which has a noticeably low

temperature. Frequently this atmosphere is quite glacial, and produces

the distinctly unpleasant reaction of goose-skin in the reader’s mind.

Both in the ideas they present, and in their manner of presenting them,

these authors scorn to please. They all possess the same penetrating

insight into the psychology of man; they reveal what the French call

“_une psychologie fouillée_,” and their honesty is hampered by no

desire to fortify themselves or their fellows in their self-esteem.

Unlike Swift, however, it is certain that these men did not write

“to vex the world more than to divert it,” but because they realized

that certain falsifications of sentiment are dangerous and lead to

degeneration.

Now there is an instinctive inclination in every reader to identify

himself with the picture of humanity presented to him in the book

that he happens to be perusing, whether it be a novel or a scientific

treatise. Naturally enough, therefore, he is exposed to the severest

shocks if at every turn he is prevented from idealizing his own nature,

or from thinking too well of it, owing to the fact that the picture

he is contemplating is too humiliating to be pleasant, and yet too

convincing to be lightly rejected.

The bulk of modern readers, however, are women. This fact, too well

known to editors and publishers, is quite inadequately understood

from the standpoint of its influence on taste and quality in literary

production. For not only do women reveal the trait common to all

readers, which consists in a tendency to identify themselves with

one of the characters of a novel, or with the portrait of humanity

presented in a scientific treatise, but they are also addicted to the

practice of confounding that which is pleasant to themselves with that

which is true. Thus in the woman reader there is a twofold tendency

to tolerate or to applaud cant; for, on the one hand, she views truth

hedonistically, and, on the other, she feels deep discomfiture,

either when she finds herself unable, through her false idealization

of herself and her motives, to identify herself with the anti-cant

portrayal of a certain heroine (Stendhal’s Félicie Féline, for

instance), or, when she finds her reading of human nature, which is

based upon her idealized reading of herself, affronted by a picture of

humanity which shatters her rosy view.

To the influence of women in this connexion, however, ought in all

fairness to be added that of a vast number of men, who, in these days,

whether from the same hedonistic view of truth, or prompted by a

certain poltroonery and vanity in the face of reality, tend to shrink

ever more and more from any understanding of human relations and the

passions that govern them, which would distort their comfortable and

comforting assumptions concerning both. If, however, they actually

form, together with the women, a force sufficiently powerful to govern

the taste of the day, especially in the world of literature and in that

department of it which treats of human psychology, we may well feel

some anxiety concerning the real worth of that literature. If Byron and

Stendhal could honestly complain of cant even in their time, what can

be our position to-day?

* * * * *

Frankly acknowledging my indebtedness to the school of writers that can

be said to have adopted the rigorous psychological uprightness of our

great philosopher Hobbes, I have endeavoured also to strip the “tinsel

of sentiment” from one of the most important of human relations, in

order, if possible, to build afresh, and to build wholesomely, where

too much confusion and too much falsehood have been allowed to flourish

in the past. In order, however, to protect myself from a charge to

which the asperity and frequent severity of my language is almost sure

to expose me, it may be as well for me to state at once that, unlike

many that have written on the subject of Woman, I have been animated by

no bitterness and by none of those unhappy experiences which often warp

judgment and impair the vision. On the contrary, to all my principal

relations to women I owe the most pleasant and possibly some of the

most valuable experiences of my life.

Unlike Schopenhauer, Byron, or Balzac, my relationship to my mother

was an exceptionally devoted and happy one. Both friends and relatives

are unanimous here, and have frequently declared that they rarely saw

anything to equal it, both on her side and on my own. Up to the time

of her death she was my best and dearest friend, and in my passionate

love for her, my love for my subject may well be said to have begun.

What has my relation to other women been? In this regard I can only

say that, though I have spent an enormous amount of my time with

women, I have never suffered the smallest wrong at the hands of any

one of them; neither have I had any experience which could possibly

give me a distorted view of the sex, or a resentful attitude towards

it as a whole. I have learned a tremendous deal from women, and,

having not a little of the woman in me besides (and to _comprise_ is

to _comprehend_), I have through the usual channels of introspection

been able to supplement my objective studies with a good deal of

subjective information. From my earliest youth, too, the subject of sex

has interested me deeply. True, it interests every one deeply; but I

have fortunately never felt any of the customary shame that so often

arrests thought and speculation on the subject. Neither can I say that

my environment was ever of a kind to hinder me in my free and careful

study of it. Brought up in an atmosphere of art and literature, I never

became acquainted with that false modesty and embarrassment that seizes

upon most young people when, for the first time, they are confronted

with the most mysterious and fascinating subject of existence. I was

allowed to dwell on the question, had no reason to suppose it was wrong

to do so, and even when, at the age of ten I took my first steps in the

science of physiology—a subject I used to beg all my elders to instruct

me upon—I and they little knew that I was anticipating, by at least

six years, a passionate interest in the principal and most fundamental

question of human relations. To this day I remember the little green

manual of Physiology, by Professor Huxley, that my governess put into

my hands, and I cannot say I remember any book better, save perhaps

another little green volume containing Schopenhauer’s essays on _Woman

and the Metaphysics of Love_, which I read when I was eighteen. At the

age of nineteen I wrote my first book, which bore the title _Girls and

Love_; but, needless to say, it was never published. And ever since

the subject of sex has scarcely ever ceased from occupying my mind in

various ways. For the rest, I have listened with respectful attention

to the voice of the Ancients—of the Orient, of Egypt and of Greece—and,

as usual, have listened most intently there where I knew relative

permanence to have been achieved and humanity to have flourished best.

Such preoccupations in regard to a matter that ought to be so natural,

so well ordered, as to be taken for granted, just as breathing is, can

denote but one thing, namely: that to the thoughtful, nowadays, sex

has undoubtedly become a real and puzzling problem; that is to say,

something that is not in order, that is not properly understood, and

that every one has, as it were, to face and to overcome for himself

afresh, before he can “carry on,” and before he can allow time and age

to overtake him.

In the present work I have attempted to be as clear and as

straightforward as is compatible with the task of handling a delicate

subject delicately. I am convinced that a good deal of the dangerous

silence that hangs over the vital and fundamental questions I shall

sometimes have to touch upon, owes its existence for the most part to

the unfortunate fact that the subject of sex, outside medical circles,

has hitherto usually been confronted by only two classes of mind—the

puritanically prudish, who have done their best to shelve it, and their

opposite extreme, the licentious and libidinous, who have refrained

from no excess or extravagance that could possibly offend and startle

their opponents in the opposite camp. With neither of these classes

have I any connexion. I object to the licentious as wholeheartedly as

to the Puritanical. I protest against being suspected unjustly of a

licentious turn of mind, because I venture to speak freely concerning

a subject that is systematically hushed up to the peril of all; I also

protest most emphatically against being suspected of Puritanism because

I make no attempt to conceal my loathing of certain modern aspects of

the sexual relationship.

Part I

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

CHAPTER I

Positiveness—The Saying of “Yea” to Life

(1) SEX _VERSUS_ DEATH

A scheme of life that includes death as the periodic end of each

generation of beings must, if it is to persist, include some form of

periodic reproduction of life. Reproduction, or the reproducing of a

fresh generation of beings, is thus the necessary balance of death.

This sounds the merest platitude. But it is a platitude that cannot be

dwelt upon too often or too carefully, if one remembers how constantly

and obstinately its consequences are denied or vilified.

To speak of the higher organic life on this globe as sexual, therefore,

is merely to state in other words, that all higher organic life is

doomed to die, and must be replaced by new life. Abolish death and you

abolish the meaning and the need of sex and reproduction. Abolish sex

and reproduction, and, if you cannot establish eternal higher organic

life, the higher organic life of the globe must for ever perish.

At least for human beings and myriads of animals, Death and Sex are

consequently counterparts. Sex with its purpose, reproduction, might

be regarded as the contrivance for circumventing Death, for nullifying

it, for cheating it of its complete victory over life. And that is why

all dreams or concepts of eternal life are, and cannot help being,

tainted by a certain hostility to sex: because where eternal life is

the scheme, sex drops out. Conversely, all hostility to eternal life is

and cannot help being tainted by a certain positiveness, friendliness

and favour towards mortal life and its ally sex: because where eternal

life is an impossibility, sex is indispensable.

It is for this reason that, in its depths, Christianity is more logical

and more acceptable to a rational man than Mohammedanism. Christianity,

accepting the concept Eternal Life, says: “In heaven there will be

no marriage or giving in marriage.”[1] It realized that you cannot

eat your cake and have it. Mohammedanism, while accepting the concept

Eternal Life, imagines an eternity of sex-life into the bargain, which

is an absurdity. Mohammed did not realize that you cannot eat your cake

and have it. Read the Koran and you will understand how it happened

that he could be guilty of this confusion of thought.

Sex, then, while as a scheme it is opposed to eternal life, is

nevertheless the enemy of _death_—the most unconquerable, crafty,

resourceful and untiring enemy of death—so much so, indeed, that

whereas mortal life is not nearly such a good opposite of death as is

eternal life (for the dead mortal is eternally dead to this world), sex

might, and in this book will be regarded as _the_ opposite of death,

the reverse of death.

This point is important in any case; but it is particularly important

to me in this book; because all my conclusions will be based upon

it. To repeat, then, the equation reads: Sex = Mortal Life; No-Sex =

Eternal Life, or, in the absence of Eternal Life, Death.

From this chapter onwards, however, save in regard to the one

particular question of virtue, I shall cease from considering Eternal

Life; because, as we see from the equation, Eternal Life and Death come

strangely as correlatives together—that is to say, for all ordinary

purposes, and as far as this world is concerned, they mean the same

thing—they both oppose mortal life and sex.

A very significant conclusion arises from this: that in this conflict

of sex and death, all those who are opposed to sex, or who call it

a sin, or who associate it with guilt, or who cast odium upon it,

range themselves on the side of death; while all those who stand by

sex, favour it, wish to vindicate it, and claim for it a character

absolutely free from all sin, guilt or odium, range themselves against

death. Here Christianity is quite logical. At its root it is hostile

to mortal life, and in favour of Eternal Life. But it never refers to

Eternal Life as a possibility on this globe, but always as an existence

that is a correlative of _death_ on this globe.

Christianity, therefore, being an advocate of Eternal Life, very

logically preaches that sex is to be deplored, to be avoided, and,

if possible, negatived. And the Puritan, who may be regarded as

the extreme Christian, is notorious for his implacable loathing of

sex. Unconsciously he sees quite clearly that any scheme of organic

life that involves sex, must be a substitute for eternal organic

life[2]—which in an idealized form is the life for which he has been

taught to crave. Death to him, therefore, is merely a merciful gateway

leading from Sex into Eternal Life. Being the foe of Sex, he knows

quite well that Death must be his ally, his accomplice, his ringleader,

in his conspiracy to realize Eternal Life.

Is this quite clear? For the present I have wished to say nothing

concerning the respective merits either of Sex, Death, Eternal Life,

or Mortal Life; I have only wished to point out that, as schemes, as

ideas, they are mutually exclusive and irreconcilable, and that you

cannot desire the one without thereby coveting the doom of the other.

As far as this world and its problems are concerned, however—and who,

if you please, stands outside this world and its problems?—we have to

deal with one kind of life only—Mortal Life. As I have shown, the

necessary correlative of Mortal Life, if it is to continue, is Sex. We

are concerned, therefore, immediately and directly, with Mortal Life,

and its indispensable correlative Sex. We need not accept the scheme

as it is thus unceremoniously thrust upon us. We can deny Mortal Life

and its concomitant need, Sex, by putting an end to everything at least

for ourselves, through straightway committing suicide the very moment

we realize that Mortal Life and Sex are undesirable. If, however, we

accept the proposition, “Mortal Life is desirable,” we necessarily

commit ourselves to the rider, “Sex is desirable.” These features are

all we know concerning Life; they constitute the two sides of the only

kind of Life of which we are aware, and however real and realistic our

visions of an Eternal Life may be, however vivid our mental pictures of

a Heaven may seem, such visions and such mental pictures, as we very

well know, are of a kind the true existence of which is quite incapable

of proof or demonstration; whereas Mortal Life is here before us, with

us and in us, and the way to live it is our chief concern; the way to

live it well so that it may redound to the benefit and credit of all,

is our highest concern.

Throughout this book, I shall argue on the assumption that the reader,

like myself, believes that mortal life is desirable. I shall take

it for granted that he, like me, is content to allow transcendental

questions to weigh with him only in so far as they do not render him

hostile to Mortal Life. I shall therefore assume all along that he

believes, as I do, that Sex is desirable, however far the consequences

of such an admission may lead him.

Be this as it may, let him entertain no qualms as to the direction in

which I wish these consequences to lead him. There are more than two

alternatives in the choice of one’s attitude to Sex. To most people

there appear to be but two opposite extremes: the attitude of the

lecherous reprobate who makes decent women ashamed of being women;

and the attitude of the Puritan who, in his heart of hearts, feels

that if only he could have been at the Almighty’s elbow at the time

of the Creation, he would have respectfully suggested a somewhat more

“drawing-room” method of propagating the species.

To neither of these attitudes has this book, or the spirit of it,

even the remotest relation. The acknowledgment that Mortal Life is

desirable, and that consequently its indispensable correlative Sex

is desirable, can be made by a man in full possession of a healthy

control over his passions,[3] in a state of complete mastery over his

appetites, and endowed with the most fastidious taste as to where

normal desire and its gratification end, and where excess begins.

Extremes belong only to the uncultured, to the hogs of life. It is they

who make everything appear disgusting, simply because they are unable

to approach a single aspect of life with that amount of understanding

and reverence which is due to all things connected with the sacred task

of making mankind and his existence an honour and not a curse to the

universe.

To accept the proposition that Mortal Life is desirable and to commit

one’s self by so doing to its inevitable rider that Sex is desirable,

may lead one very far, as this book will show; but, if it lead one to

a tastelessly pornographic or licentious attitude towards the most

fundamental instinct of life, then one is of a nature that has no right

to Mortal Life, much less, therefore, to its indispensable correlative

Sex.

Without wishing to labour this point, but with a keen sense of the host

of misunderstandings and prejudices that will cling like barnacles

to a book of this kind, unless I make my position unmistakably clear

from the start, let me put the case a little differently by the use of

another instinct of Mortal Life. Let me say, to accept the proposition,

_Mortal Life is desirable_, is to commit one’s self to its inevitable

rider that eating and drinking are desirable. There is no objection

to this statement as it stands. All who endorse Mortal Life also

endorse eating and drinking. And those who attack eating and drinking,

simultaneously strike at Mortal Life.

This conclusion, however, provides absolutely no sanction for those

who are sufficiently material and gross to make food and drink

things of shame and of horror. No man, therefore, need fear lest by

acknowledging that eating and drinking are desirable he should find

himself supporting gluttony, drunkenness and bestiality of all kinds.

It is, however, a strange and significant coincidence that, where we

find hostility to Sex, we also find a certain suspicion of all things

connected with the body. The Puritans did not accept Sex as desirable;

at the best they held it to be a necessary evil; but we also find the

Puritans hostile to eating and drinking, and not only to excessive

eating and drinking. I have already shown with sufficient elaboration

elsewhere what regrettable reforms in food and drink they introduced

into England in the seventeenth century.[4] This only supports my

contention that you cannot be hostile to Sex without being hostile to

Mortal Life in general.

If, therefore, you believe that the acceptance of Sex is immoral, as

Otto Weininger did;[5] if you believe, as he did, that “woman is the

sin of man”;[6] if, moreover, you claim, as he did, that “it is the

Jew and the woman who are the apostles of pairing to bring guilt on

mankind”;[7] if, again, you assert that “sexual union is immoral”;[8]

that “women must really and truly and spontaneously relinquish it”;[9]

that “woman will exist as long as man’s guilt is inexpiated, until

he has really vanquished his own sexuality”;[10] that “man must free

himself of sex, for in that way, and that way alone, can he free

woman”;[11] and, finally—this gem of negativeness: “all sexuality

implies degradation”;[12]—if this be your position, I say, then, you

must logically be hostile to Mortal Life, and you cannot rationally

accept it. Your only course is to commit suicide. This, as we know,

Otto Weininger was logical and consistent enough to do. He died by his

own hand on October 4, 1903.

(2) MORTAL LIFE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES ACCEPTED

As we have seen, it is impossible to have it both ways and to remain

consistent. You are at liberty, of course, to take up the Puritan’s, or

Otto Weininger’s, or St. Paul’s attitude towards Sex; but, by so doing,

you straightway disclaim Mortal Life itself and reject it utterly. Let

this be quite clear to you before you go any further, because a good

deal depends upon this simple but profoundly significant issue. The

fact that St. Paul and the Puritans did not put an end to themselves

right away, as Otto Weininger was clear-headed and honest enough to

do, need not disturb you. Fanatics are rarely clear-headed, and they

are scarcely ever honest. It is sufficient for my purpose to point to

St. Paul’s and the Puritan’s hostility to life in general in order

to show that, although they did not reach the logical end of their

journey, they were certainly well advanced along the road thither.

Besides, if you study St. Paul and the Puritans, you will find, as I

have done, that there is perhaps another explanation to their apparent

inconsistency.

A man may remain longer than he likes in a certain vicinity or

apartment, if he feels it his duty, before taking his leave, to get

others to accompany him thence, to persuade and exhort others to

forsake the place as well. St. Paul certainly felt it his duty to act

in this way, and so for that matter did Schopenhauer.

For us who accept Mortal Life and say “Yea” to it wholeheartedly,

there are certain very grave duties too. The thing to which we say

“Yea,” we wish to keep both clean, sweet and alluring. This world is

our home, and we take a pride in it. We must make it such that we are

able to take a pride in it. We recognize that Mortal Life includes

pain as a prominent factor; but, provided that pain is practically

inseparable from the best purposes of life (as, for instance, the pain

of self-discipline, self-mastership, the pain of habituation to new

knowledge, new arts, the pain resulting from the natural relationships

to our myriads of fellows, and the pains of child-birth), we say “Yea”

to it too, and with the same wholeheartedness.

We do not shrink from pain, as Schopenhauer did, we do not magnify it

or concentrate upon it, as he did, and condemn the whole of existence

because of it. We do not call our glorious history, as the King of the

Animals, the _Martyrdom of Man_, as Winwood Reade did. We call our

history the _Triumph of Man_; and it is because we wish to maintain it

as the triumph of man that we face it with spirit and positiveness.

Our duties are grave, I say; they involve everything, in fact, that can

be conceived as belonging to the task of keeping that to which we say

“Yea” in the highest degree worthy of our “Yea”—worthy, that is to say,

of our unreserved acceptance.

The conduct of Mortal Life, therefore, is our principal concern. And

for this conduct to be correct and fruitful in good things, we must be

quite clear as to the “shall” and the “shall not” of what we should

hate and what we should love, of what we should call bad, and what we

should call good.

Throughout this book the word “good” will always mean “_that which is

favourable to the best kind of Mortal Life and its multiplication_.” If

this book reveals any hate at all, it will be for that which is hostile

to the best kind of life, and if it reveals any love at all it will be

for everything that is friendly to the best kind of life.

This takes us far, no doubt; but not farther, I believe, than anyone

should wish to go who has said “Yea” honestly and sanguinely to Mortal

Life.

For instance, in opposition to men like St. Paul, Knox, Calvin, Prynne,

Schopenhauer, Otto Weininger and their like, we say that Sex is good,

Woman is good, the flesh is good. And we heartily dislike men like St.

Paul, Knox, Calvin, Prynne, Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger because

their attitude shows not only hostility to Woman and to Sex, but also,

by implication, to Mortal Life, to which we have said “Yea.”

We call _good_ all that which actuates us and maintains us in a proper

exercise of our functions, and makes Mortal Life desirable: appetite,

desire, lust, motherhood, fertility, reproductive love, reverence for

the body, prepossession in favour of health and prejudice against

sickness, respect of love, of beauty and of its multiplication. We also

call _good_ the loathing of ugliness and the desire to suppress it; we

therefore approve of deep suspicion towards ugliness and illness, and

towards everything and everybody that attempts to give ugliness and

illness fine-sounding and euphemistic names, and we cultivate a love of

moderation and a loathing of excess.

We call _bad_ all that thwarts us in a proper exercise of our functions

and all that makes Mortal Life undesirable or seem undesirable:

loss of appetite or desire, the abuse of appetite or desire, as of

all things; the finding of excuses or extenuating circumstances for

ugliness, botchedness and sickness. We also call the following _bad_:

excess, sterility, non-reproductive love, prostitution, homosexuality,

irreverence towards the body, the setting of transcendental questions

before vital questions.

On our side, in our advocacy of the first-named things, we have our

instincts which, if they are sound, confirm us on every point.

It frequently happens, however, that Mortal Life is so difficult, and

those who preach against it are so many, so eloquent and so powerful,

that we need almost an intellectual assent over and above our

instinctive acceptance of it. For it is precisely in the moments of our

greatest weakness, when we feel uncertain, when we have made mistakes

and know that we have erred, that the preachers against life and the

body, and against the fundamental instincts and desires of Mortal Life,

will seem to be right, will seem almost to convince us that they are

right. Like vultures they wait afar off till they see the body of our

trust and hope in life, the corpse of our clean conscience, prostrate

on the ground, and then down they swoop and devour the carrion that is

their natural food.

It is before such disasters happen that an intellectual assent to

the deepest promptings of our instincts is the greatest need of all.

In practical life it may be taken as a general rule that it is more

helpful to have an intellectual justification for our mistakes and the

instincts that have led to them, than the most convincing theories

in favour of our virtues. For it is innocence in the exercise of our

natural functions that the preachers against Mortal Life and the body

are most anxious to undermine, and most successful in undermining. And

how often, particularly when an instinct has, so to speak, “drawn in

its horns,” or ceased to assert itself owing to a momentary mistake,

check or rebuff, would not an intellectual justification of its

vigorous re-assertion help us to tide over the evil hour without our

falling a prey to the opposing party—to the enemies of Mortal Life and

the body!

If, however, we bear in mind the maxim that everything is “good” that

is favourable to the best kind of Mortal Life, and everything is

“bad” that is unfavourable to the best kind of life; if, moreover,

we stand bravely and firmly by the principle that Mortal Life is

acceptable and desirable, and therefore that all it exacts for its

continuance must also be acceptable and desirable, and consequently

that the things of the body—beauty, charm, ardour—together with the

flesh, the world, sex, woman, procreation, multiplication and good

food, are for the glory, joy and exaltation of Mortal Life and man;

if, over and above all this, we heroically embrace pain as a necessary

incidental factor in the process of living, then, I say, we have an

intellectual weapon far more formidable and far more effective for

the warding off of those vultures of gloom and doubt—the preachers

against life and the body—than any known engine of destruction could

possibly be. It is this intellectual attitude to Mortal Life, with all

its consequences in our code of morals, our likes and dislikes, that

throughout this book I shall call the “_positive_” or “_yea-saying_”

attitude: while the opposite attitude of mind will be designated by

the word “_negative_.”[13] Nor shall I refer any longer in these pages

to “Mortal Life,” but will speak merely of Life itself: for not only

is it the only kind of life that will concern me here, but also, as

we know nothing about Eternal Life, and our only notions of life are

derived entirely from what we know of Mortal Life, Mortal Life and Life

are to all intents and purposes one and the same thing for us, and

the expression “Mortal Life” can well fall out at this stage of the

discussion.

(3) THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POSITIVE MIND

Unless they are very delicate or very sick, all children are positive.

They are fresh from the anvil of Life. Life itself speaks through them

without reserve, without constraint. They have made no mistakes yet,

or are not aware of having made any; they have had none of those rude

shocks that shake our faith in Life and render us an easy prey to those

vultures of which I have already spoken, that live on the carrion

of shattered hopes and broken consciences. They say “Yea” to Life

innocently and unconsciously, like kittens playing with balls of wool.

And it is because they say “Yea” to Life innocently and unconsciously

that they are so deeply interesting to the positive philosopher.

Because in them he sees the attitude which he must maintain and

sustain intellectually, despite all the shocks and misfortunes life

has brought. But I point out again that I speak of this intellectual

positiveness only as a helpful confirmation of sound instincts. If the

sound instincts are not there, the positive intellectual attitude is

nothing but a pose.

There is something strangely pathetic about this positiveness of the

child. The philosopher knows the wilderness it is in. He knows that

on the mountain peaks all around, the vultures are waiting hungrily

to see it make its first mistake, to see it writhe under its first

misfortune—or its first “guilt” as they like to call it. He knows with

what extraordinary vigilance they are tracking its footsteps, so that

they may be there in time, so that they may be at its side in the first

moment of its doubt in Life, to tell it that Life is sinful, that

lust is sinful, that sex is sinful, that the World, the Flesh and the

Devil are interchangeable terms. And the positive philosopher cannot

help wondering with some alarm how the child will survive this first

encounter with doubt, with suspicion, and with distrust concerning that

to which a moment ago it said “Yea” so wholeheartedly.

The positive philosopher trembles over the outcome of the conflict.

With fear and trepidation he forges the weapons of intellectual

positiveness and flings them with anxious prodigality before the child,

hoping that they will sustain it in the struggle and confirm its best

instincts; trusting with all his heart that they will revive its

“Yea” to Life before it is completely overcome. And when the positive

philosopher succeeds in this and sees the birds of ill-omen turn

disconsolately away, foiled in their endeavour, he celebrates his feast

of feasts; because there is more rejoicing in his heart over one child

that is saved from negativeness than over thousands that repent!

To the positive philosopher, then, the healthy child is the best

pattern for the yea-saying and positive man. The only danger the child

is in, as I have shown, consists in the fact that it is intellectually

unprepared to justify its “Yea” in the face of the preachers of “Nay.”

Apart from this one flaw, however—which in a universally positive

world would not be felt as a disadvantage at all (because it is

only in negative environments and negative ages that a conscious or

intellectual confirmation of one’s soundest instincts is necessary)—the

child, or the animal for that matter, presents the perfect example

of the positive attitude towards Life. The positive philosopher,

therefore, learns from the child, and watches it with interest.

The principal characteristic of the healthy child is, that it does

not play with its primary appetites; it does not laugh about them;

it cannot abide a joke about them. Watch a healthy child eat! It is

absolutely serious, absorbed, concentrated, intent! A very healthy boy

will even frown over his meal, just as he will frown when he eats a

piece of chocolate. It is obvious from his expression that eating is no

joke with him. It is one of the gravest, most pressing, most engrossing

interests in life. And the same holds good of all healthy, positive

adults. Watch a healthy and positive adult at his meals; he is serious

to a fault! It is only when the demands of his body have been satisfied

that he begins to indulge in levity. The man who habitually jokes at

the beginning of a meal is past salvation. He is negative by nature and

cannot be rescued.

Seriousness towards the primary instinct of self-preservation is

one of the principal characteristics of the healthy child. But the

healthy child is not yet fully, consciously concerned about any other

instinct; if it were—if, for instance, it were fully conscious of the

reproductive instinct—we may be quite sure that it would take it quite

seriously too; for it is serious—most serious perhaps—even when it is

playing.

In spite of all the apparent light-heartedness of the healthy child,

which is all that superficial people can see in it; in spite of the

ease with which it turns from sleep to wakefulness, from tears to

laughter, and _vice versâ_, there is a profundity, a sobriety, a

solidity about its seriousness that nothing can affect. It takes its

own body, itself, the world, and life tremendously seriously. It takes

its wants and its desires seriously. It takes its loves and its hates

seriously. Little children can be homicidal in their loathing of other

children; they can be heroic in their devotion. Those who always depict

children with a smile on their chubby faces, and hopping about on one

leg, know nothing about them. They know nothing of the imperturbable

gravity of the child, and of positiveness generally.

To watch the face of an elderly, negative spinster when a really

healthy boy loses his temper, is to witness in one human countenance

the whole history of the long conflict between those vultures of which

I have spoken and the artless yea-sayer to Life.

Later on, if he is carefully handled, this boy will take his love

seriously; he will cling to the girl he chooses in a manner that will

make that same spinster marvel at his determination, and he will be as

fierce and as serious in his desire for the woman of his choice as he

once was over his games, over his hates, and over his meals.

Laughter is not nearly such a common characteristic of healthy positive

life as the superficial imagine—more particularly noisy laughter. In

every mixed party where much loud laughter or shrill laughter is heard,

there is sure to be a good deal, not of gaiety, not of wanton spirits,

but of nervous irascibility, sexual excitation, and particularly

sexual abstinence, exasperation and—negativeness! He who travels the

world over ascertains this curious fact: that loud, shrill laughter is

essentially the social _noise_ of Puritanical countries.

Positive people take too serious an attitude to life, to themselves, to

each other, and particularly to members of the opposite sex, constantly

to vent what they feel in an idle cackle or giggle. They laugh, but

their hilarity is short, violent, and apparently effective; because

it seems to relieve them for longer periods than does the laughter of

negative people.

_One of the chief characteristics of the positive mind, then, is the

gravity, the solemn interest, with which it confronts life itself, the

body that holds it, and everything vital, including sex._

Behold the healthy child, and you have an automaton guided absolutely

by a positive mind! To retain this positive mind throughout one’s

youth and adulthood is the greatest triumph—particularly nowadays—that

anyone can achieve. He who achieves it may well laugh; he has a right

to laugh; for he has mastered the most redoubtable foe a man can

encounter—the powerful false values that are now seeking to prevail

everywhere, and over the victims of which the vultures are muttering

their thanksgiving.

The only positive form of laughter is the expression of a consciousness

of acquired power. This is Hobbes’ view, it was Stendhal’s view; it

is the biologist’s view, who says that laughter is the expression of

superior adaptation.

Another characteristic of the positive mind _is its forgetfulness in

regard to the things that incapacitate it for taking a lively interest

in life_. This quality of the mind is simply a spiritual counterpart

of the healthy body’s power of evacuating those portions of the food

absorbed which cannot be assimilated without hurt: forgetting and

digesting being the same function of evacuation in two different

departments. The positive mind, like the healthy body it is in,

knows how to get rid of a useless thing quickly—in fact knows how

to forget. Things do not weigh on it, or bear it down, any more than

a hearty meal lies heavily on its body’s stomach. Its body digests

quickly, and has very soon done with the process. The positive mind

digests quickly—particularly its supposed misdeeds. That is why it is

so difficult to give a positive person a guilty conscience; because a

guilty conscience is simply a costive conscience. The positive mind

remembers only so much as interests it keenly, or as much as does not

stand in the way of a continued positive attitude to life; just as its

body only retains the nourishment out of all it absorbs.

_The positive mind has no fear of pain_, particularly if this pain is

incurred in a vital effort. Little boys will actually enjoy enormous

discomfort and pain, provided it is encountered in doing things that

reek of active life, that bring their bodies into violent action, and

give them the thrill and bracing sensation of overcoming an obstacle,

of resisting an attempt at capture, or of effecting a capture. “Yea” is

their constant attitude to everything, even to the things which, to the

adult, are disagreeable.

I remember on one occasion, when I was walking home from a friend’s

house in the pouring rain, I met that same friend’s two little sons

returning at a perfectly leisurely pace from school. I had an umbrella,

they had not. Naturally I felt it incumbent upon me to see them

home, and, gathering them carefully under my silk shelter, I marched

them smartly in the direction of their father’s house. I soon found,

however, that all my pains were wasted on them, for whenever I was

not looking, out one of them would stray into the drenching shower;

and when I insisted on their keeping quite close to me, each of them

gravely extended his free arm out into the rain to catch as much of

it as possible, while every puddle was conscientiously and solemnly

explored by their feet.

This may seem a trifling circumstance to dwell upon; but unimportant

as it was, it struck me as being but another example of the indomitable

yea-saying of healthy childhood to anything and everything.

The gravity of the little boy when he does these things shows clearly

the relation between positiveness and things that matter—things that

have _weight_, _solidity_, _importance_, _tangibility_, _definition_.

Another incident occurs to me as I write. I remember once feeling a

little intrigued by the sight of a knot of little village boys standing

like conspirators very seriously together in one of the streets of my

favourite Sussex village. Their ages ranged from about eight to eleven

years. I knew them all perfectly well, and the fact that I drew close

up to them did not disturb them in the least. When I was near enough to

discover what they were talking about, this is what I saw and heard:—In

the centre of the grave and almost hushed group there stood a lad of

about nine years of age. He was exhibiting his dirty hands proudly and

almost arrogantly to his friends, and the latter were listening with

rapt attention to his harangue. I noticed that they all appeared to be

a little crestfallen and dejected, save the boy who was demonstrating

with his hands, and one other boy who seemed to be arguing with him.

Now the explanation of all this profound interest, rapt attention

and conflicting emotions, was as follows:—The central figure, the

boy of nine, had hands that were covered thickly with large warts,

and he possessed one particularly big and ugly-looking specimen just

beneath the knuckle of a finger of his right hand. He was exhibiting

these horrible excrescences to his schoolfellows triumphantly and

defying them to show anything like them, or even approaching them in

size and number; and there was but one of them who had a sufficiently

respectable record, where warts were concerned, to be able to answer

him and meet him, as it were, on equal ground, and this was the boy who

had been contesting his point all the time.

Again, this is a trifling incident, but it is full of significance

for the analyst of the positive mind. This yea-saying to anything and

everything, which surges up with the conviction of an explosion at

every moment, everywhere, is far more important, far more profound,

far more solid, as a characteristic of childhood, than that mythical

innocence and sweet merriness which is the only characteristic of

healthy childhood that superficial child-lovers will either grant or

recognize.

(4) DISCIPLINE IN ITS RELATION TO THE POSITIVE MIND

The discipline of healthy children, because of their very positiveness,

is one of the most intricate and delicate tasks that devolves upon the

adult man or woman. It is the task and problem of practical morality,

and to solve it without chilling any of that valuable positiveness

of childhood, to impose a limit, in fact, upon juvenile positiveness

without destroying or blighting it, is the most difficult achievement

in education.

To say “yea” to everything—to mud, to filth, to danger, to illness (for

positive children are positive even to their bodily disorders), to the

rain, to animals, to vermin, to the knife, to explosives, to ladders,

to dangerous altitudes, to the precipice, and so on—is of course,

supremely delightful, supremely healthy; but it cannot be allowed in

its full catholicity. This I am perfectly ready to knowledge. The

luxuriance of the child’s positiveness _must_ be pruned. The human

being must be reared for society. He must be taught the limitations of

his freedom; above all, he must be taught taste and discrimination:

what to select and what to reject. And there is perhaps no more

solemn moment in life than when a full-grown man or woman, in perfect

possession of all the necessary intellectual equipment for the task,

approaches his universally yea-saying junior to discipline it—that is

to say, to determine its “yea,” to limit it, and to confine it only to

a certain set of things.

The problem is obviously, how can the child be kept positive to this

world while being rendered negative to the undesirable elements in

this life. Or to put it in a sentence: how can I make my little boy

say “No” to warts without saying “No” to the world? To all those who

approach the child with a negative creed, to all those who are vultures

themselves, or who derive from the vulture breed, the order is clearly

“Hands off!” Only people who have retained their positive attitude

to life should be allowed to interfere where children are concerned;

because ordered social life itself is discipline, and but very little

careful and discriminating guidance need be added. When Herbert Spencer

said that children of large families were always better than those of

small families, because in the case of the former the parents have

less time to interfere with natural processes, he propounded a very

true principle as far as the modern negative world is concerned;

because most of the juvenile discipline nowadays is not only imposed by

negative people, but the very social environment in which these people

move and breathe is also negative and hostile to life.

The object and province of juvenile discipline are simply these: to

rear a positive human being for social life; to discipline it to

selection and rejection without forcing it to scout or to suspect vital

functions or vital virtues. It sounds simple enough when stated in a

single line; but how many misunderstandings, how many ruined careers,

how many bitter, disappointed and ill-adapted adults are not the result

of the opposite principle, the principle which reads that the positive

child should above all be taught to distrust its deepest instincts, its

body, and to be suspicious of the world, the flesh and the Devil—the

latter meaning very often no more than wanton spirits.

Sometimes when one sees the kind of people—men and women—into whose

gentle bloodless hands, into whose drab, lifeless but well-meaning

existences, healthy helpless children are made to fall, it is

difficult not to shudder. How good they are! How sweet is their ideal

of what a child ought to be! How vigilant they are for any signs of

“wickedness”! Who can submit to their Procrustean method and survive

a whole, positive being? They _know_! They know what pleases God and

the angels! No one is better informed than they on this subject.

Honest?—no one could be more so than they. Reliable?—they could be

trusted to stamp the exuberance out of a boa-constrictor! Good?—not

merely good, but holy! Their mild cerulean eyes gaze beyond the child

in their tender care, and towards a wonderful ideal, far away, of

perfect childhood—a bright, merry, glowing angel who, preferably, would

have wings on his shoulders, _à la_ Joshua Reynolds, and nothing—no

nothing at all—beneath the thorax. His body might end there with

advantage. That is their belief, their hope, their ambition. All human

beings might end there with advantage; but above all the child, because

children are so pure, so guileless, so sweet; it is such a pity that——

Luckily, robust positiveness has a tenacity and a vigour that

frequently survive even the contagion of these toads with evil

consciences. But how few are the survivals compared with the number

that go under annually!

That is why little girls survive the process more often than little

boys; because, as a rule, unless attacked from the side of the body,

a female’s positiveness to life is wholly and utterly unbreakable.

But it is deeper, more silent, less conspicuous, less articulate

than that of the little boy; therefore it more easily eludes the

cerulean but very superficial glance of the negative adult. It is

more unconscious and consequently less liable to betray itself in the

presence of constraining influences. It manifests itself, too, in a

less arresting, less annoying fashion; it appears to be “harmless.”

Behold the girls that are turned out annually from convent schools or

strictly Puritanical High Schools. If their tremendous positiveness had

not been secret, concealed, subcutaneous, unconscious, how could it

possibly have survived? Again and again I have heard the negative adult

deny a passionate positive temperament in a little girl, when I saw it

clearly. It is this mistake, this inability to detect a trait that is

deep enough to be very far below the surface, that is alone responsible

for the salvation of thousands of girls to-day.

Modern man is not only less positive generally than woman, but

the modicum of positiveness he possesses is also more apparent,

less resisting, more self-assertive, more conscious and therefore

less secret. It also manifests itself in a more obtrusive and more

irritating way.[14]

Boys suffer most from a negative discipline. Men are suffering most

physically and mentally from our negative age. Women only suffer from

the indirect results of the age—that is to say, from the deterioration

it causes in their men.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See St. Matthew, chap. xxii. verse 30: “For in the resurrection

they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of

God in heaven.”

[2] It should always be remembered that the promise of Christianity is

“the resurrection of the body.”

[3] For an explanation of what I mean by this much-abused phrase, see

pp. 70, 90-94.

[4] See my _Defence of Aristocracy_ (Constable), chap. V.

[5] See _Sex and Character_ (Heinemann, 1906), p. 299.

[6] _Ibid._, p. 299.

[7] _Ibid._, p. 329.

[8] _Ibid._, p. 336.

[9] _Ibid._, p. 343.

[10] _Ibid._, p. 345.

[11] _Ibid._, p. 345.

[12] Op. cit., p. 346.

[13] Of course, I mean this intellectual positiveness only as a

rational confirmation of bodily and constitutional positiveness; for

frequently when I shall use the expression “positive” it will also

mean the unconscious, spontaneous positiveness of a healthy body.

From the context there will be no mistaking which I mean. The same

remark applies naturally to the expression intellectual negativeness.

For instance, St. Paul and Calvin were both intellectually as well as

spontaneously negative. An unhealthy child, or an unhealthy adult, may

be only unconsciously or spontaneously so.

[14] In this connexion, see pp. 98-103.

CHAPTER II

The Subject Treated Generally

In my Introduction I have said enough to show that I can be neither

a so-called Woman-hater nor a Woman-despiser. And if I have departed

somewhat from the common rules laid down by precedent for the writing

of a book of this nature, it was because I felt compelled to safeguard

some of my hardest and most unacceptable views and conclusions from the

withering suspicion of having been dictated by bitterness or resentment.

Other men have written about Woman, and have said hard things about

her too: Knox, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Weininger are among them.

Neither Knox, Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche, however, started life with

such a large fund of prepossession in her favour. Neither Knox,

Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche can be said to have been free, as I am,

from those bitter experiences and shocks that distort one’s vision and

destroy one’s focus.

If I appear to say things that are hard, therefore let it be plainly

understood at this stage in my work, that I do so only because I wish

to speak frankly and clearly about my subject; and that in view of the

muddled and maudlin misunderstandings that now hang like a stifling

mist over the female sex, it is impossible to dissipate errors or to

take up a clear and definite stand at all, without occasionally seeming

hard, unrelenting, metallic. Any flash may be taken for a flash of

steel, particularly when one is in a fog.

My intention in writing this book was to save Woman from the cruel

misconceptions that are steadily undermining her body and her

character, and although there is much in my work that will try the

patience and the endurance of many of my readers—particularly men and

unhealthy women—I could not possibly eliminate a single one of the more

provocative passages without failing in what I feel to be my duty to my

undertaking.

I maintain that Woman is now miserable, wretched, desperate. I am

not one of those who are certain that present woman is a product of

man’s own fashioning. If she were she would not be miserable, because,

step by step, as man has advanced—or declined!—she too would have

changed, and thus remained his adapted and contented mate. But there is

something essentially idiosyncratic in Woman, something that makes her

an individual, unalterable and for ever fixed; something that nothing

can fashion. You can make her miserable; you can make her sick; you

cannot change her! I would go further and say, that all women from

Pekin to London and Lisbon are the same; they are only a little more

happy or healthy, or a little more miserable and ill, according as to

whether their men do or do not understand how to treat them.

Disbelieving utterly, as I do, in the theory that Modern Woman is as

man has made her—I mean apart from her wretchedness or sickness, of

course—I cannot uphold the view that Woman has any destiny to work out

for herself. She has no “true Womanhood” that has yet to be sought and

found while we leave her alone. We cannot leave her alone. The moment

we leave her alone she ceases to be true Woman: where, then, could she

go alone to seek and find her “true Womanhood”?

All those who speak of a “true Womanhood” to be sought and found away

from us and from the children we give her, would do both Woman and the

world a kindness, a great and inestimable kindness, in henceforward for

ever holding their tongues on the subject of Woman.

We try to soothe our consciences; we try to slur over our social

mistakes; we sneakingly pretend to ignore the fact that our social

life is wrong; and we, and even some women themselves, preach the

accursed doctrine that there is a true Womanhood to be sought and

found in women alone, by women alone, for women alone! We have not,

cannot, will not, do our duty by Women, and we assuage their blind and

often unconscious misery by this damnable falsehood which thousands

of them in their trustfulness believe. We tell them that somewhere

in the Far Away, in the Never-Never-Land—not in the Backwoods of

Superior Bunkum—there is a True Woman, a hybrid of a misunderstood Joan

of Arc and a glacier. She is alone glorying in her True Womanhood.

No man has fashioned her. She has no fashioning—or fashion either,

for that matter!—and she simply sits and exults in her manless,

childless, splendid independence! Towards this ideal we bid our sisters

strive—nay, some of our sisters themselves bid their sisters strive;

and we have not enough decency left to blush at our perfidy, at our

blackguardly deception!

The problem is out of hand; its difficulties have proved too much for

us, otherwise we could not have the barefaced duplicity to settle it in

this transparently farcical manner.

What should we think of a cattle-farmer, who, on discovering that he

had not enough pasture-land for all his sheep, taught the pastureless

ones, when they had grown thin and wan for want of their proper food,

that there was a True Sheephood somewhere, a lofty ideal—a Sheephood

that could go without pasture-land and without grass altogether;

a Sheephood that was self-contained and self-reliant, independent

and indisputable, and that they were to go in search of that True

Sheephood, and if necessary grow thinner and less attractive every

day in their search for it? We should feel that they would have to be

very inferior sheep to believe this story, or, rather, very real sheep

indeed! Everything in their body, from their cud-chewing molars to

their long grass-digesting gut, would surely tell them that the Ideal

of True Sheephood was arrant nonsense, and _cruel_ arrant nonsense too.

No, it is impossible to accept the “True Womanhood” ideal of woman

gloriously alone, emancipated from man, independent and “discovered.”

Inasmuch as we have not fashioned her, and could not do so if we tried,

woman is as her rôle in the course of evolution has made her. She is

certainly more unhappy, more tormented, more unwell, than she ever need

have been; but that is because her principal adaptation—her relation to

man—is now so often entirely wrong, or alas! non-existent. I point out

again: if, as some presumptuously maintain, _we_ have been fashioning

her all through the ages, she would have followed us contentedly to

our present stage—a thing she has _not_ done. There is something

essentially idiosyncratic in woman then, something that defies our

clumsy “fashioning” hands.

This unalterable individuality has not to be found. It is not an ideal

after which we might strive. It is present, it is seated in Woman now

and for evermore, and one of its principal characteristics is that it

cannot brook isolation, solitude, independence, glorious singleness.

The “True Womanhood” hoax of Woman refound by herself, for herself,

and in herself, as if all this time her association with man and

her dependence upon him had been a mistake, an error of judgment, a

cramping, limiting and disturbing factor in the evolution of “Pure

Woman,” is simply pure falsehood of the worst description; because it

overlooks the facts precisely there where they are most glaring, most

undeniable, most conspicuous.

Examine the tendrils of the vine and deny that it is a creeping plant

destined to cling to a wall or to a tougher plant than itself, and you

would declare yourself in so many words an ignoramus or a madman.

Examine Woman and deny that she must have two primary adaptations—that

to the man and that to the child—in order simply to fulfil her destiny

as it is stamped indelibly on her body; and you acknowledge yourself

straight away not only an ignoramus and a madman, but a dangerous

specimen of both.

Immersed as Woman obviously is, up to her shoulders in the business of

Life and its multiplication, let it be said plainly and unequivocally:

all those who teach her that any other business is her business, all

those who, in face of the dilemma of modern problems, confuse her with

tales about a true Womanhood away from Life and its multiplication;

all those, in short, who beguile her with promises of happiness,

contentedness, or even comfort, without her primary adaptations to man

and the child, are liars both unscrupulous and criminal.

And here I have touched upon what I claim to be idiosyncratic and

perfectly individual in Woman—her deep and almost whole-bodied concern

with Life and its multiplication. Above all the other functional

differences and similarities between the sexes, this fundamental trait

must prevail as a permanent and ineradicable characteristic of Woman,

and it is the bedrock on which we must build, and from which we must

set out, if we wish to arrive at a clear and untainted image of Woman

as distinct from Man.

When, moreover, one remembers that this principal characteristic of

hers is the seed and generating force of all her will, her leading

instincts and her virtues, it is simply deliberate blindness to deny

that she has not a distinctive and powerful individuality that places

her far outside the possible influence of those “fashioning” male hands

that some have the impudence to maintain have warped or diverted the

true course of her evolution.

Leave her alone then; leave her to work out her own salvation, and like

Nora in Ibsen’s _Doll’s House_, to venture single-handed in search of

that true Womanhood which according to some theorists has yet to be

found, and has never yet been allowed a free development, and what

happens?—She ceases from being a true Woman at her very first step into

the wilderness of isolation. She denies her principal characteristic,

her distinctive individuality, by the very act of desertion constituted

by her flight into so-called freedom and autonomy. For the only power

that rules Woman with an iron hand, the only power that moulds her

destiny and actuates her behaviour and aspirations, she can never

desert; and that is a power far more inexorable and irresistible than

the power of man. It is the power of Life itself, with which she is

much more deeply, secretly and thoroughly in touch than we are, or

could ever hope to be. We are an amputation from Life, to which we

return only at odd intervals, as it were to pay tribute: she is Life’s

uninterrupted stream that receives this tribute.

I repeat, therefore, that while we have the power to make Woman

miserable and ill—a power which for the last 250 years in England we

have exercised with ever-increasing folly—we have no more right to

boast that we have moulded or directed her evolution than we have a

right to boast of having shaped the stars and the moon. And those women

who allow us this boast and who accuse us of having arrested their

development (whatever that may mean), or of having distorted their true

individuality, fall with treacherous perfidy to their sex, into the

ranks of Woman’s worst enemies.

How have we made Woman miserable and ill?

Let me explain what misery and illness means:

Put a mole to live upon a concrete floor, lay a frog in a parched sandy

plain, and confine the agile cat to a space only just large enough to

allow it to lash its tail, and you will have succeeded so thoroughly in

thwarting the primary instincts of these three animals—the subterranean

life of the mole, for which its large forelegs and its whole body

crave; the amphibious life of the frog after which its webbed feet and

nimble limbs hanker, and the stalking, hunting and prowling lust of the

cat to which all its magnificent body is so superbly adjusted—that you

will have made them utterly and desperately miserable and probably ill

as well.

What have you done? You have deprived them of their primary

adaptations. The same holds good of Woman. Millions of women to-day

are hopelessly irrevocably deprived of their primary adaptations, and

_even those who are given their primary adaptations, so frequently

receive them in a form that is inadequate and unsatisfying, effete

and inferior_, that even among the married women of our day there is

a depth of disappointment, disillusionment and vague dissatisfaction

that makes some of them even more miserable than their single sisters.

The latter, at least, are still able to hope against hope (a wonderful

power in women); the others can only await the end, knowing the worst

and knowing that everything is hopeless.

How do we men absolve ourselves from the blame of this? For it is

certainly we who mould society and ourselves, even if we do not mould

women. How do we try to evade, escape, circumvent the main issue?—We

have the effrontery to teach Woman the doctrine that since we fail

them both in quantity and quality, there is a life away from us and

the children they could have from us that is worth living. We do not

scruple to tell them that they can be happy, content, comfortable,

without the surroundings to which they are primarily adapted. We abet

and promote a process by which millions of our women deliberately turn

their backs upon their primary adaptations, and spring to our side like

neuters in the arena of _our_ active life, _our_ besotting duties,

_our_ drudgery! But not content with undermining their health and their

happiness by denying the just privilege of their primary adaptations,

we undermine their spirits by casting them like convicts into the

wheels of the very machine that has already reduced us to such pale

shadows of our former selves, such faint echoes of manhood, that they

were rightly growing dissatisfied with us.

But not only that, we taught them that they could find happiness in

this independence, in this single-handed struggle—_happiness_! Aye,

there were even some women who arose and assured their sisters that we

were right and that they could _live lives_, yes, and enjoy _Life_, in

this independent isolation!

If this were not all visible before us, many would still refuse to

believe it. Unfortunately it is all only too true! This incredible

farce is _our_ present-day existence—_our age_!

We have actually not refrained from telling young girls that they can

_live a life_ away from their principal adaptations!

Only recently, for instance, when the 1921 census revealed that there

were approximately 2,000,000 more women than men in Great Britain—that

is to say, 2,000,000 women who on the monogamous principle could not

be expected to find mates—several prominent people wrote to the papers

protesting indignantly that these women were not superfluous, and

arguing that there was “enough work in the world” for all the women.

These people wrote as if the whole question were an economic one, and

that, provided the two million unmated women could only make themselves

self-supporting in their singleness, the difficulties of the case would

be entirely overcome.[15] But this attitude towards the question was

ridiculously unsympathetic. For, if the only object in life were to

become self-supporting by means of work, one would not require to be

either a man or a woman; a neuter, after the style of the worker-bee,

would be all that one required to resemble. But the attitude of these

prominent people was unfortunately worse than unsympathetic; it was

insulting and dishonest. For, to tell a body of two million women that

they need not despair, that even if they could find no mates, there

would be work enough for them in order to render them self-supporting,

was to assume, without enquiry, that they _were_ neuters, or that

they _were_ capable of leading satisfactory lives as neuters. It was

at least tantamount to assuming that they would be content in leading

the lives of neuters—an assumption insulting both to their physical as

well as to their mental development, and one which, having not a fact

to support it, was entirely dishonest. Apart from all this, however,

it amounted to a vulgar narrowing down of all earthly aspirations and

desires, to the economic struggle—to success in the task of finding

sustenance.

The Holy Catholic Church was more honest in this, and more practical

than we are. It told all those women for whom society failed to provide

their principal adaptations, that they could find comfort, occupation,

and even a high purpose, by entering the Church, but it was frank

enough to add: if you do so you must turn your back for ever upon those

things for which you were built, those things to which your whole body

was ingeniously and artfully adjusted and contrived.

And even when the system broke down, as it frequently did,[16] at least

where Life was illicitly found in the convent or the monastery, it

was found and enjoyed _secretly_, under the respectable auspices of a

powerful institution, and not on the streets of big cities where the

fruits are nothing but distress, disgrace and disease.

But behind all this unwillingness to recognize or admit that Woman

cannot really be “adapted” (which is simply a biological way of saying

she cannot be really happy or well) without fulfilling the destiny

that her rôle in the process of evolution, and not man, stamped

indelibly upon her body from the start, is the very same insidious

and devastating force that has made her unhappy in other directions,

that has reduced her men, for instance, to nincompoops. I refer to

Puritanism.[17]

Puritanism, always so hostile to sex, would fondly like one to believe

that sex is no longer one of the first considerations of Life, even

for women. It would give a good deal, and has given a good deal, to

convince everybody that one can “get on without it”! And, indeed, its

values and atmosphere have now reared so many thousands of wretched,

lank, bloodless and lifeless men and women who _can_ get on without it,

and who _do_ get on without it, that quite a large number of people are

beginning to believe that Puritanism is right. In any case, it is to

these unconscious victims of its system that it now has the effrontery

to point as evidence of its criminal contention when it seeks to

persuade the unwary that it is right.

When, therefore, the cruel solution of modern sex problems (problems

that only arose through the kind of society Puritanism has created)

was supposed to have been found by telling women that “they really did

not want men or children, and could easily ‘get on’ without either,”

it was the voice of Puritanism that was distinct and persuasive here;

Puritanism at last within an ace of complete triumph, and exulting over

having achieved what to all intents and purposes must have seemed an

impossible undertaking from the start.

When, however, one remembers how carefully and skilfully the ground had

been prepared, when one remembers how unscrupulously every possible

means had been exploited in order to consummate the end in view, how

can one wonder at the unravelment!

After having reduced man to a mere shadow of his former self, after

having atrophied, besmirched and slandered the sex instinct until it

was literally ashamed to show its face (fancy, the fundamental instinct

of life being ashamed to show its face!)—after having heaped up so

much odium on the waning innocence of sexual beauties and the sacred

joys of procreation that shame descended upon them like a deadly and

withering shroud—no wonder that there were some, nay, thousands,

who were ready to acknowledge that there was a life away from the

fundamental instinct of life!

For fire alone purifies; _fire alone renders some fusions and

combinations possible_. Damp the ardour of man, therefore, reduce

his fire, and the sexual act does indeed become an affair from which

many might be justified in shrinking. The procreative love of human

beings was obviously designed on the presumption that they would

remain warm-blooded animals. Once they grew to be cold-blooded, it

of necessity became improper, impious. The procreation of fish is

accomplished without any embrace, without any _étreinte_ of male and

female: but fish are cold-blooded.

Thus in support of the Puritan’s chilling cry that there was a life

away from the fundamental instinct of Life, there arose very soon a

chorus of disillusioned and indignant married women’s voices, who knew

the anguish and embarrassment of human sexual life with a human fish,

and who were not in the least prepared to conceal its horrors.

And how convincing all this seemed! How many sensitive and intelligent

girls have not listened to this married woman’s chorus in support of

the Puritan’s plea, and felt their hope in life, their trust in life,

their love of life, shake in its foundations! So much so, indeed, that

it is now possible for them to listen no longer with suspicion but

with eager interest to those of their “fortunate” sisters who are too

unhealthy, or too deficient in vigour to feel any desire for their

principal adaptations; it is possible even for the naturally sterile

among women, for the women below par in every respect, and incapable,

either through repulsiveness or botchedness, to fulfil their destiny,

to pass through the world without being despised, without being looked

down upon. And since the number of women who lack the vigour and the

spirit really to crave for their principal adaptations increases every

year, an atmosphere of reality and naturalness is imparted to the

artificial and destructive claims of Puritanism, which is as deceiving

as it is dangerous, and as difficult to dissipate as it was slow and

gradual to form.

It is precisely because women are so deeply in touch with Life, so

secretly and unconsciously Life’s ally, Life’s ambassador, Life’s

_custodian_, that they cannot help being miserable and in pain

nowadays. The voice of Life inside them tells them emphatically

that things are wrong, that the muddle man has made of Life is

tragic, cruel, insufferable. As Life’s unconscious advocate, Woman

is essentially opposed to modernity, however much she may seem in

favour of it. When she appears to be most in favour of it, she is only

following modern man and his ideals most closely.

Having all the equipment for Life’s most important business, it will

not appear hard to believe that Woman is positive. Life through her

says “Yea” to itself. In fact when Woman says “Yea” to Life, it is

simply Life itself accepting itself as such. All women’s apparent

negativism is either only skin deep, or else it is the outcome of

bodily sickness or degeneracy. The mere fact that in all periods of

decline Woman has always come to the fore, the historical fact that

Feminism is undeniably a phenomenon of male degeneration—the swan-song

of male-constructed societies—shows how inevitably Life itself comes

forward at the last moment in order to try to rescue itself when it

feels all else is failing. But it comes forward in a form that cannot

lead to salvation. Because, although Woman is equipped for carrying on

Life’s business, she is not equipped for ordering it. You cannot be a

thing and above it, or out of it, at the same time. The part is not

greater than the whole. And, as Woman is immersed in Life, she has not

the duality of vision that is necessary for placing and ordering Life.

She knows, because she feels, when Life is going to pieces; she knows

when Life has been outraged, when hostility to Life is working havoc

with Life’s material; but she can only ascertain the fact, she can only

protest against the fact; she cannot remedy it.

To remind me that modern women—or the most far-seeing among

them—organized a powerful agitation to obtain the Parliamentary vote,

is simply to point to a proof of what I say. The Parliamentary vote

is essentially a male invention. It is essentially a male idea. It is

not an idea of Life. In fact, three-quarters of the harm that has come

to Life might be ascribed to this very Parliamentary vote, and the

Democracy it implies; and yet, when Woman in her agony casts about her

for a remedy for Life’s sickness, she can do nothing more than lay hold

of this futile and dangerous male invention, and seek salvation through

it.

It is her cry of protest, however, that is interesting as a symptom, as

a warning. And all those who have ears to hear, know it is the cry of

Life itself, agitating for reform. But, as the feeling is unconscious

with Woman, and as she is not equipped for the task of standing outside

Life and ordering it, the remedies she advocates must be suspected and

rejected just as earnestly as her cry of warning must be respected and

observed.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] See Arabella Kenealy in _Feminism and Sex-Extinction_ (pp.

211-12): “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 women’s most

vital and valuable rôles. Nor is it a warrant for training the whole

sex as though none were destined to fulfil this, their natural and

noblest, if not always their happiest, vocation.”

[16] The reports made in the reign of Henry VIII by his Commissioners,

concerning the state of the convents and monasteries, give proof enough

of this, as do also the reports of visiting bishops in the Middle Ages.

[17] For an exhaustive description of the metamorphosis of the

Englishman through the influence of Puritanism, see chapter V of my

_Defence of Aristocracy_ (Constable & Co., 1915).

CHAPTER III

Woman and her Unconscious Impulses

If a healthy child be told to sit still for a long time at a stretch,

the chances are that it will disobey the order at the end of the first

two minutes.

Likewise, if a rhinoceros be placed in a soft-floored stable, the

chances are that it will very soon plough up the whole of its place of

captivity with its nasal horn.

Other examples can be thought of: the wallowing of ducks, unprovided

with water, in dirty puddles and ditches; the nail exercise of the cat

on the legs of our dining-room tables; and the gnawing away of wood by

white mice in a manner that can in no way effect their escape.

Let me explain some of these examples:

A healthy child—a little boy—is told to sit still. What happens? The

muscles and tissues of his body are well-nourished. In his constitution

there is a reserve of strength which, like the power of a galvanic

battery is seeking an outlet, a method of discharging itself. All his

muscles tell him most emphatically that they _want_ to be moving, that

they want to be actively employed.

Now let us turn to the child’s consciousness and to his brain. Let us

look to see what is happening there. These impatient messages that

are constantly coming up from every nerve and tissue in his body are

registered in the brain, but they do not enter consciousness in their

original form. _Consciousness receives only an interpretation of them._

The child is not really aware of them at all. If you asked him when he

first began to move or fidget: “What is the matter with you?” he would

reply either “I don’t like sitting here” or “I want to go and play.”

Not only is he unconscious of the fact that while he is sitting there

his body is in a state of genuine distress, because of energy seeking

to be discharged, but he would be utterly incapable of using the proper

phraseology to explain his condition, even if he were aware of it. All

he knows, all he is conscious of is this:

(1) _Playing is good fun._

He does not know that the reason why his body insists on moving is that

all his tissues are alive with energy that wants to be used.

(2) _Sitting here is a hopeless bore._

He does not realize that sitting still to a live body in a state of

energetic exuberance is actually painful, and even if he cries from

sheer pain, on this account alone, his consciousness will still say: “I

want to play,” “I don’t want to sit here.” He will never say, “I am in

pain,” or “It hurts not to play.”

Let him get down from his chair and go to play, and in less than a

minute you will probably find him exerting vain efforts to move a huge

stone or a massive log from one place to another. The purpose of the

transposition of this solid and inert mass will be clear neither to you

nor to him; but that is immaterial. His body wants to spend its energy,

and the little boy, therefore, likes moving a large stone or a large

log about. And he will cry or protest violently if you tell him he is

not to do it. He does not know in the least why he wants to do it; he

only knows, for the moment, that moving big stones is good.

_From all this it is clear, not only that the brain’s interpretation of

a bodily state is unreliable as a sign of what is actually proceeding

in that body, but also that it does not always require to be reliable

in order to lead its owner to do the right thing, or to adopt the

proper course of action._

Now let us suppose the same child peevish and irritable. What actually

happens?

Let us look inside his body for a moment! The large intestine is

congested; his bowels have not been properly opened for thirty-six

hours. Last night, owing to this condition, his sleep was restless and

feverish. This morning he has eaten a good breakfast, but he is not so

lively as he was yesterday. Messages are going up to his brain every

second from every tissue in his body. And all these messages say one

and the same thing: “We are not happy: we are not in our usual clean,

healthy condition.” The brain itself, owing perhaps to disordered

circulation, is also a little surcharged with blood; so that, in

addition to the messages of distress that incessantly rise from the

body, it has its own distress.

Now let us turn to the child’s consciousness! What is happening there?

The child is not conscious of all the alarms and signals of distress

coming up from his body; he is not conscious of the pressure of blood

on his brain. All he knows is that he is feeling thoroughly and

utterly discontented. And since his human intelligence tells him that

discontent must have a cause, this cause must be found. An incident at

breakfast soon provides the whole scheme of a convincing cause for his

feeling of distress. His little sister picks up a crumb of his bread

and eats it—an innocent action which, if it had happened yesterday, or

the day before, would only have provoked laughter.

_It is, however, sufficient to provide the badly informed brain

with material for a false interpretation._ The sister’s action is

immediately posited as the cause of his feeling ill at ease, and in

a moment all his body’s angry discontent about its bad condition is

vented against the unfortunate little sister, who is as staggered as

she is hurt by his sudden unaccountable outburst of tears and bitter

words.

In the two examples given, what has been the _unconscious_ motive of

the little boy’s behaviour? In Example 1 it was a reserve of physical

energy that was seeking an outlet—interpreted by the little boy’s

consciousness as a desire to roll a stone or a log as an end in itself.

In Example 2 it was a state of physical depression which, reaching the

lad’s consciousness as a vague discontent, led him to seek its cause.

Thanks to a false interpretation, and still acting quite unconsciously

of the _real_ cause, he flies into a passion with his little sister,

because her taking of his crumb of bread seems to him a sufficient

cause for his discontentedness.

This part of my disquisition on the unconscious, together with what

follows, will do excellent service, if understood, in helping the

reader to see more clearly into the complicated train of consequences

which, as I shall point out later on, in Chapter VIII, lead to most

conjugal differences, and ultimately to Divorce. Irrelevant as the

above examples may seem, therefore, I would ask the reader to endeavour

to make quite sure that he understands the principle they involve;

because much of the lucidity of Chapter VIII will depend upon a

thorough grasp of this principle.

When I speak of people acting in a certain way, or doing otherwise

unaccountable and apparently immoral deeds as the result of a bodily

impulse that they misinterpret, I shall speak of an _unconscious_

motive on their parts. Only in this sense shall I speak of unconscious

motives.

The correlation of bodily equipment and motive or desire, therefore,

must always be kept very carefully in mind if we are to comprehend the

behaviour of our fellows, and of the lower animals.

_An animal that has a horn on its nose, like the rhinoceros, will have

a concomitant desire to use it._ Its motive for using it may be quite

_unconscious_; but that does not matter. The little kitten does not

hate you, or desire to hurt you when it uses its claws on your hands.

It has a bodily part, well supplied with intricate mechanism and

nerves, and it is more than it can do not to use that part.

The impulse coming from a bodily part that cries to be used is

generally misinterpreted. That can be taken as a more or less

universal rule. We have seen how the child, though it acted in the

right way in the first example, was utterly unconscious of the true

springs of its action. But that almost every positive action we perform

in our lives is the outcome of a correlation of our bodily parts

sending commands to our brain, is nevertheless an undeniable fact.

Take, for instance, the man who possesses the happy combination of a

very good eye and an agile, dexterous hand. According to the sort of

environment into which he falls, he may be one of several things—either

an excellent shot and warrior, or an excellent draughtsman, sculptor,

craftsman or painter. The correlation of his bodily parts determines

his desires and consequently his career. His motives throughout may be

unconscious—that is to say, he may be unaware until the end, of the

nature of the forces that actuated him.

Turning now, with these considerations in our mind, to the

contemplation of Woman, what do we find?

We find a creature who stands up to her shoulders in the business of

Life and its multiplication. Artfully contrived and richly equipped for

this business, and with the whole of her trunk and its nervous system

intricately organized for it—so that even in her limbs and the skin

upon them, so that even in her face and the hair on her head one can

detect reverberations, as it were, of the mighty and momentous forces

that irradiate her being—Woman cannot evade the common fate of all

creatures, and cannot help being guided in her conduct rigidly by the

correlation of her bodily parts, any more than all other creatures can.

But her actions and the unconscious motives behind them will be all the

more inevitable, for having such an elaborate, such a purposeful, and

such a deep-seated mechanism as their generator.

Woman’s positiveness to Life, therefore, only amounts to her saying

“Yea” to her bodily impulses, and this she cannot help doing without

entertaining thoughts of self-destruction. And her “Yea” to Life is

more determined, more unswerving, more unrelenting than man’s, in

proportion as she is more thoroughly organized and equipped than he

is for Life’s business. Her “Yea” to Life cannot be changed to “Nay,”

because she is utterly unconscious of it, and is therefore powerless

to change it. She may in a moment of bottomless despair say “Nay”

to herself, when a sufficient number of people, or a sufficiently

important one of many people, has said “Nay” to her; but even then,

she is not saying “Nay” to Life, but “Nay” to the thought of living an

empty life, or no life.[18]

Woman may ultimately marry. But she is already wed when she is born.

She is wed to Life. Life is her taskmaster, and Life is her Lord. I

shall show very soon how she unconsciously acknowledges this sway,

sacrifices herself to it, and immolates herself before it—aye, even

commits adultery for it, lies for it, murders and thieves for it, and

sometimes kills herself for it.

What is man in the presence of this formidable engine of Life’s

purpose? Merely a means that Woman unconsciously exploits while she

consciously imagines that she loves him. What are her children?

Children are the object of her eternally unconscious gratitude, because

they are the product of her healthy functioning, the instruments on

which she has played off the whole gamut of her sensibilities and

sensations.

The hierarchy then reads: (1) Life, (2) Woman, (3) Man. For the present

this will do.

To understand Woman, then, we must first of all think of her as a

creature who is constantly being actuated by the readiness and desire

her bodily equipment feels, to be used, to be made to function, to

exercise its powers. But we must always remember that she is not

aware of the nature of this actuating force, that it is always the

_unconscious motive_ of her actions. We know it must be so; we know it

is so; but we also know that she does not know it.

All her will, all her conduct, all her crimes or great deeds—if she

perpetrate any—must be ascribed to the actuating force of her bodily

equipment; but she will always be aware only of other motives for her

conduct, and her mind will invariably misinterpret the causes of it.

Let me go over the ground I have just covered, in a slightly different

way, in order that I may be quite sure of being understood. All those

who have already thoroughly grasped my point can skip this passage.

If we examine the relation of instinct to will, what do we find it to

be.[19]

An instinct may be understood as a predisposition implanted in a living

creature to act in a certain way prior to experience, or, as a bias

in favour of a certain line of conduct before any knowledge of that

line of conduct or its consequences has been brought clearly to the

conscious mind by individual experiment.

An infant, for instance, has no experience of food and its relation to

the body; it has no experience of anything; but it has a predisposition

to suck, which is the outcome of its bodily condition and ancestral

history at a certain period of its life; and, as far as its early

months are concerned, a child may be said to have an indomitable will

to be suckled or to suck—it will cry violently if this proclivity be

not indulged; its tears and cries will immediately subside if it has

its way.

How does instinct become implanted in a living creature? Instinct may

have two origins: (1) A racial origin, by which I mean that it is the

outcome of an ancestral habit, and constitutes a predisposition to

perform certain actions in a certain way, because of the incalculable

number of times that the ancestors in the same line of descent have

performed them in that way. As an example of this, take the circling

movements of the dog before he lies down. The movements have no purpose

now, because the domestic dog no longer lives in tall grass; but it is

reminiscent of his ancestors’ behaviour for ages, and in this sense may

be called an instinctive action of racial memory. The dog’s will is

bent on performing this unnecessary and now perfectly empty formality,

simply because his ancestors performed it so often in his line of

descent.

(2) A bodily origin, by which I mean that an instinct is the natural

outcome of a certain correlation of organs, bodily parts or weapons,

and the possession of which in itself is sufficient to suggest and to

enforce a certain mode of conduct in their possessor. As an example

of this take the butting or tossing proclivities of the goat and bull

respectively, the clawing of the cat, the burrowing of the mole, etc.

etc. All these activities are the outcome of the possession of certain

organs or bodily parts, that insist upon being used, that cause the

animal to feel ill-adapted and miserable if they cannot function.

What, then, is will?

All will is obviously the power of the instinct that determines conduct

for the moment, for a given period, or, as in some cases, for a

lifetime.

The will of an animal, therefore, is inseparable from the instincts to

which either his racial memory or his bodily parts give rise. For he

will do whatever his most powerful instinct, for the time being, bids

him do.

Let us now turn to man. With Reibmayr let me posit the three

fundamental instincts of man as (1) the Self-preservative Instinct, (2)

the Reproductive Instinct, (3) the Social Instinct.

According to his nature, man has one of these instincts stronger or

weaker than the other two, and this strength or weakness determines his

character, his choice of paths in life and of conduct in life.

Imagine the Self-preservative Instinct superior in power to the other

two, and, like all ambitious men bent only on self-aggrandisement,

he will scout both woman and society at all points where either of

these threatens to make him pay too heavy a toll. Suppose that his

Reproductive Instinct is the most powerful—as was the case with Mark

Antony—and he will be ready to sacrifice society and himself for the

woman he loves. If his Social Instinct leads him—as it lead Napoleon,

Disraeli, Charles I, Strafford, Colbert and others, he will make woman

and self subordinate to society’s claims upon his energies.

His will—that is to say the guiding power directing his conduct—is thus

only the popular term for “leading instinct.”

In men of the Herbert Spencer, Nietzsche, St. Francis of Assisi, John

the Baptist type, the social instinct was so strong that it completely

mastered and sacrificed the other two instincts. Their reproductive

instinct was suppressed and snubbed, and women were scouted by them,

while they considered their self-preservative instinct only in so far

as it assisted them in continuing and prolonging the exercise of their

social instinct. The will in these men resided in their leading social

instinct. It was that which determined their conduct.

In the coward, the anarchist, the deserter, the ambitious upstart

bent only on self-aggrandisement and security, in the unscrupulous

plutocrat, the self-preservative instinct is so strong that woman and

society are sacrificed or ignored, whenever any emergency or dilemma

occurs in which it becomes necessary to sacrifice them for the sake of

self-preservation. Such men’s wills reside entirely in the thought of

their own survival and security, and are determined exclusively by the

self-preservative instinct.

If, now, we ask what is Woman’s will, by what instinct is it

determined?—we are in a position to say at once: Woman’s will, owing to

the very correlation of her bodily parts and the important place the

organs and business of Life’s multiplication hold in her constitution,

is at least likely to have a strong bias or predisposition in favour

of being determined by her reproductive instinct. For the latter is

clearly very strongly implanted in her. The two sources from which

alone instinct can arise, and from which this particular instinct can

draw its strength, are present within her; they are undeniably her

idiosyncracy, and they are: (1) Racial memory (her women ancestors for

millions of generations, with the same organs as she possesses, having

performed all the functions of conception, parturition, and the rearing

of children more or less successfully, otherwise she herself would not

be there) and (2) the correlation of bodily parts (her body having

the full equipment for reproduction, which must crave the exercise of

its functions and suggest its use, if that equipment be healthy and

well-formed).

You may suggest that the same holds good of man. As a matter of fact,

it does not. Because in man there is some doubt, some uncertainty as

to the bias, as to the prejudice, suggested by his bodily parts. If

in man the organs concerned with Life’s multiplication held the same

predominant place as they do in woman, the same would certainly hold

good of him. But it is obvious that this is not the case. The case is

rather the reverse.

It is because of woman’s elaborate and extensive equipment precisely

for the business of Life’s multiplication, that we are justified in

suspecting that her will is likely to reside in this equipment, or

rather in the instinct that springs and takes its strength from it. We

are justified in suspecting this, on the same principle as that which

justifies us in suspecting that the will of the mole is determined by

its forelegs and general correlation of bodily parts.

_Provided she be healthy and well-formed_, then Woman’s will cannot

help being determined by the paramount equipment of sex in her body,

from which arises the reproductive instinct. Her social instinct

will be subservient, docile, ready to retreat before its master the

reproductive instinct on all occasions. The self-preservative instinct,

too, save when she is with child, will be limited by and associated

with the reproductive.

And all this will be so much Woman herself, so much part of her

essential being, that she will not be aware of it, _and while her

reproductive instinct will guide her, she herself will misinterpret

its promptings while doing its bidding_. So much so, indeed, will

she misinterpret its promptings, and her unconsciousness will be so

profound, so genuine, so unpretended, and so impenetrable, that it will

deceive even the spectator himself, even the contemplator and observer

of Woman.

If she has virtues, they will be offshoots from the reproductive

instinct; her vices will be the same. Her immorality, if she be capable

of it, will be Life’s immorality, vital immorality, positive immorality.

But what is most important in understanding Woman is, I repeat, her

inevitable mental misinterpretation of these phenomena. Weininger’s

book is wrong, weak, unjust, because he never lays sufficient stress on

this question of the unconscious and its bearing upon the nature and

conduct of Woman. Later on in this book many apparent problems in the

life-conduct of Woman, many of Woman’s apparent crimes, all Woman’s

so-called immorality, will be explained precisely on the basis of her

unconsciousness of the true forces actuating her. There is no other

explanation. There is no other way of understanding these things.

Let me repeat the sort of dialogue I constantly have with the average

man who is in the habit of taking things at their face value.

I. How’s Miss A.?

A.M. Oh, flourishing, thank you!

I. What is she doing now? Is she engaged yet?

A.M. No—not yet.

I. Any prospects?

A.M. None that I am aware of.

I. Where is she?

A.M. She’s attending lectures on Political Economy.

I. Political Economy!—whatever for?

A.M. Oh, she’s a very clever girl, and she’s interested in these

subjects.

I. Let me think!—how old is she?

A.M. Just twenty-three.

I. Well, well! I suppose she will meet plenty of fresh men at the

School of Political Economy, and may find what she wants there.

A.M. Oh, but you misunderstand Miss A. She has no such thought. She

says herself that she is deeply interested in Political Economy.

I. She does not know why she goes to the School of Political Economy;

she imagines it is because she is interested in the subject. But I know

why she goes there. Life sends her there. And even if the only thing

she could learn there were the turning and painting of skittles, she

would be interested in that. Life has found that one environment has

failed to give the girl her primary adaptations, so now it bids her

seek a new environment.

A.M. Oh nonsense!—you always imagine women think of nothing but men.

I. I didn’t say so!

A.M. But you imply it.

I. I. I don’t even imply it.

A.M. You do!

I. On the contrary, I feel quite certain that Miss A. is quite

unconscious of the true nature of the command that sent her to the

School of Political Economy.

At this stage in the dialogue the average man usually shrugs his

shoulders, because he knows nothing of unconscious motives; he knows

nothing of the brain’s misinterpretation of the body’s messages to it,

and the consequence is that he believes honestly in the avowed motive

in people’s conduct always being the real and true one.

But if this were so, women, with their moral upbringing as it is at

present, would be ashamed of doing half they constantly and habitually

do. It is their salvation in the present Puritanical age that their

deepest motives for their actions are not apparent to themselves,

otherwise the more tasteful, the more sensitive among them, would fly

to the nearest cellar for concealment and never show their faces again.

Never accept a Woman’s explanation of the motives actuating her—not

because she is deliberately lying, but because she does not know them:

The motive to her is always the one that is apparent, _the one that is

the outcome of her mind’s misinterpretation of the body’s messages to

it_.

People who say that women deliberately lie in these circumstances

simply do not know the subject, and had better start studying it afresh.

Let us analyse Miss A.’s case. I assume that she is a healthy normal

girl. Her hips are broad, her chest is full, she has been regular

in her periods from her fourteenth year. What is going on inside

her? All this equipment, in perfect working order and vigorously

constituted, has not ceased from signalling to the brain ever more

and more insistently for years: “We are not content; we are idle;

we are _sitting still_; we are not functioning; we are aching from

sitting still.” The brain misinterprets all this straight away, and

transmits it to consciousness as follows: “What a bore life is! _When_

is anything interesting or exciting going to happen? What are all the

men in my circle doing? Why don’t they notice me, or fall in love with

me?” The messages continue persistent, and they are the same as in the

first case, but more emphatic, more urgent. Again the brain transmits

them to consciousness as follows: “What a bore _home_ life is! What a

self-complacent, heedless creature mother is! What a tedious round this

week at home has been! I must go out; I must get away from it! I must

leave home! Couldn’t I study something? Anything that gets me out of

this tiresome futility! Isn’t there a course of something at the School

of Political Economy?” And so on!

In the terms of Life, this means simply: “My present environment is

failing to procure my principal adaptations for me. Life bids me seek

another environment at once.”

_Fidelity to Life in Woman must prevail over every other form of

fidelity._ In order to be _faithful_ to Life and Life’s purpose,

therefore, Miss A. must be _unfaithful_ to her old environment.

But to accuse such a girl of falsehood or dissimulation when she

declares that she is interested in Political Economy, and is pursuing

the study for its own sake, would be the cruellest injustice. Life is

quite unscrupulous in achieving her ends, and if Political Economy can

prove a road to them, why not Political Economy? But the woman is no

more conscious of the fact that Life is secretly directing her, than

the mole is of the reasons why it selects a subterranean life.

Hitherto I have spoken only of the healthy or positive woman. I

must, however, refer to the unhealthy woman; because, unless she is

rejected immediately, as a standard, we shall be utterly misled in our

examination of the true Female attitude.

For the present work, all I shall mean by unhealthy or negative,

will be that condition in which the body may be said to be either

_atonic_—that is to say, lacking in tone, in sanguine vigour—or

unfit, owing to inadequate, arrested or faulty development, for the

performance of its functions.

The fact that Weininger makes no classification of healthy and

unhealthy, but confines himself entirely to the two orders of women

that are either inclined to be male or inclined to be truly female,

vitiates the whole of his argument.

Unless I take into consideration whether a woman is properly equipped

not only with the mechanism but also with the tonality of the mechanism

for her functions, how can I proceed to postulate that she is either

male or female in her physical bias?

We know that the impulse to use an organ normally arises in the organ

itself in a state of health, and that the instincts of a creature have

only the two sources—racial memory and a correlation of organs—from

which they can possibly draw their strength. Suppress the more powerful

of these two sources, the organic impulse, and you cannot help

reducing, depressing, or even totally eliminating the instinct.

An unhealthy woman, in my sense, therefore, will approach maleness

in any case, whether she have male elements in her or not (to recall

Weininger); because with the decline in vigour of her reproductive

instincts consequent upon the atonic condition of her reproductive

organs, the voice of other instincts will make themselves heard, and

she will be less of a woman the more her other instincts dare to

measure themselves against her reproductive instinct.

To me, therefore, Weininger’s classification “Male” and “Female” woman

seems superfluous; it serves no useful purpose—because almost all the

secondary sexual characteristics of the male are rudimentary in woman

and come into prominence when her sex is in abeyance, either through

negativeness, immaturity (childhood), or at the climacteric (late

middle age); besides, even Weininger himself admits that he has “never

yet seen a single woman who was not fundamentally feminine,”[20] and

scores of cases could, moreover, be adduced which show that certain

races have reared women approaching as closely as possible to the

male—the _squaw_, for instance—without having produced _feminine_ males

to couple with them.

How Weininger, by the by, reconciles the opinion just quoted with his

other view, it is not incumbent upon me to say. His book is so full of

shallow conclusions, contradictions and superficial judgments, that it

is difficult to understand how it was ever taken seriously.

The relation of the unhealthy woman to Life, then, is rather that

of the renegade, of the atheist, of the infidel, towards his native

religion. She will not hanker after the business of Life and its

multiplication. Her Will will not reside in her reproductive instinct.

And this is what goes on in her mind:

(We are now inside the unhealthy woman’s brain.) Messages are being

received from all corners of her body. Her trunk with all its intricate

mechanism for reproduction sends constant signals of no urgency at

all—mere small talk! “We are quite content to be left alone; we are

quite happy sitting still; we are not anxious to have our lot altered

in the least.” The brain misinterprets all this straight away and

transmits these signals to consciousness as follows: “Man and my

supposed fatal relationship to him do not interest me in the least.

I am _above_ sex. I do not even feel a thrill in the presence of the

most virile, most positive male. All this talk about my lot on earth

being the business of Life and its multiplication, is simply nonsense

multiplied _ad infinitum_! I am born for higher things; I have the

instinct of higher things.”

As if there could be anything higher than the purpose of human

life!—Unless, of course, one is of the opinion of Schopenhauer,

Weininger and the rest of that ilk, and disbelieves in the desirability

of prolonging human life on earth.

To us, then, who are positive to Life, and to whom sterility is

therefore a thing to be regretted, deplored, and not admired, as

Weininger admired it; to us, who loathe the infertility of prostitution

and particularly of homosexuality, and who regard such a statement as

that of Weininger’s in regard to the last-named vice[21] as sufficient

not only to condemn a whole book, but a whole man as well: the

unhealthy or negative woman, despite all her superior and overweening

claims, is a subject of repulsion and disgust; and we would give her

a place in society where all her misinterpretations of her condition

would be rendered non-infectious and innocuous.

Unfortunately, what with the influence of Puritanism and its hostility

to sex and to sex-expression, what with the depressing foods and drinks

it has introduced,[22] or whose use it has fostered in the nation,

vitality even among creatures so positive and so vigorously positive as

women, has been greatly reduced and frequently hopelessly impaired; and

particularly in England, negative women, asexual women abound.

If, however, we keep strictly to our positive tenet: “_that all

that is good which is favourable to the best kind of life and its

multiplication_,” we shall have no difficulty in deciding whether this

increase of asexual women is a good or a bad thing; and our judgment

may be accordingly both definite and severe.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] The statistics showing that more women than men commit suicide and

go mad through disappointed love, prove that the importance attached by

women to this rebuff is much greater than that attached to it by men.

See Lombroso and Ferrero’s _La Femme Criminelle et la Prostituée_, pp.

515 and 517.

[19] I have already done this in my _Defence of Aristocracy_; but as

the standpoint is comparatively new, it will bear being related here in

fresh terms.

[20] Op. cit., p. 188.

[21] Op. cit., p. 66: “In the second part of my book, however, I shall

show reasons in favour of the possibility that homosexuality is a

higher form than hetero-sexuality.” See also p. 226, where Weininger

says: “Her position outside the mere preservation of the race, the fact

that she is not merely the channel and the indifferent protector of

the chain of beings that pass through her, place the prostitute, in a

sense, above the mother.”

[22] See my _Defence of Aristocracy_, chapter V.

CHAPTER IV

The Positive Man and the Positive Woman

I have spoken about the positive child and its Yea-saying attitude to

Life generally. Now I am going to turn to two creatures, a man and a

girl, who have been fortunate enough to succeed, despite the negative

influence of the age, in growing up to manhood and mature girlhood

without having lost the positive attitude to Life.

Let us consider the positive male first. And I refer to him only

because no book on Woman is complete without a more than passing

reference to her counterpart—Man.

First of all examine his body! It is clear that Life and its business

of multiplication have not nearly so strong, so complete, a hold over

him as they have over Woman. The sphere the business of reproduction,

alone, occupies in his body is limited, comparatively small, and

confined. The part he plays in this business is, moreover, incidental,

transitory, spasmodic. As I have already said, he is an amputation from

Life rather than Life itself; and he returns to Life only at certain

intervals in order, as it were, to pay tribute to her, to enable her

to carry on her grand scheme. When he has paid this tribute at stated

intervals, the fact that he willingly renounces any further concern

in the matter, in fact, with some discontent and sense of surfeit,

turns away as one who does not want to have anything more to do with

it, is proof enough of the relatively small part he plays. For while

he turns away and refreshes his resources by indulging for a space his

two other instincts only—the self-preservative and the social—Woman’s

reproductive work goes silently on and may be truly said never to cease.

In Man, therefore, we must not confound the attitude of positiveness

or yea-saying to Life with positiveness or yea-saying to sex. In Woman

they amount practically to the same thing. Her reproductive instinct

and her yea to Life are inextricably involved. They merge; they are

simply different ways of expressing the same attitude. But in Man there

is a positiveness to sex which is smaller, more fitful, more irregular

than his positiveness to Life. For the latter may last uninterruptedly

throughout his whole existence, whereas the former, as we have seen,

unless he be a mere beast, is moody, transient, intermittent.

Looking upon men from the outside, therefore, we should no more expect

to find their reproductive instinct universally predominant in them,

than the vice of kicking is universally predominant in horses.

We should readily acknowledge that a certain supernormal sexuality

might exist in men of the Mark Antony type, in which the reproductive

instinct prevailed over all others; but we should be forced to conclude

that as a general rule there would be every chance, even in the

healthiest and most normal man, either of the self-preservative or of

the social instinct obtaining the upper hand.

And this indeed is what we find constantly occurs in real life—at least

sufficiently often for us to recognize that the reproductive or sexual

obsession in Man is more or less an exception, or an abnormality.

From the correlation of his bodily parts, then, we cannot deduce a

predominance of the reproductive instinct in Man.

What do we know of his racial memory? What have his ancestors done

and been doing all these years? If we can posit anything absolutely

certain about them it is this, that they have been almost incessantly

concerned with the mastering of Life, and the organization of Man’s

life as a social being. Nothing is more certain than that. Nothing can

be read more clearly in the pages of history. Whereas the reproductive

instinct has formed but a recurring _leit-motif_ of man’s life, his

social instinct, with all that it entailed in the mastery of Nature

and the concomitant organization of man’s life, as a social being, has

constituted the unremitting and endless harmony of his existence.

Whereas, therefore, a woman cannot be positive without being

paramountly sexual, a man who would be paramountly sexual would be

negative to a most important part of his being—his relationship to

Nature, to the mastery of Nature, and therefore to the ordering and

organization of Life, including himself as a social being.

A paramountly sexual man, therefore, is as hostile to Life as the

asexual woman, and just as useless.

When a positive man faces Life with his social instinct keenly

sharpened, his ordering mind becomes creative and his creation is

society. He feels himself above Nature and bends it to his will which

is governed by his social instinct. The stylobate of the ancient Greek

temple, the elevation above the ground of the foundation of the Chêteau

de Versailles—these things are but instances of the unconscious tokens

Man has given all through his career as a rational being, of his

feeling of difference, of distance, from rude uncultured Life. When he

faces Woman, he also faces Life pure and simple, and in exactly the

same spirit. But here his body obtains the mastery, and the creation is

the child.

Nature and Woman, being both different forms of Life unordered and

unarranged, yield to Man’s ordering mastery. They understand it and

follow it, always _provided it understands them_; for, obviously, the

gardener who sought to turn the rose-tree upside down, the cattle

farmer who sought to make the sheep carnivorous, or the social gardener

who sought to convert woman into a sort of non-productive asexual

worker, might certainly come within an ace of success, but would be

equally certain of having consummated the wretchedness if not the death

both of the rose-tree, the sheep and woman respectively.

But when nature is understood it yields cheerfully and eagerly to

Man’s ordering power, although it does so dumbly and inarticulately.

Woman, on the other hand, who is simply nature, Life itself, become

articulate, does so admiringly, cheerfully, happily and consciously.

The positive man, therefore, is positive to three things; Society,

self-preservation, and Woman. He cannot be wholly positive if he lack

any one of these attitudes; and those men who have maintained all these

attitudes with dignity and _creative_ success, have been the only

truly great men of history. Others are simply specialists, cripples,

deformities or nonentities. Of course, for a man to be positive to

Woman it is not necessary that he should actually have had a child from

her. Circumstances may have been hostile to this consummating proof of

his sexuality. This is only documentary proof, so to speak, and its

absence does not necessarily argue against his having maintained a

strictly positive attitude towards her and sex all his life.

We must always remember, too, that the complicated and wearing

responsibility that man has always cheerfully undertaken, of ordering

Life and mastering nature, is an arduous and very onerous business, and

that those men who have fulfilled their obligations to their social

instinct most scrupulously and honestly, have frequently come to their

journey’s end without having been able to cast more than a glance of

hearty encouragement and tender affection at the women they passed on

the road, however positive may have been their feelings towards them.

When we see a whole regiment, or two or three regiments, present arms,

or slope arms simultaneously, so that the glint on their rifles seems

like one flash that illuminates the whole multitude in the same second

of time; when we see one policeman suddenly make a clear channel

through the congested traffic of Cheapside, in order that a fire-engine

may dash through to perform its work of rescue; or when we watch the

rhythmic and regular movements of a _corps de ballet_, keeping strict

time with a well-conducted orchestra;—a mysterious thrill passes

through us, a magic breath of cool air seems to lap the lower regions

of our spine, and for some reason which we do not stop to analyse, we

feel uplifted, exalted, in mystic and glowing fusion with something

deep and distant, buried far away in the history of our race.

What is this mysterious thrill, this cold shiver? It is intensely

pleasurable. It is the only purely non-sexual thrill that in any way

approaches the sexual thrill. Its importance, therefore, to us and our

lives must be enormous. For the fact that it is poles asunder from

sexuality, ought to make us see that here we have something, a deep

instinct that is not reproductive, which is capable of feeling immense

bodily pleasure.

As a matter of fact, this cold shiver is one of the most infallible

signs of profound unqualified approval that our body shows. When it is

felt deep down in the back, man may conclude with absolute certainty

that one of the strongest, most vital and most necessary chords of his

nature has been touched and set vibrating. For the fact that it is the

body that speaks here, is, I repeat, a proof that we are concerned

with an instinct, and not with an act of intellect. It is always

possible to make quite sure of this distinction by remembering that

the body never participates in an act of intellect. When the intellect

apprehends anything, the body, remembering its superior rank, and its

superior age, remains coldly distant and unaffected. For the intellect,

as Schopenhauer rightly observed, is the servant of the body, and not

_vice versâ_. And the body does not share either its servant’s triumphs

or pleasures.

Conversely, when the body apprehends something by means of its

instincts, its servant—the intellect—is all agog, intensely interested,

watchful and helpful; the intellect “stands by” and is ready to seek

ways and means by which the body may speedily be guided to the object

of its longing or to the consummation of its desire—no matter what the

instinct be that is providing the momentum.

All bodily thrills, then, are very important; because they signify

that the superior part of one, the older, more traditional, more

unalterable, and more untractable part of one, is gratified,

acquiescent, _deeply approving what happens to be taking place_.

This fact is most significant, particularly in regard to all that is

going to follow in this book.

The thrill of the sexual union is easily explained and disposed of once

and for all:—It is the superior, the oldest, most traditional, and most

unalterable part of us—our body—approving the act of procreation, which

promises a continuation and a multiplication of Life.

Now my claim is that this other thrill, which, in its different way, is

just as pleasurable as the thrill of sexual union, is also an act of

bodily approval—but of what?

Let us consider in what circumstances this thrill is felt. I have said

that it is when we see a large body of troops manœuvring in such a

manner that the movements of the whole multitude are as the movements

of one man. I have said that it is when we see one single man in blue

step into the midst of the torrent of vehicles in Cheapside, put his

hand up, and clear, as if by magic, an open thoroughfare for the

fire-engine to dash through on its mission of mercy and of rescue.

I have said also that it is when we see the rhythmic movements of a

_corps de ballet_ adjusted to perfection to the regular beat of a fine

orchestra.

Now what is common to all these three instances? It is obvious that the

only thing that can be common to them all is the quality of _order_,

the quality which is the result and creation of the _ordering power of

man_. Where this is found in a tangible, forcible, overwhelming form,

the body approves, the body is thrilled. And this thrill is the body’s

exultation over witnessing what from time immemorial must have been one

of the human being’s strongest cravings and deepest faiths,—the faith

in order, in regular arrangement, in the power of ordering confusion;

because such order, such regular arrangement, and such power of

ordering confusion, have always meant greater mastery over nature, over

our foes, over Life in general, and therefore greater security, better

fruit, more happiness, more beauty!

The particular manifestation of order that the body may be witnessing

is immaterial; for it is not the nature of the manifestation, but its

quality of order, that moves and thrills us so deeply, that, perhaps,

in no other moment of our lives—save possibly in sexual union—do we

feel such an exquisite titillation of our nerves and tissues.

This approval, this never-to-be-forgotten chorus of praise that our

old body sings, in spite of ourselves, is the sign that our _social

instinct_[23] feels gratified, feels secure, and in the environment in

which it can thrive; for it is our _social instinct_ that knows how to

appreciate the value of order, how important order is, and how great

were those who first created order out of chaos.

I do not know whether women get this cold shiver down their backs at

the sight of order—I believe they do; in fact I am sure they must:

because, to the extent to which they feel positive to Man and to the

child they must feel positive to the order that makes men and children

possible and safe acquisitions.

Woman’s respect for Man, her whole attitude of awe towards him, must of

necessity fall to pieces when the order which it is his duty to Life to

establish by means of his social instinct, either collapses, or proves

in any way inadequate. Because, although Woman is constantly seeking to

lure Man to specialize in his reproductive instinct, she never respects

the man whom she thus succeeds in forcing to betray his other trusts;

and knows perfectly well, unconsciously, that only that man who remains

positive both to his social and his reproductive instinct, is of any

use to the world and ultimately to her and her child.

For Man to fail in the exercise of his social instinct brings him

into just as bad repute with decent women as when he fails in his

reproductive instinct. Women realize that he cannot be wholly positive

to Life without the exercise of both, and although they may make a mad

and delirious rush into voluptuous pastimes with the man of degenerate

social instincts—as they are doing at present, for instance—the more

far-seeing among them, the more sensitive and apprehensive of their

sex, will have a sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction which will

make them look anxiously around and wonder whether all is well with

Life and the world.

This is not the place to discuss the Woman’s Suffrage Movement; but the

above adumbrates my view of the deepest causes that underlay this most

interesting, most significant and most symptomatic agitation of recent

years. It was by no means the most frivolous, the most superficial, and

the most pretentious women who were militants in this movement. All

frivolous, superficial and pretentious women nowadays are to be found

only shoulder to shoulder with degenerate man wherever and whenever he

is “enjoying himself,” and whiling away his empty existence in a whirl

of still more empty pleasure.

For the present I must proceed with the consideration of Man’s social

instinct in its relation to Woman.

In addition to the task of imposing order on chaos and of creating

the foundations of civilized society, it is the social instinct of

man that has always been responsible for the contriving of all codes

of morality, however diverse, however conflicting. It is the social

instinct in lesser men that keeps them moral. For immorality is, in the

first place, a crime against society.

Social life—and all healthy human life is social life—cannot flourish

unless it is well ordered; unless, that is to say, it follows certain

well chosen rules of conduct, diet, amusement and the like. Where

man’s social instinct begins to decline, therefore, he is not only

ceasing from being positive to social life, but he is actually immoral.

Of all this the best women, the most sensitive women, are vaguely,

unconsciously aware. As the custodians of Life, they cannot respect, or

feel confidence in, men whose social instincts are declining.

By immorality I do not mean that limited, foolishly narrow-minded

notion of the Puritans, which confines itself to the condemnation of

all sexual pleasure. The Puritans themselves were immoral in my sense;

because, they were hostile to life. St. Paul himself was immoral, in

my sense; because, being a celibate, and as good as a monk himself,

he said to the Corinthians: “It is good for a man not to touch a

woman,...[24] For I would that all men were even as I myself[25]....

I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if

they abide even as I.”[26] St. Paul was indeed very immoral in my

sense; because when he cast about him for a reason to justify the holy

and sacred union of matrimony, the only one he could find was that it

alleviated a man’s lust.[27] I mean by immorality, as I have already

explained, all those crimes of omission and commission that are hostile

to the best kind of life. Social life cannot continue unless it is well

ordered. Disordered social life is in danger of annihilation: therefore

all those crimes that lead to social disorder as the result of man’s

declining social instinct are, in my sense, immoral.

In Chapter III I showed how predominant the reproductive instinct must

of necessity be in Woman; but I also showed that, owing to her mind’s

constant misinterpretation of bodily messages, it does not follow that

Woman will always be _thinking_ of sex, man and the child, simply

because her body thinks and works round nothing else.

The Positive Woman—the young fully formed girl—is all sex; her body

aspires and yearns for nothing more ardently than the fulfilment of her

destiny; this cannot help being so, and yet what from all appearances

could be more remote, more different from thoughts of sexual relations

and reproduction than the mental preoccupations of the healthy decent

young girl? She could not tell you why she is fond of men’s society.

She knows only that she is fond of it. She could not explain why she

hopes to marry ultimately; she knows her father and mother were married

and that most adults seem to marry, but she has not the faintest

conception of all that this implies. She notices that she has a marked

taste in men—that some men are like wooden images to her, and that

others thrill her through and through; but she is not aware of the

reasons of all this. While, however, the very mystery of these thrills,

the very impenetrability of her likes and dislikes in regard to men,

make her abandon any hope of knowing the why and the wherefore of

these experiences, she is not unfavourably disposed towards them. On

the contrary they interest her and attract her as if magnetically;

while men are the object of her most solemn and most undivided

attention. Occasionally she has a terrible, unutterable dream, the

very recollection of which shocks her for days afterwards; but these

adventures she has in slumber throw no fresh light on her problem for

her; for has she not had the most impossible dreams all her life? Who

is to say that these she is having now are any more reliable than those

she had three, four, five or six years ago,—although the subject of

them is so entirely different? Still, it is all very strange, _very_

strange; and she regards men with perhaps a trifle more penetration on

the morrow, and the day after.

The very positive girl may be timid, in fact is, as a rule, very

timid in the presence of men, and very self-conscious too. Her body

is aware that in this environment it can find its consummation, it

would like to find its consummation, and it is therefore all tense and

braced with excitement—an excitement that the girl herself does not

quite understand, except that it makes her extremely uncomfortable.

And it is the difficulty she feels in overcoming her body’s concern

that constitutes the strain. This difficulty may easily be understood,

however, if we remember that ever since she first became fully

formed, her body has silently, but regularly been preparing for the

consummation of its destiny. Unbeknown to the girl’s consciousness,

though of course she has been aware of the phenomenon, every month Life

has prepared her—her body has dressed itself, so to speak, for the act

that will lead to the consummation of her destiny,—no wonder that after

all these months and years of silent waiting and waiting, and elaborate

and minute preparations for the guest, that there should be some

bustle, some joyful apprehension, when a potential guest is at hand, or

actually waiting. But the mind knows nothing of all this. What in fact

is going on in the girl’s mind?

All this bodily agitation gets telephoned through correctly enough to

the brain; but it is transmitted to consciousness in a form so utterly

garbled and inaccurate, that it becomes unintelligible. Consciously,

the girl only feels uncomfortable, and sometimes so painfully so that

she has to take flight altogether, and retire somewhere alone to

recover her self-possession. Charlotte and Emily Brontë had to avert

their eyes when they passed an attractive man in the street.

You may be quite certain that when a fully formed and decent girl looks

boldly and unmoved (as hundreds do nowadays) into the eyes of men—even

of the most attractive men—her degree of positiveness is very low

indeed, and her body feels very little at all in the presence of the

male sex.

The whole of the above, of course, applies only to the virgin.

There is no true positiveness to the social instinct in the positive

girl. The social instinct’s next finest products,[28] which are the

fine arts, are to her but means to an end—unconscious means to an

end, just as everything else is: the end being the full exercise of

her reproductive instinct. If a girl show a strong desire to play

the violin, to paint or to write, you may feel quite sure these next

finest manifestations of man’s social instinct are attracting her only

temporarily, as extra plumage with which to eclipse her sisters and

friends. And the really positive girl will throw all these accessories

to her bodily charms overboard the moment they have served her purpose.

No admirably positive woman would ever continue the pastimes of

painting, or music, once they had achieved her object for her.

As I suggested in Chapter III, for the social instinct to speak with

even an ever so feeble voice in Woman, it means that some part of

her reproductive instinct has had to stand aside—_ergo_, that her

reproductive instinct is not as strong as it might be, and consequently

that some flaw may be suspected either in her ancestry, or in the tone

or correlation of her bodily parts. If, then, she applies herself to

the fine arts—which are only the next highest bloom of the human social

instinct working for order in expression—she can do so only under

two conditions—(1) At the bidding of her reproductive instinct which

makes her unconsciously adopt one of the arts temporarily as an extra

feather with which to make her a more conspicuous female against the

background formed by her sisters and friends; or (2) at the bidding of

a genuine impulse to art, arising from a real whisper coming direct

from her social instinct—in which case her reproductive instinct may be

considered as imperfect, suspect, lacking in vigour. All positiveness

to the social instinct in Woman, therefore, denotes a decline of Woman

as Woman, a depression in the manifold and exalted virtues, the beauty,

the charm, and the power of Woman as the breeder, the mother, and the

custodian of Life.

Enough has now been said on this subject to leave the reader in no

doubt as to how I distinguish between the Positive Man and the Positive

Woman.

The first must, in order to be whole, be positive both to sex and to

society, through his reproductive and social instincts respectively.

The latter must, in order to be whole, be positive to sex only.

Of course, I need hardly remind the reader that all men, by the

exercise of their social instinct cannot be creative in social order,

or in the fine arts; but the least of them, if their social instinct is

normal, can protect and maintain society by observing its conventions

and rules.

Nor do I wish to imply that, because Woman is now anxious about the

fate of Life and society, she is therefore developing or acquiring new

powers of which neither her female ancestors nor her body can reveal

the generating source. I say only that the most apprehensive and most

sensitive of modern women are losing their faith in man because of

the undoubted decline in his social instinct, and because of their

having become aware of the danger that this entails to Life. I do not

even mean to suggest that what they say on this subject is worthy of a

moment’s attention. It is the fact that they _feel_ the danger, that is

important.

It now remains for me to differentiate between the Positive Man’s

and the Positive Woman’s attitude to the sexual act itself. This is

necessary, in fact indispensable; because upon a proper grasp of this

matter a true and serviceable understanding of Woman largely depends.

I shall deal with Man first.

The Positive Man, who is necessarily the healthy and moral man,

is faced by Woman as a temptation from a few years after puberty,

practically until the end of his life. He is faced by her as a

temptation very much in the same way as the child of my third chapter

was faced by the heavy stone as a temptation. One of the first things

he observes in regard to this temptation, however, is that it is not

continuous, not constant, but intermittent and fitful. It is much more

in the nature of an appetite that can be satisfied and momentarily

stilled, a desire that can be met and gratified, than a need that never

ceases, as for instance the need of air, or of food. What is more,

the very satisfaction it is possible to give it, is the principal

cause of its intermittent character. I do not, myself, believe in any

feeling of disgust or repulsion arising in the male towards the female

after a gratification of the male sexual appetite; I am convinced that

where this occurs it is only the outcome of bestial excess; but I am

certain that the appetite of the male, his desire, undoubtedly can and

does remain quiescent for a space after its gratification, _that it

is possible for him during that quiescent period to act and live in

a way which is absolutely, to all intents and purposes asexual, or

indistinguishable from the asexual life_.

The fact that the sexual act alone constitutes the whole of man’s

share, the whole of his desire, and the whole of his physical

concern, in regard to reproduction, and that for a space after its

accomplishment he may be regarded as practically asexual, is so

important in the understanding of Man’s attitude and his duty both to

the world, to Life, and to Woman, that it cannot be too thoroughly

understood.

It is the fitful nature of Man’s sexual Life, the _crescendo_

and _diminuendo_ of his desire, that constitutes its principal

characteristic. From the moment he rises from the couch—not refreshed,

but having rejoined the continuous stream of Life for a moment, only to

pay it tribute—he becomes for a while purely social, purely asexual,

turning his mind to other matters, _pleased_ to turn his mind to other

matters, and retaining the woman who is his mate, _no longer from pure

desire_ (let all women thoroughly grasp this), but from pure morality,

pure sociability;—aye! and supporting her children too, no longer as

a sexual accomplice or confederate, but as a social agent, prompted

thereto by his social instinct.

This state of asexuality, or pure sociability, lasts until the next

longing for the stream of Life seizes him once more; but even then

again, it is his social instinct that guides him in the way in which

he should gratify it, and the way he should meet the responsibilities

arising from having gratified it.

One can recognize immediately the man with a normally developed social

instinct (just as one can recognize immediately a well-developed social

community) by the strictness with which his fitfulness in regard to sex

is not allowed to work havoc among his female acquaintances generally,

or to make him neglectful of the responsibilities it imposes.

For, it should always be remembered that to the positive man,

well-built and well-fed, the sexual longing is sometimes the most

intolerable anguish, the most acute and importunate suffering, and its

gratification a thing which for the moment appears fraught with such

unspeakable, such ecstatic joy and delight, that to think of subsequent

responsibilities here, to dwell on subsequent duties here, denotes

a degree of social instinct that is far beyond the measure usually

supposed to be possessed by even the civilized individual. During the

moment of crisis, at its most acute stage, the only object that seems

desirable, reasonable, possible, the only prize that seems worth while,

is—gratification, satisfaction, in fact the willing Woman; even if

damnation loom threateningly behind her, even if death stand waiting at

the end!

Who has felt this and not marvelled at the fact that Man was ever able

to build up a _possible_ human society! Who has felt this and not

learnt thereby to admire and respect Man’s social instinct, which was

able, out of this fierce and tremendous passion to construct a scheme

whereby he who felt it took upon himself the responsibilities arising

from its very gratification![29]

No wonder a cold shiver of exquisite and mysterious pleasure courses

down our backs whenever we are in the presence of a masterful example

of Man’s order! What triumphs of the past that cold shiver remembers,

which we are at a loss to recall, but which we still unconsciously

applaud every time the regular movements of a multitude, the measured

strains of a rich melody, or the swing and stride of a _corps de

ballet_ appear before our eyes! For these are but the outward, visible,

tangible and most obvious examples of Man’s social instinct working for

order!

Powerful as the sexual passion is in Man, small though intense as is

his share in the joys of reproduction, only think what a powerful force

was required to meet this sexual passion, with any hope of success, in

order to discipline and control it! It had to be a force as great if

not greater than the reproductive instinct itself. And what force is it

in us that gives us a mysterious thrill, so different from, and yet so

subtly akin in bodily strength to the sexual thrill? I have spoken of

this thrill already; it is the cold shiver mentioned in the preceding

paragraph—the cold shiver of the social instinct gratified. This,

then, was the only power in man, that he himself could rally against

his fierce and ungovernable sexual desire; it was the only power that

held anything like a corresponding hold over his body; and he turned

it so successfully against his reproductive instinct, that he taught

the latter its limits, and forced it to accept the responsibilities

its tempestuous ardour involved.[30] This is the only form of

“self-control” that arises from the strength and not from the weakness

of a man.[31]

To return, however, to the question of his attitude to the sexual

act, it is clear that man, once he has risen from the couch, after

gratifying one of his fitful longings, has for the time being _done_

with sex. This is most important. After having rejoined the stream

of Life to pay it tribute, he becomes once more the amputation from

Life, and can turn away from its sexual thraldom until another of his

fitful longings overtakes him.[32] As a well-known French painter once

said to me at a moment when his house was in a turmoil over his wife’s

presenting him with his first child: “_J’y suis pour si peu de chose là

dedans!_”

It is clear, then, that while the joy of sex for man is intense,

immense and indescribably pleasurable—for, in addition to the actual

physical gratification it brings, there is the spiritual ecstasy of

the exercise of power, and power in its most flattering form, i.e.

over another human being—it is all concentrated into a few such brief

moments, into a space so short as to seem ridiculous when the efforts

made to experience it are taken into account. True, it is zenithal,

stupendous, quintessential; but it is perhaps, for that very reason,

short and exquisitely so. It is as if all the qualities of pleasure,

physical and spiritual, had for man been distilled and re-distilled

until they had been reduced to the smallest possible compass, in order

that he might be quickly and sufficiently gratified, and yet not

detained too long from those other duties to Life to which his other

instincts direct him.

And it is precisely this tabloid form of sexual ecstasy that enables

man to know exactly the limits and boundaries of his part in sexual

life. _He knows that there it begins and ends._ It is a definite thing

that he can seek and find. He can be quite conscious about it and _is_

quite conscious about it from the start. It is small enough, short

enough, intense enough, to be grasped and understood by consciousness.

The only things connected with sex that _last_ and _endure_, where man

is concerned, are its responsibilities—and these are, of course, the

very aspects of it that the man with a declining social instinct wishes

to cast off from the problem of sex. That is why the value of a man, as

a man, may almost always be determined by his attitude towards Woman.

The anarchist, the degenerate, loves the prostitute; the true artist,

the sober, healthy citizen loves the mother.[33]

To turn now to the attitude of the Positive Woman to the sexual act,

how very different is the case with her!

Take the little jewel constituting man’s small instant of sexual

ecstasy and beat it out to a length sufficiently great to cover twenty

to thirty months, and sometimes more, and you have its extended and

attenuated equivalent for the female. Until Woman has gathered up

all the experiences that constitute her participation and her share

of pleasure in the sexual act, and which are distributed over the

period above mentioned, her sexual life and the pleasure it brings to

her, cannot be said to be complete. Even the craving for the proper

functioning of her organs and the primary instinct that animates and

actuates her cannot be gratified unless she picks up every one of the

moments strewn over that space of time—unless, that is to say, she

passes through the whole cycle of events and sensations that go to make

up her complete relationship to man and to the child.

To suppose, by a false analogy with man, that sexual union alone,

without its natural results, is going to satisfy Woman’s body, however

much she herself may be deluded into believing it will, is nothing more

nor less than to condone an act of pure cruelty, of savage violence,

against a basic instinct and its elaborate generating mechanism.[34]

As a matter of fact, although Woman means everything to Man’s

sexuality, and is the embodiment of all that his reproductive instinct

can desire, even when it is at its keenest, Man means very little to

Woman. He is, after all, no more than the sparking-plug that sets an

elaborate process going, and the brief moment in which his share in

her business is accomplished, and the incomplete pleasure it affords

her, are ridiculously insignificant when compared with the importance

he himself would fain attach to them. Woman’s supposed devotion to

man, and even her love for him, is therefore much more of an illusion

than Man’s love for Woman. Regarded dispassionately and coolly, Woman’s

love for Man must be more or less of an exaggerated and romantic ideal.

He is merely the first station on a long and delightful journey, in

which the subsequent destination is the chief concern. Of course he may

be desired again as the first station for a second, third, fourth or

fifth journey; but it is always self-deception that induces any woman

to regard a man as more than that, as more final, more satisfying than

that; although utilitarian motives may induce her to exploit and use

his social instinct to the utmost while she is serving nature’s and her

own ends by having children by him.

The only kind of woman to whom Man is everything, is the prostitute,

and I shall show in Chapter IX what a cruel misconception even her

position is.

By the time that man has done his share in the sexual act, therefore,

and that his social instinct _alone_ has taken command of him, bidding

him protect and support his mate, and face the responsibilities that

are coming, the Woman may be said to have only just begun, only

just started on the road. Silently, secretly, but with vigorous

determination, the reproductive instinct still reigns supreme, and has

an enormous amount to do—pleasures and pain to bring and to forget,

power to confer and to withhold.

This is as important as it seems generally to be misunderstood; and

yet its non-acceptance as a principle is the source of more than

three-quarters of the crimes that are committed against and by women in

the whole of the modern world.

Unfortunately, positive Woman herself does not come forward with any

help here. Because positive Woman—sometimes even when she is married—is

completely unconscious of what is necessary in order for her to have a

complete and full sexual experience. _All positive women are in the

first place positive to men, and to men alone._ This cannot be helped,

as I shall explain later; it is one of the inevitable consequences

of Woman’s universal unconsciousness. But how easy is the step from

positiveness to men to exclusive positiveness to sexual union alone,

only those women who have experienced it can tell! And this fatal step

is taken by thousands of women annually—particularly in France, and it

is a step taken by all prostitutes.

It is, of course, physical anguish for the woman. Her body suffers;

because all the necessary subsequent stages of the sexual cycle are

omitted: the period of gestation; parturition; suckling, when the

mother’s power reaches its zenith, and when the soft helpless creature

in her arms offers exquisite flattery to every fibre, both mental and

physical, in her body. All this, until the actual day of weaning, comes

strictly within the cycle of Woman’s complete sexual experience. To

suppose that the mere act of sexual union, which is the first step in

this cycle, is sufficient or adequate in the case of Woman, especially

positive Woman, is to court disaster, it is to violate her deepest

craving. She does not know this. How many millions of women have lived

and died sufferers through not knowing this!

But those who profit from her unconsciousness in this matter, those who

trade upon her apparent inability to understand her body’s demands in

this matter, those, in short, who while debasing her from her exalted

position of the mother of Life to a mere instrument of pleasure, also

rob her of her full and complete sexual experience and its quota of

pleasure, are in my opinion no better than barbarians, troglodytes,

common whoreson knaves! Many thousands of them get punished quite

soundly enough, as I shall show in Part II; but how many thousands get

off scot free!

The Positive Woman, although she does not know it, must be and is

positive to the whole cycle of female sexual experiences. Her body

knows nothing else and craves for nothing else. It is true that her

body bids her seek the male alone (consciously), but merely because if

it were not for man’s diabolical skill and craft, this attitude would

perforce lead to the natural and inevitable results. The body, however,

knows nothing of the interception of the male fructifying element;

when, therefore, it drives woman to be positive at first to man alone,

it does the right thing; it does all it can be expected to do. It

forces woman to the first step which, as far as it is aware, will lead

to the inevitable cycle. Contraceptives obviously cannot come into its

purview.

That is why positive woman is conscious only of desiring the male,

while her body insists blindly on obtaining the whole cycle.

No young virgin who craves for children, or for a child of her own,

is really sincere. Such a desire never reaches consciousness from the

body. In fact the girls that make the best mothers are frequently

absurdly impatient with and intolerant of other people’s children. My

mother always told me that before she had her first child she took no

keen interest in children whatsoever. A positive girl may be fond of

children, and kind to children; but she is _consciously positive to

man only_. It is only natural that she should be so. The body knows of

no royal road to the love and possession of offspring save through the

portals of sexual life. Very often, however, a very positive girl will,

from mere bashfulness or decency, express her strong desire for man

by what she conceives to be a more polite and more euphemistic way of

revealing it, and will tell you that she longs for a child. This should

deceive no one. It is either a pose on her part, or a very transparent

disguise of her genuine feeling.

Although, therefore, we may again be deceived, and frequently are

deceived, by Woman’s double life—the unconscious life her body leads

with all its determined aspirations and desires constantly directing

her footsteps, and the mental or conscious life she leads, which

frequently has not the smallest bearing on the true aims of the

body, and as often misinterprets these aims—we cannot help admitting,

notwithstanding, that positive Woman, though she appears to be, and

will declare she is, positive to man and the sexual union alone, must

unconsciously be positive to the whole cycle constituting the female

sexual experience, _including particularly those long months spent with

the child alone_.

The prostitute, therefore, is merely a positive woman whom unfortunate

circumstances have conspired to petrify and confirm in her

misunderstanding of her true needs and desires.

The important bearing this admission has on the subsequent chapters

of this book, emboldens me to urge the reader to bear it well in mind

from now onwards; for, simple as it seems in its baldest statement, it

clears up so many of the apparent complications of practical sexual

life, that unless it be properly grasped and remembered now it may in

itself appear complicated before my task is done.

I have but one more remark to make on positive Woman’s attitude to

the sexual act, and with it I shall draw this necessary but delicate

discussion to a close.

After admitting that she, or rather her body, pronounces it, alone,

inadequate, insufficient, why do I assume that though she consciously

craves for it alone, she unconsciously craves for the whole cycle?

As I have pointed out, it is possible for man to recognize the limits,

the full extent of his momentary participation in the business of

procreation. It is short, intense, tangible. But think of the host of

accidents, unexpected joys and pains that may attend an experience

lasting eighteen to twenty months! How could that possibly be grasped

by the body, let alone the mind, as a definite desire! Prophetic power

would have to enter into consciousness as well as into the body, in

order to distil from this panorama of events anything so delicate and

unequivocal as a desire for a pleasurable experience! It is impossible

for the young girl consciously to desire _all_ the events of these

fateful eighteen to twenty months, however much her body may insist

upon having them, and complain and murmur if it does not get them.

Personally I am convinced, from my knowledge of the healthy well-built

and positive mothers I have known, that once the joys of these eighteen

to twenty months have been experienced, they are _consciously_ desired

again. As, however, such mothers are, as a rule, not very communicative

concerning the precise nature and degree of these joys, but secretly

hug them all through their lives as something precious and private that

elevates them and differentiates them from the rest of mankind, a girl

can scarcely be expected to know about them secondhand, nor can she be

blamed for not finding out about them.

Have you ever injured or harmed, even by accident, a child that

its mother had reared at the breast? Have you ever experienced the

fierce love that immediately flashes out of the mother in the form

of the heartiest and most unjust indignation at your unintentional

trespass? If you know all this, like myself you can entertain no doubts

concerning the untold joys that Woman’s life, alone with the child, can

and often does bring her. To regard her relationship to man (without

its natural consequences) as her sexual consummation, or even as her

sexual pleasure, is, therefore, simply the most crass and most hopeless

form of primitive barbarism.

It is true that, in order to rule man and to get a hold over him,

also with the view of providing herself with an ever-ready means for

creating in him a guilty conscience about her, Woman, in Europe at

least, has grossly misrepresented her attitude to motherhood, and by

concealing its joys and exaggerating its pains as much as possible,

has at last succeeded in making maternity appear a sort of voluntary

self-martyrdom. It should never be forgotten, however, that with

stupid and ill-informed men, woman finds it easy to obtain power and

mastery in this manner; for, if her man be foolish enough to believe

her, it is the best means she has for cowing him. In making him

believe that he gets all the joy and she all the suffering from the

sexual life, she gives him a constant sense of guilt or at least of

indebtedness which makes him submissive. But the whole attitude is of

course pure misrepresentation and fraud. For the very idea that the

performance of a natural function should be so painful as to amount

to an act of “self-sacrifice,” is obvious nonsense. Certainly, when

disease or malformation is present (as it is now in the majority

of cases), maternity is nothing less than a torment; but in such

circumstances, disease or malformation should be pleaded, and not

maternity or matrimony, as the cause of the trouble. A man coupled to

a wife who moans and groans over maternity, should realize that he

has been guilty of a fundamental mistake in taste, that he has chosen

an inferior woman, and should blame himself, his upbringing, and his

general notions about life, for the trouble maternity brings into his

household. But he should not let himself be persuaded that because his

inferior woman suffers over a perfectly normal function, that therefore

all maternity is “self-sacrifice” and “unselfishness.” There could not

be a grosser misunderstanding. Only the sick or badly-formed woman has

any honest right to complain of motherhood; _but she has no right to

motherhood at all_. Motherhood is only “unselfish,” therefore, when

it is unpleasant (i.e. when abnormal conditions prevail); and those

English philosophers who derive altruism from the maternal instinct are

guilty of taking the abnormal as the norm for the basis of their values.

Healthy, honest women will confess that they thoroughly enjoy every

moment of motherhood; but inasmuch as to-day it is the fashion to speak

of self-sacrifice in regard to these functions, they will only admit in

secret, and with the feeling that they are making a guilty admission,

that they have enjoyed them. It has become the custom in modern Europe,

and particularly in England, to represent women as performing some

mysterious personal “sacrifice” in marriage. In all modern novels

and plays this view of women is taken for granted. But it is only

another of the sentimental myths created by modern Western women for

their own ends. Where it is true, it ought to be a subject of shame,

as showing marked physiological inferiority; and where it is not true,

it is never anything more than a hoax for exercising moral power over

a foolish husband. For thousands of men nowadays are convinced that

whether a woman be healthy or unhealthy, well or badly formed, there is

something sweetly and edifyingly “unselfish” about motherhood. Western

Civilization has not produced a greater lie, or a more pernicious

lie than this; for it makes abnormality a virtue, and physiological

inferiority a claim upon our admiration!

Unfortunately the number of women to-day who really do suffer from

maternity shows such a large annual increase, and men’s taste in women

is so much vitiated by ignorance and false values, that the morbid

association of “self-sacrifice” with motherhood is now regarded as

almost inevitable, and doctors who thrive on it are the first to

proclaim it as a necessary and even _natural_ association.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] I feel I must offer some explanation here in regard to the precise

relationship of the social instinct to order. Some will object, and

quite rightly, that all order is not social order, and that all rhythm

is not gregarious rhythm. There is the natural rhythm (and therefore

the natural order) of birds’ songs, of insects’ buzzing, of horses’

and most animals’ movements, of fish in water, of corn waving in the

wind. Whatever be the strength or weakness of our social tendencies,

therefore, we must, as animals, feel instinctively and deeply akin to

the phenomenon of rhythm and its charm. This affinity will reside deep

down in our natures, and will hark back to an age far more remote than

that in which the first human society was formed. All this is perfectly

true. But this very phenomenon of natural rhythm, extended into the

general notion of order, is the only origin to which we can possibly

trace the power of rhythmic or orderly arrangement in the creative

human being. Extended into the notion of order and applied creatively

by a superior human being to Nature, whereby chaos becomes arrangement,

and confusion is unravelled, this rhythm constitutes the birth not only

of all human society, but of each separate civilization that has ever

existed. In this way I conceive of the social instinct having, as a

product of natural rhythm and order, engulfed and absorbed the source

of its existence, in the human kind, and established itself in humanity

as the developed and highly extended form of that source.

[24] 1 Corinthians vii. 1.

[25] _Ibid._, vii. 7.

[26] _Ibid._, vii. 8.

[27] _Ibid._, vii. 9. “But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for

it is better to marry than to burn.”

[28] For the connexion between man’s social instinct and the Arts, see

my Introduction to _The Letters of a Post-Impressionist_ (Constable &

Co., 1912).

[29] I know of only one woman who has recognized this and given man

full credit for his self-mastery in regard to the consequences of his

sexual lust. See Arabella Kenealy (_Op. cit._, pp. 178-9). The passages

are too long to be quoted, but they should be read by all those who may

be tempted to conclude that my views, as expressed above, have been

prompted by masculine bias alone.

[30] See Sir Almroth E. Wright, M.D., F.R.S., _The Unexpurgated Case

against Woman Suffrage_, p. 74, where the author hints at how much

under civilization has been done for women by man.

[31] See also pp. 7, 90-94.

[32] The part played by his self-preservative instinct in all this will

be disclosed in another chapter. See chapter V, pp. 89-90.

[33] Cf. Weininger, Op. cit., p. 227: Where the author disagreeing

with me says: “Great men have always preferred women of the prostitute

type.” It is true that eighteen pages farther on he contradicts

himself by saying of the prostitute: “She is the mate of the worst

sort of men”; but this single example, taken from among the many

equally amazing contradictions in this book, only tends to show its

extraordinary futility.

[34] And yet most of the modern books on sex questions, particularly

those written by women, take this false analogy for granted.

CHAPTER V

Virgin Love in the Positive Man and the Positive Girl

The moment when a healthy young man stands for the first time before

a beautiful positive girl, with a full consciousness of what that

girl can and may mean to him, is one of the most trying and most

disconcerting in his whole life.

In plain English, he is standing before Life itself. Life itself is

taking stock of him. Let us be in no doubt here. His eyes may wander,

dazed, over the bewildering spectacle before him; his eyelids may

quiver; he may not understand what his feelings are, or why he feels so

numb and speechless, and breathes so deeply; but he is well aware that

an iron Fate has suddenly seized him like a vice, and is holding him

spellbound before an examiner, who is far more relentless than any he

has hitherto encountered at school or college.

And now turn your eyes on Life itself! Look at the girl! Provided that

he is not watching her too closely, her eyes are scanning every inch

of his body, with a penetration, an attention, a fierce criticism,

that is allowing no detail to escape, no indication of virile potency

to go unnoticed. Her hands may be cold, even moist with emotion; but

Life in her is neither cold nor moist: it is at white heat, working its

hardest, and deciding for her whether it shall be Aye or Nay!

The very speed with which this decision is often made proves how

concentrated, how unrelaxing the scrutiny must be; and however hard

the work that has to be done, it is all over and frequently quite

brilliantly dispatched in a few seconds—a minute at the most!

Aye or Nay! No wonder the youth feels embarrassed! Such an examination

by Life itself is hard to bear. The verdict, too, if it be favourable,

is gratifying. The approval of a positive, healthy, well-built girl

is a certificate of potency; because it is not only Life’s approval

of one of its own products; it is healthy Life acquiescing in one

of its essential means to multiplication. To feel pleased in such

circumstances is perfectly justifiable; to feel satisfied here is

nothing but becoming.

But there is another side to the picture, and I state it now, while

we are discussing this particular situation. There is nothing more

harrowing, more pathetic, more heartrending than to witness poor,

patient and enduring Life, in the form of a beautiful maiden, being

forced by circumstances (by the fact perhaps that this is the girl’s

only chance) to choose the next best, the second best, the third best!

Oh, how she stifles her highest feelings! How she chafes beneath the

yoke! And how ruthlessly Life re-registers upon her eyes all the

defects of her future mate, as fast as she in her positiveness wipes

them away with the impatient sponge of her desire!

That “Yea,” given reluctantly, shamefully, almost guiltily (because

women feel that they are betraying a trust in such circumstances),

in the presence of a poor specimen of manhood,[35] simply because it

is better to be positive to Life, even on a minor scale, than not to

be positive at all!—there is nothing more excruciatingly painful to

witness!

How often this tragic farce is enacted in _our_ part of the world, only

women know, only brave women know—they who prefer anything rather than

not to remain positive to Life.

Unfortunately, it is not unusual nowadays for the positive healthy

girl, particularly of the wealthier classes, to be spoilt by foolish

modern prejudices that misguide her in this first important criticism

of the men with whom she is confronted. From the very atmosphere she

has breathed ever since her infancy, she has imbibed certain wholly

fictitious standards regarding so-called “manliness” which, at this

vital moment in her life, frequently cause her to make the most

grievous mistakes. She has had dinned into her innumerable conventional

desiderata relating to manners, sporting capacities, cheerfulness,

levity, boyishness and bodily build, which now cause her to select

consciously the very kind of man who is least likely to constitute

an understanding and adequate mate. He must possess a certain kind

of mind—supple, ready for light laughter, humorous, not too broody,

not too masterful, not too self-centred, and above all, painstakingly

chivalrous. He must have had his spirit, if not broken, at least

curbed by the public-school system; his self-esteem severely shaken

by excessive contact with mediocrities who have insisted on his being

like one of themselves, and he must have the body and face of a young

athlete. He must be capable of being trusted alone with her on rambles

in the country, at games, on short excursions. He must not take himself

or his claims or his thoughts too seriously, and the _sine qua non_

is that he must be capable of idealizing Woman, of “looking up” to

her, of feeling a lump in his throat at the thought of her purity, her

devotion, her “heroism” as a mother, her condescension as a possible

mate to himself, and her ladyhood.

All these attributes the spoilt positive girl of our wealthier classes

has been taught to seek and select among the young men that are paraded

before her; and in insisting on these attributes, she consistently,

almost without exception, succeeds in taking a man who is ideally

equipped with every possible characteristic for making her thoroughly

and exasperatingly miserable the whole of her life. For very few indeed

of these attributes have any connexion whatsoever with true, desirable

manliness in a mate, and the young man who has been tamed into making

a trustworthy companion to a single positive girl in her games and her

walks, is more often a torture machine than a delight as her husband in

later years.

But let us see what unspoilt Life, through the positive unspoilt girl,

is actually trying to discover in the positive young man before her.

Is she concerned with probing his soul? Does she meditate about his

chances of going to Heaven when he dies? Is she wondering whether he

has a load of sin that weighs him down?—She is very far from giving a

thought to these matters. Her primary consideration is undoubtedly:

Is he a fully equipped male? Is he a normally equipped male? Has he,

above all, that _exuberance_ which at one and the same time is beauty,

sexual potency, and tense passion? Is he savoury?—that is to say,

is he devoid of everything capable of ultimately inspiring disgust?

Classical features are by no means a vital consideration. Exuberance

and savouriness are much more important. Is there fire in his

eyes?—voluptuousness and fullness in his mouth? Is there eagerness and

enthusiasm in the dilatation of his nostrils? Is there energy lurking

in the vibrations of his voice? Is his mouth clean and his breath

pure?—Is there all this, and yet a remoteness from the brute, from the

mere animal into the bargain?

These facts are ascertained in the first few seconds, and all this time

Life alone has been active in criticism. A satisfactory reply to all

these questions makes the young man at once an object of the keenest

interest to the girl, and her eyes now begin, in a more collected and

less rapid manner, to survey the accessory man—his hands, his feet, his

taste as revealed by his clothes, his intelligence as revealed by his

remarks, his degree of mastery as revealed by his manner of approaching

her. All these things are important, because they represent not merely

the “quality” but also the “surviving power” of the tree to which the

female butterfly is going to entrust her eggs.

A sleek, flourishing youth has a tremendous advantage here; because it

is not Woman’s self-preservative instinct that demands the evidence of

a sound worldly position in a man, but again her reproductive instinct

thinking of the security of the coming brood. All this, of course, is

more or less unconscious, but it is satisfactorily accomplished by the

instinct.

A brilliant exuberant youth, who is shabby and poor, is naturally and

very rightly less attractive to the positive girl than the youth who,

though less brilliant, but quite as exuberant, flings on an opulent

fur coat after a champagne supper, and gracefully hands her and her

chaperon into his 40-horse-power Rolls-Royce. This youth is simply

irresistible!

This must be so. Because, although the more brilliant youth may be

an artist, a fascinating poet, or a gifted musician—all these things

belong to the sphere of the social instinct, which Woman can scarcely

appreciate critically, while the flourishing circumstances of the

fur-coated youth belong to the sphere of the reproductive instinct,

since they are one of the necessary conditions of the tree to which the

eggs are going to be entrusted.

Great spiritual gifts, _per se_, never really attract the healthy,

positive girl; the only reason why she so frequently falls in love

with men of great spiritual gifts is because extraordinarily high

sexual exuberance is so often correlated with great spiritual gifts

and powerful creative genius in a young man. In later life, of course,

the relationship changes; because you cannot burn a candle at both

ends, and the man of great spiritual gifts who has cultivated that side

of himself alone, generally suffers a proportionate loss of sexual

exuberance as he advances in years. But in any case, as far as young

men are concerned, the rule holds good that high sexual exuberance is

frequently accompanied by very superior spiritual gifts.

Incidentally, this association always constitutes the most dangerous

and often most disastrous characteristic of the artist’s life. It is a

choice of roads—and frequently the favour he finds with women leads the

young artist inevitably along the road of least resistance and greatest

voluptuousness.

Recalling our positive couple, we will suppose that the youth, in

addition to responding favourably to all the girl’s searching scrutiny,

is also a person of sound material position. Then, when the chorus of

bodily messages to the girl’s brain are unanimous in praising him,

consciousness comes forward with the conclusion: “That man attracts me

or fascinates me!” or “I like that man!” or “That man is a dream!” or

“He’s my ideal!” etc. etc. It is from this moment that the relationship

of virgin love may be said to begin, and if there is a response from

the young man besides—if, that is to say, he also comments favourably

on the girl, then the two may be said to be each other’s destiny; and,

if they are both very positive, and therefore impatient, the sooner

they marry the better.

Many girls are, however, so overwhelmed by spiritual gifts, nowadays,

that the position of the man, his material wealth, is often foolishly

overlooked. On the whole this is not quite the fault of the modern

girl. This Age, for some reason or other, sets enormous store by

spiritual gifts. Girls are brought up in an atmosphere steeped in the

worship of intellect. “Clever”—this is the most coveted adjective. Is

he clever? Is she clever? Very often the most unhappy marriages are

consummated precisely owing to the absurdly exaggerated value that is

attached to cleverness. I do not lose sight of the fact that great

spiritual gifts are frequently accompanied by great sexual exuberance

in a man, and I make allowances for that and for the temptation such a

man may certainly prove to the positive girl; but his spiritual gifts

ought not to be allowed to weigh against his poverty if he be poor,

or his inferiority as an animal, if he have bad teeth, an undersized

and weak frame, a delicate constitution, or foul breath. Only girls,

of course, whose minds have been perverted in this matter, make the

mistake of taking a poor clever man, or an unappetizing clever man,

in preference to a duller though wealthier or more appetizing suitor;

for the instinct of the female when unperverted is to find not only a

secure support for her offspring, but also a mate whom it will at least

not disgust her to embrace.

And, after all, what does this spiritual fascination amount to

for women, apart from its occasional correlation with high sexual

exuberance? If you ask yourself what it is you tire of first in life;

if you inquire to which kind of phenomenon you can relevantly apply

the expression “hackneyed” when you have seen or heard it once too

often—what is your inevitable reply? The word “hackneyed” can be used

relevantly only in regard to products of the spirit. A song, however

beautiful, repeated too often becomes a bore. A picture seen too often

begins to pall. (It is only because we scarcely ever notice with deep

attention the pictures on our walls, that we can endure them. In

time, they form part of the general scheme of decoration.) The finest

poem read too frequently becomes insufferably wearisome; and who can

read even the best novel more than three times? I confess I have read

_Wuthering Heights_ three times; but I doubt whether I could perform

the feat a fourth time. All these things, however, are of the spirit,

products of spiritual gifts. It would not sound strange or irrelevant

to apply the epithet “hackneyed” to any one of them, provided that

their charms had been impressed upon us once too often. This fact alone

should make us suspicious of the spirit as a phenomenon possessing

lasting powers of attraction.

There are, however, other things to which the expression “hackneyed”

could not be relevantly applied. What should we think or say, for

instance, of a visitor, who rising suddenly in the middle of one of

our tea-parties, exclaimed quite gravely that she refused to take

another piece of bread-and-butter for the rest of her life, because

bread-and-butter was “hackneyed.” We should all be astonished, not to

say alarmed. We should suspect her of something a little more serious

than mere eccentricity. But, as a matter of fact, nobody in his senses,

however professedly devoted to the spirit he might be, would ever dream

of saying “bread-and-butter is hackneyed.” It is a thing of the body,

and provided the body remains healthy and exuberant, the pleasures it

provides are _never_ hackneyed. Given a fair appetite and a healthy

digestion, and bread-and-butter will remain a joy for ever. Unlike the

spirit, therefore, which however exuberant and however healthy, wearies

and fatigues if it be called upon to appreciate the same spirit, or

the same product of another spirit too often, the body can enjoy

“bread-and-butter” for threescore years and ten without ever feeling

that it is hackneyed.

This alone ought to make all admirers of “brains” in men pause before

they allow themselves to be so completely dazzled by mere spiritual

brilliance, as to forget other things.—What other things?—Material

position, and that quality which all eminently desirable men have in

common with good bread-and-butter—I refer to _savouriness_.

I know of one very sad case that happened in my own circle. A

well-educated but misguided Swedish girl who while being no fool

herself had the modern exaggerated love for “brains,” happened to meet

a man in Ireland who, though brilliant to the point of genius, was

as unappetizing, as _unsavoury_ as the form of man can possibly be.

I confess to having sat in that man’s company frequently myself, and

having revelled in the easy and fluent flow of his exuberant wit. There

was virtuosity not only in his speech but also in the thoughts behind

his speech. When he met the girl in question she too came under the

spell of his extraordinary intelligence; and, forgetting the rule about

the spirit, and forgetting the quality of good bread-and-butter—for

he was so unsavoury that one could not approach him without becoming

aware of the fact with one’s nostrils, not to speak of one’s eyes—she

worshipped and married him.

It was, of course, a cruel mistake, because marriage from the woman’s

standpoint is a tragedy if she has to smother any loathing in the

embrace. Still, she admired “brains” and she certainly obtained what

she admired. But at what cost! In time, of course, she explored all the

territory of his spirit, and tasted all the delights of his skilful

conceits; and had, no doubt, by a kindly effort of will, prolonged her

enjoyment of these things very far beyond the point at which anyone

else would have tired of them; and then—what was left?—Only boredom

where spiritual intercourse was concerned, and ever-increasing disgust

of all physical intercourse, because of her unfortunate husband’s

eminently unsavoury person.

No truly positive woman, however—particularly if she has remained

uninfected by modern brain-worship—ever takes any notice of a man’s

spiritual gifts, provided that he be savoury, exuberant, and in a sound

material position; and the very fact that she does not do so is a sign

of the wise and penetrating vision of Life behind her. Men have to take

spiritual gifts into consideration in their dealings with one another;

it is essential that they should. They may be pardoned, therefore, if

they all too frequently extend this habit to their relations with the

other sex. But the woman who takes a man for his brains is a ninny, or

else a poor deluded victim of the madness of the Age. All she wants,

I repeat, is exuberance with savouriness and a sound position; and if

brains enter into the bargain as well, they are usually accepted quite

unsuspectingly by the really positive and sane woman as one of those

incidental details concerning her husband which, like his number in

gloves or his taste in ties, she bears in mind simply as part of his

general identity. Truth to tell, however, most women are saved from the

mistake of marrying brains alone, owing to the readiness which most of

them show to impute brains to the dullest male, provided he pleases

them.

This explains why so many wives of gifted men have loved and eloped

with males infinitely inferior to their husbands where brains were

concerned; it also explains why so many wives of gifted men, who have

been faithful, have been bitterly unhappy in their fidelity.

Where the artist is concerned perhaps we might make an exception,

because the artist’s peculiar gifts are so frequently allied with an

exceptionally exuberant sexuality. One German writer has suggested that

the creative power itself is the outcome of an excess of absorbed semen

in the blood. But even the artist’s mental gifts, though correlated

with a quality that is frequently irresistible to women, are an unsound

reason for a girl’s mating with him. All women should remember that

artists cannot marry them without committing adultery. For, if Woman

is wed to Life before she marries, the artist is certainly wed to his

particular muse.

All this the positive girl knows more or less instinctively, because

Life in her knows every word of it. It is only when she has become

infected with the stupid modern worship of brains that her conscious

bias sometimes overrides her better bodily feelings.

But to return to our positive couple—the condition of mutual attraction

in which they now find themselves is one of tremendous fascination,

because it constitutes an enhancement of the feeling of power, and

a deepening of the feeling of surrender. So intense is this feeling

of power and of slavery at the same time, so exquisite is the scale

of emotions that run from the bottom note of absolute subjection to

a human being to the top note of supreme sovereignty over a human

being—so that the girl bids and her bidding is done, and the man bids

and his bidding is done—that it is probably the richest experience,

as spiritual sensations go, that anyone can have. While it is being

undergone the self-preservative instinct of both parties is entirely

suspended. The male’s must be in any case, because no male throughout

the animal kingdom can approach sex without making a substantial

sacrifice in self-preservation. He cannot join the stream of Life

without paying it tribute, and this to begin with is hostile to his

self-preservative instinct inasmuch as it reduces his surviving power

for the time being. But there is this fact in addition: his social

instinct cannot face the responsibilities of a wife and her offspring

unless his self-preservative instinct is prepared to make a good many

reluctant concessions.

The woman, too, readily sacrifices all her self-preservative instinct

to her first-husband Life, and to her second husband, her lover. In

fact, to speak with levity, but with some profound truth as well,

in every respectable love-marriage, the legal husband is the dupe

or breadwinning agent who _keeps_ the girl while she does her first

mate—Life’s business.

Child-birth is not always successful even in the most healthy

communities, and a woman’s reproductive instinct often has to clap its

hand on the mouth of her self-preservative instinct before she can

consent to having a second child.

With the self-preservative instincts both of the man and the girl

in abeyance, then, we have what is always a dramatic situation. We

have a situation in which neither the man nor the girl cares what

happens provided that each can get the other. Pain, hardship, parental

hostility, parental injustice, privation, dangers of all kinds, fire,

water, exile—all these things, even to Death itself, will be faced with

determination by the positive couple who are waiting only to be united,

if only they help a step forward, or put an end for ever to all doubt

and misgivings.

How often in the history of our race have not a chaste and positive

couple, kept apart by unfavourable circumstances and in the midst of

appalling difficulties, whispered to each other passionately: “One

long embrace from you and I should be content to die!” This shows that

the self-preservative instinct is as good as dead in such cases. Dead

in the woman, because when her reproductive instinct is “meaning

business,” nothing else can live beside it; and dead in the man,

because (1) he knows that love and his girl expect him to be determined

and unrelenting in his worship and his desire, and (2) because his very

positiveness itself makes him set the multiplication of Life higher

than his own existence for the time being.

Moreover, when the girl and the man insist upon an attitude of complete

and unreserved “unselfishness” in each other, they are simply betraying

the fact that they expect the self-preservative instinct in each other

to be for the time being in a state of suspended animation. This is

a proof of what they understand by love. As a matter of fact, it is

a proof only of the circumstance that the reproductive instinct is

expected for the moment to become all-powerful or to suppress every

other feeling.

When this state is reached, if the girl has no vigilant protector or

guardian, and the man is not strongly endowed with social instinct,

the result is usually and inevitably seduction, particularly if the

man shows some mastery in sex, and some understanding of it too. And,

indeed, when one considers the forces that are active here; when,

moreover, one considers the temptations that are elevated here to the

_nth_ power, the wonder is not that seduction occasionally occurs among

positive couples, but that it does not always occur, that it is not

the rule. Only man’s social instinct can prevent it. Only man’s social

instinct remains, and is strong enough to prevent it. Do not, however,

let us confound the social instinct of the positive man, which is

strong enough to stand up to his reproductive instinct, to control it,

and to make it wait and consider responsibilities, with the so-called

“self-control” of the negative young man, who could love his negative

girl for half a century without ever desiring more than to squeeze her

pale thin hand, while she feels exactly the same about him.[36]

Of course, in countries like France, where positiveness on both sides

is at such a high pitch of intensity that it actually fills the

atmosphere of every room and makes every mixed company electric, and

also where the social instinct of men is declining more and more every

year, the only possible check on wholesale seductions is a vigilant and

inexorable protector or guardian, who watches over the _jeune fille de

famille_, until she is married, and does so with such unabating zeal

that it can truly be said that a respectable French girl is _always

being watched_.

As a matter of fact, if the same custom of vigilant supervision of the

young girl does not prevail in England, it is a bad rather than a good

sign.

It is a bad sign for the following reasons: (1) It is waived either

because it is a generally recognized thing that the Englishman’s

social instinct is of a higher order than the Frenchman’s (which is

not the case); or (2), because it is a generally recognized fact that

the Englishman is safer, i.e. less inflammable, i.e. less exuberant

sexually, i.e. less positive than the Frenchman (which _is_ the case).

I think it would be hard to prove that the social instinct of the

Englishman is of a higher kind than that of the Frenchman. There is

nothing to show that there is more order in England than in France,

more social harmony, more mastery of social problems. There are

absolutely no grounds whatever for assuming that there is less social

misery in England than in France, less social muddle, less social

strife. Nor if we go to the next highest products of the social

instinct, which are represented by the sense of order manifesting

itself in artistic productions, can we say that there is more Art, or

a higher kind of Art, in England than in France. In fact, if we draw

these comparisons at all, we must in fairness conclude that if there is

any difference, that difference is undoubtedly to the advantage of the

Frenchman. But for the sake of this discussion it is sufficient for me

to assume that the social instincts of the Frenchman and Englishman

respectively are about equal.

Well, then, if this is so, it must be some other circumstance that

accounts for the enormous freedom allowed in this country to the girl

turned sixteen, in her intercourse with men of her own generation and

older.

There can be no doubt that, in the first place, the English girl is

generally a little less positive to Life and therefore to man than

the French girl; this accounts for a good deal. There can be no doubt

either that there is a very much larger sprinkling of negative girls

in England than in France—girls, that is to say, who are happy and

content as spinsters, or whose passions are so tepid as to enable

them to endure platonic relations with men, and to resist men quite

successfully for interminable periods.

A few facts alone, apart from the evidence that can be gathered first

hand by all those who know France and England well, will be sufficient

to prove this.

In 1910, although France had for many years admitted women to the

hospitals, to the Bar and to the chemist’s dispensary, there were out

of a total of 13,000 French doctors only eighty-three women[37]; there

were only two women barristers—one in Paris and one at Toulouse, and

there were only three women chemists—one in Paris and two at Montpelier.

To take the profession of the Bar alone, think how very many more

women-barristers we should have in England in the space of five years

if the Bar had been opened to women!

To point to economic pressure here, and to say that the English girl is

more hard pressed than the French girl, would be entirely false. It is

much more difficult, as a matter of fact, for a French girl than for an

English girl to find a husband.

The truth of the matter is that the French girl is very much more

positive to Life and therefore to man, than the English girl. The

latter can frequently not only be happy without man; but she will boast

of the fact—applaud, that is to say, her negativeness, her nothingness!

I do not say this in any spirit of hostility to the English girl,

because I have travelled England and Scotland, and am aware that

very large numbers of British girls are positive and extremely

positive to Life and to man; it is, however, unfortunately true that

negativeness is on the increase—hence the almost amazing liberty

that is granted, and every year more readily granted, to the English

girl in her intercourse with young men. Were things otherwise, such

liberty would only lead to the most disastrous results; because there

is absolutely no reason whatever to suppose that the Englishman’s

social instinct—which is the only adequate check to an overpowering

reproductive instinct—is superior to that of the Frenchman.

There is, however, another side to the question, and a far more serious

and alarming side. I refer to the almost universal and increasing

negativeness of the English youth and young man. The negativeness among

females in England is as nothing compared with the negativeness to be

found among males—and it is here really and truly that the safety of

the young positive girl lies. Often to her intense annoyance and sorrow

she finds she is dealing with wood and not with vital tissue at all.

It is simply humbug to speak of self-control in such cases. For the

negative young man is nothing more or less than a wet squib—and who

believes in the self-control of a wet squib when it refuses to respond

to the lighted match.[38]

The ravages that Puritanism perpetrated in the human kind—and I have

dwelt sufficiently upon these ravages in another work[39]—affected the

men of England far more deeply than the women; and were in a sense

bound to do so. Men are not Life itself, they are an amputation from

Life. As I have shown, the reproductive instinct is less powerful, less

wilful, more fitful and less persistent in them than in women; how,

then, could they fail to be more disastrously affected by the cruel

repressing and detoning methods of Puritanism than women are? They had

fewer forces to meet and resist the attack; sex held their bodies with

too much laxity to make them survive it completely, and the consequence

is that in England and all countries like England, sexual exuberance

in males—save in the working classes (which are always the last to be

affected by anything)—is not only lower than elsewhere, rarer than

elsewhere, and more heartily suspected than elsewhere; but it is also

decreasing more and more every year. So much so, indeed, that for many

generations now, long chaste engagements have not only been possible,

but more or less common; so much so that _positive girls who marry are

able to declare quite honestly that marriage is a disappointment and

an empty delusion_; so much so, that in nine cases out of ten we could

without a qualm and without a scruple allow our unmarried daughter to

travel round the world with her so-called lover and feel quite certain

that they would both remain perfectly chaste.

This may seem most convenient and even desirable from the standpoint

of the squeamish matron; but would it not be ever so much better from

the point of view of Life if it were impossible, and if we were forced

to exercise a vigilance at least equal if not greater than that of the

French chaperon over the young couple?

To mention self-control in connexion with such safety in the

association of young people is to use a euphemism for a very much

less acceptable word. It would be unfair and wrong to postulate the

possession of a higher degree of social instinct by the Englishman than

by the Frenchman; therefore it must be some other factor that is active

in this unnatural continence where there are no safeguards; and that

factor, as every one must know, as every doctor knows, and as most

women know, is a low degree of sexual exuberance, a strong and in many

cases a pronounced form of negativism.[40]

Many readers will probably cry out: “But surely this is excellent!

What could be better! Our girls are safer; we do not require to be

suspicious; we can trust the young men—and everybody is happy!”

But _everybody is not happy_! The men are not happy; because this

negativism in sex, this lack of exuberance in sex, gives them no

mastery over it, and leaves them all their lives with a guilty

conscience about it. (For, as pointed out earlier in the book, _certain

fusions are only made possible through fire_. Fire purifies all

things.) And the women are certainly not happy, particularly if they

are positive; because they meet with no response, they meet with no

leadership, they yield to no overwhelming impetuosity where sex is

concerned—an impetuosity that carries everything before it, and which

leaves them with no ungratified desire or longing, with not one of

those aching, secret longings that thousands of women are too tasteful

and too proud to reveal and often even too modest to entertain.

Of course the negative ideal in sex was excellent from the Puritan

point of view; because, as I have shown elsewhere,[41] the Puritans

were concerned with rearing a race of office hermits, clerks,

commercial and industrial slaves of all kinds; and to these, sexual

exuberance would naturally be a most irksome, dangerous and undesirable

possession. But Life is not an office or a factory, or, for that

matter, a large draper’s store; and what may be eminently desirable for

these horrible institutions, is simply ugly, repulsive, and nauseating

out in the open, amid fields, sucking lambs and beneath a shining sun.

There are few things more pathetic, more tragic, than a positive

young English girl going to her coming-out dance. What could be more

beautiful than to see her, figuratively speaking, extend her eager

open hand to Life, with a confidence, a fullness of hope and trust, a

profuseness of delicious expectations, and a bravery and singleness

of purpose that is never again equalled in her life? And who can help

hiding his eyes when he sees the same girl take back her hand again and

again, either holding nothing at all, or filled with the merest husks,

the merest scrapings of Life? Oh, the youths that go to dances!—these

sacred functions where the positive girl takes her first step towards

her sacred calling! One can watch with equanimity the negative young

Miss of narrow hips, still narrower chest, and even still narrower

outlook, succeeding in captivating her negative affinity. Such dramas

leave one unmoved. But to witness exuberant Life itself, obliged to

be content with creatures who are mere mementoes of Life, mere echoes

of Life; to see exuberant Life itself unnoticed, unselected, feared,

shunned, and shelved!—to anyone who has any feelings at all, such an

experience must be too painful ever to be forgotten.

For in England, not only are there barely sufficient men to go all

round; but there are not nearly sufficient positive men for the

preponderating number of positive girls. And since innocent girls are

absolutely unconscious of the causes of their misery when they meet and

marry the negative man, you find in England and all countries like it,

hundreds and hundreds of positive women who will affirm—nay, who are

ready to prove—that marriage is the most unexciting thing in existence,

and that Life itself is the most unexciting phenomenon in the universe!

And the tragedy of it all is that, as far as their own unfortunate

experiences go, they are right, and they convince because they are not

only right but miserable.

Thus Life gets suspected, slandered, unjustly weighed and valued, and

the legion of negative women about seize hold of these facts with the

avidity of famishing jealousy, and _prove_ that Life and its legitimate

joys are suspicious, rightly maligned, and valueless!

Although this is a book on Woman, it is necessary to speak about one

aspect of the question of virgin love which strictly belongs to this

chapter, but which is concerned only with men; I refer to the love felt

for a girl by a man, and of the forces that direct him in feeling this

love.

When the positive man faces the positive girl, he really has but one

inquiry: “Does the girl provoke desire?” Because desire is essential

to his share in the sexual act. He does not actually say: “Does she

provoke desire?” but he implies as much.

He insists upon her being what he calls “pretty” or “attractive.” But

from that point onwards it depends entirely upon his upbringing, the

values and current opinions of his Age, the prejudices of his religion,

his class, or his own particular taste, whether he makes a wise or a

foolish choice from the standpoint of Life.

I have shown that Man is much more conscious of the limitations and the

extent of the joys that sexual life is going to bring him than Woman

is or can be. He is not only more conscious as regards the sexual life

alone, but also as regards its consequences, its responsibilities.

Notwithstanding all this, however, or rather precisely on account

of all this, he is much more susceptible to the traditional values,

opinions, or prejudices of his time, his country or his class, than

Woman is, in the making of his choice. Woman is in the grip of Life.

Life constantly speaks through her. Unless she is actually unhealthy or

spoilt, Life speaks through her in a way that is profitable to Life.

The positive, unspoilt girl, then, although she acts unconsciously,

rarely makes a mistake in her choice of a man as a sexual being,

provided that she be not reluctantly compelled to do so by social

stress, by the feeling that her choice is a last shift to be positive

somehow, or by any other non-vital consideration.

Man, however, is rather differently situated. Being conscious, he

is much weaker in the stand he takes. For _conscious_ opinions,

_conscious_ views, can be modified by persuasion, by precept, by

example, by a consensus of contemporary opinion.

When the man faces the girl, therefore, he is often and almost

universally swayed by the prejudices in regard to what constitutes an

attractive girl that are current in his Age, country or class. And

thus we arrive at this important conclusion: _That provided his Age,

his country and class entertain positive views and values in regard to

Life, his choice will be correct and perfectly desirable as far as the

highest purposes of Life are concerned; but that provided his Age, his

country and class entertain the wrong or negative views or values in

regard to Life, his choice will be incorrect and entirely undesirable

as far as the highest purposes of Life are concerned_, and this despite

the fact that he himself may be a healthy, exuberant and positive

specimen of humanity.

If, for instance, the ethereal, languishing, angelic and slightly

delicate type of female beauty be the type exalted by the current

values of his environment, he runs considerable danger of regarding

her as the attractive type; and in selecting her he will deliberately

overlook her narrow frame, her lack of fire, her lack of exuberance,

her lack of positiveness.[42] Where Puritan values prevail, the

sexually exuberant female with the ardent and fierce brow and eye

will be regarded even as distinctly ugly. It will not surprise some

people to hear, therefore, that in France the angelic, passive, and

meek expression of most Englishmen’s wives is regarded as strangely

incompatible with the frequently robust, self-assertive, exuberant

appearance of the Englishmen themselves.

Purity is indeed exhaled by such women: but not the purity that all

positive people understand as purity. _To them the only purity worth

having is that which is the outcome of fire._ Everything else is

impure. A tepid passion, a non-exuberant passion, is impure: it can

wait, it can temporize, it can play with Life; it can even thwart the

highest purposes of Life: therefore it is impure.

How often in our own small circle have we not seen a youth that we

admired—a positive, robust and savoury fellow, full of trust and

energy—condescend to take the most fragile, shadowy reminiscence of

Life for a mate and the mother of his children! I say “condescend

to take”; but I mean _in his sense of course_, “aspire to taking”;

for it was obvious that he regarded her as the highest example of

womanhood that could possibly be discovered; to this extent was he

prevailed upon by the Puritanical prejudices of his Age! But it is

within the experience of most people that the negative values of an

environment will drive some men even farther. There are a few who will

not even stop at deformities, sickness, disease. I know of two such

cases: one man who fell in love with a consumptive girl, knowing her

to be consumptive; and another who loved and married a girl with hip

disease. Both of these men were acting in a manner utterly hostile

to the highest purposes of Life; their love actually denied, baulked

and frustrated the highest purposes of Life; they were, in my sense,

therefore, utterly impure, immoral, criminal. But from the point of

view of their Age, their class, their religion and their country, what

was there, in sooth, to show them that they were wrong?

Had they not heard from their earliest childhood onwards, that the soul

was everything and that the body did not matter? Had they not had it

dinned into them at every turn along their life’s path, that a pure

soul can make up for any physical defect, even foul breath? Had they

not learnt to regard brains as better than brawn? And who had ever told

them when they were children and when they were quite ready to despise

sickness, deformity, or botchedness generally, that their instincts in

this respect were quite right and proper? Who had explained to them

that things that are unclean (as the good, honest Old Testament has it)

should be avoided?[43]

There is no science of physiognomy and of human selection to-day. It

will be objected, of course, that no possible elaboration of such a

science could ever induce young people to “fall in love” with the

proper mates. My reply to that is: Let it be tried. When our young folk

tell us that they have fallen in love at first sight, we know that

they must have followed some principles of physiognomy and selection.

However adventitiously these may have been acquired, they constitute

the only guide obtainable. But are these principles any the better

for having been acquired by chance, and very often from false and

unreliable sources? They must have acquired their principles from some

source. Is it better that they should have picked them up, as it were,

on life’s way, than that they should have been taught them? It is not

a difficult matter to educate the taste of children on certain broad

lines. The fact is not that these guiding lines are lacking to-day—on

the contrary, they abound—but that they are based on no understanding

of essentials and are as a rule not regulated by a deep concern for

health and high vitality. And since you can teach mankind the points of

a good horse or a good dog, it is surely a little bold to deny that you

can teach it the points of a desirable mate.[44] At least you can lay

down certain very distinct principles regarding the mate to be avoided.

But not even that is attempted nowadays.[45]

The danger at present is that a young man, despite his proper instincts

in this matter, may be wrongly influenced by the values and prejudices

of his Age, his country and his class, so that willy-nilly he goes

astray, and inclines in a negative direction when all the time his

instincts are positive.

In regard to sex and the choice of the positive woman, the Englishman

particularly, therefore (more especially of the wealthier middle

classes), wants re-educating, re-instructing in the values of positive

Life. And it is to him, more than to Woman (for, after all, he is the

chooser), that the chapters of this book are addressed.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Always from the standpoint of sexual potency be it remembered.

[36] See also pp. 7, 70 and 94.

[37] In 1911 there were 477 women doctors in England, 382 of whom were

unmarried.

[38] See also pp. 7, 70, and 91.

[39] See _A Defence of Aristocracy_, chapter V.

[40] It will occur to some that I ought perhaps to have referred to the

fact that English Law is more severe against illicit relations than is

the Law of France. This is true; but, after all, English Law applies

only to girls under a certain age, and is by no means repressive of

illicit relations after that age.

[41] _A Defence of Aristocracy_, chapter V.

[42] Speaking of the prevalence of this type of girl at present,

Arabella Kenealy says (op. cit., p. 84): “So devitalized 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 vitalized 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 realize itself only in sickly and

weed-like development.”

[43] Even the fiction they read did not help them to the correct

attitude in this. Does Lord Lytton ever express any horror at his hero

and heroine, who were both consumptive, falling in love with each other

in _Pilgrims on the Rhine_? And how many other cases could be quoted!

[44] The teaching that is most steadily opposed to this view is that

of Christianity; for, if once you admit that the physical points of a

human being are important, you underrate the supreme importance of the

so-called “soul,” which takes precedence of everything. That is why

Christianity has always strongly deprecated any doctrine of physiognomy

or human selection.

[45] For instance, most of the stigmata of degeneration and disease are

well known. Why are they not generally taught to the young? This would

constitute at least a start in the right direction. The ancient Hindus

were in this respect, as in many others, very much more civilized than

ourselves. In the Laws of Manu, Book III, definite hints are given to

the young man regarding the kind of girl he should choose. In verse

seven we read: “Let him avoid that family (in selecting a wife) which

neglects the sacred rites, one in which no male children (are born),

one in which the Veda is not studied, one (the members of) which

have thick hair on the body, those which are subject to hemorrhoids,

phthisis, weakness of digestion, epilepsy, or white or black leprosy.”

Verse eight: “Let him not marry a maiden (with) reddish (hair), nor one

who has a redundant member, nor one who is sickly, nor one either with

no hair (on the body) or too much; nor one who is garrulous or has red

(eyes).” Verse ten: “Let him wed a female free from bodily defects who

has an agreeable name, the (graceful) gait of a _Hamsa_ or an elephant,

a moderate (quantity of) hair on the body and on the head, small teeth,

and soft limbs.”

CHAPTER VI

The Positive English Girl

Nothing is more instructive than to proceed from a general to a

particular case; and nothing, at all events, could possibly be more

instructive where women are concerned, than to select the positive

English girl as the particular case; because it is in her heart that

the conflict between the sound promptings of the body, and the unsound

external promptings of the modern world rages most fiercely and most

dramatically. It is in her heart that the issue of the conflict has its

most momentous and far-reaching consequences.

To a heart overflowing with human sympathy, there is something

infinitely wistful and pathetic in the appearance of this apparently

careless and blooming maiden. For, has not every circumstance of her

education and upbringing conspired to make her believe that all those

things which to-morrow will be the meaning and explanation of her

existence, are the very things that yesterday were most concealed, most

“tabooed,” most anxiously hushed up?

The transition from indifference, here, to keen disconcerting interest,

is an effort of the first magnitude—however willing and eager the body

may be to assist in the change of standpoint.

Her soul is very self-contemptuous, self-condemnatory, pessimistic.

And the more positive she is, the more this will be so; because the

greater will be her feeling of conflict with it. She feels she must

be wrong, and her soul and the world right. She is on the verge of

morbid self-dislike, self-rejection. But how can it be otherwise?

Her body is a scandalous and exuberant old Pagan, and every minute

of the day is whispering all kinds of shameless “indecencies” to

her modern high-school soul. And she has been taught to value her

modern high-school soul more than anything on earth. How can she help

despising herself from the standpoint of a first-class high-school

upbringing, when the latter constantly snorts prudishly at everything

her other self—her body, dares to hint to her reluctantly attentive

ear? Who is there to tell her that her high-school soul is entirely

wrong in making her despise herself?

But it is her pessimism that is so terrible and so virulent. All

ill-adapted creatures are prone to be pessimistic, and she is horribly

ill-adapted. Beneath all her tennis-playing, her hockey-playing, her

bright and cheerful manner, that always utterly deceives her parents

and the superficial adults about her, this pessimism clings to her like

a limpet. But how could she help feeling ill-adapted and pessimistic,

in the face of the terrible alternative that now confronts her—the

alternative consisting of either doing violence to the healthy dictates

of her body, or of rejecting all the deepest beliefs of her childhood

and adolescence?

And that is why an everlasting curse must surely hang over every

creature, woman or man, who can be so unscrupulous as to exploit this

temporary pessimism of healthy English female adolescence, and to turn

it to negative account. For all those who, in the nefarious traffic of

political or religious propaganda, avail themselves of it in order to

turn a girl against Life finally and irrevocably, no punishment that

can be imagined is sufficiently severe. Let them draw the unhealthy,

negative girl over to their side; for it is better for all concerned

if she and her like are converted to Life-Heresy; but let them leave

the healthy positive girl alone, to fight her own battle with her

high-school soul.

But the healthy English “Flapper” is courageous and infinitely

enduring. And this is the secret of her constant success against her

high-school soul. For, what is it that really matters in her apparently

uneven conflict between soul and body—a conflict, remember, in which

all the weight of her environment and education is on the side of the

soul? What matters is her body. Now her body knows quite well that

everything is all right, and it has its tongue in its cheek the whole

time, more particularly when the girl herself dallies with thoughts

of the convent or of suicide. Besides, even her high-school soul has

elements that can be persuaded and lured over to the other party. She

is attractive, and is beginning to receive attention. The vanity in

her soul, therefore, soon forms a league with the instincts of her

body. Her soul also wants power, and this power her body guarantees to

give her, if only she will snub the importunate high-school portions

of herself, and neither balk nor overlook its designs. Above all, her

soul is aching with curiosity concerning the secret of life, and the

happiness of life; and as her body’s irrepressible lust of life is

always at hand to lend support to any intellectual inquisitiveness,

a combination of forces is effected that is as formidable as it is

usually triumphant.

Where is the party on earth that could survive all these defections

from its ranks? That is why, if left alone, the negative side of her,

her high-school, puritanical soul, is bound to be defeated; that is why

she ultimately rises superior to her shame, her apprehension and her

pessimism.

But it would be a mistake to underrate her struggle, to minimize her

qualms, or to scoff at her cryptic religiosity; her conviction that she

is tremendously deep—all people are deep who have a fight raging in

them—and that she stands on the brink of an even deeper abyss! Even the

haughty manner in which she holds her inexperienced nose high in the

air is instructive. She is trying her hardest to appear as if she were

already above the struggle that is not yet over. Besides, all people

who are in pain, not only feel deep and proud, but are deeper and

prouder than those who do not suffer. Pain not only delves, it also

distinguishes.

Her confusion and the conflict raging inside her, are inclined to make

her ill at ease with all men except the youth of seventeen; for, since

she feels years his senior, he cannot disturb her. She will readily

kill time with him, and with his assistance play an empty game while

she is waiting for the forces in her body to readjust themselves

to the new facts. Then she will not even look at him. Then it is

business. Lads of seventeen will strike her as raw, ridiculous! Even

full-grown men will interest her only to the extent to which they mean

business. They will evoke her blessing only to the extent to which they

realize that she too is in earnest about life, and takes it perfectly

seriously. Then woe to her if one who attracts her heedlessly passes

on! But woe to _him_, above all, who while promising business, and

undertaking it legally and conscientiously with all the sanction of

society and the Church, yet undeceives her, and disappoints her when

it comes to the point, and drives her back to the pessimism of her

youth, and the doubts and shame she had so valiantly overcome. For the

duty of the positive man is to give woman a perfectly clean conscience

in regard to sex and its pleasures. As the Church of England Prayer

Book nobly and rightly puts it: “The husband ... is the Saviour of the

body.” He who does not realize the profundity of this passage in the

Church of England Prayer Book had better put the present work aside;

for he will never be able to sympathize with anything in it. No man who

is not the “Saviour of the body” of his wife can help being anything

else than a thing of torment and torture to her; while her love and

her devotion to him are increased a thousandfold, and her fidelity to

him probably secured for life, if only he knows how to confirm and

consolidate the triumph her body once achieved, single-handed, over her

high-school soul during the trying period of her adolescence.

* * * * *

Let no young lady who has read the above passage with indignation

suppose that it was an attempt to describe her particular type. The

very fact that she has felt indignant about it sufficiently proves that

it does not refer to her in the least; so she can set her mind at rest

and absolve me of any intention of slighting or offending her.

If, however, she has read the words with a feeling of passionate

anger—anger at the thought that all I have said truly applies to her,

though no longer now, alas!—no longer at her present stage in life;—if,

therefore, her emotion is the righteous anger of one who is filled with

regret and sorrow for the things that she now recognizes as having

once been hers, though they are hers no longer;—things she is still

young enough to possess, though they have been filched from her by her

environment and her unsound mode of life—I, as the mere analyst in this

affair, applaud her feeling, and am glad that she has not yet reached

that stage of listless resignation when youth, positiveness and ardour

have ceased from moving her or from exciting her longing. If once she

has been the girl I have just described, and she has deteriorated or

grown negative, either (1) through a too prolonged and too exhausting

wait, and a period too protracted of absolute abstinence; or (2)

through unwholesome living, or—which is worst of all—(3) through

marrying a man who has not proved the “Saviour of her body”; then I,

too, join my anger to hers, and am perhaps even more angry than she;

because all those who have a keen appreciation of quality, must loathe

to see it squandered, destroyed or so badly mismanaged as to be made a

thing of naught.

The three causes of deterioration and deflection to negativeness will

now be examined separately, and in the order of the numbers given above.

(1) Maybe that at seventeen, or perhaps eighteen, the positive English

girl was fully equipped, and felt herself fully equipped. Maybe Nature

itself at that age had concentrated all its most subtle art on the one

task of making her as attractive and as irresistible as possible. Her

top wave came with her nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first years—all

years of bewilderingly beautiful ripeness, when every fibre in her body

was agog, on the _qui vive_, harking for the approach of the mate that

would justify all this sumptuous and generous preparation; harking

timidly, though eagerly, for him who would consummate her expectant

womanhood, give the only genuine value that they could claim to all her

wondrous charms, and reveal herself to herself in all her wealth of

ancestral virtues, gifts and skill.

She had received her pearl necklace; she had received her golden

bracelets; she wore on her right hand a ring that had belonged to

her grandmother; but now she wanted the crowning jewel of all, the

hall-mark of her genuine womanhood—the little band of gold that was the

emblem of matrimony.

Her twenty-second year went by, and nothing happened. Her twenty-third

and twenty-fourth vanished also, and still her insignia were

incomplete. But there was time yet, and anxiety, though present, was

by no means acute. She was prepared for another year, or two, or even

three, of patient waiting.

Since, however, it is impossible even for Nature herself to stand for

ever on the tiptoe of anticipation; since it is too much to expect of

anything or anybody, that weariness will not ultimately supervene if

a wait is prolonged unduly, or if nothing—aye, nothing!—ever comes

to repay an all too lavish outlay of beauty and its promise of joys

untasted; it is, alas, a not uncommon occurrence—however ready the

girl herself may be to continue waiting and watching—for Nature itself

to feel so bitterly snubbed that it withdraws, as it were, from its

position of proud and unstinting impresario, and wanders off elsewhere

to spread its ornaments and charms over another and perhaps more

fortunate subject.

This stage in the positive English girl’s career is not apparent to

the outsider, nor is it immediately apparent to the girl herself. All

she knows is that she does not feel quite as well as she used to feel.

She does not sleep so well, eat so well, or resist fatigue so well.

She is not conscious, yet, that her looks are no longer so startlingly

attractive as they were three or four years ago; but there is a shade

of difference of which even she herself is aware on certain days. Her

face is beginning to acquire definition. Her features do not melt into

one another with the same indefinite sweep of downy cuticle; while

the tone has also begun to decline in her bigger organs, and they are

losing the braced, tense, healthy readiness they possessed at the

beginning of the wait.

She may have all kinds of disorders now which she did not have at

the moment of her top wave, while a concomitant depression of spirit

makes her feel less keen about life, less eager about its mysteries.

There is even a threat of anæmia—the result of occasional costiveness,

its frequent correlative leucorrhœa, and a general lack of tone in

her whole system. A neglected organ avenges itself, a neglected body

avenges itself; her whole spirit wishes to avenge itself; for, like

a flower, she needed the sun—in her case the sun of love—and she is

visibly withering without it.[46]

With the third and final stage, all the symptoms become acute,

before dying away completely only to leave the body a mere husk of

_unrealised_ and now _undesired_ possibilities. Discontent, unconscious

or conscious, together with all kinds of troublesome, though not

dangerous, disorders, gradually reduce her body and her spirit, and

thus undermine her positiveness. Her temper is irascible; her periods

irregular, unreliable and sometimes very painful—the sign that the body

is really indignant! Costiveness and leucorrhœa set in chronically.

Nobody understands either; nobody cares. The first principles of

negativeness begin to creep stealthily into her once positive mind.

Her features, hands and arms have lost all their bloom and roundness.

With genuine alarm, one day, she suddenly recognizes that she is but a

travesty, a caricature, of what she once was; and that Life itself is

only a caricature of what it used to be. Now she no longer feels any

real physical horror at the thought of spinsterhood, because she is not

what she was when spinsterhood would certainly have filled her with

horror. If she dislikes the idea of spinsterhood now, it is chiefly

owing to her vanity, not to her bodily appetites. She feels that her

prestige would be enhanced by the “Mrs.”—that is all! But her body has

no share in this vain sentiment.

If she has once been the positive girl I describe, however, she is now

filled with an indescribable feeling of burning, aching, consuming

detestation of the world she once loved. Hope, trust, yea-saying have

all gone. Her thwarted instincts manifest themselves in an obverse

character, and she becomes misanthropic, purely negative to Man and to

Life, and desiring only to end her existence in an act of revenge on

man, society and her more fortunate sisters.

Only the very positive girl makes a hateful spinster, because only

she has lost anything precious, only she knows what a cruel snub

her sumptuous preparations once received! To have had all these

preparations wasted; to have had to look on while, one by one, her

charms grew so faint as no longer even to lure the guest for whom

such a rich banquet had once been laid; to have been a magnet and to

have watched one’s magnetism gradually vanish without having been

effective—these experiences are cruel in any case; but their cruelty

increases in proportion to the magnitude, wealth and beauty of the

original welcome that Nature had organized.

The negative girl, to whom an atonic state of the body, irregular and

painful periods, have been an ever-present and familiar condition since

her earliest puberty, or the negative girl who, while suffering from

none of these disorders, is yet insufficiently vigorous or sound in

organic equipment to render the thwarting of her reproductive instinct

a state of suffering and bitter disillusionment, may make a perfectly

cheerful, engaging, companionable and even thoroughly good-natured old

maid.[47]

It is an interesting fact that in France, where positiveness among

girls is ever so much more general than in England, the old maid is

universally unbearable, and is proverbially known to be so.

* * * * *

(2) But there are other agencies at work in modern society for reducing

the positive English girl to negativeness, besides the unfortunate

and often inevitable circumstances of an all-too-long wait. For, in

England, there is extraordinarily little care taken of the female body.

It should never be forgotten in this regard, that although we, as a

nation, are lovers of both sport and open-air exercise, we are culpably

neglectful of that hygiene which is concerned with the fundamentals

of life. Genuine and gentle reverence for the body, particularly for

the young female body, is startlingly rare in England. Fundamentals

are not faced; they are, if possible, avoided; and frequently owing

to a deliberate refusal to recognize the needs and fragility of an

equipment that is vital, elaborate and easily disordered, girls are

as much as possible handled and treated like boys of their own age.

Positive girls, particularly, who are well built and vigorous, whose

correlation of bodily parts is as near perfect as it is possible for

the organs of modern people to be, have very few difficulties in early

puberty. They are regular, they feel little or no inconvenience from

the attending phenomena of puberty; but owing to this very freedom

from morbid symptoms they are often allowed, thanks to the prevailing

lack of reverence for the body, to engage in pastimes and sports—even

during their moments of indisposition—which must, and undoubtedly do,

ultimately induce a morbid condition if the habit is persisted in. Let

me explain:—

To begin with, the very fact that anxious and almost fearful silence

and secrecy are made to hang over all the manifestations of puberty in

girls, is in itself an inducement for the young female to desire to

behave during her moments of indisposition as much as possible like her

schoolmates who are not indisposed. When, therefore, in addition to

this desire, she feels and is known to feel no very marked discomfort

at such moments, there is apparently nothing to prevent her from going

a long walk or joining in a game of tennis, net-ball or even hockey

with the rest of her friends, at a moment when violent exercise of

all kinds ought to be most carefully avoided. In girls’ high schools

and later on at college, such breaches of reverence towards the body

are not only of constant occurrence, they may be said to be the rule

where the positive girl is concerned, unless, of course, her parents

have been wise enough to insist specially upon the proper precautions

being observed. In the end, however, long as the period of successful

resistance may be, the body must suffer from this violence, and the

toll paid is then both severe and heavy.

Another very dangerous custom is that of having recreation and games

directly after a meal. There is nothing objectionable in sports for

girls, provided they are not too violent.[48]—On the contrary, games

keep them out in the open air and exercise their bodies. But it

is a risky thing, in view of the subsequent cost to the whole body

and spirit, to give the alimentary canal in girls the slightest

possible excuse for getting out of order; and exercise after a meal,

particularly when such exercise is violent, is a potent factor in

bringing about indigestion, costiveness and all their concomitant

disorders. This notwithstanding, it is not uncommon, in fact it is an

almost regular practice for girls in high schools and at college—often

with the consent of their parents if these happen to know—to rush out

directly after lunch to a game of hockey or tennis, or what not, and

to engage in the most violent exercise and movements in the course

of their play. This is the most unscrupulous vandalism; for, even

if they are not indisposed at the time, the evil effects of such

excessive activity directly after a meal are notorious. In the end

costiveness must occur, not as a temporary affection, but alas! as a

chronic habit; and the custom of correcting this tendency by means of

constant purgation only aggravates the trouble.[49] Now constipation

is in itself a bad thing. It lowers spirit, it gives rise to nervous

trouble, causes auto-intoxication that saps energy and interferes

with sound sleep; it also acts as a poison on the red corpuscles of

the blood and reduces their number, and thus fosters the development

of anæmia. But this is not all; for with constipation there is always

serious infection of the lower colon, and a general loss of tone in

that organ. The gravity of this condition in women cannot, however,

be overrated, because the surrounding and adjacent parts are so vital

and so important, that no risk that can possibly imperil their health

and vigour ought ever to be run, much less therefore courted and

chosen. How long it takes for an infected and atonic colon to affect

the neighbouring organs, it is impossible to say; but that the atonic

condition can and does spread from the original seat of the trouble

to other parts is unquestioned, particularly when anæmia has reduced

their resisting power; and the results are always of the worst possible

nature. Very quickly, if it is not already present, that worst and most

insidious of maladies, leucorrhœa, makes its first appearance, and then

a vicious circle is formed which it is extremely difficult to break.

This does not pretend to be a medical work; but the consequences and

symptoms of this disease, leucorrhœa, are so far reaching and generally

so much ignored, that it seems imperative to speak out quite openly on

the subject. All through this book, the relations of the spirit to the

body is considered as being so close, so intimate, and the relation of

the attitudes of the positiveness and negativeness to the state of the

body is recognized as so inevitable and deep-seated, that I should be

guilty of a flaw in my argument, of a grave omission in the frank array

of my facts, if, particularly at this stage, I were to scout a subject

which, however disagreeable and delicate, formed a necessary link in

the chain of my reasoning.

To begin with, then, let it be said most emphatically, for all those

whom it may concern, that leucorrhœa—this most regrettable and most

neglected of the hidden scourges that harass the women of England—is a

much more serious and much more distressing ailment than the ordinary

general practitioner, or even specialist gynæcologist, is ready to

admit. The fact that Albutt in his _Twentieth Century Practice_ allots

only one paragraph of about fifteen lines to the subject of leucorrhœa

in girls, shows at once with what a frivolous shrug of the shoulders

the orthodox medical school cavalierly disposes of this all-important

question. Leucorrhœa is not only a catarrh in a most vital part, it is

also the symptom of a loss of tone in a most vital part—a loss of tone

and therefore of vitality. It is important to remember, in regard to

this disease, _that scarcely a case of the kind has ever been known in

which colon bacilli were not present in the mucous discharge_. The

intimate connexion between leucorrhœa and the state of the colon is

therefore indisputable, and shows with what reverent care the body of

the young positive girl should be tended and watched. The body of the

negative girl does not matter nearly as much.

When it is remembered that persistent and obstinate leucorrhœa is

the cause not only of more than three-quarters of the irregularity

and pain of girls’ periodic indispositions, not only of a depression

and degeneration of sexual keenness that may make sexual union quite

unenjoyable, not to say unpleasant, but also that it is a reducing,

an exhausting, and a sterilizing ailment (sterility where it is not

the result of actual malformation is almost always the result of

leucorrhœa), it cannot be too urgently or too deeply impressed upon the

parent and the guardian of the positive English girl, that reverence

for her body, and not alone for her pure soul (which, as we have seen,

can well be left to look after itself), is their most solemn and most

sacred duty.

Unfortunately, and incredible as it may appear, I have, after the

most careful inquiry, discovered that even where leucorrhœa has been

diagnosed and proved beyond any doubt to be present, it has been

impossible to prescribe the only effective remedies and the only

salutary hygiene, owing to the fact that they are frequently of such

a nature that no English parent would dream of tolerating their

application for an instant! The price we pay for our Puritanism is

occasionally very heavy indeed.

When in addition to chronic costiveness and leucorrhœa, anæmia

ultimately sets in to stamp its powerful blight upon the face and body

of our fair and positive English girl, the amount of positiveness

that has been left within her, the extent of her original self that

still remains, may easily be computed. I need hardly say that this is

not much, and yet, though she is spoiled for every other purpose, she

probably stands as a tennis, a hockey, and often a classical champion,

as the glory of her whole family, class and nation.

And, mark you, she has been spoiled for every other purpose, not

by necessity, not by fate or accident, but by a manner of life the

mistakes of which could have been avoided, eliminated and corrected,

if only those to whom she was related had felt that reverence for her

body, which all beautiful things deserve and demand, and without which

they surely perish.

Where the positive girl of the poorer classes is concerned the evil is

just as great and just as widespread; but at least in her case, there

is the excuse of necessity, of compulsion, of economic pressure. She

does not, it is true, rush out to a game of hockey, tennis or net-ball

immediately after her meals, neither, as a rule, does she have to take

a long pleasure-walk; but she has certainly to rush off either to the

local underground railway or to an omnibus in order to get to her work,

or else she has to hurry along a considerable distance on foot to get

there. She does not play at hockey or tennis when she is indisposed;

but if she works at a factory she has to go there all the same; if she

works in a shop she has to stand about there all the same; and if she

is a laundress she has to stand at a board or a machine all the same.

In both classes, then, rich and poor, Puritanism in different ways—on

the one hand by its doctrine of indifference to the body, and on the

other by its creations, modern industry and commerce—has succeeded in

suppressing all reverence for the positive girl’s beautiful body, and

the spiritual as well as the physical cost to the nation of this stupid

and iniquitous attitude is as appalling as it is incalculable.

* * * * *

(3) Even if she marry early—as all positive girls should—she may

still be converted to negativeness; and in this last instance, not by

discontent, a too long wait, or an unhealthy mode of life during youth,

but actually by her young husband himself.

Although, strictly speaking, this question should come in the chapter

on Marriage, its discussion here, in view of what has gone before,

seems so opportune and necessary, that I have decided to include it

here, and thus leave myself all the more room for other considerations

in Chapter VII.

I have mentioned before that the deterioration of men from the

standpoint of Life—i.e. their gradual approximation to a purely, or

relatively, negative type—has been a process that, in England at least,

has been going on for almost 270 years. In this time a good deal can

be accomplished in the matter of altering a type, and there can be

no doubt that a good deal has indeed been accomplished. Fortunately,

however, apart from the actual deterioration through bad food and

unhealthy living and work (which, as I have shown elsewhere, are the

indirect results of Puritanical values), Puritanism has not done much

to affect the positiveness of the poorest classes in England. Where it

has proved most formidable is in (1) the plutocracy, (2) the middle

classes, and (3) the lower middle classes. In these the ravages of

Puritanical tradition on the constitutions and outlook of the men is

everywhere noticeable; and that which makes the incidence of this evil

all the harder to bear is the fact that the women of all these classes

have not suffered nearly to the same extent from this tradition.

Whereas, therefore, it is a more or less common experience to find a

positive girl in all these classes, the appearance of a truly positive

man is excessively rare. I may have occasion to refer to this state

of affairs again in Part II; but, for the present, let us examine its

immediate effects on the positive girl who has just married.

The positive girl extends her hand confidently, bravely and hopefully

to Life. She does not expect to draw it back empty; she does not desire

to draw it back full of bliss. She is brave enough, rational enough,

and above all exuberant enough, to expect to draw it back with its full

quantum of pleasure and pain. She wants _Life_, and what though Life

means some pain, willy-nilly she will have it notwithstanding, and her

heart whispers “damn the consequences.”

But there is something she does expect, something she has a right to

expect; and that is that her husband himself should be her guide, her

mentor and initiator. From time immemorial it is his sex that has been

_prehensile_. Throughout the higher animal kingdom, prehension in the

sex act is the exclusive attribute of the male. He often has the organs

for it, and he almost always has the superior strength for it—even when

his strength is not required for other purposes. But just think what

prehension means! It involves initiation; it means taking the first

steps; it is certainly tantamount to setting the tone, the manner,

the order of an encounter. Traditionally, then, for millions of years

the male has had his particular rôle, the rôle of prehension, with

all its correlative virtues and qualities. Before self-consciousness

dawned in the human being, he was prehensile in the sexual act—and his

rôle therein involved, as I think it necessary to repeat, powers of

initiation, the ability to take the first steps, the necessary mastery

over sex, to set the tone, the manner and the order of the sexual

encounter. What does all this imply? It is obvious! It implies that

for an equal number of millions of years the female of the species has

expected this prehension and all its correlative qualities in the male.

It means that now, to this very day, her deepest feelings tell her

that it is only right, only proper, and only becoming, that he should

possess and display a certain mastery, a certain free virtuosity—that

virtuosity of a flame in a roaring fire—in the matter of sex, and that

his very ardour, his very virtuosity, his very ease in mastery, should

finally seal the coffin of all that guilty feeling towards sex which

she had almost killed in her youth, and which she now expects to be

buried once and for all.

This, positive Woman understands. This is what she has a right to

expect; this is what makes her serene, content, free in conscience and

in gait, confident that life is worth living and that her positive

impulses have been correct all along.

But what is it that happens so frequently that often a sense of shame

regarding sex actually begins in a positive woman on the very day of

her marriage—never again to be completely dissipated?

—The unfortunate modern man whom our positive girl marries, is often as

remote from any mastery over sex, or from any ease or free virtuosity

where it is concerned, as a marble statue. Thanks to the prudish

nature of his upbringing, his environment and his outlook, and also

to the general lack of sexual exuberance in his constitution, he is

frequently as terrified of the subject as is his spinster aunt, and

he knows no more about taking the initiative properly, artistically,

capably, than a child of three. As for that impetuosity that carries

everything before it, even the girl’s natural modesty, and releases the

pent-up demons of roguery so long stifled in her breast!—poor man! far

from releasing them he would prefer a thousand times to slip another

bolt across the door that imprisons them! Hesitation, shame, disgust,

a sense of guilt and of discomfort, often followed by incredibly

long periods of post-conjugal virginity and chastity, are frequently

the result, and with general consequences that are most deeply to be

deplored.

Prehension!—He has not even comprehension where sex is concerned! And

since in this matter, which is rightly so delicate and therefore so

dependent upon consummate art, the Woman is utterly dependent upon

him, a miserable, uncomfortable and clammy atmosphere is straightway

generated in a new home, in which everything could otherwise be so

bright, so clean, so full of mutual confidence and good spirits. And in

all this, mark you, no reference is made to the need of child-bearing

for the woman, which here is left indefinitely ungratified and

unconsidered.

How many women ever survive this first great shock to their

positiveness it is impossible to say; but that a very large number

undoubtedly do grow negative from the effects of it, I myself have

been able to ascertain and to record, even in my own small but fairly

representative circle.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] Hundreds of people, doctors included, will declare that this is

wrong; that an all-too-long wait does not necessarily impair health

or beauty. As if not being used, not being made to function, could

possibly be a good thing, or at least a thing that does no harm! Make

a child sit still for years, and see how its health will be affected!

It is absurd to argue that when an equipment is normal and healthy, it

does not do it and the body containing it considerable damage not to

use it! But in this matter, I do not ask you to believe me! Ask the

positive girls themselves! Ask them (if they remained virgins) whether

they felt the same at twenty-five as they did at nineteen! Ask them

whether they have not learnt from sad experience that an elaborate

mechanism when it is not used gets out of order! Get them into your

confidence, and you will hear the truth for once on this matter.

[47] Paradoxical as it may seem at first sight, it is however only

too true that the worst kind of spinster is precisely this “perfectly

cheerful, engaging, companionable and even thoroughly good-natured old

maid,” because, like the cheerful cripple or the happy invalid, she

is a living mockery of Life, passion and instinct thwarted. Her very

adaptedness to her unnatural lot seems to the unwary an argument in

favour of an unnatural lot, or at least not an argument against it. See

chapter IX.

[48] By violent sports I mean any form of jumping, hockey, football,

lawn tennis, golf and lacrosse. In all these games the movements

of the body are too jerky and too jarring, and muscular effort is

too long sustained. Even for men football is very bad, for women it

is barbarous. In young girls Nature makes an effort to compensate

the excessive demands made by violent sports on the muscles and

bony structure of the legs and pelvis, by proceeding to a premature

stiffening of the fleshy, and a premature ossification of the bony

parts—both of which processes not only arrest full subsequent

development, but also make for unnecessary rigidity in the pelvic and

upper femoral regions—effects which are heavily paid for later on

unless the girls remain unmarried. The fact that even among males,

sailors show smaller hip measurements than soldiers—the former being

habituated from earliest youth to much more violent bodily exertions

than soldiers—shows what a difference this natural compensation for

early muscular strain makes in a sex in which pelvic development is

neither as vital nor as characteristic as it is among girls. Another

danger arising from violent sports for young women, which is not

mentioned in the text, consists in the jerking and jarring of the

spine, small and imperceptible sprains of which, particularly near

the ilium, often lead to very obscure but severe nervous disorders in

later life. The fact that young girls enjoy violent sports is often

adduced as an argument in favour of their adoption at school and

elsewhere. But surely young people, as I have shown, are so catholic

in their positiveness, that their mere liking for an occupation or

amusement should not constitute in itself, and without further inquiry,

a sufficient ground for allowing them to pursue it. Neither should

parents allow themselves to be influenced by the fact that a conclave

of women doctors has recently decided in favour of violent sports for

girls. The decisions come to by middle-aged matrons or middle-aged

spinsters concerning the care and discipline of young girls, should

never be trusted. It is always difficult to be quite certain about the

motives, whether conscious or unconscious, that have animated women of

this age in their dealings with young girls. On the whole, unless it be

her mother, the advice of any middle-aged woman concerning a young girl

ought to be treated with suspicion. See p. 246 (footnote).

[49] With regard to the effects of diet on constipation, I give some

useful hints in chapter V of _A Defence of Aristocracy_.

Part II

INFERENCES FROM PART I