Woman _ a vindication Anthony M. Ludovici 1050 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Woman
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Woman
a vindication

Author: Anthony M. Ludovici

Release date: October 4, 2023 [eBook #71805]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Constable, 1923

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71805

Credits: Bob Taylor, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN ***

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
Women in Art, Philosophy and Science. The Outlook.
XI 346
Conclusion
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.

T HE 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

I N 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

I F 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

T HE 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

N OTHING 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

CHAPTER VII
The Marriage of the Positive Girl
and the Positive Man

T HE multiplication of life in human society involves certain burdens and
responsibilities. A normal, positive young man could easily fertilize a
hundred women a year, without departing even for one instant from his
usual habits of industry and useful productivity. Could he, however,
undertake to provide for, protect, and rear a hundred children in the ensuing
year? He might if he were a millionaire; but all men are not millionaires.
Although, therefore, the mere carnal union of two young positive people
is the normal and natural consummation of their desire, it is bound to be
interfered with by the State, or by the community, in order that the burdens
and responsibilities resulting from Life’s multiplication may be delimited,
defined, fairly apportioned and allotted as far as possible to those who
ought properly to bear them. And since a man cannot procreate a hundred
children a year without in the vast majority of cases imposing grave
burdens and responsibilities upon his fellows, the State or the community
officially refuses to recognize, or to offer legal status, to any offspring that
are the outcome of multiplication that takes place outside the monogamic
union. Thus although marriage and its forms and limitations—particularly
the monogamic limitation—may frequently have a religious ceremonial, it
is society, or the community, that ultimately favours it, because society as a
whole cannot undertake to pay for the promiscuous indulgence of every
man’s lust.
Hence, despite the fact that the carnal union of our positive couple is all
that the multiplication of Life requires, and all that the conscious or
unconscious desire of the two young people demands, the State interposes
its jurisdiction and declares that the multiplication of life that will follow
the union, in fact the union itself, will only be legally recognized provided
that it take place along certain specified lines.
Thus marriage is not a natural state, nor is it even the logical outcome of
the “love” of a positive couple; it is an artificially imposed condition
devised for the purpose of safeguarding the community. And, being

unnatural and gratuitously imposed upon the simple relationship that Nature
requires, it complicates that relationship, and necessarily possesses all the
disadvantages that any unnatural[50] solution of a natural problem must
involve.
It might be thought that if it is so very unnatural the positive couple
would instinctively rebel against it?—Not so! How many of them are aware
even that it is not a natural law? Custom deceives the young positive couple
in the same way as it deceives us all. We are accustomed to innumerable
constraints which to a man unfamiliar with them would be intolerably
irksome. When, therefore, the young positive couple stand at the altar and
hear the priest say to the man: “Wilt thou love her, comfort her, and keep
her in sickness and in health, and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto
her, so long as ye both shall live?” and the young positive man answers
innocently “I will,” neither of them suspects the cloven hoof of social fear
or social constraint behind the words. They imagine not only that the
question is a perfectly normal one, implying a normal condition, but they
also imagine that this implied condition itself—that of lifelong love—is a
possible and generally acceptable proposition. They are not even led to
suppose that it is an ideal difficult to realize, otherwise the man would not
be invited to take such an enormously difficult vow with so little
preparation and warning. To answer the priest’s question honestly—that is
to say, with a full knowledge of the terms of the vow and with a perfect
conviction that he is ready to fulfil them—a young positive man would
require to be in possession of knowledge regarding himself and the future
which he can hardly be expected to possess. For a man to say on March 20,
1922, that, if he live so long, he will entertain the same æsthetic or moral or
political sentiments on March 20, 1952, as those he holds on the day he
makes the vow, would be daring—or to say the least, presumptuous—as
implying a claim to a gift of prophecy. But for a man to say of a sentiment
in which passion enters as an important factor, that he will hold it thirty
years hence, he must either be quite ignorant of what he is being asked to
declare, or a prophet capable of accurately reading the future; or else he
must be the most unprincipled blackguard that ever lived, and prepared to
take any vow in order to obtain his immediate needs. Now, since it would
be unfair to assume that the majority of the young men who answer “I will”
to that question are blackguards; since, moreover, it would be unscientific to
suppose that any of them are gifted with the superhuman power of

prophecy, we can only conclude that they are completely ignorant of what it
means. They are completely ignorant of the whole significance of the
marriage rite, and it is their ignorance, coupled with the fact of the force of
custom, that enables them to accept the unnatural imposition of the State-
ordered marriage as if it were a natural condition. Besides, the young
positive couple are, as a rule, not very analytical. The only thing they insist
upon with all the impatience of what is called “love,” is union; and since
their elders and society seem to offer them the chance of union without
black looks and moral indignation, only in legalized “marriage,” they seize
society’s offer without thinking much about the question of natural or
unnatural solutions of natural problems. Thousands, it is true, do not wait
for the unnatural solution.[51] They simply unite and consummate their
desire without taking any public vow. Then, however, they find the social
machinery for discouraging such simple behaviour so formidable and
unrelenting that they are frequently unable to face it, and resort to crime in
order to attempt to wipe out the consequences of their action. Unmarried
motherhood, with all the moral indignation it provokes; prosecutions for
affiliation, and the weekly payments in which they result—are some of the
unpleasant menaces that face those who refuse to wait for the State’s
conditions before consummating their desire; and, in the end, the great
majority, preferring the more peaceable and more generally accepted
course, resolve on marriage the moment they feel they must consummate
their desire.
The desire that makes the two young positive people wish to unite is
called “love.” It is mutual attraction culminating in a condition of mutual
irresistibility. It is the power which, in the course of evolution, each has
acquired to draw the other into that condition which best serves the purpose
of Life and its multiplication.
Now, as we have already pointed out, this power of attraction serves its
purpose—multiplication—whether they unite legitimately or illegitimately.
Since, however, the purposes of society are best served by their uniting
according to certain rules, and since these rules are chiefly designed to
secure each party to the union against the evil consequences (to society) of
promiscuous mating, it is expedient that the two should be bound together
for life; and the marriage tie is made a permanent tie: “Till death us do
part,”—that is the ideal aimed at. But in this way a lie is tacitly smuggled

by society into the marriage of two young people. Since society’s purposes
are best served by a permanent match between the young positive couple,
they are led to believe that the desire which the moment before union has
drawn them together, and which is called “love,” is also permanent; in fact
that it is really the best reason for making the match permanent!
Having once been perpetrated by the social organism, this lie is repeated
in all the moral prejudices and saws, all the fairy-tales, the popular novels,
the poetry and the songs, of a whole nation—of a whole continent—and
soon acquires the sanctity of truth; and he who dares to nail it to the counter
as a piece of counterfeit psychology or physiology, is dubbed a cynic, an
anarchist, and a misogynist.
We call the emotion “love” which convinces two young people that they
had better, on grounds of expediency, accept the State regulations
concerning their prospective union, but we have no business to imply by
actual words or by suggestion that the desirable permanence of that union,
from society’s point of view, will find one of its principal causes in the
persistence of the emotion that led to its being consummated.
Unfortunately, the advantage to society and to the family of a permanent
legal contract, has led to so complete a distortion of the truth, that the
majority of young people are led to believe, quite blindly, that it is the
enduring power of the emotion itself which justifies the nature of the
contract. And everything is done to confirm them in this belief. It is only
when they are married that they find how utterly untrue it is.
It is readily admitted that in every generation of human beings there is a
percentage, an ever-dwindling percentage in degenerate days, of men and
women who are capable of deep and lasting emotions. These rare creatures
of profound and enduring passion, to whom change of any sort is
distasteful, and who cling faithfully and stubbornly to their hobbies, their
pursuits, their ancestral faiths, and their particular taste in literature, music,
the graphic arts and food, may and do sometimes evince a steadiness and a
stability in their love which makes their monogamic unions exceptionally
harmonious and affectionate to the last. But for the average modern couple
to claim that they belong to this very small percentage of human beings, is
the most contemptible impudence. Even positive couples cannot all be said
to belong to this class, and as for the negative couples, whose unions are
chiefly an idle pursuit of sensation or else a gratification of vanity, they are

as different from these slow-moving, deeply passionate people as if they
belonged to a race utterly strange to them. It is therefore essential that, for
the vast majority of people, a more sensible, less dramatic, and more
realistic colour should be lent to their unions, so that they may enter them
with a clearer understanding of the enormous difficulties with which
permanent marriage is beset, and with other considerations to support and
fortify them, than a trust in a possibility so utterly fantastic as the endurance
of their emotions.
When once they are married, it is perfectly true that expediency,
economic considerations, and the presence of children frequently convince
them that it is better that their union should be permanent; but to call by the
name of “love” the reasons which cause them to arrive at this conclusion, is
a colossal hoax, the prodigiousness of which would be amusing did it not
lead to such untold misery.
But, it may be objected, even if we admit that the legal union, marriage,
is as a rule incompatible with lasting “love,” where is the harm, provided
that the two objects of the contract, the obtaining of a union between two
positive people and the propagation of children on regular and well-ordered
lines, be secured? Is it not after all the best solution of the sex problem?
The question whether it is the best solution of the sex problem we must
leave undecided for a moment. But to the first part of the question we may
now answer definitely that there is harm in any contract based upon a lie,
when that lie is one which, connected as it is with the psychological and
physiological conditions of a certain common human relationship, is bound
to be discovered as a lie by the parties to that relationship.
To allow, however tacitly or implicitly, that society’s unnatural solution
of the sex problem is even favourable to the endurance of the emotion
which first led the couple to desire union, is harmful in the first place:—
(1) Because it makes the idea and pursuit of marriage too hedonistic.
Young people know that the state of mutual desire in which they find
themselves before the union, is one of exquisite pleasure. As we have
pointed out in Chapter V, it is probably the richest experience, as spirito-
physiological sensations go, that anyone can have. They also know that the
happy and masterly consummation of this desire is a source of enormous
spiritual and physical well-being and delight. The parties to be united,

therefore, can easily be persuaded, both immediately before consummation
and for a brief period afterwards, that this exquisite pleasure and delight
will be secured them permanently by a permanent contract, and marriage is
pursued as a source of happiness. People are even in the habit of asking of a
married couple, not “Are they successful?” not, “Are they breasting their
difficulties satisfactorily?”; but always, “Are they happy?”—as if for all the
world one were necessarily happy in fulfilling a difficult and vastly
complicated contract.
It is necessary for the positive young girl to find her physical adaptation.
Only the negative girl can be content without it. It is also necessary for the
positive young man to find his. But surely it is not necessary to lead either
of them to suppose that in doing this by means of legal marriage they will
find anything more in the long run than the most moderate well-being,
disturbed by the most tremendous responsibilities and difficulties.
The way in which girls and young men are led to look forward to the
married state as if it were a kind of fairy transformation, summed up in the
formula “and they were happy ever afterwards,” vitiates the whole value of
the contract; for while it lays all emphasis on the contentment that naturally
comes with proper physical adaptation, it passes over the enormous
difficulties which any such permanent contract between sensitive and
intelligent beings must entail.
(2) It is harmful, secondly, because by leading both young people to
expect too much from marriage, it expedites the period of disillusionment,
which is bound ultimately to supervene in the great majority of such unions.
If the State solution of the sex problem, known as monogamic marriage, be
really a good institution, then surely everything should be done to make it
tolerable for as long as possible to those who are parties to it. Since
disillusionment must come, it is obviously the duty of teachers and elders to
endeavour to postpone it as long as possible. And the way to do this is
certainly not by emphasizing the “happiness” of marriage to the exclusion
of all thought about its enormous and almost insuperable difficulties. A
salutary reform in this respect would consist in leading young people to
accept the State’s solution of the sex problem in a more sober mood, with a
more grave concern about the future, with a greater insight into the utility of
marriage, and with less precipitancy than is shown at present. They would
realize that while union was what they desired, legal marriage was the least

unsatisfactory way for all concerned of meeting that desire for union; but
that it was only a clumsy way of securing their sexual adaptation, and held
no necessary promise of any greater happiness than they could expect from
any other system of constraints.
It might be objected that, in this case, young people would not marry. The
reply to this objection is that they would if their desire for normal adult
adaptation were strong enough, but that they would be likely to fulfil the
contract all the more satisfactorily by realizing from the start its utility, its
limitations, its very doubtful promise, and its artificial nature.
(3) It is harmful, thirdly, because, by confusing marriage with the pursuit
of happiness, grave considerations are likely to be overlooked. Let me give
a concrete instance:—
It may be in the best interests of a farmer’s son, who intends to adopt his
parent’s calling, to marry a rural maiden, accustomed to the problems of a
farm, and familiar with all the valuable traditions of the countryside. In fact,
from the standpoint of the State also, it may be best for him to select his
bride from among the female population of his village or locality; for by so
doing, in addition to acquiring a useful mate, his children will inherit rural
virtues from both sides, and are more likely to become good and efficient
farmers in their turn. But if, by a false association of happiness with
marriage, he fancies that he will have what is known as a “better time” with
an urban typist of smart appearance, with small bird’s-claw hands and
expensive tastes, he is likely to overlook the gravity of the purpose of
marriage in order to gratify his hedonistic lust. This accounts also for the
destruction of many of our aristocratic houses by mésalliances with chorus-
girls and American and Jewish heiresses. If the utterly hedonistic bias were
only removed from marriage, such stupid and wanton outrages against good
blood might be prevented. For since the alleged “happiness” of a permanent
association like legal marriage is in nine cases out of ten pure illusion, it
should not be allowed to override a man’s duty to himself and to his
children. One of the principal rewards of the legal marriage is the means it
gives a man of preserving his family virtues and tradition, and since this is
best achieved by choosing a girl from his own kind and set, the supposed
pursuit of happiness can only act as a disturbing element, which could be
condoned only if it were not so entirely illusory.

Of course the mésalliance as a social evil has a Puritanical root as well,
which ought perhaps to be mentioned here. The Puritans were not so utterly
and incurably stupid as to deny the existence of bodily pleasure. They knew
perfectly well that the joys of sex were very real joys. By insisting,
however, upon these joys being sought only in fast wedlock, they threw a
burden upon marriage which it was hardly designed to bear. They converted
it by one stroke into a source of joy—that is to say, into the unique source
for a certain kind of joy, into a symbol of pleasure and happiness of a
certain kind. By so doing, however, a false association grew up in the minds
of men regarding marriage, which has resulted in the scions of some of our
best houses seeking happiness and pleasure in matrimony by marrying
women whose blood necessarily diluted or destroyed their stock qualities.
Had the stupid Puritan prejudice not existed, they might have found
pleasure with these inferior females without marrying them, and thereby
saved their family line with some one who, though perhaps less garish and
less vulgarly amusing, was at least capable of giving them children true to
their traditional stock quality.
The advantages of the legal monogamic match are chiefly social. They
have very little to do with happiness, and most of them redound to the
benefit of law and order. They are:—
(a) The creation of a compact unit known and recognized as the family,
in which responsibility for the fruits of the union fall on the two parents,
and in which the financial responsibility in the great majority of families
falls upon the more free (physically) of the two parents—the male. The
State is by this means secured against the obligation of having to rear the
innumerable host of children that would result from promiscuous
parenthood where the father could not be traced.
(b) The creation of a unit with which it is easy for the law to deal,
because in it human duties are simplified down to the three relations,
spouse, parent, child, each of which has its status in the law, all converging
towards the head of the unit, who can be made answerable to the law for his
unit.
(c) The creation of a definite and stable environment for the early and
tenderest years of the nation’s youngest inhabitants, where, in the majority
of cases at least, they may be assured the care and the supervision and the

schooling of those who are by nature best equipped for discharging the
duties of protectors and tutors with love and tenderness, with natural pride
in their work, and above all without demanding payment for their services.
(d) The creation of a natural centre of interest for the female and the
male, but particularly for the former, after the first bloom of youth and
attractiveness has fled, so that each may claim, as by right, a place in a
home, in which their presence is earnestly desired, at least by the majority
—the children.
(e) The creation of a microcosm—a part and counterpart of the nation as
a whole, reduced to its smallest compass, in which the traditional character
of a people becomes imparted to its children, in which the virtues and
aspirations of a nation are inculcated by precept and example upon its
youngest members, and in which these form the first strong attachments
which, increasing with age, ultimately identify them, and act as the first
moral check upon their conduct.
(f) The creation of a centre in which the child has a chance to develop
family or stock qualities quietly, slowly, and unhindered; because it is
sheltered, or partly so, from the influence of antagonistic or competing mob
or universal characteristics.
(g) The creation of relationships—that of spouse to spouse, parent to
child, child to child, and child to parent, in which the growth of many
virtues useful to society are fostered and cultivated: a sense of
responsibility, self-respect, fidelity, early associations of devotion and
gratitude, the sense of traditional continuity which gives rise to the feeling
of dignity, honour, obligation, and individual rights, claims and duties.
(h) The creation of a community on the smallest scale, in which the
children may, by constant association with their parents, acquire their stock
of general and specialized knowledge, learn the business by which they
may ultimately earn their living, and cultivate efficiency in it quietly and
gradually from infancy upwards. (This is an advantage which, except in rare
cases, has hardly survived in family life in England.)
Now, attractive as these advantages may appear to the legislator, or
legislators of a people, and cogent as they may make the argument for
monogamic marriage, it will be seen, that they contain little that will

necessarily secure the conjugal “happiness” of the two young people whose
actions and movements they are designed to limit and to constrain. They
consist chiefly of duties which, while not necessarily unpleasant, give rise
to no small amount of anxiety and misgiving, and certainly lend a graver
accent to matrimony than is usually imparted to it by that promise of light-
hearted enjoyment upon which most stress is laid by the traditional
literature, poetry and public sentiment of all Anglo-Saxon people. On the
other hand, it would be idle to deny that if the aspects of monogamous
marriage that they represent were more frequently emphasized and brought
to the attention of both young and old, the number of “happy” marriages
might certainly be very much increased. For as I have shown, it is the
hedonistic view of marriage, or that picture of it that dwells immoderately
upon its supposed unfailing gift of happiness, that has done most in modern
civilised societies to undermine its value as a working and workable
institution. Its plain utility is smothered under too much sentiment and false
doctrine. This result has been brought about largely by Christianity, which
has persistently endeavoured to teach the high-falutin’ nonsense of
matrimony as principally “a union of souls”[52]; but added to Christian
influence in Anglo-Saxon countries, at least, there has also been the
detrimental overlay of romantic obsessions,[53] which has made a realistic
view of primitive and natural needs almost impossible.
The general tendency in Puritanical and Anglo-Saxon countries, at least,
is to keep as far as possible in the background the subject of offspring and
the fruits of marriage when discussing it or arranging for it in the presence
of any two young people who have stated their desire to be joined together.
It is not considered decent to refer to this, its most important side. As we
have seen, the advantages of the legal monogamic marriage chiefly concern
the children that may result from the match. Scarcely any other advantage
exists. It is folly, therefore, not to make the subject of offspring one of the
most important in all deliberations relating to matrimony. It is true that in
the Book of Common Prayer the first reason given for the joining of a man
and woman together in holy matrimony, is “for the procreation of children”;
but there are many people who dislike this passage in the marriage service,
and all those who have attended marriage ceremonies often will be able to
testify to the frequency with which it is rapidly slurred over in order to give
the least possible offence.

Now this is the most pernicious nonsense that could ever have been
devised for destroying the value of the legal monogamic marriage. For if
proper stress were laid upon the consequences of the union, the children, it
would not only check the hedonistic attitude towards marriage as an
institution, but would also make young people more serious in the matter of
choosing their mates and more critical of themselves in regard to their
readiness for marriage.
“Am I one who can grant myself the privilege of contributing fresh
people to the world? Am I sufficiently desirable? Is it at all desirable that I
should reproduce myself in a second, third or fourth edition?”
But how can these questions be asked in an atmosphere where the
offspring of a marriage is the last consideration to be thought of? How can
they be expected to be asked in an atmosphere where “Luvv” is supposed to
justify any match, however horrible?
In regard to the mate, too—who nowadays selects her with that serious
criticism which gazes through the optics of the next generation and
envisages their best interests? How can the average man assume this
attitude, when all the stress in matrimony is laid upon the love match, upon
the union of two souls? As far as possible, everyone tries to forget the other
matter in contemplating a girl and her betrothed. People shrug their
shoulders and say, “If children come, they come—and there’s an end of it.”
They prefer to regard the couple from that standpoint. Christianity has so
far succeeded in establishing a false atmosphere of a union of souls around
this most fundamental of all relationships (that of the betrothed couple) that
it is possible now to meet people who entertain the most solemn
determination to marry, and yet who have hardly one single feature in their
minds or bodies that would render their repetition or recurrence on earth in
any way desirable.
The whole attitude of Christianity towards the joining of male and female
together, however, is so unrealistic on the one hand, and so base on the
other, that it is not astonishing that after 2,000 years of Christian teaching
we have wellnigh reached matrimonial chaos in Europe, and all countries
like Europe.
Marriage should be regarded as the sacred garden of the next generation.
All the exalted emotions that possess an artist at his work, all the solemn

misgivings that beset a responsible man when he feels he is determining the
future of Man, ought to surge in the breast of him who contemplates
matrimony. To feel that emotion which the modern world calls “love” may
excuse a man for forming an illicit union, but, alone, it does not justify him
in concluding so grave a contract as marriage.
The disadvantages of the monogamic marriage are chiefly confined to its
effects upon the individual, and are of a nature that the State can, as a rule,
afford to ignore and to waive. I shall only point to one disadvantage that
deeply concerns the State (see objection H), and that is so serious that it
should be examined and removed instantly.
The disadvantages are the following:—
(A) Monogamic marriage presupposes a possibility which is the very
reverse of natural and human, one in fact which, through the optics of life,
does not even amount to a probability—and that is that two people of
different sexes can be united for life without needing or craving for that
same variety and respite which in all other departments of their lives they
regard as the most essential factor of well-being. This is the great lie
underlying the State’s tacit assurance that its solution of the sex problem is
for the benefit of the individual.
Every child suspects, every adult knows, how difficult friendship is, how
hard it becomes to keep up that enthusiasm and eager interest in the
relationship of friends, which alone makes companionship a refreshment
and a pleasure. And everyone feels that there is a natural prudence in sound
friendship which, founded on good taste, points distinctly to a moderate
frequentation of a friend at all times when that enthusiasm and eager
interest show signs of declining too seriously. So that it might truthfully be
said in a paradox, that friendship can be maintained only by judicious
separations, and that the duration of these separations is determined by the
barometric level, so to speak, of the friendship felt at certain periods.
No one who has attained to adult years can fail to have realized the value
of change to the body. Variations in diet, occupation and environment act as
a stimulus not only to the senses but also to the tissues; they brace and
invigorate the system. Life, like beauty, has even been defined as “repetition
with a certain modicum of variation.”[54]

Moreover, every human being, child, adult, savage or sage knows the
fatal consequences of complete and exhaustive exploration: how it cloys,
how it surfeits, how it nauseates! The very constitution of man as a sentient
being necessitates such consequences. The repetition of a stimulus reduces
the force of its appeal owing to the very tendency to habituation to which
all of us as adaptable creatures are prone. We react eagerly and quickly at
first; the thousandth time we hardly lift an eyelid.
Now, in the face of all these facts of common and everyday experience, it
would seem both absurd and indefensible to claim that any two people,
whether of the same or of different sexes, could hope to spend many years
together—not to mention a lifetime—without ultimately falling the prey to
indifference, if not dislike; and where the circumstances of their first
coming together have been attended by any excessive warmth of feeling,
the ultimate revulsion of that feeling, by constituting at once a
disillusionment and, among unwise people, a surprise, must lead to an
indifference proportionately more acute.
Unlike the mere association of friends, in which two people may work
together, share the same interests, enjoy the same games, or suffer the same
hardships, pleasures and difficulties, the married couple are united chiefly
by a physical bond which has its basis in an act of passion, an act of desire,
an act of power.
But passion is largely a matter of surplus strength, violent stimulation
and the lust of possession, all of which are steadily worn down by (a) a
steady drain on surplus strength, (b) the supervention of gradual callousness
through the repetition of similar stimuli, and (c) the consciousness of
holding definitely, or rather indefinitely, the object originally coveted.
Desire also, by being gratified, is stilled. The best cure, in fact, for desire
is precisely gratification. But a cure is hardly what is anticipated by the
usual love-match.[55]
With regard to the act of power, which, despite civilization, still accounts
for more than half the savour of the sexual relationship, that is surely
seriously impaired by the law itself which enjoins cohabitation as a duty
upon the parties to a marriage contract.

Thus the indefinite continuance of the emotion which first led a couple to
unite, and the protraction sine die of the delights of the early consummation
of their desire, are bound, as it were, with mathematical certainty to become
impossible. But this makes the relationship exceedingly difficult, and one
which, far from constituting a promise of happiness, is very much more
likely to develop into an absolute guarantee of incessant and most tiresome
differences.
To reply to these objections that there is a “love” that transcends all these
difficulties, may sound pleasant and charming and good-natured, but it is
hardly candid. For as I have pointed out above, the possibility of the
existence of this rare kind of love does not justify us in making marriage a
lie for the bulk of mankind.
(B) Furthermore, monogamic marriage makes no allowance for the fact
that human courtship and the subsequent union of the sexes to which it
leads, partakes essentially of the nature of an adventure. In fact, to a large
number of people in these dull and ordered days it is the only adventure of
their lives. In many of its aspects it is reminiscent of the qualities of the
chase, and it would be unscientific not to allow for this smack of venery in
the preliminaries which precede venery. That mutual attraction which
ultimately leads to mutual capitulation is full of the excitement, the doubt,
the anxiety and the final triumph of the huntsman. When the quarry is a
positive virgin and her pursuer a positive man, even the fascination of fear
is added—fear of the intensity of the passion awakened—to complete the
similitude of the experience to the circumstances of the chase.
Beside this, however, the steady hum-drum routine of married life can at
best only be a flat parody—particularly married life in modern civilization,
witnessed, as it is, by innumerable stuffy relatives, marred by imperfect
health, supported by tired and irascible nerves, and depressed by the
consciousness that it must last a lifetime.
Nor can it be said that the divine gifts of imagination and artistic
creativeness tend to mitigate the solemn boredom and exasperation that
overtake the parties to such a legal union; on the contrary, they but enhance
its horrors: behold the unhappy married lives of most men of genius,
Dickens, Carlyle, Byron, and the philosophic Socrates!

(C) The monogamic marriage based on the modern idea of “love” (which
should, by the by, be spelt “Luvv” to differentiate it from the nobler idea
called by the same name), in addition to leading to bitter disillusionment,
has in its very first condition—this sentiment “Luvv”—the seeds of its most
potent corrosive. For it is impossible nowadays to conceive of love without
contempt. Indeed, an innuendo of contempt is essential before love can be
possible. This is easily seen if we reflect upon what love is. It is, in its
present acceptation, a very wild, a very torrential sentiment. From the man
who says he loves her, the girl exacts little less than single-minded
adoration. She expects him to say she is the best girl in the world for him,
and she insists on his believing it. She might, at a pinch, forgive his not
regarding her as the best girl in the whole world, in the sense of supreme
above all other girls in fact. But to him, relative to his taste alone, she
expects to be that. And he expects the same. But what does this mean? What
can it not help meaning? Both parties in a courtship are fully aware of what
sorry figures they cut before the critical and fully informed eye of their own
inner consciousness. Each knows his shortcomings, his pitiful and helpless
foibles, his ugly traits, his despicable features, his nauseating, revolting
side!
And what? Some one has been found who calls this the best? who raves
about it? who is visibly frantic about it?
Deep down in her heart, therefore, where the girl secretes her contempt
for herself, she now begins secreting the first drops of contempt for the one
who can appear so wildly enthusiastic over something she knows to be so
defective. Her man feels exactly the same, and though he may be exalted,
for a while, by the girl’s having mistaken him for a hero, he would not be
human if he did not feel a little contempt for one who could appear so
enthralled by such humble attainments as he knows his to be.
When once, however, the first blush of passion has died away, this seed
of contempt has to be reckoned with, and then, watered by disillusionment
and nourished by indifference, it soon germinates and grows into the fungus
which helps to blight the last green leaves that may still be left on the spare
frail tree of conjugal affection. Because, the moment it shows its true colour
and nature, it is recognized by either party in the other, and interpreted as a
flat and wilful recantation of their former protestations, and consequently as
an insulting and heartless volte-face which cannot be forgiven.

(D) In addition to the element of contempt in all love of the ordinary sort,
there is another factor which, when once the moment of disenchantment
comes in monogamic marriage, adds seriously to its force and hastens the
end; and that is the unpardonable arrogance which is implicit in all these
“love” matches.
When a young man A so far misunderstands his condition as to say he
loves a young girl B with undying affection, although the psychologist may
smile, he does not necessarily expostulate; for, after all, the attitude, though
ridiculous, is not necessarily provokingly impudent. It is true that it is
assuming that he is capable of an enduring passion, and therefore, that he is
arrogating to himself a depth and a permanence which nine hundred and
ninety-nine people out of a thousand do not possess; nevertheless, it is
allowed to pass, because a certain modicum of exaggeration is allowed to
lovers.
When, however, the young girl B believes A’s declaration of undying
love, and accepts it as a fact, the psychologist is naturally annoyed; for here
a degree of self-deception comes into play which cannot possibly arise out
of anything else than the most stupendous arrogance. In order that B may
believe A, she must first have convinced herself of the following:—
(α) That she is capable of inspiring an undying passion.
(β) That she is capable of keeping it alive when once it has been kindled.
(γ) That there is nothing at all unlikely or preposterous in her being the
object of such a passion.
But to convince herself of any one of these propositions she must possess
the most prodigious conceit, the most unbounded impudence.
And the same applies to A, to whom B has declared her undying love.
In addition to contempt, therefore, there is in every love-match in which
the parties propose to adopt a permanent monogamic union as their destiny,
a degree of arrogance and self-esteem on either side which is wholly and
unspeakably distasteful both to the sane psychologist and to the man of
balanced mind.
But let that pass! What does it matter that the psychologist should be
offended when he hears that A has declared his undying love to B and that

B has believed him?
Yes, but unfortunately the arrogance that B shows in listening with
patience and even credulity to such a declaration as A’s, does not end
merely in giving offence to the psychologist. It ultimately recoils upon
herself in the cruellest possible manner; just as A’s arrogant acceptance of
B’s declaration recoils upon him. When the moment of disillusionment and
indifference supervenes, as it must in all ordinary “love” matches, A finds it
somewhat difficult to forgive B for having ever dreamt, even in her wildest
nightmare, that she could keep their love alive all through their married life,
and B finds it equally difficult to forgive A for having fancied, even in the
wildest flights of his imagination, that he could ever provoke a life passion.
And thus, in addition to the contempt that has already been analysed in the
preceding section, there now arises a rankling feeling of indignation of each
towards the other for ever having been guilty of such stupendous arrogance.
And we must confess that in the majority of cases this indignation is well
deserved.
The only excuse that may be pleaded in mitigation of A’s and B’s lack of
modesty is that probably no one had ever told them, nor had they ever read,
that to accept a declaration of undying love necessitates a degree of self-
esteem that is positively indecent.
(E) There are many modern people who will protest that I have not
considered the monogamic marriage on its “higher” or more “spiritual”
aspect as companionship, and that unless its possibilities in this respect be
viewed fairly and impartially, its general desirability cannot possibly be
estimated. But before we assume too hastily that this is one of the brighter
aspects of the monogamic marriage, let us make quite certain that we are
not confronted by yet another of its grave disadvantages.
Companionship is a matter of the spirit. The pleasure of it might be
likened to the refreshment that a parched body obtains from a fresh drink. It
is the bliss peculiar to friendship. The friend refreshes one by his
companionship. Provided we have not spent too many of our years with
him, he opens before us a new aspect of things. Provided that we have not
frequented him too much, his mind, however simple it may be, always
offers us some sentiment or point of view which we have not yet thoroughly
explored. And this communion with the friend is a joy, because it is a

recreation. It makes the old world seem new again. Even familiar
landscapes, viewed again with a friend whom one has seen at discreet
intervals, acquire a freshness they did not possess before. The very essence
of companionship, therefore, if it is to be a joy, consists in the freshness, the
novelty, the change that it introduces into our life.
But where is the freshness, where, therefore, the joy of companionship
with some one whose mind one has thoroughly explored, whose every
word, comment, or exclamation one anticipates five or six seconds ahead?
Where is the exquisite quality of the companion in one whom one knows as
well as oneself, whom one has had endless days, weeks, months and years
to study, to listen to and to understand? The most gifted brain can be
circumnavigated if it be lived with daily. The richest storehouse of
spirituality can hardly hold out against daily depredation.
Companionship, however, offers something else that is priceless in the
mortal monotony of our lives. It draws us away from excessive communion
with ourselves, from the surfeit of self. Thus the friend comes as a welcome
disturber of the interminable meditation that proceeds at all hours of the day
between a man and himself.
But the mate who is always with you is so much a part of yourself, so
intimately known to you, that nothing she can say is sufficiently arresting to
disturb any meditation; and unless she actually overturns the lamp, or
accidentally chops one of her fingers off, or falls downstairs, she is hardly
noticed.
And what is true of the husband here is equally true of the wife. She gets
to know her husband’s every word, every mood, every gesture by heart. To
call his presence companionship, or the boon that comes with friendship,
would be to cast a slur on all companionship and friendship for ever.
Companionship between husband and wife is therefore impossible. It is
impossible because the very source of the chief quality of companionship—
refreshment—is cut off at the root by too much association, too much and
too incessant exploration of each other’s minds, by the two spouses.
(F) The monogamic marriage is as a rule more satisfying to the female
than to the male; but only, as we shall see in the chapter on Divorce, if
children are born regularly, and the circumstances of their birth and their

infancy run a normal course. The reason of this is that since the positive
healthy woman finds her complete sexual experience only by means of the
coitus, plus the period of gestation, plus parturition, and plus the months of
lactation, she finds, as a rule, in the course of a married life in which she
brings forth children regularly and in normal circumstances, all that her
body can possibly expect from an adapted sexual life.[56] The act of
fertilization, which, as we have already seen in a former chapter, is only the
sparking-plug that starts the huge cycle that culminates in the weaning, is
such a trifling incident in her sexual experience that very soon her husband
begins to assume in her eyes the importance which, as a matter of fact, he
enjoys relative to the huge cycle itself. And if she happens no longer to feel
that enthusiasm for him which she felt as a fiancée, she can endure the
disillusionment with equanimity and sweetness because she is now aware
that, after all said and done, he does not really matter to her nearly as much
as she once rather foolishly imagined. Promoting and expediting the drop in
a woman’s affection for her husband must also be reckoned not only the
natural surfeit and indifference that comes with excessive familiarity, but
also the presence of the children themselves. For while they act as a
consolation to the woman for the declining affection of the pair, they also
operate as a powerful reducer of that affection in herself. The unconscious
longing for fertilization that has long been drawing her to her husband and
forcing her to transfigure his very common and ordinary personality into
something exceptional, naturally abates as fast as children are born,
because, as an unconscious longing, it gets gratified and therefore stifled.
And thus children, far from being the alleged bonds uniting couples, may
become the most potent wedges driving them asunder. The extraordinary
number of loving childless couples in which the woman’s devotion remains
unabated may be accounted for in this way.[57] Policy, as a rule, bids her
treat him with consideration and the outward signs of devotion as the
breadwinner, as the father of her children, and as a person who, since he is
destined to be her constant companion, it is merely ordinary good sense to
humour and to please; but provided that she have children from him at
regular intervals, she is not much troubled by the pronounced drop in her
affection and regard for him.
To the man, on the other hand, to whom, as we have seen, the sparking-
plug incident constitutes a complete sexual experience, and whose sexual

life therefore begins and ends with this spasmodic desire for woman and the
brief relation with her to which it leads, this falling off in affection and
desire is a matter of very grave concern, because he has no bodily
consolation. He may love his children, he may delight in their company,
and he may be wholly interested in his home; but the bearing and nursing of
his children constitutes no bodily experience to him; and in life it is the
demands of the body that are most important and most importunate when
they are not obeyed.
For his body to enjoy its necessary, satisfactory experience, slight and
brief as it is, it is essential that some desire, some passion, in fact some of
the feeling he felt for his wife as a fiancée, should remain. It is necessary
that he should still look upon the act as one of passion, desire and power.
But as we have seen, the act has been deprived of most of its passion, desire
and power by the inevitable consequences of the State monogamic
marriage. Its beauties have literally been worn away. It has lost its savour
and its strength by having been systematized, time-tabled, protected,
ordered, and above all, repeated too often, without that “certain modicum of
variety” which is the essential element in all life.
Generally speaking, then, it may be argued with justice that, where
conditions are normal and children are born regularly, monogamic marriage
can be tolerated quite well by women, but not by men. For when once the
elements constituting the joy of cohabitation have been robbed from the
man’s share—as in nine hundred and ninety-nine marriages out of a
thousand they must—the relationship, though still endurable to the positive
healthy female, to whom the act of fertilization, and raison de plus her
husband, is of such minor importance, becomes intolerable to the healthy
positive male; and unless he is prepared to face a life in which every week
is a long-drawn-out torture to his body, he cannot remain faithful to his
spouse.
In its general attitude towards and understanding of monogamic
marriage, therefore, this Age, in addition to smuggling the lie of happiness
into the contract, also completely distorts the true relation to the union of
the woman on the one hand, and the man on the other. By a false and
entirely gratuitous analogy, it supposes that the man’s position can be and is
as tolerable as that of the child-bearing female.

It is useless to object that thousands of married men to-day remain
faithful to their wives, and yet cannot be said to be among those rare
geniuses in love for whom alone the monogamic marriage is suitable. In the
first place it may be asked, how many of those thousands are really healthy
positive men, sexually exuberant and virile? It is simple enough to be a
Puritan if one is below par. But how many faithful husbands are truly
normal, in the sense of their body’s insisting upon leading a satisfactory
sexual life?
(G) It would be unfair to omit to mention among these objections to the
modern monogamic marriage, those that arise more particularly from the
woman’s standpoint in a match with a man who is both positive and
healthy.
At the risk of repeating statements already made, the reader must be
reminded here that when either party to a matrimonial match is negative or
unhealthy, the union ceases from being one to which mere objections can be
raised; it then becomes actually impossible. And by positiveness and health
in the woman, I mean that condition in which the bearing of children is
accompanied throughout by an easy pleasure-giving functioning of the
body.
Because I am not attempting to discuss all the sordid complications of the
sort of match in which either one or both of the parties are unhealthy or
negative, it does not follow that I fail to recognize the enormous percentage
of unhappy marriages, to which such unions lead. But this is not a book on
the pathological aspects of sex. I take only the best possible conditions—the
mating of a healthy and positive woman with a man of the same stamp, and
show the objections that may be raised to their monogamic match.
Naturally, if the unfavourable circumstances with which the start is made be
increased, the objections to the match necessarily increase proportionately.
Now, despite the best initial circumstances, there are objections to
monogamy from the woman’s standpoint which will be seen to be both
serious and insuperable. But these objections, let it be well understood, only
arise in thoroughly modern conditions. I have hinted at one of them in a
former chapter (see Chapter VI, section 3).
(G1) A woman may marry a man who is wholly positive, healthy, and
therefore quite savoury (such men get ever more rare, but they are still to be

found). Very early in her married life, however, she discovers that, through
some cause which she of course cannot fathom, her husband is a person
utterly unfit to make her his wife in the only way in which her instincts and
senses easily accept the rôle—that is to say, as the yielding partner to an
impetuous, masterful, and at the same time skilful initiator. Although he is
not negative by nature, he has been brought up negatively. He fears and
shuns what he should be most eager to experience. His timidity and
awkwardness are infectious. He proves himself not only unmasterly; he
convinces her that he is a bungler—often a bungler more terrified than she
is herself.
A relationship which should have been but a means of raising their
courting happiness to ecstasy becomes instead either frigid and frightened
post-marital virginity for weeks after marriage,[58] which proves disastrous
to their love and ruinous to their nerves; or else, a consummation which is
so hopelessly clumsy, hurried and nervous, and so distasteful to either party,
that it is repeated as seldom as possible, and is always followed by the most
bewildering disenchantment.
I have previously explained that to the decent girl the act of
consummation seems acceptable and right only if purified by fire. She does
not need to be in the least influenced by Puritanical prejudices in order to
hold this attitude. It is the natural outcome of her instincts, as they have
been formed throughout the ages. The bulk of the ancestors in her line, for
millions of years, on the female side, having encountered the proper
impetuosity and fire in the male, which carries all before it—that prehensile
and initiatory masterfulness that belongs by nature to the male’s share in the
act of consummation—this is what her racial memory leads her to expect,
this alone is what gives her that clean joy in sex, that light-hearted
innocence in sex, without which her married life is but a torment.
Yet now she finds herself with a creature who far from showing any
mastery or abandon, actually increases, if you please, her own natural
timidity about the whole affair, and even carries it one stage further until it
is brought perilously near to disgust and moral indignation.
Beginnings tell most poignantly, particularly when they consist of first
experiences in fundamental matters. And this kind of beginning, if it is not
quickly corrected, is almost always fatal. It destroys that trust, that

confidence, that humble and willing subservience, which are at once a
young woman’s instinct and her joy. It poisons the first hours of her
maturity, of her self-realization, of her taste of life’s deeper waters; but,
above all, it revives in her precisely those emotions and prejudices which
ought to have been stifled for ever—her high-school doubts and qualms
regarding the general desirability of her Maker’s scheme for mammalian
fertilization.
She may forgive this first tragic disenchantment. It is doubtful whether
she ever forgets it. And if her husband, as is often the case, continues inept,
clumsy and uneasy about the whole relationship, it matters not even if they
have children, that disillusionment which, in any case, is bound to come, is
unduly expedited, and the union gets prematurely blighted. If there are no
children—then there is either open revolt or infidelity, or both.
In this way very many eminently desirable women suffer untold
hardships through monogamy[59]; and though they are frequently too proud
and too dignified to reveal to anyone the smallest hint of their suffering, this
may be read in a hundred signs about their homes and their persons. The
bitter contempt that many women display towards their husbands, their
tendency to contradict, offend and insult them before strangers, and their
aptitude to appeal to outsiders rather than to their husbands for advice and
help, are all probably the outcome of experiences that have occurred quite
early in their married life, all of which were disenchanting, unpleasant, and
destructive of confidence.
For the healthy, positive young man, in this case, all that can be pleaded
is that it is not entirely his fault. In England, as a rule, he is bred in an
atmosphere so perfectly sex-tight, that no intelligent or enlightening word
ever reaches him on the subject. On the contrary, all is clammy, frightened,
guilty silence. On reaching maturity, if he be sensitive, the ordinary means
of acquiring practical experience in the matter will probably strike him as
too sordid, too commercial, too completely lifted out of the atmosphere of
romance and adventure in which his mind has always pictured ideal sexual
experiences; and the consequence is that frequently he not only practises
abstinence for too long, but also develops inhibitions and fantasies which
hardly conduce, when the time comes, to a happy consummation of his first
love-match.

And yet the world has grown so stupid in regard to all these matters, and
foolish romantic women’s voices have become so clamorous, that there is
an ever-increasing body of idiots who insist on the desirability of men being
virgins when they marry!
(G2) Another deep objection, from the standpoint of woman, to the
monogamic marriage, arises out of what is known as “maleness” in women.
According to Weininger this varies in degree with each individual, and
modern authorities on psychology have more or less confirmed Weininger’s
view.
For the reader unacquainted with the present knowledge on this point,
perhaps it would be as well to state plainly what results have been obtained.
In the first place it has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of most
people that no one male or female is wholly masculine or feminine. The
stage of hermaphroditism through which all human beings are supposed to
pass in their early fœtal development, is never apparently quite overcome,
and the fully developed fœtus, as also the perfectly developed child, retains
in its constitution vestiges of a sex to which its outward and primary sexual
characteristics do not belong. These vestiges of the other sex which survive
are both physical and mental, and according to their proportion in the
individual body, determine the character of their host. Thus a child who is
to all outward appearance a boy may yet possess elements according to
which he is actually 25 or 30 or only 10 per cent female. A female child
may likewise possess vestiges of the other sex which constitute her 10, 20,
30 or even 40 per cent male.
Although, therefore, all men have a preponderancy of male elements, and
all women a preponderancy of female elements, each may possess a more
or less heavy percentage of the elements of the other.
In extreme cases these elements of the opposite sex cause trouble by
leading those who possess them to form desires and to lead lives so
conspicuously out of keeping with their primary sexual characteristics as to
make them obnoxious to society; but it should be remembered that this
degree of morbidity is rare, and that as a general rule the modicum of
maleness in the female and femaleness in the male has no such disturbing
results if the other elements proper to the sex of the primary reproductive
organs in each individual find their normal adaptation.

Thus the maleness in the female has a tendency to manifest itself, more
especially when her sexuality is not fully developed or not actively
engaged. Little girls, for instance, are notoriously sadistic—sadism being a
derivative of the male reproductive instinct—as are also many spinsters and
some old women.
Femaleness in the male, on the other hand, tends to manifest itself
particularly in cases where the male reproductive instinct has been stifled,
or unhinged, or when his spirit has been ruthlessly broken.
Now it may be as well for the reader to know that the attitude of the
modern world is to fall down in a state of acquiescence before this
important fact of sex, without attempting to inquire whether the importance
with which it looms on the horizon of our lives is not precisely due to the
attitude of prostrate acceptance with which it is met.
Particularly in England is the phenomenon of mixed elements noticeable
—so much so that foreigners call attention to it as something exceptional.
[60]
But it is only noticeable in this marked degree in England because, like
all other manifestations of sex in this country, it is ill-adapted. A well-
adapted sexual proclivity does not cry aloud and call attention to itself in
this way.
Humbly as they may acquiesce in it, however, it is customary for people
in this country to speak disparagingly of the “male woman,” of her who
flaunts manly attire, affects a walking-stick, hunts like a man, and is always
the last to be drawn away from a drain or other refuge in which some
unfortunate fox or other hunted animal has run for safety. I know of a case
where such a woman constantly waits until long after dark in order to catch
or kill the fox that has thus hoped to save its life. (Unconscious Sadism.)
Now it is all very well to inveigh against the existence of such viragos,
and to describe as morbid their manifestation of male sexual characteristics,
but, as a matter of fact, there is as a rule nothing really morbid in their
constitutions. And in any case, an attitude of humble acquiescence before
them, as if they were an imposition from Providence, which must be
suffered willy-nilly, is hardly the best way of modifying either the
disagreeable character of their proclivities or tastes, or the evil to which
these proclivities and tastes undoubtedly lead.

I realize that in making this statement I am at variance with practically
every authority on the subject; but it is because in no authority on the
subject have I found a suggestion of what I am about to say, that I venture
to trust my own judgment, and provisionally to adhere to it until such time
as the authority who opposes it makes allowances for all I am going to
advance in defence of these so-called “male” women.
In the first place, then, it may be pointed out that it would be absurd to
complain that a race is breeding women with manly traits in their character,
if the desideratum of that race is avowedly to breed people of highly virile
propensities. The mating of highly virile males with women devoid of all
trace of virility would surely only lead to a depreciation of the stock. For
the males, by having their seed diluted by elements utterly unlike them,
could not hope to be the fathers of boys in any way worthy of them.
The rearing of women with strong male characteristics is, in fact, always
an advantage to a race that wishes to produce a fine virile manhood;[61] for
the dangerous diluent “effeminine”—to coin a new word for a new notion
—is thus reduced to a minimum.
Among the ancients Celts, Teutons and Slavs, than which few races have
been more virile, women, when necessary, used to fight side by side with
their men. It is said of the virile Similkameen Indians, that “the women
were nearly as good hunters as the men.”[62] The whole race survived only
by means of hunting. It was therefore an advantage for the females to
approximate to the men in their skill. By this means a double strain of
hunting virtues descended to the offspring, thus leading to ever greater and
greater refinement and specialization of instinct and judgment.
From the reading of the biographies of great men also we are in a
position to determine to what extent the quality which to-day is
opprobriously referred to as female “masculinity” was present in their
mothers. Think of Schopenhauer, Byron, and, above all, of King Alfred the
Great, to whose mother history declares the monarch owed everything! She
could hardly have reared so manly a king, had she not herself possessed
some innate knowledge of manliness and masculine virtue.
This manliness of women, therefore, far from being a disaster, is rather a
desirable trait, if a particularly virile race of men is required. And since the
existence of women with pronounced male characteristics cannot possibly

be a novelty in this world, it is far more likely that the outcry against them,
which is modern, is due to modern conditions, than that they are truly and
intrinsically undesirable.
“But,” argue the man and woman of taste, “the masculine woman in our
society is surely disagreeable!”
I agree. But while I shall now endeavour to explain why she is, or has
become, disagreeable, I should like to repeat that she is by no means the
only example of a disagreeable sex-phenomenon in our midst; that there are
other phenomena just as obnoxious, and that all take their root not
necessarily in abnormality of an incurable kind, but in the condition of ill-
adaptation into which sex has fallen in this country—a condition that sex-
psychologists do not sufficiently reckon with when they regard as
pathological the unfortunate modern female who is either sadistic, hostile to
man, unnatural in her love and pursuit of women, or blatantly and
ostentatiously masculine in her tastes, her kit and her interests.
The maleness of women, considered from the standpoint of marriage—
which is the only standpoint relevant to this chapter[63]—can be deprecated
only when it renders impossible, or more than usually difficult, the cohesion
of that valuable unit in society known as the family.
As this is not a work on the pathology of sex, I cannot deal with cases of
genuine physical and mental aberration in which a woman is so intensely
masculine that motherhood is quite out of the question. I can only deal with
those cases where male elements are present in sufficient quantities in the
female to avert serious dilution of virile qualities in a stock.
Now in such cases marriage is not only possible, but can be quite
successful—or at least as successful as any marriage can be from the
standpoint of the individual—provided that the female elements in the
woman find complete and happy adaptation, and the male elements in her
are prevented from guiding her conduct and her judgment at the cost of the
female elements.
If the male elements in her are not prevented from guiding her conduct
and her judgment, the evil result will be twofold: (1) she will develop her
masculine proclivities at the cost of her female or maternal side; and (2) she
will come into early and bitter conflict with her husband. Either one of

these evil results is sufficient to upset the balance of the unit known as the
family.
What kind of man, then, is likely to be the best mate of the woman with
pronounced masculine elements in her constitution?
The problem is to make her masculine elements recessive in favour of her
female elements. It amounts to this, then—in what circumstances is a
woman likely to abandon her masculine elements as a weapon in the
struggle of life? In what circumstances is she likely to realize their
uselessness to her?
—Only, it may be said, when she has found them utterly useless; only
when she has learned to despise them. But when does this occur?—It
always occurs where the masculine elements belonging to the woman have
in a sharp conflict, or by gradual experience covering innumerable small
incidents, discovered superior, overwhelmingly superior, masculine
elements in the mate. It may never come to a conflict. The superiority of the
male elements in the husband may become impressed upon her by repeated
lessons, by small daily occurrences, that teach her in spite of herself to trust
his masculinity more than hers. When this point is achieved, her masculine
elements rapidly become recessive, and thenceforward give no further
trouble—nay, they may cease to manifest themselves altogether.
For this end to be attained, however, the male—the husband—must be a
creature of overwhelming masculinity, against whom no masculine
elements belonging to any female could possibly measure themselves
without the certainty of absolute rout.[64]
In the same way it might be pointed out that the womanly man finds his
happiest and best adaptation with the female—the wife—of overwhelming
femininity; for then his female elements finding it impossible to measure
themselves against those of his spouse, quickly become recessive and cease
to give any further trouble.
But what actually happens to-day?
Our great past as a virile race has certainly left us an inheritance of
thousands of virile women, some of whom excel anything that any other
European country can produce; but alas! owing to the degeneracy of man,
caused by his bad health, his Puritanism, his bemeaning occupations, and

his absurd obsessions about chivalry, there are not the males to hand with
whom to mate these women.
When one of these women marries nowadays she must perforce unite
with a man who is utterly incapable of making her male elements recessive;
who, on the contrary, is himself so exiguously endowed with masculinity
that his wife not only has every temptation, but also every opportunity, to
express, assert, and impose her masculine elements upon the family and
himself.
But the continuous expression and assertion of male elements in a
woman, and of female elements in a man, at the cost of those elements
proper to their primary sexual organs, far from leading to happiness, result
in nothing but misery both mental and physical, while the ultimate effect on
the nerves is always disastrous.
If, however, there is nothing in her immediate environment to make her
despise her male elements, or to convince her that they can safely lie
quiescent, a woman’s very self-preservative instinct will not allow her to
abandon them to the process of recession, and the consequence is that in
thousands of marriages at the present day the wives are utterly and deeply
miserable on this account alone. Masculine men are lacking. The great past
of the race has produced generation after generation of fine, stout-hearted
women with a large percentage of virile elements. But the mates for these
remaining memorials of our whilom greatness are no more, and thus these
unfortunate women either wander the world unmated, or if mated, suffer an
ill-adaptation that is sometimes even more cruel than spinsterhood itself.
To point to these wretched, unadapted virile women—whether married or
unmarried—as the legitimate butts for our scorn or our contempt, however,
is the acme of ignorance and stupidity. It is the degeneration of man, the
low ebb of his former greatness, that has left them standing high and dry in
conspicuous isolation; and if England’s “trousered women” now strike the
foreigner as one of the regrettable features of our civilization, it is
regrettable only in the sense that it proves positively that this country once
enjoyed a racial greatness of which she can no longer boast, and of which
these women are the belated reminder.
(H) But the chief and most serious objection to the monogamic marriage,
apart from all the pain that it brings to individuals, male and female,

consists in the injury which, particularly at the present day, it does to the
offspring of each generation. From the standpoint of posterity, indeed, the
gravity of this charge can hardly be exaggerated.
It may seem a far cry to speak of the increase of indigestion and of bad or
defective teeth in connexion with the monogamic marriage, but in practice
this connexion is not so remote as it would appear.
The ideal condition for a child that is to be well-constituted and
flourishing in body and mind, is, in the first place, that its mother should be
left in peace during gestation, and certainly that she should be left
scrupulously alone during the period of suckling. From the standpoint of the
race it is of such supreme importance that a child should be reared on
mother’s milk, that everything should be done, no stone should be left
unturned, to secure if possible the certainty of this condition.
With regard to cohabitation during gestation it is only fair to say that
opinions are sadly divided, some doctors maintaining one thing, and others
the reverse. If we require a standard, however, we have only to study the
lower animals, among which the female is not even accessible during
pregnancy. Whereas some doctors will declare, however, that any
cohabitation whatsoever during gestation is most pernicious, all are
unanimous in pronouncing against normal indulgence at such times. But
apart from everything that changeable and uncertain science may
periodically proclaim regarding this question, it would seem obvious that
cohabitation at a time when fertilization is impossible cannot in any case
have been Nature’s design; and if, therefore, there remain the smallest doubt
about the matter—as the division of opinion among medical men reveals—
surely the benefit of the doubt ought, in all humanity, to be given to the
expected offspring!
With regard to cohabitation after the confinement and during the seven to
nine months of suckling that should follow, there can, however, be no doubt
whatsoever. This must be bad; for, seeing that it is of primary importance
that the child during these months should be able to obtain mother’s milk,
no risks should be run which can in any way jeopardize the happy
fulfilment of this condition.
At such times the mother should be left severely alone. She is happy,
exquisitely happy.[65] Her nervous system is concentrated on the one

important and essential object—that of providing for her infant child. Any
action or diversion that tends to disturb the attention of the nervous system,
or to shake this precious concentration upon the mammæ, cannot therefore
be too strongly deprecated.
What is the alternative? The mammæ find the nervous energy of the body
divided. The woman’s system is no longer that of a mother alone; it has
been recalled to its rôle as a wife. There may be conception or there may
not—at any rate, the frequent occurrence of children only a year or thirteen
months older than a brother or sister, shows how often conception does take
place in such circumstances—and the consequence is that the suckling has
to be removed from the breast, in order to become the experimental victim
of every kind of abomination in the form of substitutes for mother’s milk.
To the ignorance of the young mother concerning artificial foods are now
added the ignorance of neighbours, the audacious and criminal lies of
commercial baby-food manufacturers, and frequently the ineptitude of the
local doctor. Against such a conspiracy of error—irrespective of the fact
that no substitute, however good, can possibly compensate for the loss of
mother’s milk—it is not surprising that the infant’s body should rebel; and
the result is a child who cannot by any conceivable chance be saved from
digestive trouble, whom nothing can cure of digestive trouble, and who, by
having alimentary disorders started so early in life, reaches maturity not
only with a strong bias in favour of gastric and intestinal vices, but also—if
indeed his teeth survive so long—with every imaginable kind of dental
disease, from caries to pyorrhœa.
From mothers congenitally and constitutionally unfit either to have
babies or to nurse them, there will surely always come a sufficiently vast
contribution of unhealthy and undesirable babies to each generation; but
these, at least, no ordinary precaution can save, and if their early upbringing
only tends to promote a condition of degeneracy already inherent in them,
so that they find it difficult to survive, we can only applaud this
confirmation of a thoroughly moribund tendency.
But in the case of healthy, positive women, admirably fitted to fulfil all
the functions of motherhood efficiently and pleasurably, anything that
interferes with this healthy functioning amounts to a national and racial

calamity, and it is to these I refer when I emphasize the immense danger of
cohabitation during the nursing period.
Now the monogamic marriage makes this sort of plague almost a natural
necessity, a sort of ineluctable scourge. It is impossible to ask a normal,
positive, healthy man to exercise sexual abstinence for sixteen or eighteen
months—that is to say, the nine months of his wife’s pregnancy and the
seven or nine months of lactation. Only Manicheans, Puritans, or people
thoroughly below par and quite devoid of virility, could possibly think of
recommending such a course. Psycho-analysis has at last shown what all
decent and clean-minded people knew about prolonged sexual abstinence—
that it is both wrongful and harmful. It can only be thought of and practised
by people who have either used religious and alcoholic methods of
sublimating their passions, or else by people who are utterly and
conspicuously undesirable; but in the case of the latter it should be
remembered that it is not abstinence or so-called “self-control,” but semi-
impotence. Where it is attempted by exuberant, positive young men, who
are neither geniuses in art, philosophy or religion, it can only mean disease
—possibly physical, but certainly nervous.
The husband, therefore, in a monogamic marriage consisting of the union
of two positive, healthy people, finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. If
he be sound and normal he cannot dream of abstaining for the number of
months that would be necessary for his child’s welfare (for even if he
indulges in cohabitation during gestation, he still has to face the seven or
nine months of suckling, during which he must at all costs leave his wife in
peace); and yet society (modern society) and convention generally bid him
rather ruin his child than practise even the most innocuous form of virtual
polygamy.
Of course the intelligent, thoughtful and good-natured man in such
circumstances turns to some sort of modern substitute for polygamy. But
the curse of modern civilization, its great blot and disfigurement, lies in the
fact that at this stage in his wise resolve, he must perforce resort to secrecy,
to deception, to concealment, to a hole-and-corner liaison, which may and
frequently does expose him to every conceivable danger and expense—
danger from disease if he be a fool and unwary, danger from blackmail if he
fall into the hands of knaves, danger from ruin if he happen to have lighted

upon unscrupulous associates, and danger from a criminal prosecution into
the bargain.
But in any case, however fortunate he may be in forming his liaison, he is
certain, if found out, to incur the moral indignation of all the snivelling,
worthless, ignorant and “respectable” people of his circle, among whom the
loudest in their outcry will be the spinsters and the Puritans, of whom not
one—no not one—can have or ever has had the faintest beginnings of an
understanding of any aspect of the sex question.
This is how our society is organized. Its whole basis, its whole
prepossession, is directed stubbornly towards degeneration. Nothing that
points, however meekly, the other way, is any longer listened to, much less
observed!
Can it be wondered at, in the circumstances, that the average
unresourceful and timid man, prefers to remain strictly faithful to his
monogamic vows? Can it be wondered at that he prefers to ruin his child’s
constitution and temper?
This is the gravest charge that can be brought from the standpoint of the
race against the monogamic marriage, and it embodies the outline of an
explanation of perhaps half the physical and mental degeneracy of modern
times.
It seems necessary to remind the reader here, that all these strictures
against monogamy only apply to the healthy, normal, positive man and
woman. They do not, therefore, apply to half the existing population. For in
order that a woman may be thoroughly happy bearing and nursing children,
she must be healthy, well-constituted and positive, and in order that a man
may find it impossible to practise what the modern Age arrogantly calls
“self-control,” he must be positive, healthy and exuberantly virile. To half
the modern world this alleged “self-control” is merely a euphemistic cover
for the ease with which they can forget the weak, barely audible call of their
bodies; and to an ever-increasing number of modern women there is
precious little enjoyment associated with any stage in the sexual cycle,
whether it be actual fertilization, gestation, parturition or lactation.
In discussing the value of monogamic marriage, therefore, and the
possible reforms that might be instituted to render it suitable for the positive

man and woman, it is hoped that none of the remarks I shall make will be
thought to apply to the vast crowds to-day who are able to find in
monogamic marriage a satisfactory, though perhaps tiresome, adaptation.
But, in the first place, it may be objected that, since I find so many
serious difficulties in modern monogamic marriage, why do I not
straightway recommend its total abolition, and advocate polygamy, or
promiscuity, or polyandry, or total sexual anarchy?
I might certainly be tempted to advocate frank and open polygamy were I
not too deeply conscious of the very many serious and far-reaching
advantages that the ideal of the family, as at present held in modern Europe,
enjoys over every other kind of social unit designed to solve the problem of
the sexes.
As I have already stated these advantages, from the standpoint of society,
earlier in the chapter, there is no need to repeat them here. Nevertheless,
before proceeding, it might be as well for the reader to glance at them
again, so that he may the more easily follow the modifications I am about to
recommend.
The problem before us, therefore, is how to maintain the monogamic
marriage and give it fresh life, while modifying it in such a way as to meet
the gravest of the objections that can be advanced against it.
But before I proceed it may be as well to utter some words of warning to
those romanticists and sentimentalists who have doubtless been offended by
the strictures I have already pronounced against monogamic marriage.
Let me tell them, therefore, that however much they may be persuaded of
the contrary, it is not I, with my clear and merciless criticism of modern
marriage, who am the bitterest enemy of that institution, but they
themselves, with their wilful concealment of all that I have brought to light.
Modern marriage is now on the rocks. If it has drifted into this perilous
position it is, however, not because the question of its advantages and
disadvantages has been properly ventilated and discussed, and the
disadvantages corrected; but because it has been persistently and almost
maliciously overlaid with false sentiment and bogus psychology, by these
very romanticists and sentimentalists themselves.

If, therefore, it is to be saved, as it should be saved, this end can be
achieved only by a blank refusal to shut one’s eyes to its drawbacks, so that
the latter may be rectified wherever possible; and by a full and earnest
advocacy of its advantages, however unromantic and unsentimental these
may appear to feverish modern sensationalists.
Before proceeding to the review of the specific objections outlined
above, the general criticism of modern monogamic marriage with which the
chapter opened must first be dealt with.

Method of Meeting General Criticisms.

1. Stress should be removed from the alleged permanence of love and the
happiness of the marriage state, as far as possible, and laid on the utilitarian
aspect of matrimony.
2. The young people should be taught realistically that since some sort of
physical adaptation in sex is indispensable to the healthy adult, monogamic
marriage was designed as a means of meeting that need.
3. Its difficulties should be emphasized, and a happy issue shown to be as
difficult an accomplishment as the complexities of the contract would lead
them to expect. They should be told that in their search for a mate they
should show more concern about minimizing these difficulties than about
desiring to have “a good time.”
4. The responsibilities of a family should be understood, and the wife
regarded in her utilitarian aspect as a keeper of the home, as a mother, and
as a guardian of the home comforts; marriage itself, as the sacred garden of
the future of mankind, in which each party to the contract has the privilege
of contributing to that future.
5. Differences of temperament and tradition between mates should be
avoided. Since ill-health forbids our marrying into our own families (the
ideal match), the young must not forget that in going beyond their families
for a mate in order to contradict certain hereditary taints—such as gout, or
consumption, or cancer, or any other constitutional vice—they need not
therefore contradict the virtues and abilities that their particular family line
has cultivated; for this leads to decline, and to the procreation of children

who have no character and no ability. They should seek, as far as possible,
their like in a strange family.[66] The policy of avoiding family taints in too
near relations should not be extended into a policy of seeking opposites.
6. If by chance the expected disenchantment does not supervene in a
form intolerably acute, when marriage has been taught on these lines, and
the two young people discover that they do not necessarily become
surfeited of each other with years, then at least the surprise would be
pleasant, and not as it always is to-day, the sudden unpleasant realization of
complete disillusionment.

Method of Meeting Specific Objections.[67]

(A1) People should be taught quite early how changeable they are. They
should be persuaded of the frangibility of their resolutions, vows, and
promises, and they should learn how deeply they are wedded to variety
before ever they celebrate their final and most fateful wedding.
(2) They should be taught that it is only the exceptions among mankind
that have that genius for love which can endure for a lifetime, and they
should be shown the hollowness of the popular assumption that every one is
capable of une grande passion; therefore, that to arrange their lives as if
they were one of these geniuses in love is not only the grossest form of
megalomania, but dangerous into the bargain.
(B) The problem here is one belonging to the art of life. Those who can
practise this art, and contrive to make themselves always the desired object
of the spouse, have overcome one of the principal difficulties of monogamic
marriage. The French are perhaps the most successful European people at
practising this art—hence the high percentage of happy marriages in
France.
(C) If the approval of each party to the match is understood merely to
mean the recognition by each of the necessity of an adequate physical
adaptation, and the unconscious desire for this physical adaptation in each
is discounted from the enthusiasm felt for the other as mate, then it will be
seen that the residue, which will be a pretty tepid feeling, is by no means
the outcome of an overvaluation of the individual, and the contempt need
not arise.

In other words, teach the girl to subtract the need and the desire for
physical adaptation from her love of the man, and teach the man to do the
same in regard to the girl, and what remains will quickly be seen to consist
only of a strong personal regard, which can hardly lead to the contempt that
would otherwise result if the enthusiasm on both sides were supposed to
arise from the unaided charms of either party to the match.
(D) The remedy here is the same as for (C). If a man realizes that when a
girl protests her undying love for him the bulk of the ardour she feels is
provoked merely by him as her physical adaptation—by him qua male—
and that his individual traits play only a minor part, he will be less likely to
believe that he is capable of provoking a life-long passion because a girl
approved of him as her mate. It is a simple idea to grasp. Both the girl and
the man should always reflect how much nature is helping them towards
their success. When the declaration of life-long love came, it could then be
estimated at its proper worth, without either party fancying that any
exceptional fascination in themselves had been the principal power at work.
(E) It should be inculcated upon all, young and old alike, that
companionship is not to be sought with people whom, in view of peculiar
circumstances, one is bound to see every day and every hour of the day.
The sooner we free our minds from these foolish notions the better. A
man and a woman should seek companions of the same sex as themselves,
and outside their families. Then an hour with the mate—with the lawful
spouse—may come as a rest, as a respite, as a welcome spell of peace when
we need not say or do anything. But this moment of repose, of speechless
serenity, with the sound of someone breathing not three feet away, should
not be confused with companionship.
(F) As society is organized at present it is difficult to meet this objection.
Wherever possible the man should, of course, have a concubine of some
sort. Provided that the wife continues child-bearing, at regular intervals, as
she should, she cannot weary of the relationship as hopelessly as he will.
Women should be taught to realize that the division of labour is so unfair,
that they get so much more entertainment out of sex than men do, that some
compensating feature ought to be introduced into the lives of the latter. The
importance of the act of fertilization alone to the man’s reproductive instinct
cannot be exaggerated. To woman, its importance is only equal to the

proportion it bears to the rest of the sexual cycle. To preserve his peace of
mind and health of body and nerves, therefore, the man must be in a
position to perform his one function with healthy desire. The children he
had from his concubine, if any there were, would not necessarily rank in
law with the children of his first wife.
(G1) In order to meet this objection it is imperative that we should
institute some sort of tasteful method of initiation into sex for young men.
Let the girls be initiated by their proper and natural initiators—their
husbands; anything else is simply modern nonsense; but men should be
properly and carefully initiated before marriage, away from the dangers of
commercial prostitution. This school of initiation, however formed, would
also serve, as it did with the Greeks, as a means of preventing the evils of
total sexual abstinence among the young men who have to wait a long time
for marriage.
The general ideal in modern England is that the eligible young man
should be what is called “clean-minded.” It cannot be disputed that “clean-
mindedness” is a very desirable and very rare quality. But the way to set
about securing it is the very reverse of that which the bulk of modern
English people would recommend. They would say, let the young man
practise rigorous sexual abstinence before marriage, let him go in for sport
and exercise “self-control.” Only thus can he remain clean-minded.
But the very last means by which a healthy positive young man may hope
to attain to a clean mind is precisely the means advocated under the general
head of sexual abstinence. The non-indulgence of the sex-impulses in the
vigorous young male is the means par excellence of destroying clean-
mindedness.
Sexual abstinence, even when accompanied by energetic exercise and
indulgence in sports, by chaining in the desires and wishes arising from the
young man’s reproductive instincts, causes them to become ramping
demons. It causes the imagination to become filled with wish fantasies,
often of a morbid kind. It fills the mind with obsessions, always obscene
and frequently revolting, and if not quickly relieved must undermine the
whole of a young man’s healthy mental and physical attitude towards a
normal sexual life. No mind residing in a healthy young male body,
practising sexual abstinence, can remain clean every minute of the day, and

even in the night it is disturbed by occasional bodily protests in the form of
dreams.
The dangers of not being clean-minded, however, are so great and so far-
reaching, and the risks run by the healthy total sexual abstainer are so
enormous, that it is high time that the truth about this matter were more
widely understood.
To clean the mind, the deep wishes of the body, which refuse to be
flouted, must be satisfied. To forget sex, in fact, the sex instinct must be
indulged. Freedom here, as in the case of any other appetite, can only be
attained by gratification.
It is true that permanent sublimation is also a possible alternative. But
unless a young man is destined for the Holy Catholic Church, who would
wish to sublimate his sex?
It necessarily follows from this, that clean-mindedness in abstinent young
men, as it is generally understood, is a pure myth, a complete
misunderstanding; and that if it is desirable that eligible young men should
be clean-minded (and I am of opinion that it is most desirable), then the
road thereto does not lie through the dark spook-haunted swamps of sexual
abstinence, but through the open sunny highways of healthy sex
gratification, secured from the dangers of commercial prostitution.
(G2) This objection can only be met by the Herculean undertaking of
rearing a type of manhood richer in masculine traits of mind and character,
and possessed of more exuberant virility—a type, that is to say, by the side
of which virile women would immediately feel the inadequacy of their male
elements and would not be tempted to use them as weapons. By this means
alone can the male elements in the finest women be made recessive.
At present the idea of the “manly” man is foolishly limited to one who
loves sports of all kinds, who believes in open-air life, and who, while
having a sense of humour, also wears about him an air of breezy modesty.
By this modesty is meant a disinclination to make any special claims for
himself.
But all women quickly discover the ease with which they become
mistress of the fate of such a man, and it is curious that, in spite of the

thousands of cases of such subjection on the part of this type of man in
English marriages, he still continues to pass as the “manly” man.
The man of will, the man of character, the man who wishes to administer
his own life and the lives of those dependent upon him, because he is
conscious of being fit for the responsibility, and repeatedly proves this
fitness,[68] is being born in ever smaller numbers every year.
It is the system of education in England that is at fault. It produces a
womanly will-less creature, with heavier muscles than the average woman,
but with less grit and less bite in him, with less pride and less jealous love
of responsible action and mastery than the average girl has who is his
partner at golf.
If this seems like calumny or exaggeration, let the reader watch the career
of any one of these alleged “manly” men of England, from his school years
to his tenth or eleventh year of marriage, and if in every case they do not
behold a creature who has long abandoned all self-direction, not to speak of
direction of dependents, I invite him to close this book at this point as the
most unspeakable nonsense.
With such a man, woman’s male elements cannot possibly be made
recessive. But it should not be imagined that she is any happier on that
account. On the contrary, both wisdom and compassion would seem to unite
in advocating the return in ever larger numbers of exuberantly virile men, if
only for the sake of securing happier and fuller lives to the bulk of modern
women.
(H) Regarding, as I do, this objection as so serious as to constitute the
chief and most fundamental objection to monogamic marriage, I can see no
possibility of making the institution sound unless something be done to
meet it. We cannot hope that things will right themselves with an evil like
this at the root of our national life. Suppressing the sale of commercial
products fraudulently declared to be equal to mother’s milk is not enough.
Self-control is the counsel for wax-figures. To be offended by a frankly
polygamic solution and yet to feel that no stigma attaches to women unable
to suckle their babies,[69] and to be conscious of no indignation at the
horrors of the present state of monogamy with prostitution, is wanton and
brutal hypocrisy. Those who are guilty of this hypocrisy have wished to run
the world too long.

I have now examined the monogamic marriage of the positive man and
the positive woman in all its more important aspects. Wisdom would seem,
at all costs, to advocate the salvage of monogamic marriage from the
wreckage of modern society. But before marriage can be saved and handed
on as a valuable institution to the New Age, it must be reformed and
established on a sounder basis. To continue along our present lines, without
correcting our attitude towards marriage and some of the most rigorous
customs that govern it, is simply to steer our course headlong back into
sexual promiscuity, anarchy and chaos. No reform of modern marriage, or
of the ideas that cluster about it, can possibly achieve any good, however,
which does not satisfactorily meet every one of the objections I have
advanced against it. To proceed, as we are now proceeding, by making the
dissolution of marriage easier, is only one step farther in the direction of
barbaric promiscuity. No readjustment can avail that does not go to the root
of the problems involved; and although it may certainly be legitimate to
inquire whether, at this late hour in our torrential degeneration, it is worth
while making any reforms in anything, it does not alter the fact that if
marriage is to be saved, all the objections to it that have been raised in this
chapter will require to be fairly and seriously faced.
Since, however, the sex question is so fundamental as to be almost of
primary importance; since the building of the social unit, the ideal family,
constitutes the first elementary task in all sound social organization, it is not
impossible, fantastic though it may seem, that wise and thorough reform in
this department of life may alone prove the best means of rescuing Western
Civilization itself.

FOOTNOTES:
[50] When I use the word “unnatural” here, I should like it to be understood as
meaning “unnatural to human beings,” for, as we know, “nearly all rapacious
animals, even the stupid vultures, are monogamous,” certain monkeys are so too;
but no anthropologist would argue that monogamic marriage was natural to
man.

[51] The proportion of those who do not wait, to those who do, may be judged
to some extent from the following figures:—
Legitimate and illegitimate births in England and Wales during the nine years
1911-19.
Legitimate. Illegitimate.
1911. 843,505 37,633
1912. 835,209 37,528
1913. 843,981 37,909
1914. 841,767 37,329
1915. 778,369 36,245
1916. 747,381 37,689
1917. 631,189 37,157
1918. 621,209 41,452
1919. 650,562 41,876
[52] See Ch. Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage (London, 1891):
“Christianity, which taught that the earthly country was of no account, and taxed
with impurity all that related to sexual union, made marriage a sacrament, and
consequently an institution quite apart from humble considerations of social
utility.... We shall see how hurtful the influence of Christianity has been on
marriage, and we shall come to the conclusion that in order to manage earthly
affairs well, it is not good to keep our looks constantly raised to the skies” (pp.
205-6). See also p. 245: “Abandoning the modest reality, it [Christianity] lost
anchor from the first and was drowned in a sea of dreams. Marriage, instead of
being simply the union of a man and woman in order to produce children,
became mystic.”
[53] As we shall point out later, these romantic obsessions in regard to
matrimony are chiefly Woman’s work.
[54] See the interesting treatise entitled The Grammar of Life by my friend Dr.
G. T. Wrench (Heinemann, 1908), p. 218.
[55] That is why the world’s greatest love stories—those of Dante and
Beatrice, Romeo and Juliet, and Heathcliff and the elder Catherine (in Wuthering
Heights)—are all stories of a love that was never consummated. In poetry and
fiction, as in life, it is felt that for a great love romance to remain at its lofty level
of passion and desire, the couple enacting it must never have an opportunity of
living together as man and wife.
[56] Naturally these remarks do not apply to the large and ever-increasing
number of women nowadays to whom every stage in the process of child-
bearing, from the preliminaries to the weaning, is a torment and a source of
disgust. But such women are too abnormal, whatsoever their numbers may be,
and too sick and below par to be called positive healthy women, or to be
reckoned with in any discussion regarding what is characteristic of happy and
successful functioning. They are the kind of women who can truly regard
matrimony and maternity as states of self-sacrifice.

[57] Of course this can only happen where the woman is inclined to
pronounced negativeness, otherwise the longing for children drives her away
from a husband who cannot or does not give them to her.
[58] The writer has known one case in which it lasted for years. Sometimes, in
extreme cases, where the girl is too decent to be sacrificed for a lifetime, there is
a nullity suit, and the man produces doctors who declare that he is perfectly
normal. Of course he is perfectly normal! What is wrong about him is the whole
of his upbringing and the effects of absurdly Puritanical notions about sex,
acting upon a peculiarly sensitive nature. For such men are usually extremely
desirable and acutely sensitive. They cannot, however, overcome the ridiculous
prejudices that prevailed regarding sex in the atmosphere in which they have
been reared.
[59] It should be noted that this does not apply to working-class women. The
men of the working classes may be coarser and more brutal than the men of the
wealthier classes, but they are also very much more normal, easy, natural, and
gifted in the matter of sex, and from this point of view generally make excellent
husbands. They may sometimes strike their wives, but they also know how to
love them. The nullity suits and the bad lovers are to be found in the so-called
“upper” classes.
[60] August Strindberg, in a letter written in the autumn of 1888, refers to
England as “a nation of bigots that has delivered itself up into the hands of its
women,” and later on speaks of “England’s trousered women.”
[61] I mean here, by “male characteristics,” only such traits as can be safely
emulated and acquired by the female without the sacrifice or impairment of her
reproductive functions, or of the instincts and virtues that derive from them (see
chapter X).
[62] See Journal Anthropological Institute, Feb., 1892, p. 307. See also
Bancroft, quoting Heame (Native Races), Vol. I, p. 117, where a North American
Indian Chief of some nomadic tribe, speaking of the women said: “There is no
such thing as travelling any considerable distance in this country without their
assistance.” Evidently here too it was an advantage to the race for the women to
be as nearly masculine in their characters as possible. Australian women, like
Cuban women, used to fight beside their men and were very formidable. The
former, when on the march, are said to have hardly troubled to halt for so slight a
performance as child-birth. The newly-born infant was wrapped in skins, and the
mother marched on with the rest.
[63] I shall deal with other standpoints in the chapter on the Old Maid.
[64] This solution of the problem of the manly woman, who is not
undesirable, will thus be seen to be the very reverse, the flat contradiction, of
that advanced by the decadent Weininger. He argues that the male woman does
and ought to marry the female man, and the modern, decadent world, more or
less agrees with him. But this means an accentuation of her maleness, a triumph
of her maleness, at the cost of her femaleness—obviously an undesirable result,
both from the standpoint of the race and the family, the only two standpoints
from which the monogamic marriage has any meaning or can find any
justification.

[65] I remind the reader that I refer here to the healthy, positive woman, all of
whose bodily functions are a joy to her.
[66] See my more detailed discussion of this question in chapter VII of my
Defence of Aristocracy.
[67] The letters correspond to those heading each objection in the body of the
chapter.
[68] Such a man can be, and usually is, just as fond of open-air exercise and
sports as the merely “manly” man.
[69] The fact that at present no stigma attaches to loss of function or failure to
function in the human body, is one of the most conclusive proofs of the
degeneration in taste and instinct that Christianity has brought about. It is
interesting, however, to be told by a woman emphatically that “the incapacity of
a mother to nourish the babe she has borne should be known for a mark of
degeneracy—sign, too, that she was unfitted to have borne a child” (see Arabella
Kenealy, Op. cit., p. 214).

CHAPTER VIII
Breaches of the Marriage Contract
and Divorce

(1) ANALYSIS OF THE MARRIED LIFE OF POSITIVE PEOPLE

I N the chapter on Marriage we saw that the married state is a difficult one for both
parties, but that monogamy is more tolerable to the woman than to the man,
provided always that children are born regularly. It was there seen that woman must
not be falsely likened to man in the claims she makes on monogamy for a perfect
sexual life. The coitus is relatively so unimportant to her, that the man himself, her
husband, holds only a secondary or tertiary place in her life. That which chiefly
matters to the healthy positive woman is that, at stated intervals, her body should be
allowed to experience the whole female cycle of sex, from the coitus to the weaning
of the child.
Indeed, woman’s unconscious demand for the experience of this whole cycle is so
persistent and clamorous that they may be excused who, like Schopenhauer,
perceive in it the importunate voice of the Will of the Species (Wille der Gattung)
resolutely demanding Life, and ever more and more guarantees of its survival.[70]
It is owing to the secondary, tertiary, or, at any rate, minor position of importance
that her husband occupies in the life of a woman who is bearing him children at
regular intervals, that his individual characteristics do not really require to be very
striking in order to prove satisfactory to her. It is for this reason that he must be a
brute indeed, or a drunken sot, or a maniac, if he is to provoke her active hatred
while child-bearing continues. Finding, as she does, her principal pleasure in the
experiences of motherhood—provided that he behaves with average decency and
earns a comfortable living—she asks but little more.[71]
Short of impossible conduct on his part, therefore, it may be taken for granted
that it never occurs to the positive healthy married woman, who bears children at
regular intervals, to make any effort to seek another love affair, and even if the
opportunity for such a love affair should come her way, and be set before her with
all the persuasiveness that deep desire in the other party can lend it, she will, as a
rule, resist it and let it pass by without very much of a struggle. She is finding the
consummation of her being in the life she is leading, and let her husband be ever so
besotted, ignorant, boring and uncompanionable, it will never occur to her to go in
search of another love.

This conclusion is, I think, borne out by the statistics of divorce in England and
Wales, where separations between people who do not attempt to limit the family, is
extremely rare. It is usually said with reference to such cases that it is the children
who “strengthen the union.” This is the popular and even the learned opinion.[72]
The prevalence of this opinion, and the high authority behind it, however, should
not lead us to misunderstand the true nature of the actual forces at work. It is to
some extent true that the presence of children does induce parents, who might be
tempted to separate, to think twice about it. The father pauses before he decides to
deprive his offspring of their mother, and vice versâ. But these wholly impersonal
considerations binding a couple together are as nothing compared with the vital
forces that are actually at work. The impersonal considerations may weigh, but only
if supported by the far more potent promptings of healthy and normal conditions.
Nor should it be concluded too hastily from the low figures of divorce among
people who have large families, that the presence of children operates in causing the
parents to feel a deeper “love” for each other. It is possible for a fruitful couple to be
almost entirely indifferent to each other, as many thousands are, and yet to remain
together, partly because of the impersonal considerations already referred to, partly
from pure conservatism, and also from fear of publicity, or scandal, or a feeling of
shyness, or a certain cynicism which leads them to prefer the devil they know
before the devil they know not.
We must not allow ourselves to be blinded by sentimental tears, therefore, to the
extent of supposing that offspring invariably increase conjugal affection. A long
observation of our fellow-creatures convinces us, on the contrary, that the presence
of children operates in precisely the opposite direction, and that if we are going in
search of “romantic” love, lasting long after the first years of marriage, we are much
more likely to find it among infertile than among fertile couples. Children, far from
cementing the affection existing between their parents, are rather inclined to supply
its most potent and infallible corrosive.
The alacrity with which a young mother becomes absorbed in her young ones, the
lightning speed with which all her activities, mental and physical, concentrate upon
her brood, their wants and their development, is hardly calculated to effect that
“cementing” which is believed to take place in marital relations from the moment
children begin to appear.
Very soon after the birth of the first children there occurs in all decent positive
women a certain definition of the maternal side of their nature, which tends to
convert them ever more and more into the nun, miser, or prophet type—that is to
say, self-centred, impatient of distracting forces, and fanatical. They listen to matters
foreign to the nursery and their children, as if they had been wakened out of a dream
or roused from some thrilling meditation. A certain vagueness comes over them in
regard to all matters not strictly domestic, which, while it may please the wise and

understanding husband, as furnishing a conclusive proof of their perfect femininity,
nevertheless can hardly fail to inform him that his rank in the household has
suffered noticeable degradation.[73]
When he speaks concerning topics which interest him, he is no longer listened to
with the same attention—not to mention eagerness. Indeed, he soon finds that
strangers outside his home are very much more inclined to vouchsafe him an
attentive hearing than the spouse of his heart, and more ready to give serious
consideration to his more thoughtful expressions of opinion. Now, it requires all the
philosophy and understanding in the world—particularly to the man who may
cherish certain ideals about marriage as companionship—to accept this secondary
position in the home of his own creating, without a feeling of resentment or
mortification. How, then, can the full realization of the position be said to “cement”
or “strengthen” the affection between the couple?
It is true that the normal father acquires a deep fondness for his children, and that
this attaches him to the home in which he has suffered his degradation of rank.[74] It
is also true that, as the children grow older and realize him as their father, he may
enjoy a fresh access of the very importance of which their arrival deprived him. But,
while all these facts are readily admitted, they can hardly be used to prove that the
presence of children “strengthens” the union between the parents as lovers. That has
been shaken once and for all beyond any hope of recovery. Economic reasons, the
attitude of each parent to the children, reasons of policy, etc., may now attach each
parent individually to the home; but that does not mean that the other parent is the
lasting attracting force.
Later on, when the children grow old enough to discriminate or to draw
comparisons, and the original dependence, which makes filial affection so fanatical,
is beginning to wane, certain members of the growing brood may, and frequently
do, exhibit preferences for one parent or the other—preferences which nine times
out of ten are reciprocated. The more passionate the attachment between the parents
and the children has been in infancy and childhood, the more likely is this to occur.
But distinctions of this sort drawn by children in favour of one parent only tend to
increase the cleavage already existing; and wherever in such circumstances an
occasion for any divergence of opinion happens to arise between the parents and
sides are taken, as they must be taken where preferences have already been mutually
proclaimed, the declaration of allegiance by becoming overt amounts to little less
than a frankly acknowledged feud with the other side.
Quite apart, however, from the possibility of particular children appealing more
to one parent than the other, and the cleavage which such factions confirm or start in
the home, children and their multifarious wants are, in themselves, an inexhaustible
source of contention. Their particular foibles, their wilfulness, their education, are

matters which, while they are constantly to the fore among the problems of the
home, as constantly give rise to friction, or, to say the least, to differences of
opinion between their parents. When once, therefore, one of the parents—the father
—has naturally and inevitably suffered so marked a degradation in rank that his
word, his opinion, his judgment, is no longer attended to with the respect and
eagerness which he encountered in his wife in their early childless days, it is not
surprising that discussions or arguments, from being merely amicable exchanges of
opinion, should degenerate into acrimonious and heated quarrels—the husband
resenting every minute more and more the cavalier manner in which his views are
rejected as worthless by the “spouse of his heart,” the wife resenting every moment
more and more the presumption with which the mere means to an end, this
sparking-plug and breadwinner, is daring to assume supreme authority over her
brood, her babes, the fruit of her womb.
Now, in view of all this, can it any longer be maintained that this element in the
home—the children—actually contributes to the affection between the parents? In
the happiest cases the ardent love of the father for one child, and the ardent love of
the mother for another, may attach each parent individually to the common hearth;
but to argue as the two judges, above quoted, argued before the Divorce
Commission of 1912,[75] that this proves that children “strengthen the union,” or
“keep it together,” without explaining more narrowly how they effect this end, is to
deliver the whole question over into the hands of the romanticists and
sentimentalists, who will not scruple to arrive at the foolish conclusion that children
perforce increase the affection existing between parents.
I have stated the extreme case in order to make the nature of the cleavage, in so
far as it arises from the presence of the children, as plain as possible. In all families
it does not become acute, because there is too much at stake; and much is therefore
suffered in silence, swallowed down or repressed, for the sake of the home. The
only point it is necessary to make clear is, that when it is also argued here that the
presence of children in the home does contribute to a very great extent to the
stability of that home, something very different is meant from what sentimentalists
and other muddlers are likely to infer. I most emphatically do not mean that the
presence of the children increases the mutual love of the parents—nay, I would go
farther and say that it leads to exactly the opposite result.
What, then, is the precise influence of children?
My reply is, that in all homes where the wife is a positive, healthy and desirable
woman, the repeated birth of a child at regular intervals thoroughly adapts the
woman by giving her a full physiological and spiritual life, and thus reconciles the
principal member of the household (as far as stability is concerned) to the
monogamic state and to the home.

She can afford to control her temper when she is enjoying the perfect serenity of
mind and body that complete adaptation brings. She can afford to pretend devotion,
for economic and other reasons, to a creature who has long ceased from holding
even that space in her heart, which is occupied by her first baby’s smallest toe. She
can afford to put up with years, not to mention hours, of a boring companion, seeing
that he secures her this perfect serenity, and, by his daily labours, guarantees her
own and her precious children’s survival. If she is clever, she realizes how much is
at stake, and she makes allowances for his peculiarities. If she is shrewd enough to
appreciate the true nature of her happiness, she does her utmost, in order that her
bliss may be uninterrupted, to delude him into thinking that he is not merely the
fifth wheel of the family coach. And while all the world points the moral that it is
the children who have “cemented” the affection between herself and her husband,
she knows perfectly well that this affection has long ago been transmuted into a
curious compound of which the principal ingredients are: a desire to play a safe
game, a deep attachment to her children impelling her to secure by fair means or
foul someone who will supply them with all they need, and a patient toleration of a
creature whom she does her best to regard as something more precious than a
necessary evil.
The fact that this curious compound appears to the outside world in the false light
of connubial affection does not disturb her, because, as a rule, she is constitutionally
and congenitally predisposed herself to a romantic interpretation of phenomena, and
eagerly seizes the tinselly cloak the world gives her, in order to conceal the sordid
truth.
In such circumstances the union might last for ever. The only event that can bring
it to an end is the demise of one of the parties to it.
The husband, actuated by habit, timidity, a sense of duty and propriety, attached
to his home by his deep affection for one or more of his many children, and deluded
both by the voice of the world and by the repeated asseverations of his wife into
believing that there is a deep affection uniting them, endeavours to act up to the
part, and as a rule succeeds extraordinarily well. But is that all? There must, of
course, be something else. Just as the woman is induced to accept the situation,
because it provides her with the only prize that is really worth securing in life—
complete physical adaptation[76]—so the man must also be deriving some deeper
satisfaction from the position than the mere pleasure of conforming to a social ideal.
It is otherwise inconceivable that he should persist in “playing up” to his spouse
with the histrionic zeal of a paid actor.
Truth to tell, the father of a large family is attracted to the position he holds by
very deep and very powerful appeals to his most primitive instincts. But again, it
requires emphasizing that these deep and powerful appeals are as a rule quite

independent of his attitude towards his wife, and provided that she do not actively
conspire to displease or to harass him, they will continue to bind him to his home
long after all genuine affection for her has entirely subsided.
These appeals are: The sense of power he derives from the visible extension of
his own identity in his offspring, and: The silent tribute that the presence of
offspring makes daily and hourly to the deepest source of his self-esteem—virile
potency.[77]
Both of these appeals act secretly, and chiefly through the least conscious
functions of his mind, so that he may never be perfectly aware of them.
Nevertheless, they give rise to a constant feeling of self-assurance and self-
confidence which is pleasant and fortifying, and which, being interpreted roughly
by the conscious mind, appears to his intelligent perception in the form of a very
profound attachment to his home and family. This pleasant feeling, like the
complete physical adaptation of his wife, also fills him with a certain calmness and
serenity which enable him to suffer kindly any exasperating peculiarity in his
spouse, to endure with patience her ill-concealed indifference to him as being little
more important than a sparking-plug or breadwinner, and to meet in a conciliating
spirit any opposition with which she may encounter his plans for their children, or
for any other feature of their joint lives. It should not be forgotten either that this
feeling helps him to resign himself also to the conscious depreciation in his own
affection towards her.
The world speaks of him as “unselfish,” “devoted,” “self-sacrificing,” “good-
natured,” etc., and his children are reared, sometimes by their mother, but always by
strangers, in the belief that he is entitled to all these epithets, because there are so
many men who have not acted as he has. He himself, however, accepts these
epithets with a mild pretence of modest deprecation, for in his heart of hearts he
realizes that somehow they ring strangely by the side of his intimate knowledge of
the deep satisfaction he has derived from the whole business.
Now statistics and legal authorities tell us that this kind of marriage is the best,
the most lasting, and the happiest kind of marriage. The judges say that it is because
“children strengthen the union” or “keep the home together.” We have seen in what
way a growing family effects this end. We have seen that it has very little to do with
the attitude of the parents towards each other. Now we have to discover how it is
that, according to statistics, divorces are more frequent where there are only one,
two, or three children, and where child-birth may be said to have stopped.

(2) UNHAPPINESS IN THE HOME OF THE POSITIVE COUPLE

In another chapter the positive woman has been called “the custodian of Life”;
we have already seen that Schopenhauer has graphically described her unconscious
insistence on experiencing the whole physical cycle from the coitus to the weaning
of the child as the Will of the Species (Wille der Gattung) demanding more Life and
thus achieving human survival. We have also spoken of the voice of nature in her,
clamouring not only for Life, but also for Life’s multiplication.
These are only different more or less successful attempts at describing that
instinct which in the positive woman is paramount—the instinct to employ her
elaborate reproductive equipment effectively. The fact that when this equipment
remains idle the existence of the species is imperilled, evidently led Schopenhauer
to discern the unconscious will of the species in the positive woman’s restlessness in
awaiting fertilization. But we should always be careful in using these descriptions of
woman, to remember that in her the end, which is the multiplication of life, is quite
unrealized by her conscious mind. She acts in a way that brings about the
multiplication of life; her instincts impel her to achieve that end; but she is not
intelligently concerned with anything so remote as the will of the species or its
preservation.[78] She is much more concerned with her own personal wishes, her
own personal notion of pleasure, and her own sensations. When once these are
gratified, the fact that the demands of the species are also satisfied is, as far as
woman is concerned, merely a happy coincidence, in which she can have but an
academic interest.
Nevertheless, in judging of her conduct, and in drawing moral conclusions from
it, we must be careful to allow her the full benefit of the view that, in acting as she
does, she is securing the survival of the species in ultimate fact. More than nine-
tenths of the abuse to which women have been subjected throughout the ages has
been due precisely to man’s omission to allow her the full benefit of this view. The
gratification of woman’s passions serves her own end, inasmuch as it affords her
pleasure—Yes!—but it also serves the purpose of the race. That is the fundamental
fact to remember.
In another chapter I have described how Life itself is woman’s hardest
taskmaster, and that her first impulse in all circumstances is to be faithful to this
taskmaster, even at the cost of infidelity to human pledges.
(a) Adultery of the positive spouse through absence of the mate.
Long absences of husbands, therefore, during wars, transoceanic voyages,
explorations, etc., should always be viewed in the light of a rebuff to woman’s
hardest taskmaster. The prolonged absence of the male imposes idleness on the
female’s reproductive organs, and, since the best women are primarily faithful to
Life itself, and only secondarily so to their mates, it must follow that in all cases in
which husbands are absent for long periods, that the call of Life in positive women

becomes too imperious to be ignored—hence the thousands of wives who were
unfaithful to their husbands during the last war, both in England and on the
Continent.[79]
Ignorant, pious people, and even experienced Divorce-Court judges expressed
their horror at the thought that while their men were nobly risking their lives in
defence of “King and Country,” these women in their thousands calmly sought
fertilization elsewhere. But a woman’s character as a woman would be almost
forfeited if she did not act in this way![80] Where else would you have her transfer
her allegiance? Would you invite her to break the whole valuable tradition of her sex
which has been consistently devoted to the multiplication of life, in order to show
allegiance—say to an oath, or to an ideal, or to a moral precept? But even
Schopenhauer himself, with all his detestation of women, would defend them here,
and say, “Surely the species is more important than your trumpery moral codes,
your ephemeral oaths, and your pretentious ideals!”
The English world is almost comic in the light of its most cherished illusions. It
does not base its outlook upon the unalterable laws of life, consequently it is
constantly receiving the rudest shocks and the most unpleasant surprises. The fact
that so many thousands of women in England and Wales were unfaithful to their
husbands during the war came as a shock to the dear Puritanical and ignorant old
ladies, chiefly unmarried, that rule public opinion in England.
Had they ever dreamt, or had they ever been told, that the best women, the most
desirable women, must be unfaithful to their husbands when, through what cause
soever, the latter are forcing them to be unfaithful to Life itself, they might have
shown less righteous indignation and more understanding when the women of the
country in their legions turned adulteresses in war-time.
As it was, the phenomenon was quite unexpected, and proved a most terrible
blow to the national conscience. For it was realized only too shrewdly that if
thousands of these women were ultimately found out, many more thousands must
have escaped the discovery; and thus the character of the nation seemed to have
suffered very severe deterioration.
Truth to tell, the parties to blame were not the women at all, but the hopelessly
vain men who were the co-respondents in the actions, and who understood so little
of female psychology that they interpreted these adulteresses’ fidelity to Life and its
multiplication, as a preference, if you please, for themselves before their legal
spouses. Not knowing of the positive woman’s inveterate fidelity to Life, they
arrogantly imagined that their personal and irresistible attractions were the cause of
these adulteresses’ infidelity to their husbands.

They—these men—were the people against whom the world ought to have
inveighed; for the man who is capable of so misunderstanding the human female as
to flatter himself that it is his personal attractions that are seducing her, when all the
time it is the Will of the Species, neglected by her absent husband, that is impelling
her to go in search of fertilization elsewhere, is not worth the rope with which he
ought to be hanged.
The mistake, as a mistake, is all the more monstrous, seeing that it is the outcome
of maniacal vanity. For no man who was not too much elated by a woman’s
attention to retain calm reflection, could ever be such a fool as to imagine that his
triumph over her husband was due to his own personal charm.
There is no need, however, to labour the question any longer, if once the true
nature of woman be properly grasped; for then it is seen immediately that, in the
best and most vital women, fidelity to Life must take precedence of fidelity to the
mate, to a pledge, to an oath, to a vow, to a custom, or to anything else.[81]
Would the reader perhaps have it otherwise? Would he have a race of women
reared (we are unfortunately not so very far from the attainment of this ideal to-day)
to whom the claims of Life are secondary—women, that is to say, who are so
constituted that they could hesitate between Life’s call and some trumpery human
convention? Would he have women so constituted that their self-preservative
instinct is more powerful than their reproductive? Because that is what it amounts
to. A woman who, when confronted by Life’s call, can calmly discriminate between
that and her own safety, her own future, her own smug ease, and can proceed to
select the latter in preference to the former, is not a desirable woman in the best
sense, for she cannot be trusted to do the right thing for the species in all
circumstances. The spark of vitality in her does not glow with sufficient ardour to
compel her to serve Life’s interests before her own. She is the kind of woman that is
rapidly coming into power in all classes above the working class, but hers is a bad
character, not a good character, for a woman to possess.
No, we want to keep the best women as they are. We do not want to tame the life
out of them. But since we cannot have it both ways, if we insist on women
remaining desirable—that is to say, faithful primarily to Life itself, we must breed a
race of men who understand them, and who in the absence of their fellows on wars
or expeditions can see what is happening when young wives “make eyes at them.”
Any man who in such circumstances imagines he is irresistible and falls in with the
woman’s designs through sheer vanity, deserves a punishment very much more
severe than being mulcted in damages; he has qualified himself for some
disciplinary correction which ought at least to include a term of hard labour. For it is
not his understanding of woman alone that is at fault—although this in a full-grown
man would be unpardonable enough—but his estimate of himself, which leads him

to the gross presumption of imagining himself capable of conquering another man’s
wife single-handed without the assistance of Life itself, pushing her violently into
his arms the whole time.[82] Why, he might just as well flatter himself that a flea has
bitten him, not because it was too hungry to wait, but because there was something
exceptionally delicate or precious in the composition of his vile blood!
Thus adultery, when the wife is the defaulter, is always a case of a man betraying
another man, and never that of a woman betraying her man. Woman, if she is the
right sort, remains throughout faithful to Life. Only if she betrays Life does she
cease to be desirable.
Continuing our consideration of the positive couple, we must now examine the
forces which operate in causing a woman to be unfaithful to her husband while yet
living and cohabiting with him in apparent peace and happiness.
(b) Adultery of the positive spouse through impotence of the male or through
childlessness.
If the positive female cannot tolerate long absences on the part of the male
without endeavouring to seek fertilization elsewhere (because her equipment for
Life’s multiplication is otherwise reduced to inaction) it is obvious that, since male
impotence is tantamount to a complete absence of the male (from the standpoint of
reproduction), she can hardly be expected to tolerate it any more gladly.
Truth to tell, I have known cases of male impotence where the natural modesty
and fear of publicity in the wife prevented an action for nullity and also all
adulterous liaisons; both parties to the match having advanced quite peaceably and
resignedly to middle, and ultimately to old age, without anyone, except the couple
themselves and their immediate relatives, knowing the truth;[83] and it is probable
that in many cases of childless marriages, in modern England, impotence on the part
of the male may be suspected as the cause, although the wife may have been too
timid or too shamefast to drag the misery of their married life before the courts. But
in almost all marriages where this occurs without adultery on the part of the wife, it
is safe to infer that the female of the match is herself partly or wholly negative, or
that she has become so in process of time, otherwise it is inconceivable that her
timidity or shame should thus override the deepest force within her, which, as we
have seen, is the Will of the Species for Life and its multiplication.
In the case of most positive and desirable women it is safe to argue that, where
the husband is impotent, either adultery or a suit for nullity will be the inevitable
result.[84]
Among the positive couples where, although the male may be potent,
childlessness is secured by some contraceptive method, for reasons of economy, or
because it is thought that three, four, or even five years of connubial bliss without

children will allow both parties to have what is known as a “good time,” it is
obvious that the toleration of the positive female may last longer than in cases
where the male is impotent; but since the orgasm does not supply the female with
her complete sexual experience, it is equally clear that the state of childlessness
cannot last an unlimited time without causing trouble. As, however, in these peculiar
circumstances, the psychological processes in the female, which lead her to
adultery, are more subtle than in the event of male impotence, I shall be obliged to
enter into them with more detail.
When the male is impotent the positive woman knows that this is so, and she
consciously realizes the need of seeking fertilization elsewhere, lest she remain
childless for the rest of her life. This alternative is presented plainly to her
consciousness and there is no doubt about it.
In the case of the couple using contraceptives while cohabiting affectionately
together, however, the female is not conscious of a desire to seek fertilization
elsewhere. Not realizing clearly that, in fact, her life is equivalent (but for the
repeated orgasms) to that of the married woman whose male is impotent, she has no
conscious motive or warrant for seeking fertilization outside her home. Very few
women indeed know that the orgasm forms such an insignificant part of their sexual
experience as to leave their bodies completely unsatisfied and disappointed.[85] It
follows, therefore, that if her love for her husband be very deep and guileless, she
may continue living with him for years without taking any notice of other men. If
her positiveness persist, however, despite the deleterious influence of the
contraceptive habit, and she and her husband still continue to pursue their policy of
childlessness, she will eventually find that other men do begin to interest her a good
deal, although this interest at first will appear to herself as entirely involuntary and
innocent. It will begin to show itself by a certain childish eagerness to see her
husband’s friends, to meet them at bridge, at golf, or at tennis. She may suggest
dancing lessons, or regular attendances at public and private entertainments, where
she can meet and talk with other men.[86] All this time her affection for her husband
will continue as strong as ever, and she will not be conscious of his having declined
in her esteem by one iota. If the men she meets at this period in her married life
happen to be men of the world, they will note the eager interest with which she
looks at them, laughs at their clumsiest sallies, and applauds their most trifling
manifestations of intellect, and they will be on their guard and remain punctiliously
formal. If, on the other hand, they belong to the modern herd of arrogant,
overdressed townsmen, whose only mainspring is vanity, and who find in the favour
of a poor starved female body the highest flattery that their stupid, fatuous lives can
offer them, they will fancy that this young wife’s eager attention when they speak,
and her delirious laughter when they attempt to be witty, constitute a tribute to their
intellect and wit. They will flatter themselves that the little woman has been

captivated by them. And from that time onward the little woman in question will be
in great danger.
Now let us try to ascertain precisely what has occurred in the body of the young
wife in question, in order that we may follow and understand her conduct.
We will suppose she has been married three or four years, and all this time has
been living in perfect concord with her husband. Occasional differences there have
been, of course; but they have been unimportant. They have all turned, as is
customary in English houses, upon the ridiculous words “selfish” and “unselfish.”
When the young wife has wanted her way against her man she has endeavoured to
make him yield by giving him a guilty conscience over the matter, and calling his
opposition “selfish”; and when at last he has yielded, she has declared both to his
face and to the world, that he was the most “unselfish” of husbands.[87] Likewise the
man, when he has wanted to exert some leverage upon his wife’s mind, has warned
her that resistance on her part would be “selfish,” and upon her yielding has
admitted that she was “unselfish.” But apart from these foolish verbal quibbles
around the utterly fantastic antithesis “selfish” and “unselfish,” they have had no
quarrels.
Meanwhile, however, although the husband’s sexual experience has been
complete, his wife’s has been of the most fragmentary order. Her reproductive
organs and functions, though repeatedly stimulated as if their important business
were about to begin, have been robbed each time of the natural sequel to that
stimulation. Despite hundreds of alarms and starts, the complete cycle has never
been experienced. As a result, this large reproductive equipment has not only
remained idle, but in this very idleness has also been cheated again and again of its
legitimate expectations, when those expectations seemed most certain of being
fulfilled. These repeated rebuffs, together with the continued inactivity of this
important mechanism, has not been suffered with impunity. Gradually, as the
idleness came to be felt more and more acutely, and the sense of physiological
disappointment became insistent, vague messages were sent up through the young
wife’s subconsciousness to her brain. These messages we can decipher without any
serious inaccuracy as follows:—“We are still idle; we are still inactive. When are we
going to function? We ache to function.”
It must not be supposed, however, that these messages are deciphered as
accurately as this by the woman’s conscious mind. She is vaguely conscious of the
importunate calls from her dissatisfied reproductive equipment; but she is aware of
them only as dissatisfaction. Whence they hail, what they mean, she has not the
slightest idea. If you told her that they amounted to protests from her inactive
reproductive equipment, she would probably feel so utterly outraged that she would

never speak to you or see you again. She would need to be a psychologist herself to
interpret them accurately.
Now it is when this vague feeling of dissatisfaction first becomes insistent in her
conscious mind that she proceeds to act upon it in the manner already described (see
p. 196).
Quite unsuspecting, her husband falls in eagerly with her plans. Truth to tell, any
such marked change in a young married woman is a very serious sign; but the
husband knowing nothing of these matters, and concluding after a review of the last
three years that he has perhaps invited his wife to lead too dull a life, acquiesces
with alacrity in her schemes.
Now if we suppose that the new régime, with its constant round of gaiety and
variety, has lasted a further six months or a year, and still nothing has happened—
that is to say, the young wife’s reproductive equipment is still inactive—a second
and more dangerous phase very rapidly sets in.
The young woman suddenly finds one morning or evening that she is
unaccountably exasperated by the way her husband fingers his tie while he talks to
her or to a friend, or by his habit of knocking his pipe out against the iron of the
grate, or by his manner of clearing his throat, or by any other peculiarity which,
twenty-four hours previously, she was not even aware of having noticed particularly.
At first she is a little alarmed and suppresses her feeling of irritation. She feels
that it is unfriendly, and that he does not deserve a rebuke for something so
ridiculously trifling. Very soon, however, after she has continued to note the
exasperating peculiarity for four or five days, her irritation begins to choke her, and
she feels she must express it. The next time she observes him doing the fatal thing,
therefore, she snaps sharply at him with a “Don’t, Harry, you fidget me with that
constant noise!” or “Don’t, Harry, you always finger your tie in that ridiculous
manner when you are talking—why do you do it?” etc.
She has not the faintest suspicion that this irritation and exasperation over a
trifling aspect of her husband’s behaviour is only a surface ripple of a very much
deeper and more bitter exasperation, down somewhere in her body; and the young
husband, who is even less conscious of the matter than she is, turns to her in a
manner utterly dumbfounded, and wonders what on earth can have happened.
He sees that she is serious. He has noted the strain of bitterness in her rebuke and
its threatening note of anger, and, if he is a man of spirit, he points out to her that if
she is out of sorts she had better go to bed, but that it is absurd for her to start now,
after four years of marriage, rebuking him for something he has done regularly
every day of their married life.

This discussion may end in a serious quarrel—the first serious quarrel in which
words very much more stinging than “selfish” and “unselfish” are used freely for
the first time; and both may retire to bed utterly bewildered by what has happened.
It is about this time that the young wife shows the eagerness described above in
her attitude towards other men. These men may be, and usually are, a hundred times
plainer, prosier and less potent than her husband; but this does not disturb her. She
looks into their faces as if in their countenances alone she expected to find a spark
of intelligence or manliness. Her husband’s superior witticisms fall flat, while at the
grossest pun from his friends she contorts herself with laughter. She organizes
games, picnics, excursions, and even summer holidays, in which some of her
husband’s friends always contribute their share to the entertainment. Quiet lanes in
Devonshire alone with her husband are no longer her ideal. She wants to organize a
“jolly” party for the holidays, and learn to dive and swim with the other girls and
young men of the party.
It is usually at this juncture that some prize fool of a man comes forward, who, in
his superlative vanity and his crass ignorance of the true state of affairs, sets all the
young woman’s restless eagerness, and particularly her attentiveness to himself,
down to the credit of his own irresistible charm.
This sums up the psychology of all co-respondents. They are fatuously vain, they
are criminally ignorant of female psychology, and they eagerly place to the credit
account of their wit, their good looks, their intelligence, and their virility, a so-called
conquest in which the part they have played is no more than that of an old horse’s
leg that is taken into a stagnant pond to catch hungry leeches with.
At all events, if such a dangerous fool happens to be in the neighbourhood at such
a juncture, and the young wife is thrown much into his company, the chances are
that, encouraged by his eager acceptation of a situation in which his personal
characteristics count for nothing, she is likely to imagine herself both “loved” and
“in love”; and then nothing can save her from matrimonial ruin.
Her blind manœuvres will have achieved what her reproductive equipment most
ardently desired; they will have removed her from a male who abused without
satisfying this equipment, and will have thrown her into the arms of a man who,
though possibly inferior to her husband in every respect (as she herself would have
realized had her reproductive organs been content), or at any rate not so very much
superior to him to justify all this fuss, was at least holding out to her reproductive
equipment a fresh promise of fertilization.[88]
And since fertilization is what the will of the species insists upon, and woman is
that will, she must be forgiven if, in the circumstances, she goes over to the vain ass
who imagines he has captivated her affections. At any rate, she herself is in no way

to blame. She has been true to the power to which she owes all her fidelity. The
blame, if any, lies, in the first place, with her husband for having deprived a positive
and desirable woman of her full sexual experience for a number of years, and for
not having realized that this was her trouble when she first became restless; and
secondly, with the co-respondent for having mistaken an exasperated woman’s
longing for fertilization—not for “companionship,” for “understanding” or for a
“kindred soul” as she has declared—for a triumph attributable to his irresistible
attractions. The illicit lover in this case, besides being a vain fool, betrays his own
sex in the man whose wife he robs.
In such cases a little knowledge of sex psychology will, as a rule, save the
situation. But so long as the world continues to be thronged with jackasses who are
ready to go hot all over with pride at every woman’s smile, the ridiculous spectacle
of a co-respondent in every way the inferior, or at least no more than the equal, of
the wronged husband, will continue to be common in our midst.
The strange part of the whole affair is that the young wife’s notion of promised
bliss with the co-respondent is based entirely upon her unconscious or bodily hope
that fertilization is now sure to follow. Unless it do follow, therefore, she finds
herself a twofold dupe; for she has exchanged a man to whom she is at least legally
attached for a man who in nine cases out of ten is either no more than her husband’s
equal, or his inferior; and she is no better off; because, the moment the novelty of
the situation will have died down, the same dissatisfaction that takes its root in her
rebuffed reproductive organs will make itself felt again.
Now the above analysis of the workings of a positive married woman’s mind in
all cases of adultery resulting from physiological disappointment, is typical, and
may stand as the unalterable frame or pattern which all similar cases may be made
to fit. For it matters not whether the marriage is a childless one, or whether it be one
in which, from motives of economy, child-birth has been stopped after the birth of
one, two, or three children; the phases which mark the approach to adultery are
always the same. And it may be said with perfect accuracy that, where positiveness
persists in the woman, and child-birth is stopped while she is still too young for her
reproductive equipment to tolerate idleness gladly, some kind of unhappiness is
bound to enter the home, and as a rule this unhappiness will lead to adultery.
When we note in the statistics of divorce the comparatively high figures shown
for marriages in which there have been one or two children only, therefore, we may
take it that unhappiness began to enter the home in the third, fourth, or fifth year
after the birth of the last child—that is to say, at a period when the idleness of her
reproductive organs was beginning to prove a source of intolerable exasperation to
the young female. And in these cases, as in the classical instance detailed above, the
same phases occur. There is the same sudden interest in matters outside the home—

either golf, tennis, acting, bridge, dancing, a new religion, a new philosophy, or a
Cause. This brings the young wife into touch with a number of strange men, and as
her interest in these increases, she begins to be aware of a vague feeling of irritation
concerning certain aspects of her husband’s person or behaviour, of which
theretofore she had not been conscious. Finally, she becomes infatuated with one of
the strange men, and her feelings for her husband suffer a corresponding change for
the worse. Then only cowardice, caution, or extreme devotion to her small family,
can possibly prevent her from compromising herself.
This is now the time and the place to consider whether there are not perhaps other
physiological and psychical conditions resulting from deliberate childlessness, or
from the deliberate limitation of the family, besides those discussed above, which
hasten the rupture between the positive couple.
There are certainly many such physiological and psychical conditions, and the
foremost of these is the deleterious effect which the constant use of contraceptives
has upon the happy sexual relations of the young couple. That there should be no
known contraceptive which does not in some way mar the complete happiness of
marital intercourse, will perhaps be regarded by some as a very wise dispensation of
Providence;—for certainly the best brains of all nations for many thousands of years
have concerned themselves with the problem, and it seems astonishing that, so far,
nothing really perfect should have been discovered;—but at all events this fact goes
a considerable way towards making the marriage-bed of people who deliberately
limit the family at least a breeding-place of very serious trouble.
Secondly, the very fact that childlessness as an end is incessantly present to the
minds of the young couple—whether they have had no children at all, or only one,
two, or three—during the cohabitation, constitutes in itself an influence which in
time is certain to destroy the savour of their relations at a pace commensurate with
their positiveness.
The reduction of any human function to the plane of sensationalism alone has this
strange result that, in the end, the very sensations it provides tend to decline in
intensity. It is as if sensation alone were an insufficient psychical foundation to
support the whole arch of any permanent human interest or effort, and that where it
is not correlated with the feelings of power or purposefulness, it tends to crumble
and to perish.
The woman in such cases suffers even more quickly than the man, because in her
the physiological disappointment sings in chorus with the psychical disillusionment.
But in the man too ultimate anæsthesia is inevitable; for, sooner or later, the fact that
the natural consequences of his act (offspring) are not forthcoming, will begin to tell
on his self-esteem and his sense of power, with which elements more than half the
savour of sexual relations must certainly have been associated by his ancestors.[89]

A further psychological factor must be reckoned with, which has its share in
bringing about matrimonial difficulties in the state of deliberate childlessness, or of
the limitation of the family, and that is the feeling of aimlessness that ultimately
supervenes, when any two people associate together without any further object in
life than that of eating, drinking, or making merry. This is not due to the fact that
eating, drinking, and making merry are in themselves bad, as the Puritans would
have us believe; but that they are at least monotonous if unrelieved by any other
interests. Life, as we have seen, is repetition with a modicum of variation, and so is
happiness. Nothing that can introduce variety into the home of the young couple,
therefore, ought to be eschewed, for fear lest that lack of variety should be realized
which causes life to lose its interest and its savour. Now children are obviously a
constant source of variety in the home. Each child, in its turn, gives the home a
different aspect, a different outlook, a different responsibility. Children, moreover,
give the family unit a superior aim and purpose, which increases in importance with
the number of the offspring. In this sense alone, therefore, a state of childlessness or
of family limitation (when the number of children is small), in an ordinary home,
where there are no compensating features such as ardent artistic, scientific or
religious preoccupations, constitutes a dangerous state from the standpoint of
connubial stability.
Before concluding this discussion of the positive couple in relation to divorce,
which we propose to do with an examination of the statistics, it will now be
necessary to consider the circumstances under which the positive man himself
becomes unfaithful.[90]
From the statistics it would appear that more women than men go wrong in a
childless marriage. This is only what, from our argument, we should have expected;
because since the coitus represents a complete physiological experience to the man,
he is less likely to become vaguely dissatisfied with childlessness than the woman.
Nevertheless, should the childless state be continued too long—that is to say, for
five, six, or more years—there are sure to arise certain indistinct feelings of
dissatisfaction in the man, which will cause him to become restless and interested in
other women. These feelings will be the result of the total lack of those “appeals” to
his primitive instincts, which the regular procreation of children provides for almost
all men without exception. He will miss the sense of power which he would derive
from the material and visible extension of his own identity in his offspring, and he
will also feel the need of that silent tribute which children would make to the
deepest source of his self-esteem—virile potency.
It should also be borne in mind that, where there are no children, the man is more
likely, owing to the absence of heavy responsibilities, to indulge that inclination to
varied sexual experiences, to which every positive man is subject after some years
of marriage. We have seen how entirely man’s sexual experience depends for its

savour upon desire—the desire he feels for the object of his sexual passion. When,
therefore, through years of regular intimacy with his wife, this desire tends to
decline, there naturally follows a corresponding decline in the savour of his sexual
experience. To correct this he is tempted to go in search of change, of novelty. Now,
when this inclination arises in monogamic marriages, it is frequently checked out of
consideration for the children, and more especially by the secret satisfaction derived
from their presence. Where there are no children, it is much more likely to be given
free rein.
Another factor which ought to be given due weight in the sexual psychology of
man, is his love of protecting and patronizing. The wife who gives him a number of
children not only makes a strong appeal to this love in her own person but also in
the persons of her offspring. He becomes, figuratively, a huge buttress supporting
the dependent members of his family, and this gratifies the self-esteem of the
average simple-minded man, and in innumerable cases induces him not only to
accept the burden, but also to love it deeply and passionately for giving him such a
delightful and constant sense of real importance.
Finally, in the conduct of the man of high ethical development, there will enter
the factor of moral ideals. When once he feels his family about him, he will be
conscious of certain duties, certain obligations, which will preclude all idea, all
velleity, of not abiding by his original pledges. This man will be able to live till the
end of his days with a woman, however much his feelings may have changed
towards her, and still give the world the impression of being a most dutiful and most
devoted husband. Temptation, sexual passion, the desire for variety, will simply not
enter within his purview. The moment an irregular thought occurs to his mind, it
will be, as it were, “switched off.” It should, however, be remembered that when
such men are positive by nature, they will usually be found to practise in their
leisure hours some kind of sport (hard walking, cycling, golf, riding) or industry
(carpentry—true of thousands of Englishmen to-day; wood-cutting, e.g. Gladstone
and the ex-Emperor of Germany; stamp-collecting and numismatics—true of
thousands of modern Englishmen) or religious activity (Christian, Spiritualistic or
other propaganda) in which much of their sex becomes absorbed.
In Chart I, I have given figures covering a period of twenty-one years—from
1899 to 1919 inclusive, for England and Wales; and the most important conclusions
to be drawn from them at a glance are the following:—
(a) The preponderance of divorces which occur as the result of husbands’
petitions over those which occur as the result of wives’ petitions.
Bearing in mind the more insistent impulse to variety in sexual experience which
harasses the male throughout life, this preponderance of husbands’ petitions only
tends to show the extreme difficulty with which women can tolerate either the

premature cessation of child-birth or no child-birth at all. For although it may be
argued that in order to obtain a divorce the woman must charge her husband with
something more than the mere indulgence of his craving for variety, and therefore
that proportions are misleading from this point of view, it should also be
remembered that, where there has been a transference of affection with adultery on
the male’s part, desertion would necessarily follow, and therefore supply the
minimum grounds for the woman’s petition.
Chart I. NUMBER OF CHILDREN AT TIME OF FILING PETITION OF DIVORCE.

1899. 1900. 1901. 1902. 1903. 1904. 1905. 1906. 1907. 1908. 1909.
Number of
Children W.
H. [91] H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W.

No children 175 147 167 156 188 166 230 185 183 170 178 147 180 167 201 161 169 182 198 235 213 197
1 child 97 83 80 84 129 91 140 115 105 133 110 116 114 137 120 127 91 128 119 136 104 137
2 children 58 57 59 53 93 57 98 62 76 75 78 82 73 86 73 80 84 82 86 67 75 89
3 to 6 children 66 69 68 63 86 67 131 65 128 70 97 66 83 69 62 78 84 70 82 71 80 79
Above 6
4 14 6 9 10 11 9 15 11 11 6 7 3 5 9 12 6 7 3 11 3 6
children
Number
1 1 2 1 2
unknown

Number of 1910. 1911. 1912. 1913. 1914. 1915. 1916. 1917. 1918. 1919.
Children H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W. H. W.
Total successful
412 343 466 393 506 414 548 450 607 468 682 461 781 382 1,044 379 1,807 516 4,076 1,009
petitions
No children 412[92] 408 444 493 496 491 563 660 1,043 2,338
1 child 222 281 347 372 366 379 382 433 707 1,627
2 children 146 201 193 194 241 248 231 307 488 930
3 to 6 children 119 170 160 192 228 231 200 285 423 831
Above 6 children 9 12 10 12 17 17 16 19 27 36

Chart II. DURATION OF MARRIAGE UP TO TIME OF FILING PETITION OF DIVORCE.

1910. 1911. 1912. 1913. 1914. 1915. 1916. 1917. 1918. 1919.
Less than 1 year 14 17 29 22 18 35 27 36 75
1 and over to 2 29 26 25 44 17 40 58 78 86 156
2 and over to 5 110 143 145 136 150 130 192 274 516 1,171
5 and over to 10 284 353 378 427 394 371 383 482 858 1,947
10 and over to 20 369 418 440 481 583 618 577 667 930 2,008

Above 20 116 119 155 146 182 194 165 177 262 405

The high figures for faithless wives revealed in these statistics, therefore, point to
the extreme refractoriness of women under the conditions imposed by modern
economic pressure, which makes the limitation of families an ineluctable rule in
most homes. This is furthermore confirmed by a comparison of the high figures
given for childless marriages, or marriages of only one, two, or three children, with
those given for marriages which have more than three children.
On the other hand, the proportion of husbands’ petitions to wives’ in those
marriages in which there are more than six children, leaves no doubt that in most of
these cases not the wife but the husband was at fault, which is exactly what we
should expect.
(b) It is interesting to note the steady rise in husbands’ petitions during the years
1915-1919—all years of war: the figure 4,076 as against 1,009 in 1919 constituting
the most convincing evidence we have of the difficulty with which women tolerate
the lack of children or the cessation of child-birth, even when it is due to the
absence of their husbands on what was believed to be a “Crusade.” It seems
probable that the bulk of these women must have been young, for the total number
of divorces for that year, in cases where there was only one child or none, amounts
to 3,965.
Of course, from my point of view, the value of these figures is lessened by the
fact that it is impossible to differentiate between marriages of positive and negative
couples; but perhaps the steadiness with which certain characteristic proportions are
revealed in them compensates to some extent for this defect.
When we add to this Lord Salvesen’s evidence before the Royal Commission on
Divorce (1912), in which he declared that in Scotland the proportion of divorces
among childless couples was “immensely larger” than that among fertile couples, it
can leave little doubt in our minds that, in order to be so constant and universal, this
rule must be based on unalterable laws taking their root in deep physiological and
psychological conditions, and that the sentimental and emotional factors can be but
surface phenomena accompanying rather than affecting the operation of these laws.
For, if we have been right in arguing that the presence of children does not operate
as a strengthener of the union by cementing the love of married couples, but by
meeting certain instinctive needs in their physical and mental constitution, it is clear
that the sentimental elements in the union are the most insignificant—hence their
inability to tide large numbers of positive couples over the periods of physiological
and psychical stress which childlessness or the limitation of the family imposes.

(c) When we turn to Chart II and examine the figures given for the duration of the
marriage up to the time when the petition was filed (for the years 1910-1919), we
also note a fact that does not surprise us, and that is the immeasurably higher figures
given for the four years lying between the fifth and the tenth years of marriage, than
for all other periods.
It is precisely during these four years that those two disturbing forces which do
most to mar modern marriages are most likely to begin to operate, viz:—
(a) The irascibility of the wife as the result of the cessation of child-birth; this
irascibility showing itself in a decreasing satisfaction with her home and her
husband, and an increasing interest in outside amusements and occupations, and in
other men.
(b) The loss of desire for his wife, in the husband, which causes him to seek other
sexual experiences.
With regard to (a) it is obvious that during the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth
years of marriage, most couples who are attempting to limit their families will have
ceased from procreating. They will have had from one to three children, and will
have decided to have no more. The wife will therefore tend to become increasingly
impatient with her lot, and ultimately make a confidant of some idiot of a man, who
will interpret her marked attentions as a proof of his irresistible charm, and the two
will end in what the world is pleased to call “falling in love.”
With regard to (b), six, seven, eight or nine years is a long period over which to
extend the average man’s desire for fresh sexual experience, and in the event of a
cessation of child-birth (which means the use of contraceptives—always
unfavourable to happy marital relations) it is during these last years of his first
decade of married life that he is most likely to feel the ardent desire for a change.
The two factors (a) and (b) conspiring together soon force the couple asunder, if
they are positive, brave, and intolerant of conventions and rules—hence, I believe,
the high figures for the period in question.

Chart III. DIVORCES ACCORDING TO PROFESSIONS.

Navigation
Inland Domestic Professionally Unspecified
Agriculture. Mining. Manufactures. and Trade.
Transport. Service. Employed. Occupations.
Fishing.
1908 26 17 168 14 42 345 13 298 87
1909 19 21 172 25 29 253 10 244 110
1910 22 11 118 18 38 344 12 267 78
1911 21 9 194 24 30 366 12 320 97
1912 24 17 211 38 21 347 24 389 87

1915[93] 37 26 362 31 84 381 11 361 79
1916 28 24 310 43 60 397 27 444 1
1917 44 48 419 33 79 446 18 545 73
1918 61 95 744 63 204 591 34 826 79
1919 133 192 1,581 78 468 1,174 64 1,903 169

In Chart III we have the statistics for divorce, tabulated according to the
occupations of the husbands. Now, according to the 1911 census, the figures given
for the total number of males engaged in three out of the nine categories is as
follows:—

Professional callings 367,578[94]
Agriculture 1,140,515
Mining 1,039,083

If we compare these total figures[95] with the corresponding figures given for the
divorces in each category, we see the enormously high percentage of divorces that
occur in the professional classes, as compared with both the mining and agricultural
industry, and although in accounting for this conspicuous difference we have to bear
in mind the facilities, chiefly financial, for procuring divorce in the professional
classes, we are nevertheless confronted by a disparity which requires some
explanation.
When, however, we consider the greater prevalence of birth-control among the
professionals, with the inevitable unconscious disaffection that it introduces among
the wives of that class; when, also, we reflect upon the more artificial circumstances
in which this class lives, and the higher and less natural demands that its spouses
make upon each other; when, moreover, we remember the greater irascibility and
nervousness, together with the usually lower passion, of all people engaged in the
more intellectual pursuits of life, which make them more prone to chafe under the
many vexations to which married life gives rise, and less likely to attain that
physiological serenity which is the pre-requisite of all solid contentment, these
statistics seem to confirm the conclusions at which we have arrived, and, on the
whole, to support the analysis we have made both of the marriage tie itself, and of
the factors that conspire to loosen it.

Having dealt with divorce in so far as it concerns positive couples, I have now to
deal with it in its relation to the negative man and woman. My present task is,

therefore, by far the more difficult of the two, seeing that the moment we leave the
uniformity of natural law and the regularity of indomitable forces, we find ourselves
in a maze of possibilities, which, while they defy enumeration owing to their
extreme multiplicity, also elude all effort at classification because of the infinite
combinations and permutations that low health and eccentricity are capable of
producing.
It must be clear that the moment the driving force of healthy, normal passion
ceases to be the motive actuating male and female, the vagaries of human conduct
are no longer calculable. One knows what in certain circumstances a healthy
passionate animal will do. It is impossible to foretell what an unhealthy or
unpassionate one will do.[96]
To describe all the possible complications that will ultimately lead a negative
couple into the Divorce Court, or cause them to seek a judicial separation, or induce
them to conclude that they would be happier living apart, is therefore beyond the
powers of any human being. The negative man and woman, like the invalid or the
eccentric, must remain an enigma, because natural laws and forces no longer
operate normally or calculably in them.
Nevertheless, it is possible, in a rough way, to outline certain features which are
more or less common even to sub-normal people, and from which, therefore, certain
general rules of conduct may be inferred.
For instance, we may say of negative men and women that:—
(a) The physiological promptings of an instinctive and organic kind are never
likely (as with their healthier brethren) to weigh very heavily with them. (The
ethereal lovers who believe that marriage is a union of souls.)
(b) The sentimental and intellectual aspects of a sexual situation are more likely
to determine their conduct than its vital or reproductive aspects. (The lovers in most
modern novels, in which “Luvv” is supposed never to have bodily union as its aim,
but only companionship, or sweet words, or pure affection, or a life of “unselfish”
mutual service, or some other high-falutin’ nonsense.)
(c) The force of passion being no longer the ruling determinant in them, such
factors as vanity, caution, cowardice, and even indolence, may dominate the sex
impulses and direct conduct to their own ends. (The bulk of hasty marriages made
during the war were of this nature, vanity both in the man and the woman giving
rise in each individual to such elated feelings that these were mistaken for depth of
passion.)
(d) The intellectual attitude towards love, and the passions which it tends to
assume, may cause negative people to imitate without feeling the behaviour of their

more passionate fellows and their love affairs, thus producing a false but fairly
accurate image of true passion. (The actors in modern society, all of which are by no
means professional histrions.)
Dealing with (a) first, it must be fairly obvious that where physiological
promptings are feeble, deep bodily disappointments, and particularly rebuffs to the
reproductive system of the women, can be tolerated very much more placidly than
where physiological promptings are imperious.
Thus all negative women are likely to endure for a very much longer period a
childless marriage, or a marriage in which child-birth has ceased in the first four to
six years, than are their positive sisters. In all “happy” marriages of this kind,
therefore, which have only terminated with the demise of one of the parties,
negativeness may certainly be suspected in the woman, and, since like tends to
attract like, also in the man.
When, therefore, unhappiness supervenes in such a home, other causes must be
sought than the secret and unconscious revolt of the woman’s reproductive
equipment, or the man’s fiery need for sexual variety.
Negativeness being the outcome of an atonic condition of the body, or, at least, of
the genital organs, and negative women being less likely to function properly than
their more positive sisters, there will naturally arise a tendency, in all such matches
(owing to the small amount of pleasure and gratification that is derived from the
whole of the physical side of marriage and motherhood), to discount the
physiological side, and to exalt only states of the soul and the mind. These people
will have the old maids of all Puritanical communities with them when they cast
scorn upon the pleasures of the body; and as their number is increasing daily, the
chorus of body-despisers grows steadily louder and louder in all the countries
enjoying Western Civilization.
The women in these matches are likely to confound motherhood with self-
sacrifice and martyrdom, and their husbands to confound the birth of a child with
the threat of financial ruin. Science, costly and inefficient science, helps them at
every step, and when finally child-birth stops, which is never too soon (for the
women in any case), and nurses and perambulators take their leave, science remains
to the last to try to repair or neutralize the debility that unwelcome fertility has left
behind.
In their most private moments the women of such matches speak of the “horrible
sensuality” of men, and of the havoc this sensuality has made of their lives; and in
thought and in action they incline to everything that emphasizes the soulful or
spiritual side of life. They cultivate a taste for extremely soulful literature or poetry

(Maeterlinck’s Serres Chaudes, for instance) and tend to gravitate towards those
forms of Christianity that are most quintessential.
Divorce, if it is ever resorted to by such couples, is usually the fault of the
husbands. They may at length manifest a desire to have a breath of air untainted by
sickness or debility, and in that case usually become entangled with a woman quite
as negative as their wife. The women hardly ever go further than to cultivate an
apparently ardent but platonic attachment to some poet, musician, or other artist, to
whom they write long soulful letters, full of hints about a non-physical kind of bliss
in love, which they have longed all their lives to experience. But in a large majority
of cases, negative couples of precisely this kind tend to finish their days more or
less tiresomely together, each bewailing the fact that such a white elephant as the
body ever became associated with the more “exalted” spiritual side of man.
In regard to (b) it can only be said that the type is so very prevalent that it is
becoming almost the norm of modern civilization. Its principal characteristic is that
both the male and the female tend to choose each other for reasons which are as
remote as possible from the body. The men of this type choose “clever,” “artistic,”
sylph-like, narrow-hipped “sweet” women, with thin slender hands, spiritual
interests, and probably a history of some intestinal irregularity in their past. The
women, while aspiring to a high ideal of health and manliness in their mates, have
not the instinct to pick out the passionate man, but usually select one, who though
he may be big of body and limb, intellectual and “breezy,” is quite fireless,
unpassionate and dull.
The couples belonging to this type can also endure childlessness or a cessation of
child-birth with almost perfect equanimity; the man being very much more
concerned about the figure he is cutting as a chivalrous, sporting mate, who
observes the rules of “cricket” with his spouse, than about any other aspect of their
married life. He studies with asinine perplexity the so-called inscrutable
complexities of his wife’s mind, and is always making “allowances” and preaching
the doctrine of give and take. His great charm, according to modern values, is the
fact that he regards women as utterly incomprehensible. Women are so powerful
nowadays in determining opinion, and have so often and so emphatically called the
men who show some insight into women’s nature “prigs,” that at the present day
both women and men unanimously call any man who voices penetrating views
about woman, an out-and-out prig. In fact, in order to be a prig it is necessary to
have shown some ability in analysing the true nature of woman.[97]
The women in such unions very frequently outstrip their male companions in
mental nimbleness, and this disturbance of the proper balance frequently leads
them, in their vague discontent, to become prominent exponents and defenders of all
those claims of sex-equality and sex-levelling, which have agitated the home life of

northern European countries (where most negative people are to be found) for the
last hundred years. The spectacle of their lady-like and unobtrusive male, there can
be no doubt, is usually the first incentive towards these kinds of activities, and,
seeing that they have the constant substantiation of their claims in the tame animal
with whom they cohabit, it is not surprising that they frequently enter into
“Woman’s Cause” with a conviction and a fervour very much more intense than the
more academic enthusiasm of the old maid who is usually their associate in the
movement.
Indeed, it not infrequently happens that the “male” of these militant women is
himself an active collaborator in his wife’s public work, and so complete is their
intellectual and sentimental agreement on the question, that he will echo her words
with the docility of a parrot.
The type (c) is also common enough and is growing more plentiful in all classes
of society. It is the negative type which approximates most to the passionate, tragic
type of real life and fiction; because, while it possesses no deep passions, its
extreme vanity makes it capable of the wildest excesses.
In all the possible situations of married life, this type never consults any other
arbiter than vanity, and it is only when its caution, cowardice or indolence can
overpower its vanity that the latter does not decide the issue.
Having no real deep passion to direct them, the men and women of this type are
actually drawn into marriage in the first place solely from motives of vanity,
because the state of being betrothed is a state of (1) supreme importance, (2)
conspicuousness, (3) intense and unscrupulous mutual worship, and (4) romantic
glamour.
Their marriage is likely to be the least stable of all marriages among negative
people, however, for the moment their vanity ceases to be fed, or humoured, they
are likely to weary of an association that affords them ever less and less of the joys
of their engaged days. Lacking the sound physiological promptings which make a
fully-adapted life sufficient for their happiness and serenity, they become restless
the moment (1) adulation declines from the quarter of the spouse, (2) the attention
of their world ceases from being concentrated upon them, and (3) that feeling of
exaltation which filled their breast during courtship—and particularly on their
wedding day—shows signs of waning.
The woman in this kind of match finds out soon after marriage that while she has
become the mistress of her own home, she is living in an atmosphere which,
compared with that she had grown accustomed to in the days when her
matchmaking mother directed her life, and during the months or years of her
courtship, is depressingly deficient in appeals to her vanity.

Her husband is securely bound to her by law. His first raptures are over, and the
two seem to be settling down to a hum-drum existence, in which those deep thrills
of yore seem entirely to have gone from her life. But precisely those thrills were the
breath of her nostrils. All the joys of marital intimacy with the man she “loves” do
not make up for the loss of that. Her body is not tonic or vital enough to provide any
comfort for the exaltation her vanity once afforded her.
She therefore contrives so to modify her hum-drum existence as to restore to it
some of the atmosphere of her late adolescence and the days of her courtship. She
goes in search of company; she insists on men coming to the house. She sings, or
acts, or goes in for sports—all with a view to restoring that atmosphere in which she
became engaged. In the end, she easily finds some idiot of a man who will be
ignorant and vain enough to court her, and when this happens she will at last breathe
deeply again.
These courtships which the vain negative woman contrives to bring about, in
order to feed her vanity, may or may not lead to adultery. Frequently they do,
because, although she is certainly not actuated by passion in contriving them, she
may by chance light upon a paramour who is passionate, and then, in order to
prolong the farce, she finds she must yield to his importunacies. Indeed, unless she
do yield, the whole of the realistic nature of the love affair, which she has done her
best to impart to the experience, will be destroyed. Thus, despite her lack of real
passion, this kind of vain adulteress frequently finds herself in the Divorce Court,
with the most damning evidence against her, when all the time she has never desired
the illicit consummation. What was necessary—nay, essential—to her, was the
breath of adulation, not the final embrace of the procreator. She wanted a life that
was a long courtship, because courtship is the time when vanity receives its
strongest appeals. As, however, she could hardly simulate une grande passion
without actually appearing desirous of the consummation, her first marriage is
ruined.
Very frequently indeed these women do not allow the consummating step to be
taken. Not being at all disposed to it physically, their caution, their cowardice, and
their indolence easily get the upper hand, and they ultimately disappoint their
expectant lover; but as a rule this happens only when they have squeezed him dry of
every possible flattering epithet and attention.
But, the reader will object, as far as behaviour and results are concerned, where is
the difference here between the negative woman acting on the impulse of vanity,
and the positive woman acting on the impulse of passion?
To judge from the evidence heard in the Divorce Court, the difference is
admittedly slight. There is the same dissatisfaction with the home and the mate,
leading to the same longing for amusements and activities of all kinds which

promise a chance of variety. In actual practice, however, the differences are marked.
The positive woman goes about the business with more solemn, even sullen
determination. She does not smile, laugh, and frivol about it as the negative woman
does. The latter betrays her immediate aim, which is the satisfaction of vanity, by
her extreme enjoyment of every step along her irregular path. She enjoys the mere
means to an end, which supply the gratification that her vanity needs. The former,
having only the end in view, accepts the means as a necessary preliminary, but these
means obviously leave her much more unmoved than they do her negative sister.
Thus negative women are notoriously what the French call grimacières. They
proclaim their true nature by the perpetual grin that distorts their features throughout
the whole period in which they receive attentions from their worshipper. Deep
passion does not grin in this way. It is either too deeply stirred, or it is too shy, to
make an open exhibition of its feelings. Besides, it is greatly agitated and anxious
about the issue.
The vain, negative woman, moreover, is always conscious of an observing public
when she is in the company of her admirer, and her triumphant glances at onlookers
in such circumstances are a sort of challenge to them to contemplate her in the full
intensity of her joy. Part of the gratification of her vanity consists in drawing the
envious looks of other women upon her. Hence, too, her perpetual grin, a good deal
of which is meant for public notice. The positive woman, on the other hand, is too
deeply interested, too seriously concerned, to be able to give a thought to the
onlookers. She may even shun the crowd. In her, everything is subordinated to the
principal end she has in view.
The vain, negative woman, moreover, because she does not really desire the man
who happens to be worshipping her, will brook no breach of manners, of chivalry,
of steady worship from him. She is constantly on the alert and vigilant. She keeps
him up to the mark, and will quickly rap his knuckles if the incense he is burning at
the altar of her self-esteem is the least bit stale, or burns with only a moderate fury,
or is swung with any sign of diminished zeal. The passionate woman, on the other
hand, will bear anything from the man she really desires, except—absence.
The vain woman’s hatred is roused, not by a refusal to cohabit with her, but by a
noticeable lameness in her worshipper’s flattering fluency. She hates those who
wound her vanity, not those who cheat her will to Life and its multiplication. She
will become homicidal only if she is made to look small or ridiculous, not if she is
left sterile. She loathes situations in which she cannot make a display of her bliss.
The positive woman, on the other hand, longs for privacy and secrecy, and
forgives nothing less easily than a lack of virile ardour in her male pursuer. He may
be silent to the point of dumbness, inarticulate to the point of being unable to
apologise when he spills his soup over her dress at table;—all these things she

overlooks if he has the first pre-requisite of Life, which is virile ardour rising to
impatient and restless importunacy. On the other hand, the worshipper who spills his
soup over his negative mistress’s dress in a restaurant or any public assembly, would
thenceforward be loathed on that account alone. Because it is mortifying to one’s
vanity to be made ridiculous in public.
The negative man of this class is of the cold Don Juan type, who gratifies his
vanity more than his sexual appetite by repeated conquests. He too soon tires of his
wife and of his home. He does this all the more readily, seeing that his marriage
itself has usually been quite an unintended consummation on his part of one of the
many flirtations his vanity led him into in early manhood, and that he has been
chafing ever since it was finally settled at the thought of the many conquests he
might have made before taking the final step.
His nostrils, too, yearn for the hot breath of adulation. He is a tormentor of
positive women, because he can so readily hold himself aloof at the last station
before the terminus.
If this man becomes unfaithful, it will be because his enormous vanity has
overcome his caution. In order to extract the last and most enthralling confession
from a young woman’s heart—which will cause him to reach his highest pinnacle of
exaltation—one day he will go too far, either in his protestations or in his caresses,
[98]
and then, if he is dealing with the kind of girl or woman who knows of no facile
retreat from such avowals, and who is really in earnest, he will find himself
impelled in a direction and to an end which he can truthfully swear he never had in
contemplation at the outset.
The fact that the law of England deals too lightly with this kind of dandified
scoundrel (for such men almost always dress well) is due not merely to the fact that,
generally speaking, it is grotesquely lenient to correspondents as a class, but also to
its inability to distinguish between the adultery of the negative man and woman,
whose misdemeanour is the outcome of vanity alone, and whose ruin of another’s
home is, therefore, wanton and unnecessary, and the adultery which is the outcome
of genuine passion, and which, therefore, partakes far more of that quality of human
action which is elemental and inevitable.
This man only becomes tragic under a snub. He finds no infinite resource in a
deep knowledge of his own value, and is, therefore, incapable of self-consolation
when shown the cold-shoulder. Hence the woman who does not fall in with his
scheme of mutual worship, incurs his homicidal loathing. She destroys his joie de
vivre, his very primum mobile, the source of his will to live. His career is a series of
escapes from female fires he has deliberately kindled; but he is always more ready
to forgive a burn than the fuel that refuses to flare up under the power of his
bellows.

Before concluding section (c) perhaps it would be advisable and also helpful to
give a brief analysis of the psychological forces which impel the negative, vain man
and woman along their career of vanity-gratification at all costs. For, while to
understand them will be in a measure to exonerate them, it will also serve as a
means of recognizing their type when we see it.
Now the fundamental truth to be grasped about vanity is that it is always found in
conjunction with modesty. It is the intense modesty of the vain person that forces
him to gratify his vanity at every turn.
What, then, is modesty? In ultimate practice it amounts to an inability to set a
value on oneself, an inability to place oneself according to one’s worth in the
graduated hierarchy of human beings. The modest man waits to be given his place,
to be told where he stands, to be priced and valued by his fellow-men. Compliments
mean a good deal to him, because, since he has no settled opinion of himself, they
promote his self-esteem. In short, his self-esteem fluctuates according to his receipts
in compliments and abuse. And since his good spirits depend largely upon his self-
esteem, his spirits may also be said to fluctuate according to these receipts. Unlike
his proud brother, he does not hold a good or poor opinion of himself because of an
inner conviction of his worth, which is settled; he holds it because he has been
modest enough to wait for the world to give it to him.
But this makes him entirely dependent upon his fellow-men for his knowledge of
his worth, and consequently for the condition of his spirits. By throwing him always
upon the judgment of his fellows for his opinion of himself and his good spirits, his
modesty therefore tends to lead the modest man into the constant practice of trying
to seduce his fellow-men to such an opinion of himself as will not cause his spirits
to suffer. He covets good opinions, because on them alone can his self-esteem, and
therefore his good spirits, thrive. In order to enjoy that comfortable feeling of
satisfaction which promoted self-esteem affords, he is constantly tempted to
persuade his fellow-men into giving it to him. This makes him amenable, and what
the modern world calls “lovable,” because he glows under compliments, and
becomes pliable and susceptible to influence, and by the side of him his proud
inflexible brother appears to the modern world as cold and inaccessible.[99] The vain
man asks: “What did So-and-so say of me?” or “What did So-and-so think of me?”
And according to the answer he receives he is either happy or depressed.
The proud man does not care what So-and-so thinks of him. He is not concerned
with public opinion. He knows his own good and bad points, and no views about
himself, entertained by his fellows, can modify that knowledge one way or the
other. Consequently he is not always busy trying to seduce his circle of relatives,
friends, and acquaintances into a good opinion of him. This makes him stiff,

independent, unamenable, and dignified—in fact, everything that the modern world
is least able to tolerate with patience.
The modest man lives in his neighbour’s views of himself. He depends on them
for his self-esteem, and therefore for his joie de vivre. On these views he measures
his worth. It is only human, therefore, that he should be anxious to make them as
favourable as possible.
Now it is this constant effort to make these views as favourable as possible, and
the pleasure he feels over the success of his efforts, that constitute the characteristic
known as “vanity,” for which the modest man is notorious. It is obvious that when
no other deeper motives interfere—as in the case of all those people whom I call
negative, and whose physiological or bodily promptings are hardly audible—vanity
very soon becomes the only mainspring of action. It constitutes the only tribunal
before which life’s alternatives are drawn for examination; and, according to
whether vanity promises to be gratified or not by a certain course, that course is
adopted or rejected.
When I say, therefore, that these vain, modest and negative people approximate
nearest to the passionate, tragic type, it will readily be seen why this must be so. For
to snub or to withhold your good opinion from the vain man or woman, is not only
an offence in itself, it also deprives that man or woman of self-esteem for the time
being. They depend on your good opinion of them for their good opinion of
themselves. Not to give them your good opinion is, therefore, tantamount to
destroying their joie de vivre for the time being; it amounts to depriving them of
their mainspring, which is gratified vanity. But this is as good as killing them. Until
they can find someone, or think of someone, who can cancel out your poor opinion
of them, by a more exalted opinion, they are, therefore, desperate. They hate with a
homicidal hatred (vain people never forgive anyone who has mortified their vanity),
and this makes them tragic. Tragedy among vain negative people is always to be
traced to wounded vanity, and never to passion. The constant mistake made by the
modern world is to confound the passionate crime with the crime that arises from
vanity.[100] But the passionate crime is of a different order of rank altogether. It is
always a crime arising out of an affront against Life itself, whereas the crime that
springs from vanity is always the result of the much more insignificant fact that
somebody’s good opinion of himself has been assailed.[101]
In class (d) we also have a very large and growing section of the population,
particularly among the middle classes. It consists of people, not unlike the former,
but who know exactly what real passion does, and how it does it, and who proceed
to ape it in every momentous incident of their lives. They are negative and therefore
have no genuine promptings from passion; but they read and observe a good deal,
and they emulate their passionate fellows with a pertinacity worthy of a better

purpose. They will fall in love, marry, commit adultery, divorce, and even commit
murder, provided that they can convince themselves that each successive step has
been taken in the grand style. And, as they proceed through their various
metamorphoses, they watch themselves with the double interest of participators and
spectators of a great drama.

Of the whole negative class it may be said that they are radically unstable in
marriage, because they are not actuated by any natural passion or impulse, and
therefore do not become wedded to any environment where their instincts find
perfect adaptation. On the other hand, however, they are frequently able, owing to
this very lack of natural passion, to endure for a lifetime matrimonial unions which
would be intolerable to the positive type for a month, and this accounts for the fact
that, in England particularly, there are so many peaceful lifelong unions of couples
who are childless and doomed to childlessness.
The most constant characteristic of all negative people, however, is this, that they
are always prepared, and able, to silence the natural passions (because in them these
forces are so feeble) and to direct their conduct according to any conceivable rule
other than that of these natural passions. Thus opportunism, vanity, an eye to the
main chance, love of display, histrionic tastes, indolence, caution, cowardice—each
one of these factors may at different moments direct their lives; but true passion
certainly never will, and the very fact that it cannot, they will dress in every form of
high-falutin’ euphemism. They will call their lack of passion, self-control, or
strength of will; they will describe it as ordinary common decency; they will even
have the impudence to call it simply “good breeding,” and sometimes they will have
the duplicity and arrogance to call it purity.

FOOTNOTES:
[70] See Chapter 44 of the Ergänzung zum vierten Buch of the Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung. In La Femme Criminelle et la Prostituée, by C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero
(Paris, Felix Alcan, 1896) the authors, wishing to emphasize the same fact, say very
plainly: “C’est le besoin de l’espèce, le besoin maternel, qui pousse la femme vers
l’homme, l’amour féminin étant une fonction subordonnée à la maternité” (p. 107).
[71] See ante, p. 148. See also Lombroso and Ferrero, Op. cit. (p. 112):
“Psychiquement, l’amour de la mère se greffe toujours et l’emporte sur le besoin du
sexe.”
[72] See Sir Bargrave Deane’s evidence before the Royal Commission on Divorce and
Matrimonial Causes, 1912, para. 1163: “My impression is that it is a very serious

question—this absence of children—to the married life, and I believe you will find (I am
certain it is so from my experience this term) that if there are children it keeps the home
together, and they both work together.” Lord Salvesen (Judge of Court of Sessions,
Scotland), speaking before the same Commission, and discussing the statistics as to
childless and fruitful marriages, said: “I draw this inference, that I think they show where
there are children the union is strengthened, and parties are more unwilling to have it
dissolved” (para. 6214 of the Report).
[73] In addition to the engrossing character of the rôle of mother, and the tendency it
has to invade every controlling centre in a positive woman’s nature, we should also
remember that, inasmuch as man is only important to woman as a means to an end, his
importance must diminish pro rata as the end tends to be achieved and visibly
materialized in the form of the growing family.
[74] The modern man’s chief safeguard against becoming a complete nonentity in the
home is, of course, his hold on the purse-strings. This procures him a sort of perfunctory
regard.
[75] See footnote, pp. 179, 180.
[76] Buffon in his Discours sur la nature des Animaux makes the following profound
remark which English people as a whole would do well to take to heart: “Amour,
pourquoi fais-tu l’état heureux de tous les êtres, et le malheur de l’homme? C’est qu’il
n’y a que le physique de cette passion qui soit bon; c’est que, malgré ce que peuvent dire
les gens épris, le moral n’en vaut rien” (see Oeuvres Complètes, Tome 3me, Paris, 1837,
pp. 21-22).
[77] As a proof of this, behold the aggressive exultation of the ordinary man over every
fresh addition to his family.
[78] So far from being conscious of the will to the multiplication of life, it frequently
happens that women do all that is required in order to achieve fertilization, and yet
protest that they do not wish to have children, or that they do not care for children.
[79] The ancient Hindus, from whose great wisdom nothing was hidden, not only
openly recognized this fact, but made special provision for it. In the Book of Manu there
were special periods of absence allowed for husbands, beyond which their wives were no
longer forbidden from seeking fertilization elsewhere (see Book IX, verse 76). It should
be borne in mind, however, that a very large proportion of the women who committed
adultery during the war did so out of vanity rather than out of passion. The preponderance
of negative women in England makes the passionate crime a much rarer occurrence than
is generally supposed. See explanation of the rôle of vanity in adultery in the second half
of this chapter.
[80] Even in regard to the legendary Penelope we have to remember that tradition
relates certain facts about her that cast some reflection upon her normality. Why, for
instance, was she thrown into the sea by her parents? Both of her parents came from
Sparta, and the Spartans did not scruple to destroy abnormal children. In fact, they
regarded it as a religious duty to do so. At the very beginning of her life, therefore, some
suspicion is cast which entitles us to question whether she can have been as desirable as
the numbers of her suitors leads us to believe. Further, we may quite pertinently inquire
what it was that ever induced Odysseus to spend twenty years of his life away from his
wife, unless there were some secret and profound reason. It is true that his adventures are
presented to us in the narrative as being forced upon him. But who has ever known an
adventurer whose adventures were not inevitable?
[81] The realism and methodical certainty with which adultery was expected in the
wife by the absent husband both in antiquity and the Middle Ages is shown (1) by the
general attitude of wonder and admiration maintained towards Penelope, and (2) by the
famous ceintures de chasteté in which the aid of the locksmith was enlisted in order to
safeguard an absent husband’s honour.

[82] The fact that during the war numbers of married women were thus served by men
very much older than themselves, only shows how, as his years increase, a foolish man’s
vanity sets ever greater store by a female’s favours. It is too easily forgotten that when a
man is a born fool, old age does but increase his foolishness; it does not, as most people
suppose, turn bad wine into good.
[83] In one case this occurred, despite the fact that all the woman’s relatives and
friends constantly urged her to rid herself of her useless mate by fair means or foul.
[84] The Laws of Manu make special provision for a woman who is childless owing to
her husband’s fault.
[85] A good deal of the pseudo-scientific literature of their day even tells them that the
orgasm is just as important to them as to the male, and lays such stress upon it that they
may be forgiven for misunderstanding its real value to their lives.
[86] Women of a slightly more intellectual mould of mind generally become interested
in some public movement or Cause, or begin to take up a new religion or philosophy, or
express the desire to go in for acting at this stage. But the same forces are at work in them
as in the woman described above—that is to say, their old environment having failed to
procure them the whole physiological cycle which they need, their instincts urge them
blindly to seek a fresh environment.
[87] Women are particularly prone to endeavour to rule in the home by means of this
trick of giving their spouse a guilty conscience, and they do not mind much what words
they use or abuse to achieve that end. The word “selfish,” however, is a very convenient
word for this purpose, particularly if they happen to be dealing with a man who believes,
as they do, that it has a meaning and that this meaning is offensive.
[88] All this time she may have been protesting consciously that she does not want
children and that she is quite happy without them. It is her blind instinct and the
impelling force of her dissatisfied reproductive organs that have been driving her (despite
her conscious disinclination or indifference to motherhood) into situations in which she
can be fertilized.
[89] To this anthropologists may object: What about the Australian Bushmen who did
not associate the coitus with reproduction? True; but they knew that children came with
marriage, although they did not know that the coitus had anything to do with their
appearance. And the fact of being a married man would thus become inextricably
mingled with the condition of paternity.
[90] Among the reasons given for the wife’s unfaithfulness there are of course a few
that apply also to the husband. These the reader will readily pick out, and they do not
require to be re-stated here. To give one example of these common reasons, however, I
would remind the reader of the effect of the continued use of contraceptives on happy
sexual relations.
[91] “H” signifies husband’s petition: “W” signifies wife’s.
[92] Unfortunately these figures were unobtainable, as for the previous years, distinct
for husband and wife.
[93] Figures for the years 1913 and 1914 unobtainable.
[94] Priests of the Holy Catholic Church not included.
[95] As they include unmarried men, they are somewhat in excess of the correct figures
for families, but the proportions between them would not be so very much affected by the
omission of the unmarried.
[96] It is this omission to draw a sharp distinction between the proclivities of
flourishing health and those of lack of health or of sub-normal health, that vitiates the
arguments and conclusions in such books as Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character, and

essays like Schopenhauer’s on Woman and The Metaphysics of Love. This omission is
more particularly fatal to-day when negative people are becoming very much more
numerous than positive people.
[97] The reason why women live in such dread of the man who can see through them,
and endeavour to heap every kind of ignominy upon him, is that in their alleged
“mystery” lies their power over the average man, and that their sentiments and insistence
on a sentimental view of their sex, all help to furnish their arsenal with the weapons they
can wield most effectively against man in general. The wonder is that they have been able
to impose their view of the penetrating man upon the mass of British mankind.
[98] The same lack of caution probably led to his marriage; for, in view of the negative
character of his constitution he is not likely to marry in order to meet the deep bodily
need St. Paul speaks of.
[99] Truth to tell, the proud man is disliked nowadays. There is no place for him. The
whole of the modern world is run and organized on such lines, that only the vain man and
woman are regarded as desirable. The bulk of modern men are of the modest-vain type,
who purr contentedly when their fellows smile upon them; hence the enormous increase
in futile and meaningless orders and badges of honour in recent years, and the stampede
there is to obtain them.
[100] In his House of the Dead, Dostoiewsky lays some stress on the frequent
occurrence of vanity in criminals. See particularly Chapter I.
[101] It is this fact that makes the judgments of vain people so unreliable and
worthless; because a vain person always judges all people, not according to their true
worth, but according to the satisfaction his vanity has derived from them. Thus a genius
who mortifies a vain man’s vanity (or a vain woman’s vanity) is called a “fool,” a
“detestable fraud,” a “stuck-up, pretentious prig,” etc., etc. On the other hand, the fool
who knows how to flatter is regarded as intelligent, understanding, perspicacious,
knowledgeable, etc., etc., by the vain person. The whole of modern opinion, based as it
largely is upon vain impulses, thus becomes quite worthless.

CHAPTER IX
The Old Maid and Her Relation
to Society

O NE of the first facts to be remembered about the spinster, whether she
be a positive or a negative woman, is that she is an abnormal being—
just as the celibate priest is abnormal, and just as any non-reproductive
adult animal is abnormal—and therefore that her impulses must inevitably
find their adaptation in an abnormal manner.
This may be an unpleasant fact, and it may seem a hard thing to say; but
we are not concerned here with what is pleasant, kind-hearted, or courteous.
Our concern is much more to approach as nearly as we can to the truth on
this matter; and since the phenomenon of spinsterhood is well known, to
deal with it in a manner that will be useful to all those who wish to arrive at
a better understanding of it.
Modern people have grown so emotional and sentimental as to truth in
general, that it is becoming more and more difficult to deal in a
straightforward way with subjects having unpleasant associations, or likely
to lead to unpleasant conclusions, without incurring all kinds of imputations
that are utterly irrelevant to an honest spirit of inquiry. The moment they
leave the investigation of such obviously harmless subjects as chess or
bridge, and turn their attention to human nature, modern people feel that the
pursuit of truth must or ought to be directed more by a constant regard for
good feeling, politeness and pleasantness, than by any rigorous endeavour
to arrive at facts.
For instance, when the ordinary middle-class person of the present day
hears it said that spinsters are abnormal, cannot help acting abnormally, and
must therefore constitute an abnormal influence in society, he finds it
difficult to resist the temptation to object indignantly: “Oh, but it isn’t their
fault if they are spinsters—why say such hard things about them?”
It never occurs to such a person that the business of discovering the facts
about a certain phenomenon is not an undertaking that can be trammelled
by considerations either of gallantry or drawing-room etiquette, nor is it
embarked upon with the object of apportioning praise or blame. The

contention that it is not the spinster’s fault that she is a spinster, therefore, is
no more relevant to an inquiry into spinsterhood, and ought no more to
influence us in the conclusions at which we arrive concerning spinsterhood,
than the fact that the germ of tuberculosis is not responsible for being the
germ of tuberculosis ought to influence us in our inquiry into its relation to
pulmonary phthisis.
I am quite prepared to admit without further ado that there are hundreds,
possibly thousands, of noble and eminently desirable women in England to-
day who have remained spinsters from deliberate choice. I have no doubt
that if I had been a woman and had entertained anything approximately like
my present opinion of modern men, I too would have remained a spinster,
maybe from sheer nausea.[102] The majority of modern men are so very
much below even a modest idea of what man should be, they have been so
much besotted and debilitated through generations of unmanly labours and
occupations, that it is not merely conceivable that many women should
prefer not to condescend, it is almost inconceivable that any woman can be
found who imagines she has found her match. Let us clearly define,
however, what we have set ourselves out to investigate. We have not
undertaken in this chapter to show the multifarious reasons why a woman
may elect spinsterhood as her rôle in life. We have undertaken the more
important task of discovering her relation to society when once the rôle of
spinster has been assumed. Whether she has remained a spinster from
deliberate choice, therefore, or whether she is a spinster owing to the loss of
her fiancé at sea or in a railway accident, matters but little. The fact is that,
as the result of circumstances which may or may not have been beyond her
control, she has remained unmarried. As a spinster she will inevitably
develop characteristics more or less true to type. These characteristics will
exercise some influence on her own life and that of others. It is this
influence that we propose to consider, irrespective of the causes which
brought the spinster herself into being.
From the outset, therefore, it is as well for everybody to bear this in mind
in regard to spinsterhood in general, namely, that since the spinsters of any
country represent a body of human beings who are not leading natural lives,
and whose fundamental instincts are able to find no normal expression or
satisfaction, it follows, on a priori grounds alone, apart from any question
of evidence, which we may ultimately find for or against, that the influence

of this body of spinsters on the life of the nation to which they belong, must
be abnormal, and therefore contrary to the normal needs and the natural
development of that nation. Moreover, since the abnormal, when it is not
supernormal, tends constantly to gravitate into the morbid, it is not
inconsistent with this principle, but rather a necessary conclusion from it, to
say that the presence of a body of unadapted spinsters in any nation must
exercise a morbid influence upon the life of that nation.
The attitude of the average thinker to this conclusion is, as a rule, to
shrug his shoulders and to exclaim: “What would you do with them, poor
things? They must live!” Certainly. And it is precisely because they must
live that they cannot help exercising a baneful influence on the life of the
community. The fact that modern society can offer no satisfactory solution
of the surplus-woman question does not justify us in overlooking the evils
which are the outcome of surplus women in our midst. The fact that we can
devise no adaptation for them, does not relieve us of the duty of
investigating the nature of the evils to which their non-adaptedness gives
rise.
To concentrate upon the economic aspect of the question, and to say as
many do, that provided these surplus women can support themselves, the
problem of their lives, and the difficulty of their evil influence upon their
nation, is entirely solved, is simply to draw a red herring across the path of
our inquiry. For self-support is not even the consummation of the life of
man. How then could it be the consummation of the life of woman, in
whom a very much more elaborate equipment than man’s for a definite
calling, demands a far more complicated range of bodily activities than any
to which an occupation providing merely self-support can possibly lead?
Self-support is never more than a means to an end. The needs of a full and
complete life, therefore, cannot be met by self-support and the industry by
which it is achieved.
Neither is it any satisfactory reply to the question, How can we correct or
eliminate the evils of spinsterhood? to point to the number of spinsters who
are doing what is called “useful work.” In the first place, it is always wise
when such a plea is advanced, to inquire into the “useful” work in question,
in order to discover (a) how much of it has been rendered necessary by the
very existence of spinsters in large numbers, (b) how much of it is the
creation of the spinsters themselves in their resolute insistence on acquiring

some importance, (c) how much of it is actually harmful, (d) how much of
it is not essentially woman’s work at all. Finally, when these questions have
been gone into with sufficient care, we find ourselves back at the old
objection that, however useful the employment may be at which spinsters
may be working, since it cannot thoroughly adapt them (except in the event
of its conforming to two additional conditions which shall be discussed
later),[103] it must leave them still abnormal members of the community, and
therefore a morbid influence.
I propose to discuss the whole question of spinsterhood from the age
when, in healthy girls, the condition begins to prove noticeably deleterious
to health and spirits, to the time when, if marriage has not taken place, no
fertilization can occur.
I therefore have for my subject the general question of spinsterhood,
from the time when a virgin reaches the age of twenty-five, to the time
when she is fifty or more. And very naturally I propose to concern myself
not with spinsters in the legal sense, but only with spinsters who are entitled
to the epithet intacta.
Proceeding along the accustomed lines, spinsters shall accordingly be
classified as follows:—
(1) Positive virgins.
(2) Negative virgins.
—that is to say, (1) those whose bodies and instincts say “Yea”
emphatically to life, and who will brook no negative compromise; and (2)
those whose bodies and instincts are not sufficiently vital or sanguine
insistently to demand the fulfilment of their destiny.
It is necessary to make this sharp distinction again, because it is the only
way to be clear regarding the diversity of characteristics which are to be
found among spinsters of all nations and climes.
In Chapter III, I dealt with the question of the origin of instinctive desire,
or bodily impulse or wish. I showed how it arose from two possible
sources:—
(a) An ancestral habit, leading to a predisposition to perform certain
actions in a certain manner, or to function in a traditional way in complete

conformity with the lines laid down by previous generations within a
species.
(b) A certain correlation of bodily parts or organs, the possession of
which in itself is sufficient to suggest and to enforce a particular course of
conduct in its owner.
I showed that the blind will to function in a certain way, and the impulse
to seek the means of functioning in a certain way, must arise, provided that
these two conditions are present in an individual, and that his body is in a
sufficiently tonic state for these conditions to operate normally.
Now in a woman the blind will to function as a mother finds its source in:
—
(a) The long line of female ancestors who must have been mothers, and
who therefore have established an ancestral maternal habit on the female
side, which reaches the individual female with a considerable amount of
accumulated momentum through the generations that have preceded her.
(b) A certain correlation of bodily parts—the large amount of space taken
up in the female body by the organs connected directly or indirectly with
procreation, the importance of these organs, and the elaborate nervous
organization contrived to bring these organs into effective and harmonious
action when once the proper start has been given.
(1) In the unmarried woman, therefore, whose body is sufficiently
healthy and tonic to act normally, there are two forces incessantly impelling
her to the employment of her important reproductive organs, of both of
which forces she may be and usually is, childishly unconscious: they are (a)
her ancestral bias or habit, and (b) the correlation of her bodily parts. The
more perfectly formed she is and the more healthy she is, the more
importunate will these forces be, and the less inclined will they show
themselves to be put off without a struggle.
This woman or girl I shall call the positive spinster—that is to say, the
type of unmarried female who says “Yea” emphatically to life, and whose
tendency will always be to favour those opportunities, circumstances, and
directions in her life which promise to lead her to motherhood and the
normal functioning of her body.

(2) In the unmarried woman, however, whose body is not sufficiently
healthy or tonic to act normally, there are the same forces present, driving
her to employ her reproductive organs; but the insistence of these forces not
being very great, the drive is hardly felt, or not felt at all. The ancestral
habit, although the same of course, speaks with a fainter voice, and the
correlation of organs which are less tonic and less healthy perforce
generates a less impetuous impulse.
This woman or girl I shall call the negative spinster—that is to say, she is
the type of unmarried female who either says “Nay” emphatically to life,
and who will not hasten to seize opportunities that promise to lead to
motherhood, or else she will be listless and apathetic about the whole
matter, unconsciously so, and therefore consciously uninterested, unmoved
by any of its aspects.
These two types of spinsters will now be examined separately.

(1) THE POSITIVE SPINSTER

She is usually a great conscious sufferer, sometimes both mentally and
physically; for, while she possesses the physical equipment for marriage in
a highly tonic condition, with all the potential virtues of the mother, this
equipment and these virtues never have the opportunity of deploying their
power.
She may, at the cost of great pains, develop other virtues and other
adaptations; but the fact to be remembered about her is, that the functions
for which she is best fitted and the virtues which are most essentially hers,
cannot be used in her life.
Whatever else she may become—that is always her second calling. Her
true vocation will have been missed. What perfection soever she may attain
in her second calling, will always be inferior to that which she would
certainly have shown in the calling for which she was primarily and chiefly
endowed.
In addition, however, to the extra fatigue, worry, pains and distaste
always connected with pursuing a vocation not primarily one’s own, she
herself will always feel and reveal the disillusionment and bitter regret of

one who is conscious of having been designed for something different. The
mood of the artist whom circumstances have compelled to adopt
accountancy for a livelihood, will be her constant mood.
In addition to being a person pursuing a wrong vocation, in this sense,
however, she will feel something more than the artist who is doomed to
accountancy. She will feel “out of it,” as the popular expression has it—
outside that which is most thrilling, most enthralling, and most universally
interesting, outside the main Stream of Life itself.
All of us, as we look around and behold our big cities, our municipal
authorities and their offices, our streets, our traffic on those streets, our
railways, our Parliament, our system of Judicature, our industries, our
commerce, and finally the land beyond with all its agricultural and mining
activities; all of us who can with one sweeping glance comprehend the
immensely vast and intricate activities which go to make a modern nation,
have sometimes a lucid moment when we can abstract from the wild and
confusing tangle of our environment the idea of the purpose for which it is
all there, the idea of the force for which it is organized—in short the
underlying fact which gives the city, the country beyond, and all the
activities we see, a sense, a genuine meaning.
This purpose, this force, this fact, is the Stream of Life that runs through
our organized State, and to which all these activities, all these complex
conditions, do but minister. The factory is thus beheld, not as an end in
itself, but like art, like railways, like the bus service and the Government, it
is only an instrument serving the most important thing of all, the Stream of
Life, Human Life.
Now it is precisely from this most important thing of all that the spinster
feels herself most radically and hopelessly severed. She may minister to it
indirectly, through the factory, the municipal or Government offices, the
studio, the nursery or the scientific professions; but her importance will be
commensurate with the relation she bears to it. She is one step removed
from the main stream, she does not directly flow with it; before the most
important thing on earth, the thing that gives everything else its sense, she is
and can only be a spectator. This is the additional anguish she must feel as a
creature cheated of her proper calling. The artist with whom we have
compared her, who suffers the mortifying experience of pursuing a vocation

(accountancy) not his own, may after all be flowing with the Stream of Life,
and form part of it. The additional anguish of being “out of it,” in this sense,
he need not necessarily feel. He experiences only half the spinster’s
spiritual distress.
Nor will it necessarily console her, or reconcile her to her relatively
unimportant fate as spectator, to point to the pain, the passion, the
disappointment, the hardships, the disease and the poverty that lash the
main Stream of Life like a flail. If she is honest, she will tell you just what
everybody else feels—that she would risk all these things to be in it.
But there is yet something more she endures, which the artist doomed to
accountancy is spared. Provided he be wise and observes the essential rules
of hygiene and sound diet, there is no reason, despite his abandoned
mission, why his body should suffer very severely. While he may deplore
his wasted capacity for art, he may nevertheless live a healthy sexual life
and become a happy father.
The positive spinster, on the other hand, cannot well escape the physical
penalty of her total sexual abstinence. The rebuff offered to her
reproductive system by the long, endless wait is neither passed over by
Nature nor forgiven. Such elaborate preparations as have been made in her
body for a specific consummation cannot end in nothing, without certain
very definite reactions, which it is neither fanciful nor fantastic, but rather
helpful, to describe collectively as a profound physiological
disappointment. The fact that this physiological disappointment does not
enter consciousness as a disappointment has nothing whatever to do with its
reality.
The energy that has been waiting and waiting to be used endeavours to
discharge itself. Since it cannot find the customary and normal channels of
discharge, it disperses itself erratically along any channel that it can find—
usually the nerves—and it does this angrily because of the impetus it has
acquired through being checked. The thwarted instincts show their revolt in
internal conflict with the other instincts of life, and may be so powerful as
to convert a girl hitherto consistently yea-saying into a radical nay-sayer, or
a suicide.[104] Hence the strong tendency to suicide in very positive girls
between the ages of fifteen and twenty, when the passions are most
impetuous, and waiting leads to the maximum amount of conflict.[105] The

fact that the number of suicides among women increases where their
occupations bring them in contact with men, and that the same association
with men also increases their tendency to lunacy and criminality,[106]
supports the view that the physiological expectancy, by being increased
owing to the presence of a strong sexual stimulus, leads to a greater conflict
when it is disappointed.
The discharge of the sexual energy along nervous channels may lead to
every variety of neuropathic symptoms. The woman may become the victim
of phobias, obsessions, melancholia, morbid self-contempt, or morbid self-
esteem (narcissism), facial tics, other spasms, insomnia, vicious secret
habits, and hallucinations. Owing to the fact that other parts of her body,
away from her sexual organs (the throat, œsophagus, or bowel, etc.), may
attempt to find compensation for the inexperienced sexual sensations, she
may find a morbid pleasure in consuming highly condimented foods, or
foods which she can swallow in a bulky bolus[107]—bananas, new bread,
pastry, insufficiently masticated hard foods, such as bread-crusts, apples,
and even raw vegetables. This propensity, while quickly inducing
indigestion, may, by giving a false appetite, cause her to be taken for a
glutton. A case has been known of a girl who, addicted to this method of
pseudo-sexual satisfaction, used to employ artificial means of vomiting up
her food, like the more dissipated Romans of old, in order to be able to
enjoy a fresh bout of swallowing.[108] The effects of this kind of abuse upon
the alimentary canal may well be imagined, and even where it is not carried
to extremes, must in the long run lead to all the most distressing forms of
chronic dyspepsia.
Furthermore, the instinctive effort which every woman will make, in
cases of vague physiological distress, to conceal her bodily misery from her
friends and relatives, frequently leads to consistent affectation. It is not
necessary that the nature of the bodily misery should have reached
consciousness in order that affectation, as a means of concealment, should
be indulged in. It is sufficient that the physiological distress should have
been communicated vaguely as distress to the brain. From the moment this
has occurred there will be a tendency in all brave women, who incline to
show a bold and happy face to the world, to practise every kind of
affectation. Their speech, their voice and even their laugh will strike their
friends as over-strained or peculiar. Some will habitually make strange

grimaces, others will smile in a set, exaggerated way, or over-emphasize
their horror at objects disliked and their pleasure at objects approved. The
affectation may even affect their gait, so that they will walk with a bold
manly stride in which an unconscious attempt will be made to demonstrate
to the outside world excessive self-assurance and happy adaptation, in order
to conceal the reverse of these feelings which are agitating their spirits. As
time goes on these affectations will become fixed habits that no training and
no changes in environment can remove.
There may be attempts at sterile compensation, taking the form of an
excessive fondness for children, or a desire to fondle or to have power over
them. This is particularly obnoxious, and entirely justifies psychologists
like Dr. E. Jones in strongly deprecating the too exclusive teaching of
children by unmarried teachers.[109] It may look very sweet to behold the
spinster of from twenty-five to forty manifesting her affection for a child
and kissing, nursing or instructing it. But when it is remembered that the
spinster in question is not merely giving herself very well-defined pleasure
by the immediate touch of the soft downy skin of the child, or by the sense
of power over it, but may also be rousing in the child itself certain
pleasurable feelings, or certain notions, that do not fail to become registered
on its memory, and may induce either regrettable sexual precocity or a
distorted view of life,[110] the behaviour of the spinster appears in a less
innocuous light. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that such attempts at
sterile compensation by unmarried women are hard to prevent; for the
spinster’s action at such times is quite unconscious, and she is usually so far
from realizing what she is doing, that if you were to enlighten her upon her
conduct she would be both indignant and disgusted. There can be little
doubt, however, that the spinster’s strong predilection in favour of the
teacher’s calling is largely due to this blind pursuit of some kind of power
over the young.
There may also be attempts at compensation with members of the same
sex—not necessarily in the form of vicious unnatural relations, but in the
nature of patronizing friendship with younger girls. Spinsters in the wealthy
classes who organize and direct girls’ clubs are usually seeking
compensation of this kind, and receive a tremendous amount of credit for
humanitarian motives, of which they are entirely innocent. Nevertheless,
the misinterpretation of the crowd, which takes their action to be

humanitarian, is eagerly seized and adopted by them, because it helps them
to give a definite description to the merely compensatory character of their
interest in the club, which even they themselves do not, of course,
understand.
Among the more wealthy spinsters, there may also be attempts at
compensation through frankly humanitarian propaganda, through the
endowment or enriching of humanitarian institutions, or through
humanitarian labours. This is usually expressed by a very deep concern
about the welfare of animals, or the poor, or the babes of the poor, or
anything over which the assumption of power constitutes an easy and
uncompromising matter. We should remember that the relationship of
mother to child derives more than half its exquisite pleasure for the female
from the fact that it is a relationship of almost absolute power. This instinct
to wield power, therefore, which forms an essential factor in female
psychology in its relation to the helpless, and which explains the regret
most mothers feel when their children are first able to run about and
become independent, has to be reckoned with in the psychology of the
spinster. If it cannot in her find its normal expression, it will seek
compensation in every possible way, and since humanitarian interests offer
an uncompromising outlet for its exercise, humanitarian interests are
naturally in very great favour among the spinsters of all classes.
Intimately connected with humanitarian pursuits, particularly when they
are adopted with frenzied resolution, is however another and less inviting
psychological factor. The theory that males and females contain in their
constitution certain elements, more or less accentuated, of the other sex, is
now so widely accepted that it has become a commonplace in all
speculations upon the sex question. Now among the characteristics which
most frequently manifest themselves in women of marked male tendencies
is a proneness to sadistic expressions of the sex instinct. The habit of
teasing among hysterical girls, and even among female children not yet
pubescent, is a sign of this.[111] In the normal life of the married female
these sadistic impulses become sublimated either by the action of the
stronger male upon her psyche and physique (which draws the masochistic
elements in her to the fore) or by the natural expression of her power over
her baby or babies. In the unmarried female, or the female without
offspring, these sadistic impulses have to be repressed or curbed. The

peaceful and orderly expression of them in modern society is hardly
possible. But we are told by psychologists that an overpowered instinct
asserts itself in an obverse character.[112] In spinsters, therefore, we should
expect the sadistic elements in the happiest circumstances to become
inverted into intense humanitarianism.[113]
This explains why we so frequently encounter middle-aged spinsters
whose hard metallic faces and cruel cold eyes seem so utterly out of
keeping with their ardent participation in humanitarian movements of all
kinds. I remember one occasion when I happened to call on a lady of this
kind. I was appalled by the terrifying hardness of her features, and yet, I
must say, I was not in the least surprised when, in the course of the
conversation, she asked me (I ought to mention the district where she lived
was a very hilly one) whether I did not suffer at the sight of the poor horses
in the neighbourhood. These women, who frequently have hearts of stone,
nevertheless find compensation for the repression of their sadistic impulses
in the exercise of the most ungovernable and most obsessional
humanitarianism and sentimentality, but while their neighbours and the
local clergy applaud their lives to the echo, no one has the smallest inkling
of the true nature of the phenomenon. A child would tell at a glance that
these humanitarian and sentimental ladies were not radically kind by nature,
and those who live with them every day would probably confirm the child’s
first impression; but such is the distrust in England of what the eye can
read, and so great and instantaneous is the respect for humanitarian zeal,
particularly when it is backed by a heavy banking account, that these
women frequently die leaving a big reputation for warm-heartedness behind
them.
The fact that this feverish humanitarianism and sentimentality are
frequently most mischievous in their effects and create a number of national
abuses, besides involving the expenditure of large sums of money on what
are frequently the least desirable and least promising elements in the nation,
is concealed beneath the dramatic munificence of the wealthy spinster’s
life.[114]
In the wealthy classes, as the result of their superior cultivation, the
compensation frequently takes an active intellectual form, and when, owing
to the vague consciousness of enduring a great grievance (common to most

positive spinsters who have not successfully sublimated their reproductive
instincts), misanthropy supervenes, there may arise a very pronounced sex-
antagonism, leading the spinsters who have developed it to engage in
pursuits, or in intellectual pastimes, where they feel they can clash with
men, or where they know they can resist or impede men in the natural
business of their lives. Spinsters seeking this kind of compensation
frequently derive great satisfaction from misogamist meditations. They will
display a morbid interest in arguments against marriage, in the statistics of
insanity or disease among married women, and in the evidence of excessive
parturition (leading to debility) among the wives of the poor. They will
exercise their influence to convert young girls to misanthropy, to misogamy,
or at least to an indifference to men; and if they can achieve this end, under
a religious cloak (which is not difficult with passionate young girls of
eighteen, whose “vague voluminous and powerful feelings, if afforded
means to do so, settle down and concentrate on a single object,”[115]), they
justify themselves on the score that they have led such young girls into
paths of purity and devotion.[116]
It would be impracticable here to deal with all the possible manifestations
of sex-repression in the female celibate. They have been discussed very
fully by other authors, and in detail they would serve no purpose in this
book. I have contented myself with hinting broadly at those morbid results
of sex-repression in the positive virgin which, while not leading to definite
lunacy or insanity, are yet common enough to demand consideration in a
discussion upon the spinster’s relation to society; but let not any reader
imagine that in the outline given above there has been any desire to dwell
upon the black side of a picture which from whatever angle it be viewed
cannot at best be a pleasant one. There is a good deal of strong feeling
among the majority of people to-day against the belief that sex-repression
need necessarily have bad results. These people say that the school of
psycho-analysts have grossly exaggerated the facts about the phenomena,
and have drawn an unnecessarily lurid description of them. But surely the
question is one concerning which it would be suicidal in a scientist to
exaggerate or overstate his case. Is it not after all common sense?
Years ago—or to be precise in the year 1840—de Quincey, comparing
the mental diseases that arise from excessive expression with those that

come from insufficient expression, or the non-expression, of deep
sensibilities, wrote as follows concerning this matter:
“Amongst the Quakers (who may be regarded as a monastic people)
anomalous forms of nervous derangement are developed, the secret
principle of which turns ... upon feelings too much repelled and driven in.
Morbid suppression of deep sensibilities must lead to states of disease
equally terrific, and possibly even less tractable; not so sudden and critical
it may be, but more settled and gloomy.”[117]
This anticipates most of what modern psychology has discovered about
repression, and can be applied just as legitimately to repression in the
physical as in the psychical sphere. But a very much earlier record of the
same common-sense view about repression, or non-expression of natural
appetites and sensibilities, is to be found in Aristotle’s Poetics, where the
doctrine of catharsis constitutes the kernel of all that modern psychologists
would claim in regard to this particular aspect of civilized humanity.
As the life of the individual female is prolonged, and the tone of her
reproductive organs depreciates through the deleterious influence of long
idle waiting, there occurs an abatement of the unconscious influences
impelling the positive spinster to seek a fuller life. A sort of passive
adaptation to abnormality takes place in which a balance is attained, and the
restless and more afflicting symptoms become accordingly less acute. But,
with the decline in sexual vigour and alertness, there is a corresponding
falling off of good spirits, hopefulness, and the love of life, and frequently
there supervenes a pronounced distaste for human concerns or a general
depression, which makes the spinster the proverbially embittered female of
popular tradition. The more positive she was at the outset, the more likely is
this revulsion of feeling to appear in an intolerable form—hence the
common occurrence of embittered spinsters on the Continent, where
women are, as a rule, more positive than in England.
Indeed, it can usually be taken for granted that where Nature has been
thwarted without any dire results, Nature was not originally very strong, or
not assertive enough to offer very severe resistance. The presence of
thousands of very cheerful and completely adapted spinsters in England,
therefore, far from being a good sign, is in reality a very deplorable one; for

it argues that in them Nature was not powerful enough to offer any
determined fight before allowing herself to be completely conquered.
There are but two possible exceptions to this rule, and they occur where
the reproductive instinct has been subjected to the process known to
psychologists as sublimation. This innocuous transmutation of the sex
appetite and emotions may be effected either by means of Christianity
(religious fervour)[118] or Alcohol (dypsomania). When either of these
potent sublimators of the sex impulse has come into operation, it is no
longer safe to argue from the spectacle of a cheerful and happy spinster of
middle age, that in her Nature was not very strong from the start. But,
again, the fact should be emphasized that with the spread of enlightenment
on the one hand, and the general decline in vigorous health on the other,
these hitherto unfailing means of sex-sublimation are becoming ever less
and less accessible to the women of the nation. A generation has arisen on
whom the fundamental tenets of the old faith have lost their hold, and in
whom, therefore, it is becoming ever more and more difficult for
Christianity to become a burning substitutive passion; while this same
generation can no longer undertake the alcoholic cure, owing to the fact that
human health is no longer what it was.[119]
Before proceeding to a discussion of the negative spinster, I now propose
to consider one aspect only of the positive unmarried girl of the poorer or
working classes.
There can be little doubt that in her case, very much more frequently than
in the case of the well-to-do spinster, compensation is sought in some kind
of illicit relation to the males either of her own class or of the class above.
The statistics of prostitution alone show what an enormous contribution the
women of the poorer or working classes make to the ranks of the courtesans
in Europe; and seeing what the alternative usually is—that is to say, a life of
drudgery unrelieved by any brighter element and aggravated by all the evils
of unsuccessful repression—it is not surprising that among the more
positive girls of the poorer classes, particularly in towns, there are many
who go to swell the army of fast women.
But at this point it will be necessary for me to digress a little in order to
make quite clear my own standpoint in regard to this very vexed question of

prostitution. For it is only an evil in modern Western Civilization because
people insist on making it so.
Our civilization stands or falls as a whole. The intricate adjustments
which constitute its fabric, and the minute ramifications that wander in all
directions from every centre in its complicated organization to every other
centre, and sometimes to every other civilization, lend to its various parts a
character so interdependent and mutually subservient, that it is no longer
possible to lay hold of any important portion of it, with a view to
condemnation, without thereby condemning the whole.
The comfortable and short-sighted people who, from the security of their
smug homes, point a finger of censure at prostitution, therefore, have not as
a rule the imaginations or the knowledge to realize that in so doing they are
bringing an indictment against the whole order of society, including their
own pathetic fastnesses of bourgeois luxury and morality.
If prostitution exists on a large scale in modern Europe, and prostitution
is wrong, then the civilizations of modern Europe are wrong, and it is
fatuous to point to the most obvious sore, when the whole pig is diseased.
Nobody nowadays denies, perhaps, that the whole pig is diseased? Then it
is absurd to moan over this one sore.
But why is so much fuss made precisely about prostitution on its sexual
side? There is the prostitution of healthy rosy-fingered youth in hundreds of
other walks of life, and nobody, or scarcely anybody, stirs to point it out.
The young girls who to-day are sent by their parents at the age of sixteen to
twenty to bow their heads for forty-three hours a week before a typewriter,
or a ledger, or a stamping, cutting or folding machine, get ill just as quickly,
lose their beauty just as surely, and grow depressed and spiritless just as
rapidly, as the sexual prostitute, and they get only a sixteenth or less of the
prostitute’s entertainment out of life into the bargain. Watch the career of
the girl who sells herself to the modern taskmaster of commerce or
industry! Could anything be more tragic? Could any satyr bring about
grosser degradation of health and spirits? What sympathy or horror or
righteous indignation can you rouse in the moral toads, who inveigh against
prostitution, by pointing to the rounded shoulders, the loveless life, the
listless eyes, the bloodless cheeks and hands of the typewriter or other
machine drudge? None!

They reply that the typist’s worn-out looks, her lost beauty, her faded
youth, her hopeless expression and outlook, are not the result of a life of
immorality, therefore she is honourable, therefore she need not be rescued,
therefore everything is all right, therefore nothing need be done.
But enough! The wide-awake will see at once that there is cant in the
very frown that is vouchsafed to sexual prostitution—cant, the inevitable
ingredient of every movement and every counter-movement in these
islands.[120]
The evils of prostitution are no greater and no more tragic than those of
any other form of exploitation of the individual. That which unnecessarily
aggravates the horrors of the public courtesan’s life in England is not
necessarily the natural consequences of the life itself, but the whole attitude
of the community and of the legislature to the question of prostitution in
general.[121]
Society in England seems resolutely determined not to face and answer
the question: Is prostitution necessary or unnecessary? If it is necessary to
the kind of civilization we have evolved, then the only honourable, the only
humane, the only magnanimous course to take, is to face it bravely and
honestly, and do all we can for those women who are contributing their
lives to a public service, just as we do all we can for soldiers and sailors in
war-time, and for all public workers who perform useful and dangerous
duties for the public weal. If it is unnecessary, then steps should be taken to
find out why it continues to exist, what flaw in our social system accounts
for its survival, despite the fact that it is superfluous; and how that flaw can
be best removed.
The general consensus of opinion among European legislators and the
European public must be to the effect that prostitution is necessary. It is
inconceivable that it should be allowed to survive as flourishingly as it does
in England and on the Continent, if public opinion and the legislators in
each country could find no excuse for it. What is still more inconceivable,
however, is the diabolical hypocrisy of a public, which at the same time
tacitly assents to it as a social need, and yet covers with shame and
contempt those who devote their lives to making it possible.
Truth to tell, there are many grave reasons why prostitution[122] still
constitutes a necessary adjunct to our topsy-turvy, hare-brained social

system, and as long as it remains as topsy-turvy and hare-brained as it is,
the prostitute will continue to be indispensable. In view of this fact, it is but
rational, not to mention humane, to regard with more solicitude and charity
those who from what motive, or through what circumstances soever, supply
the means for its existence.
I will touch but lightly on two aspects of society which seem to
contribute chiefly to the causes making prostitution a public necessity. I
refer to (a) the virgin ideal in marriage, or parthenogamy, and (b) the
economic system which compels thousands among the men of the
struggling classes to marry at a date very much later than their
physiological development would indicate as reasonable.[123]
(a) In order to preserve the custom of parthenogamy in conjunction with
(b) it is obvious that there must be some safety-valve, some outlet for the
expression of virile passions, which while being normal is capable of
safeguarding a certain large body of virgins annually, and of preserving
them from pre-connubial amours. The fact that, at present, this safety-valve
or outlet, though countenanced by society, is entirely neglected, despised
and concealed by the public, and is thus allowed to breed many evils which
are not necessary to prostitution per se, is not so much a reflection on the
prostitute as upon the administration which leaves this department of social
life utterly uncared for and unorganized.
(b) Apart altogether from the fact that late marriages resulting from
economic pressure necessitate the existence of some relief measure which
will preclude the deleterious alternative of repression, or unnatural vice, in
young men; for the adolescent, as we have seen in the Chapter on Marriage,
it is highly desirable that there should be some school, some opportunity for
experience in sexual relations, as there was in ancient Greece, for instance,
in which the young male, in addition to finding the means of healthily
delaying marriage, may also acquire that mastery in the mysteries of life
without which his future marriage may very seriously suffer. It is one of the
most scandalous features of modern society that, while this relief measure
and this school are allowed to exist, nothing is done to protect either the
women who supply its personnel, or the young men who resort to it, from
all the worst consequences of promiscuity and vice.

The old moralists or moralizers of the nineteenth century, now thank
goodness rapidly becoming extinct, used to justify this scandal by arguing
that the dangers attending the recourse to the prostitute served a good
purpose in two respects: (1) They offered a strong inducement to sexual
abstinence among young men, and (2) they cast the well-merited stigma of
shame and disease upon those women who ministered to these young men’s
ungovernable passions.
It is now no longer possible either medically or psychologically to
support (1), consequently the cold-blooded moral inference in (2) falls to
the ground. The evils of abstinence among men are certainly in this country
more serious than those of indulgence, while the evils resulting from a total
absence of experience in sexual matters among young men are perhaps the
worst of all.
The present obvious duty of civilization, therefore, short of so
revolutionizing society as to make parthenogamy a thing of the past, and
late marriages unnecessary, is to see that the sexual relief measure and
school that the modern world provides for its young men are placed upon a
sounder, a purer and a more humane basis, free from the ignorant bias of
puritanical busy-bodies, and secured from the dangers that now attend
them.
It only remains now to say a word on the position of the prostitute
herself. From the psychological and physical point of view the sadness of
her plight does not reside, as the Puritans of England suppose, in the moral
turpitude of her lot, or in her loathing of it—for that is simply high-falutin’
nonsense.[124] It resides in the fact that her very taste for her calling, or the
very desire that drew her into it—that she herself in fact—is a physiological
misunderstanding. Her calling, like that of the childless married woman,
presupposes that she will have to cry “Halt!” to a physiological process in
her being, which only finds its first step in the coitus. By a false analogy
with man’s sexual life the orgasm, which to woman is only the beginning of
a long cycle of sex-experiences which end with the weaning of the child, is
the only part of the female cycle which is vouchsafed her. Like the barren
woman, she is denied the whole of the subsequent stages of the cycle, so
rich in delightful experiences to her, and continues like a man to confine
herself to orgasms—orgasms ad infinitum.[125]

It is this that constitutes the sad side of the prostitute’s life. If she have a
tragedy, this is her tragedy. But for fear lest, prompted by vague moral
prejudices, we feel tempted to make too much even of this aspect of her life
—generally overlooked, by the by, in all dissertations I have read about her
—we should remember that she shares this sad experience not only with
thousands of spinsters, but also with thousands of married women who,
from some cause or other, frequently economic pressure, are compelled to
remain childless.[126]
From the national point of view, the feature about modern prostitution
(apart from the evils incidental to it which are preventable) which is most
strongly to be deprecated, is the fact that, since it is from working-class
girls that its ranks are largely recruited, the danger is that it is upon the most
temperamental and most positive of these girls—upon the most desirable of
these girls, therefore—that the temptation to illicit relations with men is
likely to exercise the most potent influence.

(2) THE NEGATIVE SPINSTER

I now come to the consideration of the negative spinster, and when once I
shall have dealt with her, a few remarks about the characteristics common
both to the positive and negative spinster will conclude the chapter.
The negative spinster, unlike her positive sister, is not a great conscious
sufferer from her condition. She may ail as the result of constitutional
debility incidental to the inferior vitality which causes her to be negative;
but, from the absence of that element in her life which consummates a
woman’s destiny, she will not be conscious of suffering very severely.
The physical equipment for marriage, and the traditional impetus derived
from the ancestral habits of her sex, are both present in her, but their urge is
faint, the inner voice, far from being loud and insistent, is barely audible,
and she is harassed by little of that importunacy on the part of her
reproductive organs which compels her sister either to adapt herself
normally to life, or else to seek compensations and to develop acute nervous
symptoms in so doing.
Her own and her friends’ failure to recognize the true nature of her
condition, however, frequently, if not invariably, leads to misinterpretations

of her precise value as an individual which are as gross as they are
dangerous—gross because they apply moral values to a condition that is
primarily physical, dangerous because they lead the rest of the world into a
misunderstanding concerning the importance of a normal sexual life to the
individual, and the worth of life generally.
These misinterpretations, particularly in England and America, usually
take one or all of the following forms:
(1) Miss A, the negative spinster in question, may regard herself, and be
regarded by others, as above the ordinary impulses of her positive sister, so
that she and others may draw a moral from her condition, and argue that, by
means of exercising sufficient self-control, and preoccupying the mind
sufficiently with “elevated” thoughts, the sex-impulse is easily overcome
without any dire results whatsoever.
(2) Miss A may regard herself, and be regarded by others, as too “pure”
for sexual impulses, so that, far from needing to repress or suppress the
fleshy “demons” within her, she soars to an altitude too lofty to be reached
by them.
(3) Miss A may regard herself, and be regarded by others, as indifferent
to men, so that she is able to assume an attitude of philosophical
detachment towards the main stream of Life, which she contemplates from
a distance as a mildly amused and sometimes scoffing spectator.
(4) Miss A may convince herself, and convince others, that sex-impulses,
because they do not happen to be noticeable in her, are a pure—or rather, an
impure illusion. She may argue, and induce others to argue with her, that the
power of these impulses is absurdly exaggerated by modern psychology,
and that she herself is the best proof of this absurd exaggeration.
As I have pointed out, these misinterpretations are gross, and they are
also dangerous. They are gross, in the first place, because they take no
cognizance of the fact that Miss A is a different creature from her positive
sister, an inferior and a less tonic creature, and secondly because they give
what is really a lamentable condition a falsely enviable character by
concealing its true nature beneath a number of high-falutin’ euphemisms.
This procedure is dangerous for the following reasons:

(a) The Miss A’s of this world, particularly of this English world, are
increasing at such an alarming rate that very soon Miss A will be the normal
woman, and by being held up as the normal woman and the normal ideal,
will mislead the ignorant regarding the most valuable type of woman.
(b) To regard a person as above a normal human passion, when she is
constitutionally and congenitally beneath it, is to lend a power and an
influence to degenerates which must contaminate the national outlook on all
that is desirable in life.
(c) To be deceived into imagining that Miss A has achieved by self-
control what her inferior physique has made inevitable is again to grant her
a quality which, by becoming associated with her type, loses all its
instructional worth, besides attributing to her a spurious value.
(d) To accept Miss A’s alleged “purity” as a fact is to remove from purity
all its positive, potent value. The pure virgin is she whose pride and self-
mastery together have protected her from condescending except to the man
who has thoroughly captivated her heart, her imagination, her sense of the
ideal, and her body. But Miss A is not pure in this sense at all. She is simply
virgo intacta because no deep instinct, no deep impulse, no wild desire, has
ever driven her forth to seek her normal adaptation.
(e) To accept Miss A’s mild amusement at life as that of a creature who,
having tasted and tested all life’s joys, concludes that they are worthless, is
to run the danger of scorning life without the advantage of Miss A’s inferior
physique to help one—an experiment which, if one is positive, can only
lead to disastrous results. The fact that Miss A’s influence on young girls
may lead many to try the experiment is one of the most perilous
consequences of the negative spinster’s existence in our midst. She, in her
own person, constitutes a lure to the negation of life’s joys, to the contempt
of the body and its demands, and to the disdain of the other sex, which is
next door to sex-antagonism. Her mind is merely an instrument seeking
intellectual justifications for her body’s inferiority.
So much for the misunderstandings of the negative spinster’s true nature,
and their corresponding dangers. We may now examine her outlook a little
more narrowly, in order that we may recognize her when we meet her, and
measure her various boasts at their proper worth.

She will usually gravitate almost automatically to the Christian Church,
and become an eager exponent of its principles and an ardent supporter of
its work. She will do this, not because, like her positive sister, she will
require to sublimate impetuous reproductive instincts, that will find
expression, but because the negative character of the Church’s teaching will
naturally appeal to her, and strike her as offering to people like herself a
philosophy which might have been “cut to measure.”
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man
love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the
world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is
not of the Father, but is of the world.”[127]
“Flesh is death, Spirit is life and peace. The body is dead because of sin,
but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If ye live after the flesh, ye
shall die, but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye
shall live.”[128]
“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life
and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God.... So then they
that are in the flesh cannot please God.”[129]—And so on ad infinitum.
These texts will appeal to her. They will help her to a conviction, to
which she is already predisposed—that she is more godly than her positive
sister, and superior to the rest of the fleshy world. She will notice that
“body” in the text from Romans is spelt with a small b, whereas Spirit
appears in the pompous parade dress of a capital letter. She will understand
this perfectly. She instinctively thinks of her body with a small b, and of her
great, lofty spirit with a capital S.
What effort is it for her to mortify the flesh, seeing that her own flesh
came to her half mortified by nature? (See Gal. v. 24.)
Like the positive spinster, she is conscious of her own unimportance, of
being cut off from the main stream of Life, consequently she exerts every
effort—even at the risk of making herself a perfect nuisance—to prove
herself most important. She will try to be foremost in the work of the
Church, in the work of the parish, or in the work of the Borough Council. If
she be wealthy she will endow special missions, and back missionaries with
more zeal, but with a far more disastrous result, than that with which most

people back horses. What does she know about the virtues, the good order,
the content, the peace of Indian women, Chinese women, or the females of
the Mohammedan harem? She lives in a country, England, where there is
more misery, more disorder, more sickness and more misunderstanding in
connexion with sex than in any country on earth; and yet by means of her
wealth she is determined to guarantee that this same misery, chaos, sickness
and misunderstanding shall be spread by her minions, the missionaries, to
every quarter of the globe.[130]
She will interfere with anything and everything, quite irrespective of her
qualifications, provided she can leave no doubt in anybody’s mind as to her
extreme importance.
Unlike her positive sister, who is generally too busy mastering or
sublimating her sex-impulses to think of much else, she will watch the
world of the flesh with perfectly unconscious but bitter envy. She will think,
as St. Paul did, that it were good for them if they could “abide even as I,”
and all her activities, all her influences, all her money, will be directed
towards favouring her type and its multiplication.
She will tend to spend her time with the people over whom it is easiest to
exercise power—the sick, the crippled, the blind, the very poor, the inmates
of prisons, and the very aged or the very young. She will profess that she
loves the poor, never dreaming that it is the power that is so easily exercised
over them that is sweet to her. She is of course hopeless at self-analysis, and
even when these facts are pointed out to her, she is intellectually too
dishonest to acknowledge their truth.
While professing a love of all humanity, she will secretly cherish a
loathing for men, for, where all sex-impulses are absent, the natural and
radical hostility of the sexes (as seen in healthy little boys and girls, and in
animals) finds its full expression. She will always suspect men of grossness
and brutality, and never realize the staggering brutality of her own thoughts
about them, and her own secret wishes regarding them. Whatever their
politics or patriotism may be, the hearts of all decent positive females are so
tortured by war and the death of men that war involves, that during a long
tragedy like the last War all warm-hearted women longed only for one
thing, and that was the conclusion of hostilities at the earliest possible
moment. Not so the negative spinster. She perceived in the war a means of

expressing her loathing of men under the noble mantle of patriotism, and
she did not scruple to go so far as to agitate for its prolongation as long as
possible.[131] These women could be seen during the war eating their
breakfasts with gusto, while their newspaper, folded to present the Roll of
Honour to their view, was propped up against the milk jug.
But where the negative spinster most thoroughly deceives the world is in
her cheerfulness and general absence of any signs of faulty or unhappy
adaptation. People behold her and are wont to exclaim, “See, here is a
woman who has had none of those experiences which psychologists assure
us are so essential to the happiness of the female, and yet she is the
embodiment of good cheer and general contentedness!” True! But such
people do not know how to distinguish the negative from the positive
spinster, and by confounding the two assume too readily that it is possible,
when sex-impulses have been impetuous and insistent, to have ignored and
flouted them without any more serious result than a pleasant, contented, and
thoroughly peaceful smile.
The distressing fact is that the number of these women who in England
cheerfully survive a life in which their most important organs and instincts
have been wholly neglected and spurned, is increasing at such a rate that
there is hardly a circle in England that cannot boast of one or two of them.
And seeing that their existence is only possible where reproductive
impulses are low, atonic, and seriously below standard, their increase is one
of the surest indications we possess of the declining vitality of our race.[132]
Although, in the negative spinster, the sex-impulses are hardly audible to
her consciousness, she reveals in her actions many of the motivations of her
positive sister. On a lower key, for instance, she may seek compensations of
all kinds for the absence of sex-expression; the only feature that will
distinguish her behaviour along this line from that of her positive sister will
be the inferior zeal or fanaticism with which she enters into the particular
compensatory occupation or activity adopted.
She may show the same fondness for children, but in an attenuated form;
she may reveal the same delight in acquiring power over them, both bodily
and spiritually; she may manifest the usual sadistic tendencies, with their
inverted correlatives, humanitarianism, extreme sentimentality, and hyper-
sensitiveness, and she may show the same general misanthropy, overlapping

her sex-antagonism. In the negative spinster, however, all these symptoms
are likely to be very much more faint than in her positive sister;
nevertheless, she is just as likely as the latter to die honoured and respected
by her Church and the community, for the “unselfish” humanitarianism of
her life, and the warm-heartedness she showed to everything that was
feeble, degenerate, botched, sick, very young, very aged, dumb, blind, poor
or utterly helpless.

(3) THE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SPINSTERS AS BREAD-
WINNERS AND INDEPENDENT FUND-HOLDERS

The thousands of spinsters of all classes who are now achieving
“independence,” both in commerce and industry—not to mention the
professions[133]—naturally only increase the acuteness of the economic
difficulties which make their self-support a necessity; for, by competing
with male labour they only aggravate the severity of the struggle, and
increase ever further and further the age at which men can safely undertake
matrimony. In this sense alone the influence of the spinster on our economic
life is a very serious one.
If, in heightening the fury of the economic war, she achieved her own
adaptation and contentedness; if in complicating the economic difficulties
of large societies, she achieved any specific result, valuable to the
community and unobtainable without her, her presence would be as much a
boon as is that of the mother, or any other active contributor to the main
stream of Life. But, seeing that she neither succeeds in securing her own
happiness, nor in promoting the happiness of the society in which she finds
herself—for, apart from nursing, domestic service and certain trades
connected with drapery and women’s and children’s apparel, it is difficult to
point to any extra-domestic occupation that is typically women’s work—it
is doubtful whether she may not be regarded as a burden on the community
and an aggravation of its already enormous problems.
It should not be forgotten that industry, commerce, the professions and
the Civil Service are but institutions organized for the purposes of Life. The
main stream of Life certainly runs through them, and derives its security, its
relative permanence and its fluency from their harmonious functions, but
they exist for Life, and not Life for them. It is Life that is important, the

channels through which it flows are only significant, as auxiliary to the
main purpose.
Now the spinster, by being wholly divorced from any direct connexion
with the main stream of Life, for which society and the Empire exist, is
severed from the most important phenomenon on earth that can justify
existence. The next best course is to obtain an indispensable foothold in the
machinery that makes the stream of Life, as we have said, more secure,
more permanent and more fluent. The moment, therefore, it can be shown
that the spinster can lay no valid claim to this one remaining indispensable
foothold, but rather that she only clogs, impedes and retards the machinery
that assists Life, her last justification for existence vanishes; and whatever
the work may be that she is doing, however “useful” it is, we fail to make
out her claim to toleration the moment it can be shown (1) that the work
would be done as well or better by a man or a married woman, (2) that she
is not assisting but only retarding the machinery that makes the main stream
of Life possible.
In short, it amounts to this: Society does not exist for the spinster. Life
does not flourish when it is cultivated too luxuriously in its cul-de-sac
ramifications. The main stream is too important.
But there is another and even sadder aspect to the entrance of women into
the arena of commercial, industrial and financial occupations.
One of the greatest tragedies of life for modern women is precisely the
havoc that these occupations have made of modern men. The Alcibiades
type of man, the complete man, the man who, while he can wield a sword
as well as anyone, can also sob over a sonnet, direct a difficult transaction
with shrewdness and sound judgment, be an ardent lover, a dutiful father,
and also a being capable of wisely directing and ordering his womenfolk at
every juncture of their lives, is now extinct. The versatility of gifts and
catholicity of tastes which once characterized the normal man, has been
destroyed by two hundred years of occupations that are not only
emasculating and besotting, but alas! also specializing. All men nowadays
are specialists, and frequently specialists in the most dehumanizing form of
labour. The Leviathan of Commerce and Industry, Trade and Finance, by
compelling them to eschew other interests and other activities, has reduced
the gamut of their capabilities and their tastes to the limits necessary for