Women in Art, Philosophy and Science. The Outlook. Conclusion
From what has been laid down in the previous chapter, it will have been
seen that, in the economy of Nature, the female of the species has been
endowed with very special qualities which, while they are indispensable
to the survival of life, also give her a very definite character,
different from that of the male and susceptible of alteration only at
the peril of the species.
Woman, at her best, has been revealed as a creature, who, without
exaggeration or fulsomeness, may be called the Custodian and Promoter
of Life. If this is the rôle in which she is at her best, it therefore
follows that, in any other rôle she undertakes, she will display her
second best, or her subordinate, side. A creature cannot wantonly do
violence to her nature and proceed along lines foreign to the strongest
forces that have been evolved in her, and yet hope to achieve the same
virtuosity as when she had nature and the tradition of her line both on
her side. To repeat the simile already used in this work, as well might
you expect a fly to walk with the same facility on its antennæ as on
its legs.
_A priori_, without examining the evidence for or against our
contention, we should expect to find that in Art, Philosophy and
Science, which are pursuits exacting qualities frequently antagonistic
to the natural pre-requisites of woman’s rôle as a Custodian and
Promoter of Life, woman can at best only make an inferior display, even
if she make any display at all.
This, as the reader will agree, is surely not a matter of opinion, it
is one of facts, and the facts can be verified. What would the logic of
the most carefully argued thesis signify, if all about us we possessed
the evidences of women’s unquestioned mastery in Arts, in Philosophy,
and in Science?
This is true enough, and in this respect, the verdict of facts is
final. In science and philosophy, says Havelock Ellis, “it is not
simply that women are more ready than men to accept what is already
accepted and what is most in accordance with appearance—and that it
is inconceivable, for instance, that a woman should have devised
the Copernican system—but they are less able than men to stand
alone.”[232] Whether we turn to metaphysics, epistemology, and
the other departments of abstract thought, astronomy, physics, or
mechanics; whether we turn to medicine, chemistry, philology, geology,
physiology or any other of the more modern sciences, or whether we
turn to architecture, sculpture, poetry, or painting, the names that
really count, the figures _that are milestones_ in the history of these
human pursuits—and this is the ultimate criterion—are all names of male
performers. There should be no need to elaborate this point. Anyone
acquainted even slightly with the history of any art or science, is in
a position to accept it without demur. Think what we embrace in the
subjects mentioned, when we pronounce the names of Aristotle, Bacon,
Hobbes, Kant, Nietzsche, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Harvey, Pasteur,
Lyell, Grimm, Pheidias, Michelangelo, Titian!
It is not legitimate, as we have seen, to argue that men have
distinguished themselves more than women in all these fields
_because_ women have been suppressed and wilfully stunted. In this
respect the Feminists have wished to prove too much, and in doing
so have overreached the truth. Specialization of function must be
accompanied by specialization of instinct, impulse, and outlook. The
highly specialized functions of woman in the long line of evolution,
therefore, must be taken into account, in any inquiry into the striking
disparity existing between her performances and man’s, in such
important departments of life as Art, Philosophy and Science. And if,
by taking the said specialization into account, we are able to explain
this disparity, what need is there of a hypothesis so very much at
variance with historical fact, according to which it is claimed that
the difference between the intellectual capacities of man and woman are
the outcome of a warping or of a stultification of the female mind,
somewhere and somewhen, in the development of the race?
In connexion with this differentiation of the sexes from the standpoint
of their respective capacity in matters of artistic production, it
should, however, always be borne in mind that the positive man is
distinguished from the positive woman (_vide_ Chapter IV) by the
possession of a developed social instinct which, in itself, is a
sufficient basis for all his powers of order and arrangement. The
relative importance of the social instinct in man—that instinct
to which everything in the nature of civilization and ordered
human society is to be traced—its power in him to act freely and
independently of the reproductive and self-preservative instincts, and
sometimes even to act against them (as in its control of male lust and
its recognition of the responsibilities of that lust) is certainly an
important factor in man’s superiority over woman in the matter of art
production. For Art is not only a social function in the sense that it
is an expression of one man’s feelings to another, it also partakes,
in the forms it adopts, of those elements of order and arrangement
which reach their highest manifestation in the ordering and arranging
of society.[233] Men, as social animals, are therefore possessed of
the necessary sex tradition to produce great artists; whereas women,
as pointed out in Chapter IV, not only have no sex tradition in the
forming of society, i.e. in the creative aspect of the social instinct,
to which order, form and arrangement belong, but they are also too
much overpowered by one instinct (the reproductive) to allow their
rudimentary social instinct free play. As I have already shown, woman
only inclines to art, therefore, when (_a_) her reproductive instinct
is prepared to stand aside, because it is not as strong as it might
be, owing to some flaw in her ancestry or in the tone or correlation
of her bodily parts; or (_b_) she wishes to wield an extra weapon in
attracting the other sex.
In the first case, she turns to art at the bidding of a genuine impulse
to it, arising from a real whisper coming direct from her rudimentary
social instinct, in which case her reproductive instinct may be
considered as imperfect, suspect, lacking in vigour. In the second
case, she turns to art at the bidding of her reproductive instinct,
which urges her unconsciously to adopt one of the arts temporarily as
an extra feather with which to distinguish her from the ordinary crowd
of females about her.
It is, however, probable that to woman’s lack of a strong sex tradition
in the free exercise of a social instinct, the unimportance of her
performances in the arts is largely due; and seeing that a more perfect
equipment in this direction must mean the disturbance of her instincts’
balance, and the suppression of her reproductive in favour of her
social impulses, it is not likely that, if the human species is to
survive, we shall ever witness such a readjustment of woman’s instincts
as to render great female artists a possibility.
The reader may wish to point out that the acceptance of the theory of
organic evolution hardly allows us to deny that some transformation of
woman along lines that would make her able to become a great artist,
philosopher or scientist is surely possible. According to this theory
there can be no limit to the possible metamorphoses which a deliberate
and consistent change in environment and in habit might produce in a
number of generations; and, given the will thereto, the end is probably
not beyond human achievement. There is some plausibility in this
objection; but, as in the matter of the virtues and vices of women, it
may well be asked: (1) Whether it is a desirable end, (2) whether the
price paid for its achievement—the volatilizing of women’s subservience
to a concern about the concrete demands of life—can be afforded by a
race already somewhat exhausted from the standpoint of vital instincts,
and (3) whether the experiment could possibly be made on a sufficiently
large scale, for a sufficient number of generations, to bring about a
modification of the sex as a whole.
To transform the whole of the female sex in civilized countries in
the hope of bringing forth a female Michelangelo or a female Kant,
would seem a hazardous and very laborious experiment, with but a
doubtful reward as its object; and seeing that the experiment might
and very probably would involve a dangerous depreciation of woman’s
vital instincts, the endeavour to philosophize with women might quite
conceivably end in racial and social suicide.
There is, however, a grave difficulty in the way of any such
experiment, a difficulty that would probably foredoom it to failure
from the start; and that is the probability that the appearance of
such minds as Michelangelo’s or Kant’s in the male sex is due to
a male characteristic which can by no human means, selectional,
educational or otherwise, be transferred to woman. I refer to masculine
variability. It is probable that the appearance of all great men is
to be ascribed to the law of the greater variability of males than
females, and that it never will be possible to achieve in woman that
large gamut of endowments which separate, say, a Newton from an average
suburban-dwelling newspaper-and-cabbage-fed clerk. The fact that while
this greater male variability produces geniuses superior in every way
to the highest woman, it also produces male fools whose standard of
stupidity is far and away higher than any that woman has ever reached,
is not denied; but we are bound to reckon with it notwithstanding.
And if, as biologists assure us, the extreme variability of man is
the ultimate cause of the genius, then it seems unlikely that in the
experiment above outlined, anything more could be achieved than the
deterioration of woman as woman.
Apart from woman’s natural lack of originality, and her absence of
initiative, or of that spirit of bold and confident conviction—all of
which derive from her necessary rôle in the relation of the sexes—her
indifference to truth is what chiefly incapacitates her for scientific
pursuits, as it does for all undertakings where truthfulness is of
pre-eminent importance; while her constant subjection to her emotions
makes her an untrustworthy judge of all those facts or questions, to
which she may be inclined to bear an emotional relation.
Anyone who has an extensive knowledge of women—even of the most
cultivated among them—is aware of how constantly they are guided in
their conclusions concerning what is true by hedonistic considerations.
Indeed, it is the most difficult thing to persuade a woman, even of the
most obvious truth, if that truth strikes her as being too unpleasant
to be comfortably assimilated to her previous stock of knowledge.
In addition to her vital indifference to truth, therefore, woman’s
emotions add a further disability to her nature in this department.
Her convictions are so intimately and unconsciously interwoven with
her deepest interests and long-cherished beliefs, that if, to accept a
certain truth, these convictions have to be outraged, she prefers to
reject that truth as unacceptable. In this sense, woman’s thinking is
largely feeling, and her thoughts are largely sensations.[234] The
more emphatic and stubborn a woman is in any belief, the more strongly
you may suspect that she has not facts, but emotional reasons for
holding it.[235] That is why women are so notoriously bad at giving
reasons for their opinions, and why they are so untrustworthy as judges
of matters of fact, where impartiality is a pre-requisite. A woman
Feminist, for instance, will emphatically claim (I have actually heard
a body of them claim this) that the music of Dame Ethel Smyth is equal
to any that has been composed by the best male musicians, and she will
reiterate this claim and press it the more aggressively and stubbornly
the more you try to appeal to her reason with the view of showing her
the absurdity of her position. Now the cause of this is not the female
Feminist’s _intellectual_ conviction that Dame Ethel Smyth’s music
is actually equal to the best male music, but her strong emotional
desire that it should be so; and this strong emotional desire makes
her utterly unfit to express an impartial opinion upon it. The truth,
which is that Dame Ethel Smyth’s music is by no means equal to the
most superior male music, is too unpleasant to be accepted: therefore,
without any further ado, it is rejected as untrue.
It is enormously difficult for a woman to divorce her wishes, her likes
and dislikes, from her beliefs and from her conclusions; and this, in
addition to her natural indifference to the truth, and her lack of
originality, is enough to explain the fundamental unsuitability of her
sex for any scientific pursuit.[236]
These characteristics of woman’s mind ought, of course, to exclude her
from any function in which impartiality and unemotional judgments are
pre-requisite. We ought not to dream, therefore, of placing women on
juries, or of making them judges of anything except the most trivial
and impersonal questions; and consequently it is perhaps the best proof
of our stupidity, or rather of our subjection to female influence,
as a nation, that women are not only allowed to sit in our principal
governing bodies, but also on our juries. That gross miscarriages
of justice are bound to follow, is a prophecy that anyone can make
now, and with absolute confidence that he will prove right. In fact,
although at the time of writing, it is hardly more than a twelvemonth
since women have been sitting on juries, a gross miscarriage of justice
has already occurred.[237]
When, therefore, we hear that on February 24, 1922, Mr. Justice
Coleridge, in welcoming four women on the Grand Jury at the Surrey
Assizes, said he was satisfied that the administration of justice
would be strengthened by women on Grand Juries, we can only shrug our
shoulders at the vagaries of the senile—or anile?—judicial mind. (He
was apparently seventy-one when he expressed this view.) We should
have liked to ask him, on what evidence he, as a judge, based this
utterly unwarrantable opinion. Had he any evidence? If he had none,
why did he, as an expert trained in the sifting of half-truths and
untruths from Truth, ever allow himself to make such a wild statement?
If he had evidence, where did he get it from? We can condone his
senile slobbering over four strange ladies in his court and under his
immediate patronage, but he might at least have confined the expression
of his sentiments to less harmful amenities than the remark he actually
made.
Verily the emotionalism of our bench of High Court judges is one of the
many dangers menacing our civilization; for it furnishes a proof that
Feminism and effeminacy are invading the very quarters where they do
most harm—that is to say, those quarters on which the nation depends
for impartiality and coolness of judgment.
It is perfectly possible so to change a woman as to convert her
into a creature who might be as impartial as a slot machine or a
ready-reckoner; but, before this could be achieved, so many of her
vital characteristics would have to be destroyed, that the process of
education would amount to a training in degeneration, dangerous both to
the species and to human life in general.[238]
To employ her, however, in functions demanding characteristics the
very opposite of those which are the most vital in her; to place her
in a position in which she has to display a love of truth, a lack of
emotion, and a capacity for thinking as apart from feelings of desire,
like or dislike, is to anticipate this training in degeneration before
it has effected its results, and thus to make justice, and every other
public function in which she takes part, a pure and unadulterated farce.
In opposition to the sentimental septuagenarian of the Surrey
Assizes, therefore, we prophesy with even more conviction than he
could possibly feel, that the administration of justice will only be
_weakened_ by women on Grand and all other juries.
In reply to those Feminists who are inclined angrily to dismiss all the
above as the outcome of prejudice, or whatever else they may imagine
has animated me in writing it, it would be interesting to ask them
how _they_ propose to account for woman’s inconspicuous part in Art,
Philosophy and Science, unless they are prepared to accept as real some
of the disabilities which I have shown to be derived from the most
vital elements in female nature.
They cannot now argue that it is due to the systematic repression of
women’s capacities by men, because this _canard_ is no longer believed
by anybody. They can hardly argue that it is due to the frequently
adverse conditions of women’s life; because we know that some of
the greatest geniuses of history were not only born in conditions
unfavourable to high achievements, but also produced some of their
finest work while still struggling with adversity. If they are not
prepared to ascribe the fact to a natural difference between the sexes,
which, in view of its being part of the economy of life, it would be
dangerous to disturb, _what_ is their position?
The fact that women possess certain powers of mind peculiar to
themselves alone, which enable them frequently to hit at a truth
beneath its many disguises, and to appear to guess when they really
only _see_ or _feel_ the correct answer to the question, has been
asserted and claimed too often to be passed over here without some
comment. And we are the less inclined to leave it unnoticed, seeing
that both tradition and the wisdom of antiquity take it for granted.
This power is usually called intuition. It is an immediate road to
knowledge, instead of a mediate one. Without reasoning or analysis, the
intuitive person _perceives_ the truth.
In the sense of its being an _immediate road to knowledge_, however, I
should doubt very much whether it could be proved that woman possesses
intuition. The number of her guesses being infinite, it is only natural
that occasionally they should be right.[239] But, in any case, even if
we did grant that woman possessed intuition in this sense, we could
not claim that she is alone in this possession. All great male poets
have possessed it: Heraclitus, Theognis, Shakespeare, Gœthe! When Gœthe
perceived the true morphology of the human cranium, after looking at
a skull, he saw intuitively a fact which the science of a subsequent
Age was only able to prove at the cost of much labour and research.
Likewise, when the poet responsible for the opening chapter of Genesis
wrote down the order in which the organic world appeared on earth, he
perceived intuitively a fact which thousands of years afterwards the
analysis and reasoning of science confirmed. We have not on record
any such profound scientific fact that was originally discovered
intuitively by woman. If, however, women really possessed intuition, in
the sense of a power that enabled them immediately to perceive a hidden
or hitherto undiscovered truth, the records of the sciences would
surely be full of such cases; and we should expect to find the history
of every science to consist of an early _intuitional_ period in which
all the fundamental great truths were discovered by women, and a later
_substantiating_ period, in which these female discoveries were proved
and confirmed by the analytical and rational faculties of the male.
This, however, is not what the history of any science reveals. It
frequently records cases of correct guesses on the part of male poets
and thinkers, which subsequent generations of male scientists have
confirmed; but, to my knowledge, not one such case of a woman.
Nevertheless, we are bound to treat with some respect a tradition
of such hoary antiquity as is this one concerning woman’s peculiar
mental powers, and although we may doubt whether they may be truly
characterized by the one word intuition, it is at least incumbent upon
us to find a better word, or to explain how the tradition arose, and on
what feature of the female psyche it is based.
The most striking instance of the recognition by the ancients of
special spiritual powers in woman, is the employment of virgins as the
voices of oracles. The Oracle of Delphi, for example, which was the
most celebrated of all the oracles of Apollo, employed a virgin in this
way, and she was known as the Pythia of the Temple. Whenever the oracle
was consulted she was led by the _prophetes_ to her seat on the tripod,
and then, under the influence of the vapour arising from the chasm
under her feet, she would fall into a state of delirious intoxication,
and utter the sounds which contained the revelations of Apollo. Until
about the end of the third century B.C. this virgin was usually a
young girl taken from some family of poor country people. About this
time, however, a certain Thessalonian named Echecrates is supposed to
have seduced her, and thereafter she was replaced by a woman of fifty
or over. Three such virgins were constantly employed at Delphi in the
heyday of Hellenic civilization, and the pronouncements of the oracle,
although they frequently contained prophecies of a very definite kind,
were so consistently wise and true, that it is impossible to deny at
least some mysterious power behind their inspiration.
Modern rationalists, like the Greek rationalists of old, have scoffed
at the supposed mysterious power that resided in these virgin mediums,
but it is easier to scoff than to explain, and the task of dismissing
them as a fraud is simpler than that of explaining how a wise people
like the ancient Greeks could have maintained their faith in them for
generations, if there had not been a genuine element of divination in
their many pronouncements.
Other oracles were served by women, in addition to that at Delphi, and
among these we may mention the Oracle of Apollo at Tegyra, the Oracle
of Apollo at Argos, the Oracle at Deiradiotes, and the Oracle at Patara
in Lycia.
Whatever the powers were that the mediums used, I, at all events, feel
disinclined to doubt their truly mysterious quality, nor do I believe
that this mysterious quality was in the nature of a fraud engineered
and practised by the priesthood. If the mediums and their peculiar
functions were the only instance we had of occult powers being used
for prophecy and divination, through the instrumentality of virgins,
I should feel more inclined to side with the sceptics. But, seeing
that we have in the mediæval belief in the magic of witchcraft further
evidence of a popular traditional notion that occult powers of a sort
can reside in woman; seeing, moreover, that we have such staggering
cases of mysterious virginal inspiration and second sight as that which
is typified in the history of Joan of Arc, we can but maintain a humble
attitude of mind, and until such time as greater knowledge is given
us, readily admit that here there is something outside our philosophy
which, while it cannot be denied, is yet akin to what, for lack of a
better term, we may call the Unknown.
When we are told by psychologists, therefore, that in the matter of
psycho-therapeutics women reveal greater suggestibility than men;
when Baudouin tells us[240] that in applying his system of cure by
auto-suggestion, Coué has met with speedier results among women than
men, the most we can do, at the present state of our knowledge, is
perhaps to suppose that there exists in woman an easier and readier
contact with the unconscious mind, that women are therefore able
to communicate with greater success than men with that mysterious
reservoir of strength and life, now designated vaguely as the
Unconscious, and it is in this power that we must seek an explanation
of the miraculous phenomena with which, for millenniums, women have
been traditionally associated.
In any case, it must now be obvious that it would be a mistake to
call this power _intuition_, i.e. an immediate perception of objective
scientific truth; because tradition and history alike give us no record
of objective scientific facts that have been discovered by women in
this way. It would be more accurate, for the present, to regard it as
a sort of _clairvoyance_, a power of presaging an event, by _feeling_
correctly the significance of antecedent circumstances or perturbations
preceding the event. Presumably every event in history is but the
inevitable bursting of a mine, the various trains of gunpowder to which
may be accurately located and recognized some time before the explosion
takes place. Given a degree of sensitiveness that feels one or more of
the existing trains, before their presence is even suspected by the
remainder of mankind, and correctly traces their course to an ultimate
goal, and the presentiment that a perturbation will sooner or later
occur at that goal, must follow with more or less intensity.
How this presentiment or feeling becomes conscious, how the virgin
Pythia of Delphi _felt_, for instance, that the Persians would one
day plunder and burn the Temple of Didyma, and accurately prophesied
the event some time before it happened, it is impossible to say; as
well might we try to explain the accurate weather prognostications of
snails, of swallows, or of the monkeys on the rocks of Gibraltar. This,
however, is certain, that a kind of second sight is frequently given to
women, particularly to young virgins (probably owing to their condition
of acute apprehensive-and sensitive-ness); but whether it will ever be
explained as a sort of feeling intelligence of the periphery of their
bodies, or of their sight, or of their ears, or definitely located in
a peculiar function of their psyche, it is at present impossible to
say.[241]
In conclusion, however, I must, for the sake of the reader unacquainted
with the history of this aspect of the human mind, call attention to
the fact that men, too, have been known to possess these very powers.
It is in no spirit of hostility to women that I here add this reminder
of a well-known fact, but simply with a view to saving myself from
misinterpretation.
The feminist reader, who will imagine that the bulk of this book,
instead of having been dictated by a feeling of deep friendliness
to women, is really the work of prejudice, will halt here, and feel
perhaps a certain disappointment. Here was I, at last, generously
according a unique psychical power to woman, and lo! I now proceed to
add that even this peculiar gift is not peculiar, and that she shares
it with man.
Alas, yes! The truth must be admitted. The most we can say is, that
women perhaps possess it more frequently, more normally than men; but
that men have possessed it, and will continue to possess it, cannot, I
fear, be denied.
The ancients, whose wisdom in these matters is our first hint of the
existence of such occult powers in humanity, were perfectly well aware
of this fact. The oracles at the Hill of Ptoon, at Claros, at Olympia,
and in the Oasis of Lybia (Zeus Ammon), and many others, were all
conducted by men, while that of Zeus at Dodona, was conducted by men at
first, and only in later times by women.
The records of the Jewish race and of the Middle Ages are full of
instances of men whose “clairvoyance” was well known, while in the
East, the employment of men in functions where powers of divination and
clairvoyance are essential, is almost universal.
Whether these facts justify the ultimate conclusion that, while man
includes woman, woman does not include man—that while all that is woman
is man, all that is man is not woman, it is perhaps a little difficult
to say. At all events, it is my belief that the truth resides very
near, if not actually in, this statement of the relation of the sexes;
and although I claim no originality for it as it stands, I think it
helpful in explaining briefly much that will probably be eternally true
about this relation.
* * * * *
The Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races have little of the seer in their
constitution. They are better at meeting and enduring disaster than at
foreseeing and forestalling it. They are suspicious of prophets and
prophecy, because they have none of the gifts that would enable them
to indulge in vaticinations themselves. Not being possessed of any
capacity for divining the ultimate bourne of current tendencies, they
doubt very much whether it is possible for any man to foretell that
bourne, or to describe it in anticipation. They are completely wedded
to the doctrine of experience. “What you have not experienced you
cannot possibly know,”—this is the ultimate epistemological doctrine of
these two races. The consequence of this is that they are constantly
in the precarious position of him who, knowing nothing of poisons, and
being quite unable to predict their possible effect, has to wait for
the consequence of having partaken of strange drugs before he can know
whether they are good for him or not.
Such an attitude would be excusable at the dawn of history, at the
beginning of human life, or in the Garden of Eden. It seems quite
inexcusable in the present Age. And yet, although the Anglo-Saxon and
Teutonic races have the whole of the accumulated history of civilized
mankind, and the whole of the tradition of humanity, at their command,
they still persist in demanding individual experience of everything,
before they will pronounce upon it.
The fact that in such circumstances one may quite easily _die_ of
experience, or at least fall into a hopeless decline as the result
of it, never seems to occur to them. They go blundering on, refusing
to learn from the lessons of previous civilizations, and determined
to allow every possible experience of mankind to work its worst
consequences upon them, as if these consequences had never been heard
of in the world before.
It is so with Democracy, and it will be so with Ochlocracy. These
things have been tried before. They are known, and have proved fatal
to the civilization that tried them. But what is that to the Teuton
and Anglo-Saxon? He has no personal experience of their evils, and is
therefore determined to stake the fate of his civilization on trying
them.
Even without actual experience of their evils, either in the present or
the past, it would be simple for anyone, equipped with only a little
insight and wisdom, to foresee exactly whither democracy will lead,
whither it must lead, whither it cannot help leading; for you cannot
conduct any institution with a committee consisting of everybody,
without condemning that institution to immediate or ultimate disaster.
Democracy has only to be thought about for a few hours, in order to be
dismissed as the most stupid of all forms of government. Even if other
civilizations had failed to try it, even if democracy were a hitherto
unexplored field, a moment’s reflection would be sufficient to enable
one to condemn it as utterly hopeless.
Such, however, is the constitution of the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon
mind, that the people of these races will require to see their
civilization in ruins about them, as the result of their experiment
with democracy, before they will be prepared to alter their opinion
on the subject of democratic institutions, and agree to label them
“Poison” for all time.
What is true of democracy in Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon countries, is
also true of Feminism. It is possible to say now quite positively that
Feminism is stupid and wrong. It is possible to prophesy with complete
certainty that Feminism will only aggravate the disasters already
overtaking civilization. To anyone who feels that the arguments
advanced in this book cannot be cavalierly dismissed as negligible,
it must be plain that modern humanity’s experiment with Feminism, by
striking nearer to the roots of Life, is perhaps even more dangerous
to civilization and to the race, than Democracy itself. But let no
one who feels disposed to take this view imagine for one moment that
the Anglo-Saxon or Teuton will therefore stop the experiment of
Feminism here and now. To the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton, Feminism is
an unexplored experience. However mad, however dangerous, and however
mortal it may be, it will therefore be allowed to proceed until its
danger and its deadliness are apparent to all. The fact that, by that
time, it may be too late to reverse the engine, too late to repair the
havoc wrought, does not disturb the Teuton or Anglo-Saxon mind for one
minute. To lock the stable door after the horse has gone, to label
“Poison” an emptied phial, are practices so common, so habitual in
England, and in all countries like England, that it would be romantic
to hope that any halt will be called in the modern stampede in favour
of Democracy and Feminism until long after their worst consequences
have become plain to the meanest intelligence. This fact, however,
would not be sufficient to exonerate anyone like myself from all blame,
if he omitted to raise his voice above the roar of the stampede, to
try at last to call attention to its dangers. For, even if I may fail
to gain the ear of my own countrymen and all those who resemble them,
I may at least have the satisfaction of warning off those who have not
yet become involved in the colossal errors of Western and particularly
Anglo-Saxon civilization.
The outlook, then, is decidedly depressing. It seems almost certain
that the experiment of Feminism, far from being arrested, will be
pursued further and further. Not until its worst consequences begin to
be understood by the dullest inhabitants in Great Britain, is it in the
least likely to be regarded as a possible mistake; and, seeing that
England and America—not to speak of France and the northern countries
of Europe—have it in their power to set an example to the rest of the
world, it is probable that the harm it will do will be world wide and
deep seated before anything in the nature of a revulsion of feeling
begins to make itself felt.
The prospects of an immediate revulsion of feeling in this country are
not very hopeful. There are indeed signs of such a movement; but, in
my opinion, it is too feeble, too sporadic, and too unreasoning to be
effective.[242] It is very much more likely that Feminism will enjoy
a fresh access of power and popularity in the near future, than that
it will meet with any serious reverse; for almost everybody to-day is
an unconscious feminist. Every journalist, novelist, poet and public
man, with but few exceptions, takes the first principles of Feminism
for granted. No one seriously doubts, for instance, that woman has
exercised a beneficent influence over civilization; the absurd idealism
which represents woman as the unselfish, self-sacrificing, partner in
human life, is almost universally accepted. Everybody is inclined to
regard man as the unmoral (non-social or anti-social) and woman as
the moral (social) sex, and to hold the sexes as otherwise perfectly
equal. And as long as these false ideas prevail, it cannot be a matter
of surprise that modern man should have come to the conclusion that
the more women’s influence is made to prevail, the better the world
will be. It is true that there are still a number of intelligent and
healthy people who are prepared to enlighten the world on the danger of
this tendency; but their voice can hardly be heard above the clamour
of the other side. In fact, the victory of the Feminist standpoint is
so complete, that success in any field to-day presupposes a certain
deep and sometimes quite unconscious sympathy with Feminist ideals.
All those who fail to confirm this tendency, all those who attempt
to tear away the tinsel of dangerous sentiment and sentimentality
that now adorns the female of the species, and to raise a masculine
voice of protest against the absurd idealization that disfigures and
distorts and will ultimately ruin her, finds the whole front of modern
criticism, modern prejudice, and even modern philosophy against him.
The chances are, then, that before another century dawns, we shall
see women as judges, women in holy orders, and even women as Cabinet
Ministers. But by the time this comes about, if it should come about,
it is to be hoped that the influence of Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic
countries will have sufficiently declined in the world, for their
example to be no more than a sign-board, a warning and a danger-signal,
to inform other nations of the fatal peril of following in their wake.
The reforms suggested in this work, for the purpose of curtailing
the power of women and of instituting saner and healthier views of
marriage, are hardly likely to be adopted while the influence of
Feminists remains in the ascendant; for the possibility of greater
happiness and greater health resulting from such reforms could hardly
be admitted by a public which, through being largely under the
direction of Feminist sentiments on the subject, must take a romantic
rather than a realistic view of the relation of the sexes. Indeed,
the probability is that the views regarding marriage, and the laws
regulating it, will grow steadily more and more insane as the century
advances and the more deeply we sink into Feminism; for the increasing
influence of women in every sphere, including particularly politics,
can only tend to falsify and destroy every natural relation and every
sound institution of social life. With perfect confidence, therefore,
we can prophesy an increasing degeneracy of life in England, that will
reach its lowest point with the zenith of feminine influence; but
whether at the end of this tragic cycle there will remain sufficient
health and sanity in the population to help towards a recovery of its
former greatness, and towards a reaction that will prove salutary, is
a question that we should require a Pythia of Delphi to answer for us.
The same remarks apply to the reforms suggested in the chapter on the
Old Maid. Not until England has suffered very much more cruelly than
she has suffered hitherto, can we hope to see reforms introduced which,
for their initiation, would require not only the defeat of Feminism,
but also a state of mind entirely purged of feminine, romantic, and
anti-male influences. But this moment is still a very long way off. The
fibre of the nation will require to be very substantially stiffened
before these happenings will be descried even on the most distant
horizon, and it is feared that this stiffening process will be achieved
only by the fierce lesson of a cruel disaster. Nothing else will
convince people that the road has been a wrong one.
* * * * *
I have now come to the end of my undertaking. I have called my work
_A Vindication_, because I sincerely meant it as a book friendly in
spirit to the female sex, and one in which the worst that can be said
about them is shown to be but the outcome of their best, or at least
but the result of a misuse or abuse of their best. I have attempted
to show that their virtues, like their vices, are all derived from
the unalterable vital instincts which their evolutionary rôle, as the
mothers of the race, have gradually implanted in them and fixed in them
for ever. Not the smallest suspicion of hostility or bitterness towards
women has animated me in writing one line of the preceding pages. It is
my conviction that those who misunderstand women, who wish to make them
more negative, and who flatter them into the belief that their present
and traditional inferiority to man is not natural but “artificial,”
are the true enemies of womankind. It is they who are now contriving
woman’s unhappiness, and who, in conspiring to rob her of the greatest
joys of which her body and spirit are heirs, distract her attention
from their nefarious scheme by holding before her prizes which, in the
ripeness of time, she herself recognizes as mere baubles.
The possibilities of human nature are so incalculable, and the freaks
of adaptation so manifold, that it is by no means impossible to
destroy the woman in woman and to convert her into a creature in which
masculine instincts and aspirations come into constant conflict with
a non-masculine physique and a non-masculine racial history. As an
ideal achievement this is not impossible. The only question humanity
has to decide is whether such a metamorphosis is desirable; whether
in the interests both of woman herself and the species in general,
such a transformation will be for the good. It is true, as we have
seen, that it will never be possible to rear female geniuses equal
to male geniuses, because these extremes in men seem to be due to a
purely masculine tendency to greater variability; but a more modest
programme of masculinization is certainly not impossible. Make woman
honest, upright, straightforward, however; make her impartial; make
her scrupulous; make her the reverse of vulgar; destroy her love of
petty power, her vanity and her sensuality; and what, in sooth, will
you have achieved? You will have undermined the very instincts that
Nature has implanted in her to secure the survival of the species at
all costs, and in the face of everything. If that is desirable, if
that is an ideal worthy of our aspirations, then certainly let us
do all in our power to realize it. If, however, it is possible to
entertain the smallest shadow of doubt concerning the wisdom of this
course; if by the exercise of a little humility we can question whether
our nineteenth-century or our twentieth-century ideals can possibly
be more profound and more far-sighted than the eternal sagacity of
Nature; if there are still reasons for feeling that it is not woman as
I have described her in these pages, but man himself—man as we know
him in this post-war Europe of 1922—who is really in direst need of
transformation; then, it seems to me, that it is above all important
to pause and carefully to take our bearings before we make this daring
plunge; for we cannot now with any pretence of honesty or good faith
claim that it is a plunge into the unknown.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[232] Op. cit., pp. 210, 211.
[233] For a detailed discussion of the relationship of the painter,
sculptor, poet, architect and musician to the great social builder and
artist, see my Introduction to _Van Gogh’s Letters_ (Constable & Co.,
London).
[234] See Lecky (Op. cit., vol. II, p. 360). Speaking of women he says:
“They are little capable of impartiality or of doubt; their thinking is
chiefly a mode of feeling.” See also Buckle (_The Influence of Women on
the_ _Progress of Knowledge_), the whole argument of which is to the
effect that woman’s thinking is emotional. Weininger also says (Op.
cit., p. 100): “With the woman, thinking and feeling are identical,”
but this testimony is not nearly as valuable as that of the two former
writers, who can in no way be suspected of misogyny.
[235] On this whole question cp. Sir Almroth E. Wright (Op. cit., p.
35): “Woman’s mind attends in appraising a statement primarily to the
mental images which it evokes, and only secondarily—and sometimes not
at all—to what is predicated in the statement ... accepts the congenial
as true, and rejects the uncongenial as false; takes the imaginary
which is desired for reality, and treats the undesired reality which is
out of sight as non-existent.”
[236] With the softening of men in an effeminate civilization, women
are, of course, not alone in holding this attitude to truth. Many
men, even among the most cultivated, are unable to-day to separate
pleasantness from truth; for to do so implies a control of emotion by
reason which is not the forte of modern mankind. Not only men writers
during the war, but also politicians, proved beyond doubt their own and
their male audiences’ inability to regard truth rationally; and at the
present time you are quite as likely to be flatly contradicted by a man
as by a woman, if you enunciate an unpleasant truth before an ordinary
crowd.
[237] _Vide_ Press reports of the William Harkness case, particularly
the comments published, after Harkness’s execution, in _The News of the
World_ for February 26, 1922.
[238] Arabella Kenealy was tending towards this conclusion when she
wrote (Op. cit., p. 155): “The woman of average brain, however, attains
the intellectual standards of the man of average brain at cost of her
health, of her emotions, or of her morale.” I would suggest “and”
instead of “or” in the latter part of the sentence.
[239] Anyone who attempts to keep a record of his wife’s, mother’s or
sister’s so-called “intuitive” statements, will soon realize how few of
them reveal an accurate power of immediately perceiving truth.
[240] See several passages in his _Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion_.
[241] The fact that certain organisms in the animal kingdom use senses
which, as far as we can tell, have neither sight, taste, smell,
hearing, nor touch, for their basis, is shown by W. S. Coleman in his
_British Butterflies_. The manner in which the males of the Kentish
Glory Moth, for instance, are attracted to the female, when she is
sometimes more than a mile away from them, is utterly unknown, and
Coleman is compelled to refer it to a sort of clairvoyance. (See pp.
28-29.)
[242] It is largely animated by commercial and industrial rivalry, and
this sort of opposition to Feminism is too contemptible to inspire much
enthusiasm.
INDEX
ACTORS, the, in modern society, 214
ADULTERY, committed by the artist when he marries, 89;
in case of positive woman due to long absence of husband, 189;
caused by vanity, 189 _n._, 219;
during war-time misunderstood by fools, 190, 191;
of the woman owing to her husband’s impotence, 194;
in positive woman due to childlessness, 202
AFFECTATION, a sign of misery in spinsters, 240
ALCOHOL, a sublimator of sex, 248
ALFRED THE GREAT, the masculinity of his mother, 158
ANÆMIA, pernicious effects of, in the positive girl, 116, 117
ANGLO-SAXONS, their lack of insight, 361-3
ARISTOTLE, his doctrine of catharsis, 247
ART, only a weapon in the hands of positive women, 65, 66;
all forms of, man’s invention, 325;
why women turn to, 349
ARTIST, the, often ruined by his success with women, 85;
commits adultery when he marries, 89
ATHLETICS, pernicious effect of, on the positive girl, 113-5
BIRTHS, table of legitimate and illegitimate, 128 _n._
BODY, the, thrilled by sexual union and also by order, 58-60;
the joys of the healthy, never pall, 87;
care of the, in positive girls essential, 117;
the, ruined by Puritanism in both rich and poor, 118;
the joys of the, most important in life, 149
BYRON, unhappy married life of, 143;
the masculinity of his mother, 158;
on cant, 250 _n._;
attitude of women towards his Don Juan, 279 _n._;
his unfortunate relationship to his mother, 316;
on women and false sentiment, 319 _n._
CALVIN, hostile to life, 11;
altogether negative, 13 _n._
CANT, _see_ Introduction.
The inevitable ingredient in every movement in England, 250;
Byron on, 250 _n._
CARLYLE, unhappy married life of, 143
CATHOLIC CHURCH, honest and practical regarding superfluous women, 32;
its wise organization of spinsters, 274, 275.
CELIBACY, in the Catholic Church enforced by poverty, 329 _n._
CHANGE, a necessary tonic in life, 140
CHARLES I ruled by social instinct, 45
CHILDLESSNESS, as an end destructive of conjugal happiness, 204;
its bad effect on the husband, 205, 206;
a cause of divorce, 207-10;
longer endured by the negative than the positive woman, 215
CHILDREN, positive if healthy, 13, 14;
healthy, the best pattern for the positive man, 15;
the seriousness of positive, 15, 16;
positive to everything, 18-20;
their restless energy, 37;
their misrepresentation of their restlessness, 38;
their unconscious motives, 39;
the object of woman’s eternal gratitude, 42;
their healthy contempt of sickness and deformity, 101;
their taste should be guided along healthy lines, 101, 102 _n._;
the regulation of the procreation of, the object of marriage, 138;
a consolation to the wife for decline in her husband’s
affection, 148, 149;
a separating force in marriage, 149;
no bodily consolation to the father, 149;
during regular bearing of, a woman rarely tempted to leave her
husband, 179;
years do not necessarily increase love between the parents, 180-4;
frequently a source of friction, 183;
much more important to the wife than the husband is, 185;
not consciously desired by the dissatisfied wife, 201 _n._;
necessary to introduce variety into the home, 205;
the pernicious relations of spinsters with, 241
CHRISTIANITY, logically condemns sex and advocates eternal life, 4, 5;
responsible for decadent doctrines, 102 _n._;
teaches nonsensical doctrine of “union of souls” in marriage, 137;
and thus responsible for degeneration, 139;
responsible for degeneration, 176 _n._;
a sublimator of sex, 248;
attractive to the negative spinster, 258
CLEANMINDEDNESS, destroyed by sexual abstinence, 173;
only obtained by healthy gratification, 174
CLEVERNESS, exaggerated value attached to, nowadays often leads to
unhappy marriages, 85
COHABITATION, pernicious during gestation and suckling, 163-5
COLBERT, ruled by social instinct, 45
COMPANIONSHIP, impossible in marriage, 147
CONCUBINE, necessary for positive young man, 172
CONSCIENCE, a guilty, merely costive, 18;
woman tries to rule man by giving him a guilty, 197 _n._
CONSTIPATION, bad effects of, 115
CONTEMPT, inevitable in modern love-matches, 143, 144
CONTRACEPTIVES, unknown to the body, 75;
because they cause sterility lead to adultery in the woman, 195,
196;
deleterious effect of, 203, 205 _n._, 211
CO-RESPONDENT, the, a vain fool, 191, 193;
the, always vain, 200;
his vanity, 211;
far too lightly treated in England, 223
COURTSHIP, should be an adventure, but to-day is not, 142
CRIMINALS, the vanity of, 226 _n._
DAVISON, Emily, her marvellous rush at the Derby, 312
DEATH, the necessary counterpart of sex, 3
DEGENERATION, of modern man, 161 (_see also_ Introduction);
the object of society to-day, 166
DEMOCRACY, has been proved fatal to civilization, 362
DE QUINCEY, on the evil effects of repression, 246;
his unfortunate relationship to his mother, 316
DESIRE, killed by gratification, 141
DICKENS, CHARLES, unhappy married life of, 143
DISCIPLINE, of healthy children most difficult, 20;
the object of, 21
DISRAELI, ruled by social instinct, 45;
an able man capable of fulsome flattery, 338
DIVORCE, rarer where there are many children, 180;
high figures for, in cases of small families, 202;
majority of petitions made by men, 207;
some statistics of, 208;
childlessness a cause of, 207-10;
chart of, according to professions, 211;
higher percentage of, in professional classes, 212;
of the negative couple, 216
DOMESTIC work, value of, 266
DON JUAN, the cold, 222
DOSTOIEWSKY, on the vanity of criminals, 226 _n._
EDUCATION, in England produces womanly men, 175
ELIZABETH, Queen, her vanity, 337, 338;
her success as a ruler largely due to her unlimited capacity for
lies, 315 _n._
EMMA OF NORMANDY, a remarkable woman, 292, 293
ENGLAND, full of negative and asexual women, 53;
lacking in positive men, 97;
disregard of the body in, 112, 113;
men made negative in, for 270 years, 119;
her “trousered women,” 156 _n._, 162;
large proportion of negative women in, account for adultery out of
vanity, 189 _n._;
public opinion in, chiefly ruled by Puritanical old ladies, 190;
co-respondents treated too lightly in, 223;
marriage in, often peaceful through negativism, 227;
women less positive in, 247;
cheerful spinsters in, a bad sign, 248;
prostitution most degraded in, 251;
hypocritical attitude towards prostitution in, 252;
more misery and disorder in, connected with sex, than anywhere
else, 260;
full of homes owned by wealthy spinsters, 269, 271;
cooking in, atrocious, 299;
and clothing inferior, 300
ENGLISHMAN, less positive than the Frenchman, 92;
has less social instinct than the Frenchman, 92, 94;
increasingly negative, 94;
his negativism, 119;
his erroneous views of woman’s virtues, 308
ETERNAL LIFE, doctrine of, hostile to sex, 4
EXUBERANCE, high sexual, often accompanies superior spiritual
gifts, 84;
lack of, makes both men and women unhappy, 96;
sexual, not required in modern industrial slaves, 96
FAMILY, the, created by monogamy, 135
FATHER, the reasons of his attachment to the family, 186, 187
FEMALE, the positiveness of the, almost unbreakable, 22
FEMALENESS, in the male due to snubbed sex and broken spirit, 156
FEMINISM, a phenomenon of male degeneration, 35 (_see also_
Introduction);
the ruling creed of English journalists and writers, 272 _n._;
largely the creation of wealthy spinsters, 273;
the creed of the age, 278;
to be condemned even from the hedonistic point of view, 335;
rout of, essential, 345;
stupid and wrong, 362;
bound to be given a trial in Anglo-Saxon countries, 363, 364;
likely to grow stronger, 365
FLAPPER, the courage of the healthy English, 105;
helped by her vanity, 106
FOOD, joking over, a sign of negativeness, 15
FOOTBALL, bad for men, barbarous for women, 114
FRANCE, old maids in, always unbearable, 112
FRANCIS, ST., of Assisi, ruled by social instinct, 45
FRIENDSHIP, requires change and separation, 140;
affords recreation, 146, 147
GIBBON, on the importance of women among the Teutons, 280, 291
GIRL, the first meeting of the positive, with a possible
mate, 80, 81;
her disappointment to-day, 81;
foolish prejudices that mislead the positive, in the choice of a
mate, 82;
the French, always watched, 92;
the English, less positive than the French, 93, 94;
the positive, often disappointed in marriage, 95;
tragic plight of the positive English, 97;
the conflict between her body and modern ideals in the positive
English, 104;
her self-contempt and pessimism, 105;
only the positive, makes the hateful spinster, 111;
the negative, makes a cheerful old maid, 112;
the positive, often ruined by athletics, 113;
care of her body imperative, 117;
the positive, converted to negativism by her husband, 118, 121, 122
GOOD, definition of, in a positive sense, 10-12, 53
GREECE, schools for initiation into sex in, 253
GREEKS, schools for initiation into sex among the, 172
HEALTH, means pleasurable functioning, 151
HERMAPHRODITISM in both sexes, 155
HINDUS, their healthy teaching about marriage, 102 _n._;
their wise regulations for wives separated from their
husbands, 189 _n._;
their provision for women childless through husband’s
fault, 194 _n._;
destined their daughters for marriage only, 276 _n._;
description of woman in their sacred book, 280, 281;
on woman’s disregard for beauty, 325;
the poorest caste the most respected among the, 330;
their wisdom in controlling their women, 325, 336, 344
HOMOSEXUALITY, admired by Weininger but condemned by the author, 53
HUMANITARIANISM, an outlet for the spinster’s love of power, 242;
merely inverted sadism, 243;
the harm done by, 244
HUSBAND, the saviour of his wife’s body, 107
HUXLEY, on woman’s virtue, 308
ILL-HEALTH, in girls due to waiting for marriage, 110
IMPUDENCE, the, of those who imagine they are capable of feeling and
inspiring undying love, 145
INDIAN women, cynical treatment of by British, 299 _n._
INFERTILITY, danger of, to married life, 195-203
INSTINCT, defined, 43, 44;
the three fundamental instincts, 44;
the social, rules men like Napoleon, Charles I, Nietzsche, etc., 45;
the self-preservative, rules cowards, anarchists, unscrupulous
plutocrats, etc., 45;
the reproductive, rules Woman, 46;
the self-preservative, suspended during courtship, 89-91;
the social, keeps reproductive, in control, 91
INSTINCTS, sound, necessary for positiveness, 14
INTUITION, in women and great men, 356
JOAN OF ARC, her mysterious powers, 358
JOHN THE BAPTIST, ruled by social instinct, 45
JUDGES, effeminacy of present-day, 354
LADY, no such thing has ever existed, 331
LAUGHTER, not a characteristic of positiveness, 16;
shrill, the social noise of Puritan countries, 17;
the only positive form of, defined, 17
LEUCORRHŒA, bad effects of, 115-7
LIFE in Nature quite tasteless, 306
LOVE, illicit, some penalties of, 128;
defined, 128;
society’s lie regarding permanence of, 129;
permanent only in very rare cases, 130;
may be an excuse for an illicit union but not for marriage, 139;
only lasts if it is unconsummated, 141 _n._;
the delusion of lasting, 142;
not necessarily deeper between parents of a large family, 180, 181
LUNACY, in females chiefly among the unmarried, 238 _n._
LUVV, the right spelling for the maudlin modern idea of the nobler
sentiment, 143;
the corrosive of monogamic marriages, 143;
as described in modern novels, 214
LYING, “physiological” in women, 281;
in women vital and essential to life, 302-5
LYTTON, Lord, his unhealthy influence, 101 _n._
MALE, the, naturally prehensile, 120
MAN, cannot mould woman, 27;
but can make her miserable and ill, 29;
modern, less positive than woman, 23;
a means unconsciously exploited by woman, 42;
not generally ruled by reproductive instinct, 46;
an amputation from Life, 55;
reproductive instinct not universally predominant in, 55;
social instinct most important in his life, 56;
woman a temptation to the positive, 67, 69;
practically asexual after performing the sexual act, 68;
guided by social instinct to support woman and child, 68;
the modern public school athlete a torture machine for
women, 82, 83;
guided by values in his choice of a mate, 98, 99;
the positive, ruined by Puritanism, 152, 153;
the positive, misled by Puritan values, 100, 102;
duty of the positive, to give woman a clean conscience in regard
to sex, 107;
degeneration of, 161 (_see also_ Introduction);
the rarity of the male, in England, 161, 162;
school of initiation into sex for, 172;
effect of childlessness upon the positive, 205, 206;
games, hobbies, and religion the substitutes for sexual variety for
the positive, 207;
the negative, guided by vanity, 222;
the proud, disliked to-day, 224 _n._, 225;
the modern, very much below even a modest idea of what man should
be, 230;
ruined and devitalized by commercialism, 265 (_see also_
Introduction);
the creative intelligence even in woman’s sphere, 299;
the Promethean type of, and the misery he creates, 333, 334;
geniuses and unmitigated fools produced by the extreme variability
of, 350, 351;
his psychic powers, 360;
his great variability, 367;
most in need of transformation, 368
MANLINESS, absurd modern conception of, 82
MANU, Laws of, _see_ HINDUS
MARITAL fidelity, due to ill-health, 151
MARK ANTHONY, ruled by reproductive instinct, 45, 55
MARRIAGE, erroneous to regard it is a sacrifice for women, 79;
often a disappointment to the positive girl, 90;
a social contrivance, 125;
not a natural state, 126;
hedonistic view of, reprehensible, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137;
its utility, 133;
in a chaotic condition in Europe owing to Christianity, 139;
unhappy in most cases of men of genius, 143;
modern, now on the rocks, 168;
should be utilitarian, 169;
points to be considered in, 169;
right teaching regarding, 170;
reform of, essential, 176;
the fifth to the tenth the most critical years for, 210, 211;
entered upon from vanity, 218;
in England often peaceful owing to negativism, 227;
should be the only calling for women, 276
MATERNITY, the pains of, exaggerated by modern women to give man a
guilty conscience, 77;
only intolerably painful in disease, 78;
only “unselfish” in the case of a sick or badly formed woman, 78;
increasing number of women suffering from, to-day, 79;
only self-sacrifice in the case of sick females, 148 _n._
MEMORY, ancestral, in women, 234
MEREDITH, George, on wealthy spinsters, 270
MILL, John Stuart, a henpecked philosopher, 282;
inspired by his wife, 282;
his foolish remarks on the nature of woman, 283-7;
his false assumptions regarding woman, 289;
a sentimental liar concerning women, 296;
a pernicious liar, 345
MODESTY defined, 224
MONOGAMY, natural to some animals but unnatural for man, 126;
advantages of, chiefly social, 134-7;
regulates the procreation of children, 138;
disadvantages of, 139-67;
precludes all change and respite, 140, 141;
more satisfactory to the female than to the male, 148, 149, 150;
may inflict sexual abstinence on the male during pregnancy of the
wife, 165;
productive of ill-health and degeneracy, 165
MORTAL Life, desirable together with sex and other means
thereto, 6-8, 12, 13;
includes pain, 10;
intellectual justification required for constant attacks upon, 12;
to be called Life, as being the only kind of Life we know, 13
MOTHER, the, loved by the true artist, 71;
the positive, consciously desires her full sexual cycle, 77;
importance of the early training of the child by the, 314, 315
MOTHER’S milk, abominable substitutes for, 164
NAPOLEON, ruled by social instinct, 45;
his dictum that women have no rank, 331, 332;
and Madame de Staël, 337
NEGATIVENESS, defined, 13;
noisy laughter a sign of, 17;
the attitude of, towards childhood, 22;
in woman, the outcome of sickness or degeneracy, 35
NEGATIVISM, responsible for chastity in England, 96;
excellent from the Puritan point of view, 96;
causes of deterioration to, 108-11;
physical disorders due to, 112;
positive girl converted to, by her husband, 118;
in women through lack of mastery in men, 121, 122;
incapable of lasting emotion, 130;
impossible to calculate the vagaries of, 213;
due to an atonic condition of the body, 215;
confounds motherhood with martyrdom, 215;
never guided by passion, 227
NIETZSCHE, ruled by social instinct, 45
OLD MAID, the, less enthusiastic about “Woman’s Cause” than the
negative wife, 218 (_see also_ SPINSTER)
OLD TESTAMENT, honest in its attitude to disease, 101
ORDER, means greater happiness and security, 60
ORGASM, the, alone unsatisfying for the woman, 195
PAIN, to be accepted because necessary to Mortal Life, 13;
the depth and distinction gained by, 107
PARENTS, should destine their daughters for marriage only, 276
PASSION, does not grin and grimace, 221;
never directs negative people, 227;
euphemisms for lack of, 228
PAUL, ST., hostile to Life, 9, 11;
altogether negative, 13;
immoral because hostile to Life, 62
PENELOPE, her undesirability probably the cause of her
fidelity, 190 _n._;
admiration of, 192 _n._
PESSIMISM, the, of the positive English girl, 105
PHILOSOPHER, the positive, deeply interested in the child, 14, 15
POSITIVENESS, defined, 13;
the seriousness of, 16, 17;
forgets all that mars interest in life, 17;
rarely has a guilty conscience, 18;
has no fear of pain, 18
PRAYER BOOK, its wisdom in the Marriage Service, 107;
its teaching regarding marriage, 138
PREHENSION, a male quality, 120;
modern Englishman lacking in, 121
PRIG, woman’s epithet for the man of insight, 217
PROCREATION, improper and impious for cold-blooded Puritans, 34
PROFESSIONAL classes, reasons for high percentage of divorce in
the, 212
PROSTITUTE, the, loved by degenerates and anarchists, 71;
the only kind of woman to whom man is everything, 73;
driven by unfortunate circumstances to misunderstand her true
needs, 76;
the sadness of her lot not due to its moral turpitude, 254;
her childless fate her severest penalty, 255 _n._;
not so by nature but made so by circumstances, 255
PROSTITUTION, an evil in Western civilization because it is made
so, 249;
sexual, not necessarily the worst, 250;
most degraded in England, 251;
hypocritical attitude towards, in England, 252;
Lecky on, 252 _n._;
as a school of initiation into sex, 253;
necessity of placing, on a sound and more humane basis, 254
PURITAN, the, his implacable loathing of sex, 5;
and of all bodily matters, 8;
immoral because hostile to Life, 62;
by associating sexual pleasure with marriage only, responsible for
_mésalliances_, 134;
his outcry against wise marital infidelity, 166
PURITANISM, has reduced men to nincompoops, 33;
claims of, now heard because of increase in repulsive and botched
people, 35;
vitality impaired by depressing foods and drinks introduced by, 53;
affected men more deeply than women in England, 94, 95;
ruins the sexual life of the positive couple, 153;
has destroyed the male man in England, 161
PURITY, true and false, 100;
the only true, is the outcome of fire, 100
RELIGION, as a compensation for sex, 245
REPRESSION, De Quincey and Aristotle on bad effects of, 246, 247
REYNOLDS, JOSHUA, his bodiless child angels the ideal of the negative
mind, 22
SADISM, in little girls, spinsters, and old women, 156;
unconscious, in women, 157;
humanitarianism an inverted form of, 243
SAVOURINESS, a pre-requisite in marriage, 87
SCANDAL, loved by all decent, humane people, 311
SCHOPENHAUER, hostile to Life, 11;
the masculinity of his mother, 158;
on woman as the voice of the species, 178;
his conclusions vitiated by his failure to distinguish between
healthy and unhealthy, 213 _n._;
on woman’s cunning, 304 _n._;
his unfortunate relationship to his mother, 316;
on harm done to modern society by woman’s influence, 330 _n._
SEDUCER, the, who gives a girl a child more merciful than he who does
not, 254 _n._
SELF-CONTROL, that, which arises from strength, 70;
the so-called, of the negative young man, 91;
not responsible for the chastity of English courting couples, 95;
a euphemistic name for lack of virility, 167;
in sex a counsel for wax figures, 175;
the vain boast of negative spinster, 257
SELFISH, a meaningless term, 197
SENSUALITY, necessary in woman, 340-4;
but should be controlled, 343
SEX, the necessary counterpart of death, 3;
incompatible with Eternal Life, 4, 5;
necessary for Mortal Life, 6, 8
SEXUAL ACT, man’s attitude towards the, 70, 71;
alone insufficient for woman, 76
SOCIAL instinct, creates society, 62;
positiveness towards, in woman denotes decline of woman, 66;
leads man to support woman and children, 68;
keeps sexual instinct in control, 70
SOCRATES, unhappy married life of, 143
SOUL, the pernicious doctrine of the pure, 101, 102 _n._
SPENCER, HERBERT, right regarding children of large families, 21;
ruled by social instinct, 45
SPINSTER, the hateful, only made by the snubbed positive girl, 111;
the cheerful, made by the negative girl, 112;
her advice about girls to be suspected, 114 _n._;
her outcry against wise marital infidelity, 166;
the, always abnormal, 229-31;
exercises an abnormal influence on society, 231-3;
her “useful work” should be suspected, 232, 233;
the positive and negative defined, 234, 235;
the positive, a great conscious sufferer, 235-7;
profound physiological disappointment of the Positive, 238;
tendency to suicide in the very positive, 238, 239;
neuropathic symptoms in the, 239, 240;
affectation a sign of misery in the, 240;
the various ways in which she seeks compensation, 240, 246;
reason of her frequent choice of the teaching profession, 241;
her jealousy of young girls, 246;
the embittered, more common on the Continent than in England, 247;
the negative, not a great conscious sufferer, 255;
misinterpretations of the lack of sexual vigour in the
negative, 256, 257;
the danger of these misinterpretations, 257;
will gravitate almost automatically to Christianity, 258;
her love of the weak and the poor, 260;
her hatred of men, 261;
the negative becoming more prevalent in England, 262;
increases economic difficulties, 263;
the wealthy, inevitably a burden on society, 268-71;
her good works a means of making herself important, 270;
George Meredith on, 270;
contaminates English opinion, 272;
largely responsible for Feminism, 273;
an abnormal influence, 273, 274;
wisely provided for by the Catholic Church, 274, 275;
the “annuitant” always a bane, 278;
benevolent sequestration of the, desirable, 278
SPIRIT, the things of the, pall quickly, 86
STEPMOTHER, the bad, a good mother, 312, 313 _n._
STRAFFORD, ruled by social instinct, 45
SUBLIMATION of sex possible but undesirable outside a Church, 174;
of sex may be accomplished through Christianity or alcohol, 248
SUICIDE, through disappointed love more common among women than
men, 42 _n._;
tendency to, in the positive spinster, 238, 239
TACITUS, emphasizes the important rôle of women among the Teutons, 290
TEACHER, pernicious influence of the unmarried, 241
TEUTONS, importance of women among the, 290
UNCONSCIOUS motives, actuating action, 40, 41;
misunderstood by women, 43, 47-9
UNHEALTHINESS, defined, 50;
the unhealthy woman approaches maleness, 51;
makes woman an infidel towards Life, 52
UNSELFISH, a meaningless term, 197
UNSELFISHNESS, the, of motherhood one of the greatest lies produced
by Western civilization, 79
VALUES, guide a man in his choice of a mate, 98, 99
VANITY, helps to save the young girl’s body, 106;
makes the sick girl desire marriage, 111;
as cause of adultery, 189 _n._;
of the old man, 193 _n._;
mistaken for passion, 214;
leading to imitation of passion, 218;
leading to marriage, 218;
leading to adultery, 219;
courtship the time of the strongest appeal to, 220;
guiding the negative woman, 218-22;
guiding the negative man, 222, 223;
always found in conjunction with modesty, 223-5;
the tragedy of mortified, 226;
of criminals, 226 _n._;
judgments based on, unreliable, 226 _n._
VIRGIN, the, does not sincerely crave for children, 75;
the “pure” defined, 258;
as the voice of oracles, 357
VIRGINITY, idiotic demand for, in men before marriage, 155
VULGARITY, vital, of women, 326-30
WAR, the Great, supported by negative spinsters and old men from
secret sex motives, 261 (_see also_ Introduction)
WARTS, children positive even to, 19
WEALTH, desired by positive woman, 84
WEININGER, his logical hostility to Sex and Mortal Life, 8, 9, 11;
his misunderstanding of the unconscious in woman, 47;
makes no classification into healthy and unhealthy, 50;
admired sterility, 52;
admired homosexuality, 52 _n._;
his contradictory statements about the prostitute, 71 _n._;
his view of “maleness” in women, 155;
this view proved false, 161 _n._;
his conclusions vitiated by his failing to distinguish between
healthy and unhealthy, 213 _n._;
agrees that there has been no subjection of women, 297;
on woman’s natural lawlessness, 301 _n._;
his pessimism, 302 _n._;
on great men preferring the prostitute, 327
WILL defined, 44
WOMAN, more positive than modern man, 23;
wretched and desperate to-day, 25;
an unchanging individuality not fashioned by man, 25, 27;
her primary adaptation to man and the child, 28;
is Life’s uninterrupted stream, 29;
to-day deprived of her primary adaptations, 30;
rightly dissatisfied with modern man, 30;
modern attitude towards superfluous women insulting and
dishonest, 31, 32;
the Catholic Church more honest towards them, 32;
as Life’s custodian inevitably miserable and in pain to-day, 35;
not equipped for ordering Life, 35;
her cry of warning must be respected but her remedies rejected, 36;
her action guided by her bodily structure, 41;
is above all wedded to Life and sins in its service, 42;
unconsciously exploits man, 42;
does not know her unconscious motives, 43;
ruled by reproductive instinct, 46;
misinterprets promptings of reproductive instinct, 47;
unconscious of her motives, 49, 50;
approaches maleness when unhealthy, 51;
an infidel towards Life when unhealthy, 52;
for woman positiveness to sex and Life is the same thing, 55;
the asexual, hostile to Life, 56;
will follow man if he understands her, 56;
positive to order, 61;
feels no confidence in men lacking in social instinct, 62;
the positive, all sex, 63;
the positive, timid in the presence of men, 64;
the positive, does not continue to practise the arts when once they
have helped her to secure a man, 65;
modern, losing faith in man because of the decline of his social
instinct, 67;
attitude of the positive, to sexual act, 72;
sexual union alone insufficient for, 72, 76;
her love for man a romantic ideal, 73;
the positive, unconscious of what is necessary for full sexual
experience, 73, 74;
positive in the first place to man, 74;
the positive, unconsciously desires full sexual cycle, 75, 76;
the modern European, exaggerates pains of maternity in order to
give man a guilty conscience, 77;
increasing number of women suffering from maternity to-day, 79;
the positive, desires wealth for the protection of her offspring,
84;
the positive, not impressed by spiritual gifts alone, 88;
guided by Life in choice of a mate, 98, 99;
the negative, content without children, 149 _n._;
sadism in, 156, 157;
the “male” desirable, 157-9 (_see also_ Introduction);
cases in which the “male” is undesirable, 159;
maleness in, only made recessive by superior maleness in the
man, 160, 161, 174, 175;
misery of the “male” woman in England, 162;
her demand for the sexual cycle the voice of the Will of the
Species, 178;
rarely tempted to leave her husband if regularly bearing
children, 179;
the positive, grows more indifferent to her husband as the family
grows, 181, 182;
the positive, unconsciously desires to employ her reproductive
machinery, 188;
the positive, commits adultery owing to long absence of husband,
189;
the best, faithful to Life before all else, 192;
her adultery owing to husband’s impotence, 194;
the childless, often takes up a Cause, 196 _n._;
tries to rule man by giving him a guilty conscience, 197 _n._;
more likely to go wrong in marriage through childlessness than the
man, 205;
the negative, endures childlessness much longer than the
positive, 215;
the negative, cultivates a taste for soulful literature and
Christianity, 216;
calls man who sees through her “prig,” 217;
difference between positive and negative, in an illicit love
affair, 220, 221;
the negative, notoriously _grimacière_, 221;
the surplus, and work outside the home, 267;
being besotted by entering the work market, 267, 268;
the number of surplus women in England, 274;
should be destined for marriage alone by her parents, 276;
suggested ways of dealing with the problem of the surplus, 276, 277;
connected with evil from time immemorial, 280;
lying “physiological” in, 281;
her bondage an illusion, 289, 290, 296;
her importance among the Teutons, Celts, and Early English, 290-2;
in the Middle Ages, 293, 294;
in the 16th and 17th centuries, 294-6;
has consistently shown crass stupidity in her own peculiar
domain, 298, 299;
Life’s custodian, 300;
her _primum mobile_ completely a-moral, 301;
her lies vital, 302, 305;
her lying necessarily extended to non-vital matters, 302-4;
her five cardinal virtues, 307;
modern Englishman’s erroneous view of her virtues, 308;
her derivative virtues, 309-19;
her laudable love of scandal, 311;
her six cardinal vices, 318-43;
her tact, 320;
her lack of taste of vital necessity, 326-32;
her incapacity to appreciate great men, 327-9;
cannot forgive material failure in her men, 331;
has no rank, 331, 332;
her love of petty power, 332-6;
must be controlled, 335, 336;
her vanity, 336-40;
danger of her vanity, 338;
her vanity vital, 339, 340;
vanity overcome by passion in the positive, 340;
her sensuality, 340-4;
her sensuality vital, 341, 342;
the custodian of Life, 346;
negligible in Art, Philosophy and Science, 346, 347;
reasons for her turning to Science or Art, 349;
cannot be changed without danger to the species, 350, 351;
her thinking largely feeling, 351, 352;
incompetent to act in any judicial capacity, 353, 355;
her intuition, 355, 356;
her psychic powers, 358, 359
WOMANHOOD, ideal of “true womanhood” cruel nonsense, 26, 27
WOMEN workers, their number, 263 _n._
WORKING-MAN, the, more gifted at love-making than his social
superior, 154 _n._
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_.
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 8 Changed: and, finally—this gem of negativness:
to: and, finally—this gem of negativeness:
pg 102 Changed: The danger at persent
to: The danger at present
pg 137 Changed: that pictire of it that dwells
to: that picture of it that dwells
pg 145 Changed: and that B has delieved him
to: and that B has believed him
pg 186 Changed: passion qiu soit bon
to: passion qui soit bon
pg 207 Changed: practise in their lesiure hours
to: practise in their leisure hours
pg 217 Added footnote marker after: analysing the true nature
of woman.
pg 223 Changed: grotesquely lenient to corespondents
to: grotesquely lenient to correspondents
pg 226 Changed: perspicacious, knowledgable, etc., etc.
to: perspicacious, knowledgeable, etc., etc.
pg 237 Changed: the passion, the disapppointment, the hardships
to: the passion, the disappointment, the hardships
pg 266 Changed: and perfer to pay even the price
to: and prefer to pay even the price
pg 302 Changed: immorality, preforce condemned it.
to: immorality, perforce condemned it.
pg 303 (footnote) Changed: or of a dovoted husband
to: or of a devoted husband
pg 319 Changed: unreasonng fury he provokes
to: unreasoning fury he provokes
pg 335 Changed: we read in the old cannon
to: we read in the old canon
pg 347 Changed: devised the Copernician system
to: devised the Copernican system