CHAPTER IV

THE WOMAN BRAIN: ITS POWERS AND DISABILITIES

"My state is like the lightning's light—Now it shines forth, and now 'tis gone from sight.At times, amid the heavens I find my seat;At others, I am lower than my feet."Sa'di (Persian poet).

"My state is like the lightning's light—

Now it shines forth, and now 'tis gone from sight.

At times, amid the heavens I find my seat;

At others, I am lower than my feet."

Sa'di (Persian poet).

Of what order is this Woman-half of Mind which Feminism seeks to extinguish?

* * * * *

The cerebral processes appreciable upon the Outer plane, and calculable by Science, represent no more than a tithe of brain-activities. They are but a single highly-specialised focus of brain-functioning.

Behind concrete Volition, Intellection, and Action, are the silent, ceaseless, inner and incalculable workings of innumerable brain-cells concerned with the mysterious constitution and metabolism of Life, and its strange, potent relation and correlation with Mind and with environment; concerned with character and attribute and impulse; with ancestral vestiges and personal experience; with memories and instincts; with an infinitude of occulted and imperishable records of previous terrestrial existences, perhaps; concerned, in a word, with all the secret springs and complex potences of Individuality; which differentiates every thought, emotion and action of any human person from those of every other.

And in these recondite mysteries fructifying in a hundred million bi-sexual brain-cells, it may be that thesubtle counter and inter-operations of the Man and Woman-traits find their highest activities, and make for their supremest issues.

Every man and woman is to every other a Sealed Book, whereof no more than a few pages have been glimpsed—even by those nearest and dearest. We are Sealed Books to ourselves, indeed, because we do not know the language we are written in. For of all the muted mysteries spinning ceaselessly within the silent-functioning cells of twin brain-hemispheres, Science affords us but the scantest and most sketchy information. That the grey matter coating the brain-convolutions is the site of mentality; that the higher the intelligence, the deeper and more intricate these convolutions are; that disease of a certain area destroys the power of speech; while disease of some other occasions paralysis of this or that group of muscles, loss of sensation in this or that tract of skin. Baldly it states that a portion of a certain convolution controls a certain movement of a hand. But the thousand and one emotions and incentives prompting such movement, and differentiating the resulting action across the extensive range between the noblest benefaction and the blackest murder, baffle every scientific method.

The processes of Mind and Impulse occur on planes we have no means of penetrating, possess no appliances whereby to estimate the ethereal undulations thereof.

What are we? Who are we? Whence are we? Whither do we go?

All is locked within the occulted silence of our hundred million brain-cells; each of which holds and keeps its own intrinsic secret; each the mysterious record, it may be, of one of those countless experiences, forms and phases, ancestral or individual, whereof every living person is the last resultant. But the Twin-hemispheres, face to face within the skull, like opposite pages of a book, are key to one another; one page written in the mysticallanguage of The Past and Future, the other in the concrete language of The Present.

Is that which I surmise to be theWoman—and emotional half of brain, the site of the mysterious province known as The Subconsciousness, into the strange powers and phenomena whereof scientists are now beginning to inquire?

Is it the seat of that which Myers designated "The Subliminal Consciousness," but which might well be called the Supra-Consciousness, because, in the regions of its higher functioning, it cognises things beyond power of Concrete Consciousness to apprehend; intuitions, premonitions, apparitions, telepathic messages?

Is it medium of those inherences and that sub-intelligent emotionalism known asInstinct; which may be regarded as the implanted religion of rudimentary organisms, leading them upward in blind subconscious obedience, at sacrifice of their self-interests and disposition?

Respecting the regeneration of the crystalline lens of the eye of a Triton, Bergson says:

"Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing principle in order to account for this convergence of effects."

May it not be that this brain-half—seemingly functionless, albeit as marvellously constructed and constituted as its fellow-half—is, in its merely organic departments, the agency of such an "inner principle," engendering the vital potentials of Life and Evolution, of health, of nervous recuperation and of biological repair? While in its departments of Mind, it functions as instinct, as intuition, as inspiration, aspiration; serves as the subtly receptive medium by way of which The Divine Influx wells in human attribute; whereby Divine Revelation is communicated to the concrete brain-half, forinterpretation in speech and in writing. Bergson says also: "The consciousness of a living being may be defined as an arithmetical difference betweenpotentialandrealisedactivity. It measures the interval between representation and action." (Duality is indicated.)

The trait essentially distinguishing the human from the brute-mind, is Intelligent Purpose. And Purpose is the product of Impulse (or Instinct) and Reason, (or Concrete Intelligence). (Duality again.) Impulse is an emotion and is feminine. Reason is masculine. Intelligent Purpose may well be, therefore, a resultant of the co-operation of the feminine half of the brain, which supplies Impulse, with the masculine half, which supplies Reason.

Instinct, Professor James, the American psychologist, has pointed out, exists independently of any recognition of its purpose. While Reason exists apart from instinct—apart therefore from the emotional impulse which gives it the personal motive-power to become purpose. Thus, either mode of brain without the other to supplement it would be incapable of function.

Self-consciousness requires two departments of Consciousness—each of which is aware of the other. So that a man may judge and restrain impulses in himself that are contrary to reason and expedience, or, on the other hand, may choose to sacrifice both reason and self-interest to emotional impulse, noble and uplifting, or ignoble and debasing.

Describing Intellect as characterised by a natural inability to comprehend Life, Professor Bergson further says: "Instinct, on the contrary, is moulded on the very form of Life.... If the consciousness that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of Life."

Again Duality of mental processes is inferred. As too in the following passage:

"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations—just as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into Matter.... Intelligence, by means of science ... brings us, and moreover only claims to bring us, a translation of Life in terms of inertia.... But it is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us—by Intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely."

III

The phenomena of Hypnotism seem to set the Duality of cerebral processes beyond dispute.

Dr. George H. Savage, Consulting Physician and late Lecturer on Mental diseases at Guy's Hospital, in his Harveian Oration, October 1909, testified as follows to the strangeness and authenticity of hypnotic evidences:

"Wishing to follow our great master in not accepting anything without personal investigation, I took advantage of the opportunity offered by Dr. Wright, to test some of the points of most importance to which I have referred."A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down and talk quietly about his relationship to hypnotism. Then he was told to go to sleep. A few passes being made over his head, he slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping placidly. By the gentle strokingof his left arm this was rendered inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal, but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly). After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done during the period of hypnosis."He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had been roused,his right arm fell useless by his side, he passing at the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis.This is common when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of the right side, including the face, was insensitive; the pupils were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of anything which had been said or done. He was later again hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts."It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong smell of violets came."I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during sleep."

"A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down and talk quietly about his relationship to hypnotism. Then he was told to go to sleep. A few passes being made over his head, he slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping placidly. By the gentle strokingof his left arm this was rendered inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal, but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly). After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done during the period of hypnosis.

"He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had been roused,his right arm fell useless by his side, he passing at the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis.This is common when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of the right side, including the face, was insensitive; the pupils were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of anything which had been said or done. He was later again hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts.

"It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong smell of violets came.

"I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during sleep."

Be it observed that when at the end of seven minutes (as had been "suggested" to him should happen) the subject lost all power and sensibility in his right side and "his right arm fell useless by his side," he passed "at the same time into a partial state of hypnosis.This is common," Dr. Savage adds, "when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out."

Here is strong corroboration of my argument that the right side of the body, with its allied half-brain, is the agent of Material Consciousness, of muscular action and of physical sensation, and that it operates normally in fencing in the higher faculties of Mind from the outer plane of concrete happenings, as also of interpreting them upon this plane.

Hypnosis is induced by devices occasioning muscular exhaustion, and thus temporarily paralysing "voluntary muscles"—muscles, that is, which are under conscious control. It is induced as well (as in the case cited) by stroking, and thus putting to sleep the sensory nerves—nerves which define the patient's consciousness of his material personality. It would seem that by such inhibition, or paralysis, of the perceptions of the outer consciousness, faculties of Subconsciousness—even of Supra-consciousness—are exposed, so that Mind itself may be dealt with direct.

Every form of insensibility is closely allied with muscular relaxation or paralysis.

Examples of the operation of the Supra-conscious faculties upon the concrete plane are supplied by the marvellous feats of "lightning calculators."

The most intricate mathematical problems—calculations that would call for lengthy and complicated intellectual processes on the part of expert mathematicians to work out by ordinary methods—are solved instantaneously by the genius of such natural "calculators." You cannot puzzle them; you cannot baffle them. Scarcely have you stated your problem than they have calmly presented you with the solution. As Maeterlinck records in his interesting book,The Unknown Guest, this genius for figures developed in Colbourn and Safford at the age of six, in Mangiamele at ten, in Gauss and Whateley at three. All that and more than expert mathematicians laboriously acquire by decades of study and practice, these boy-prodigies achieved by way of native faculty. Such have not the slightest notion how they arrive at their results. These are obtained automatically—are products of unconscious cerebration.

Maeterlinck observes of this, that the resultant "appears to rise, infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and cosmic reservoir wherein the answer to every question lies dormant."

What is this "eternal and cosmic reservoir" if it be not Mind, or Supra-consciousness, as distinguished from conscious intellection—a native intuitive, but undifferentiate, or potential, consciousness which holds the answer, "infallible and ready-done," to every question.

TruthIs. There is but one solution—the true one—of a mathematical or any other problem of exact science.

A significant fact is that such prodigy boys generallylose their mysterious faculty "at the moment when the possessor begins to go to school." So soon, that is, as he develops the power of conscious brain-processes—the power to work out his problems by concrete methods—his native supra-conscious gift of solving them spontaneously fails.

Intuition, the woman-mode of arriving at conclusions, lightning quick and true without reason or reflection, is a kindred potency of Mind. "When a man," says a French writer, "has laboriously climbed a staircase, he is sure to find a woman at the top—although she will be unable to say how she came there!"

He did not add the further truth, that—as with the prodigy boys—the more you educate her to come at her conclusions by processes of intellection, the more you rob her of her native woman-gift of divination.

With the rising level of Faculty engendered by progressive evolution, woman's powers of intellection have developed too.

While her own mental attributes are themselves of a very high order, and give to her mentality an inductive subtlety and illumination lacking in that of the male. And this high quality of brain it is that is now being extinguished in her by straining her to masculine standards.

Progress awaits, indeed, the new and quickening impulse Life and Faculty should derive from the Woman-mind fostered along its own inherent lines—to supplement the mind of man. For as Bergson says, "it is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us."

And Intuition is the woman-mode of Mind.

* * * * *

The women intellectuals who have done great work have been women who inherited talents so far above the average, as spontaneously to have reached high mental levels, without need to have sacrificed those womanly traits which gave the noblest values to such work.

The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards of the man of average brain only at cost of her health, of her emotions, or of her morale.

Herbert Spencer said profoundly, "Mind is as deep as the viscera." Indicating it as being vital and intrinsic, at one with the occulted sources of Life.

Mind is of an order of mentality wholly different from that of Intelligence or Intellect. Mind is of the nature of Emotion. It is personal, is sympathy, is divination. It is the cerebration of the Soul.

The Soul, or essential Individuality, must abide amid infinitely delicate and delicately infinite brain-cells attuned to those spiritual vibrations whereof Mind is the reflex. And if Mind is Emotion, the Woman brain-half, which is the department of human emotion, must be the mainspring of the human mind.

Great intellect, pure and simple, may exist in man or woman without or with only a fractional leaven of Mind. This is seen in the abstractions of scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, astronomers, financiers, and others. Such brains are special organs of a high order of Intellection, clear, calculating and precise of observation and reflection; rational, deductive; admirable in their unswerving rectitude, pitiless in their impregnable emotionlessness; rejecting all but incontestable evidences, scrupulously aggregating and faithfully interpreting their dry bones of numbers and data and vestiges—skeletons of Life long since extinct, or scaffoldings of Life that lives and moves and laughs and weeps, and bears no more semblance to their bloodless tabulations of its modes and processes than warm, creative Mother-Earth resembles the geological strata they describe in her; or than a beautiful flower-garden blooms in botanical treatises; or than living men andwomen are pourtrayed in text-books of Anatomy and Physiology.

Many men of Science—and all the great ones—have been men of Mind as well as of Intellect. But the intellectual processes of Abstract Science are no more operations of Mind than the paths by which we climb to sun-illumined peaks are the Light upon those peaks. Mind is Spiritual Illumination—a glimmering of The Infinite, reflected in the highest and most subtle order of the brain-cells. Rays from it are deflected toward the concrete, to function as Intellection. But these rays enter the brain at a different angle from that of Mind-rays.

Like woman its medium, Mind is inspirational, wayward and elusive. It comes we know not whence. It goes we know not whither. Receptive, intuitive, creative, colourful, it may be unwitting of Astronomy, yet it roams amid the stars. Ignorant of Geology, in it Immortal, the dry-bones of The Past become immortal—arise eternally in everlasting re-creation. Its Biology is in the lives and loves, the hopes and fears, the throes and tears of human souls and stories. It inspires the poet, priest, historian, romancist, artist; the seer and statesman; the philosopher and wondering child. It exalts the humble and meek. It may be lacking in the cleverest and most learned of men. It is found in the most ignorant and simple women; in whom it is dumb, however, failing the intellectual talent of expression.

The Woman brain-half being medium, in its higher region, of thatSupra-conscious emotionalism which engenders Mind, and in its lower region, of thatSubconscious emotionalism which engenders vital impulse in the body, woman's range of mentality is wider thanis that of man; extending both higher and lower in its opposite reaches.

But because her Intelligent Consciousness is not inherent in her own brain-half, but is supplied by her borrowed masculine brain-half, her intelligence is more superficial, is weaker and less deep and strong of grip than is his. And when the gap between her upper and her lower registers is not duly bridged and stabilised by an efficient middle-register of male-intelligence, she tends toward two extremes of mentality, both of which are emotional. Thus she lives on the plane of her highest emotional impulses. Or she lives on the plane of her senses. Some women act and re-act perpetually between these two extremes.

In her highestSupra-reaches, she is athrill with Supra-faculties. In her lowestSub-register, she is instinct and palpitant with the colour, the magnetic vibrations and the blind forces of Matter, which her vital processes are evolving into Life.

Extremes which are shown, at the one end, in the reasonless animal emotionalism of hysteria, with its abandon of control, its inco-ordinated muscular movements, its senseless weepings, cries and laughter; at the other end, in catalepsy, in which she exists detached from earth and its material needs and consciousness, subsisting, it may be for weeks together, without food or drink, withdrawn into the Inner, and potential, zones of Life and Mind. So that, no longer subject to limitations of Matter, she perceives without aid of the senses, apprehends without aid of intelligence, discerns without help of the eyes, hears without instrumentality of ears. And Time and Space no longer circumscribing her essential faculties, she visions happenings at the Antipodes, overhears whispers across a Continent, recalls The Past, foretells The Future.

It is because of the potence of the Subconsciousmedium in her, instinct with the magnetic forces of Evolving Matter, that, in her intelligence, she shows as more materialistic than man is, although warmer and more quickened in her feelings.

Living personalities and issues mean to her more than intellectual abstractions do. She is more materialistic because she cares more for the things that matter! The puddings which in her children's young bodies will be transmuted into living flesh and function, are to her of more significance than the Isosceles Triangle is.

(All that is true of the Woman brain-half must be true of the Woman brain-half in man. In him, however, his own hemisphere dominates the bent and faculty of its female counterpart.)

It is in the emotional impressionability of the Subconsciousness that habit, good and bad, is formed. Hence woman's native susceptibility to her environment—a susceptibility which renders indispensable due protection of her mind and nature during years when habits of thought and of conduct are shaping in her. Normal man, whose emotionalism is (like woman's intelligence) a borrowed faculty, differs essentially from her in this. His intelligence is inherent and more stably rooted. He is far less mimetic, far less a creature of circumstance. His firmer will and stronger intellect enable him to rise superior to environmental conditions, to shake himself free alike of habit and of circumstance; his pioneering spirit disposing him to new departures.

VII

Dual Personality, Catalepsy, Epilepsy, Shock, Insanity, Chorea are explicable as effects of abnormal dissociations or inherent discrepant relations between the two brain-hemispheres, which represent, respectively, Conscious (or objective) Intelligence, and Subconsciousness (which is subjective).

Such discrepancy occasioning confusion between the two planes of mentality, perception becomes so blurred that, as in insanity,subjectiveimpressions are perceived asobjective fact. And some idea or spectre of his own mind becoming thus objective, and being seen out of all perspective with the facts and conditions of everyday life, the patient may be so haunted and dominated thereby that not only his mentality, but his actions too may take distorted shape.

While the Conscious Brain-half is a lens that focuses the Concrete, theSubconscious Brain-half is a highly-sensitised mirror (or retina) that reflects and retains, in terms of potential Memory, all impressions and experiences. It becomes charged thus with a medley of strange and incongruous imprints, which, so long as the lens keeps these submerged and subconscious—because unfocused on the plane of consciousness—do not obtrude upon mentality. Flaws or failures in the lens of reason allowing certain imprints to emerge, these become fixed ideas and obsessions.

It is by way of the Subconsciousness, that the hypnotist impresses "suggestion."

Clairvoyants and other "mediums" employ crystal-gazing and other devices in order to fatigue, and thus to paralyse or inhibit the visual function on the outer plane of Sight. By such means, the Subconscious visual faculty comes into operation, and sets themen rapportwith their client's subconscious mentality. This becomingobjectiveto them, those endowed with the gift of "Second-Sight" (a faculty not to be denied) are able to visualise in it misty impressions of the subjects' character, thoughts and circumstances. Those rare clairvoyants who are able to establish rapport with their client's Supra-consciousness may catch glimmerings of future events, even. Because Supra-conscious Mind, being Supra-Natural, is not bounded by the limitationsof The Natural, in respect of Time and Space. In it, that which Was still Is, and that which Is-to-be already Has Been.

"Spiritists" who see or hear phenomena they attribute to "spirits" are (when such are genuine) for the most part visualising or overhearing phenomena of their own (or of some other's) Subconsciousness, which, owing to errors of refraction in the lens of Consciousness, have becomeobjectiveto them.

It may well be by way of magnetic vibrations communicated to Ether by theSupraor theSubconsciousness, that apparitions and telepathic impressions are transmitted from the brain of one person to that of another. So too, apparitions seen of persons lately dead, and so-called spiritist "communications" with these, may be (when genuine) phenomena of such etheric vibrations communicated to the Supra or the Subconsciousness of a living person, and apprehended by him in the objective forms of "ghosts" or "voices."

Kindred vital and powerful electric vibrations emanating, at the moment of death, from the Subconsciousness of victims murdered, may so charge the etheric element of houses and localities as to be communicable, for long periods afterwards, to the Subconscious mentality of "sensitives," which serves thus as "wireless receiver." Such sensitives derive the impression that the scene of the tragedy is haunted by the actual "spirit" of the murdered.

It is as incredible, of course, that an immortal soul should be chained to the scene of the violent death of a mortal body as it is incredible that a "spirit" should be at the call of a "medium," who—perhaps, for a fee—should be able, at will, to summon it back to the plane of concrete conditions, in order that it might talk (for the most part) irrelevant nonsense.

On the other hand it is to be believed that, for a briefperiod after death, a spiritual entity may remain sufficiently in touch with the material plane as to be able, by way of those Etheric undulations continuous through all the planes of Being, to manifest its existence to one in close sympathy with it.

VIII

In an article by me, "Is Man an Electrical Organism?" which appeared inThe Nineteenth Century, July, 1914, I showed—on the evidence of careful and delicate experiments by an electrical expert—that the two sides of the body (and presumably of the brain) are of different electrical potential. The active, right side ispositivelyelectrified, while the passive, left side isnegativelyelectrified.

Mental Telepathy and Telæsthesia prove, surely, that brain and nerve-currents are electrical—one brain-hemisphere operating as transmitter, the other as receiver. Since Nature employsoneLaw only to suspend the mighty solar systems of the Universe and to bring an apple to the ground, is it credible that she should employtwolaws for "Wireless" and for Human telegraphy, respectively?

The Hibernation both of animal and vegetative organisms shows two poles of vital function; Life and Consciousness passing into the Recessive, or potential, mode during such winter-sleep. Plants sleep by night.

Is Sleep a recession merely from the state of Consciousness to the potential states of Sub- and Supra-consciousness? And do these two states alternate normally in the opposite halves of the brain, concurrently with the alternation of Day and Night? Night-blindness suggests such an alternation in the dual factors of Vision—which comprises the intrinsicfacultyof Vision and the concretefunctionof visualising the external. Every concrete function normally wanes with the waning of Day.

Hence increasing drowsiness, passing into Sleep.

Morning and evening mentality differ greatly. Intellect, reason and physical activity are paramount during the day. Emotion and imagination intensify with the approach of night.

Is this an alternation in function of the Male and Female brain-hemispheres, coincident with the alternation of the dual luminaries of our earth—the positive, unchanging Dominant Sun; the changeful Moon, with her Recessive phases and her mystical influences upon Life and Mind? The ante-natal life of the embryo is set in terms of lunar months. The word "lunatic" expresses the effects of lunar phases on persons of unstable mentality.

Whence do we derive our daily influx of Life? Though we have sunk to rest with dissolution in our bones, we awake re-charged with powers of living—a phenomenon for which Science has no explanation.

Life does not originate in vital processes; vital processes originate in Life. Do we, in sleep, when processes have exhausted our daily influx of Life-power, recruit this again from a psychical source? Are living processes the wick of a lamp which is filled with the Spirit of Life at each recurring dawn, spent by the day's endeavour, and re-filled again with the following dawn?

Failure of sleep kills more swiftly than starvation. And drug-insensibility will not preserve life unless natural sleep supervene.

If nervous energy is a complex form of electrical energy, then the brain in which this is stored is an electrical dynamo. Is this dynamo re-charged during sleep from some Occult Power-station?

Since, in every equation of Science, an unknown factor reveals itself, why not candidly confess this to be a Spiritual factor?

Spirit is no more a hypothetical medium than Ether is. And Science has been forced to assume the existenceof Ether, as a basis for its calculations. Ether and Spirit are conceivably the same medium manifesting on different planes—the one of Physics, the other of Mind.

According to Professor Clarapède:

"The intellect appears only as a makeshift, an instrument which betrays that the organism is not adapted to its environment, a mode of expression which reveals a state of impotence."

A saying which supports three clauses of my hypothesis: First, that the brain, with its tributary spinal-nervous system, is an instrument of Consciousness wholly differentiated from, and supplementary to the organism of Life. Secondly, that it is an instrument designed for the adaptation of the organism to environment (the rôle I have assigned, throughout, to the male). Thirdly, that the organism of Life is not itself adapted to its environment, and that, accordingly, Adaptation to Environment cannot be regarded as the impulse of Evolutionary development, since the living organism has so far failed to adapt itself to environment that it requires a highly specialised instrument to serve as medium between itself and its surroundings.

That Intellect—being an instrument by way of which Life is adapted to environment, as also, on the other hand, by way of which environment is adapted to Life—is a makeshift that "reveals a state of impotence" is not to be admitted, however, in view of the fact that it is an instrument which preserves Life from developing along the lines of its environment; an adaptation which would necessarily involve lapse from typal ideals.

Intelligence taught man, in place of so adapting to environment as to have developed the fist of a gorilla (which at a blow can crack a human skull), to armhimself with a club. And by thus adapting environment to his evolutionary requirements, he conserved his resources and applied them to development along higher lines. Such impotence as may be, arises out of the undevelopment of a rudimentary organism. Of an organism in course of development, however. In the meanwhile, both man and woman are provided, in their hybrid constitution, with the "makeshift" of an instrument of opposite sex, which supplies both with the powers neither has yet developed in himself or herself; but without which neither is able to exist or to function.

Hybrid Humanity is still amphibious; a creature living between two planes, the Without and the Within, the Material and the Spiritual. And like all amphibious creatures, the human species is, in a measure, clumsy and imperfect. Because while fitted still with organs and faculties that have adapted to a lower plane, it possesses likewise organs and faculties that are adapting to a higher. Its powers thus handicapped by requiring to engender the vital potential and the developmental power to equip it with two orders of implement, neither order has attained perfection of construction or of function. And both ministering to the requirements of the other, necessarily hamper the operations and mask the characteristics of the other.

The two sexes are making all the while for higher development, each along routes of its contrary trend. Man develops human faculty in the direction of the Outer and material plane of Being. Woman develops it in the direction of the Inner and psychical plane.

Man transmits to woman a brain-hemisphere and powers ever further increased and intensified in their relation to the concrete. Woman transmits to man a brain-hemisphere ever further indrawn and illumined in respect of the emotional and intrinsic. Woman's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its concrete fellow, becomesincreasingly empowered to manifest, upon the outer plane, its own essential Woman-traits in Life and Consciousness. Man's brain-hemisphere, adapting to its diviner fellow, becomes increasingly illumined and inspired thereby to leaven and exalt its concrete outlook and activities.

Man's brain, by way of its responsive adaptation to the brain of woman interior to it in the zone of Mind, becomes thus ever more sympathetically intelligent, or intuitive, in respect of human life and conditions, of Science and the Arts; while losing nothing of its Dominance and concrete power, but interpreting its operations in terms of a profounder and a nobler Chivalry. Woman's brain becomes ever more intelligently sympathetic and practically helpful; losing nothing of its Recessiveness, or emotional impulse, but, on the contrary, intensifying all its Woman-attributes by extending the range and the operations of these in terms of a profounder and a nobler Altruism.

* * * * *

Because of their hybrid constitution, there is necessarily a borderland, alike of faculty and function, wherein the organisation and the characteristics of the sexes merge and approximate one another's trend and traits. This borderland represents, however, the crudest and least differentiated department of the personal and mental powers of both. It is a zone of Neuterdom, and marks a grade of rudimentary organisation in which the Sex-characteristics have not yet sufficiently diverged in development, as clearly and finely to differentiate themselves as traits of pure and unalloyed type.

The cruder the species or the evolutionary stage of species, the less Sex is specialised in it.

MALE AND FEMALE SEX-INSTINCTS AND MORALE DIAMETRICALLY DIFFERENT

"In conjunction with any other beings but men, women would have been angels; but with men they are just women, which when all is said and done, is much the same thing."—De Livry.

Among many other misconceptions with regard to Sex-characteristics, is the modern teaching that the sex-instinct is identical in men and women.

Ignoring the truth that a higher moral code is the mark of psychical superiority, and moreover that the exaction of it from women, under social penalty, has done more than any other thing to purify and to exalt the woman-character, impassioned fallacy now sees this higher standard demanded of the sex as a stigma of inferiority, and as an injustice. Accordingly it preaches equal liberty in this as in other respects. The trend toward equalisation is unfortunately (but inevitably) in the direction of lowering the woman-code rather than of raising man's.

No falser or more disastrous doctrine could be promulgated. As in all its other attributes and functions, so in this, the woman-nature differs wholly from that of the male. The primal male sex-instinct was one of tyranny and subjugation. There was no element of affection in it, and its bent was toward promiscuity. In the primal female, the instinct as an initiative impulse was non-existent. The surrender was to fear, and to habit engendered by fear. Fondness for her mate cameto woman by way of her love for his child, a source essentially monogamous in trend.

Physical passion in woman is derived from the Male-traits in her. It is, accordingly, a borrowed, not an inherent instinct. And in all natural women, passion is secondary to love; love belonging to her own intrinsic nature. Because of its heritage, there is, in a true woman's love, always a maternal altruistic element: unselfish, ministering, devoted. Love has come to be intensified in her by fire of passion and by force of personal attraction. It is no longer a mere meek surrender, with fear for spur and maternity for solace. In proportion as she is of high organisation, it has become a complex of mind and emotion and sense; intense and vital. But always, in proportion as she is womanly, her own way of loving—the way of devotion and tenderness—is ascendant over passion.

In man, howsoever it be leavened by the higher love, passion dominates. When in woman passion dominates love, she is loving with the Male-traits in her—not as woman. And in the measure wherein she falls short of the womanly monogamous ideal, she is less woman than she is male.

Mr. Justice Hannen, for long President of the Divorce Court—and a subtle expert in women—observed that it was not the passionate, warm-eyed women who figured most before him, but, in far greater number, the cold-blooded, greedy and emotionless. Because for one woman who succumbs to love or passion, twenty transgress from motives of vanity or gain; or from mere frivolous craving for excitement.

It is the sexless women who are most immoral, for the same reason that some dyspeptics are always hungry. Persons of healthy digestion eat, and are satisfied. The healthfully-sexed love, and are content. The emotionless woman is for ever seeking in novelty, emotions she lacks the emotion to feel. Such women exploit passionfor vanity, for distraction, or for the primal male-instinct of subjugation. Their desire for a lover is less a sentiment than it is of the nature of that craving for drink, or for drugs, or for dress, which many of this order also indulge. All are megalomanias—natural instincts distorted to vices by warp of abnormal self-centredness.

With its foundations laid in instinct, its organic emotionalism, its streak of mental irresponsibility, and its hunger for approbation, the Woman-nature, when lacking in the higher Woman-traits of affection and selflessness, or when these are not duly absorbed in the natural interests and functions of the sex, may degenerate to a very ugly thing.

Some of our latter-day "smart" young married women, childless or with one or two children consigned to hirelings, their passions excited by marriage and not duly assuaged by maternity, their impulses unchastened and their powers unexpended in affection and care for the family, seek outlet and distraction in promiscuous philanderings, in intrigue or in vice.

Human faculty and impulse diverted from their normal channels readily find crooked and dangerous courses.

In the fourth year of War, the Prussian Protestant State-Church declared that "immorality among German women has attained such a degree that the very foundations of Society are threatened." This and kindred developments in other War-ridden countries are not due to women having changed their natures, but are the outcome of conditions so altered as to have released them from the wholesome disciplinary exercise of their accustomed duties, relaxing thus the salutary curbs of habit and convention. Child of Nature that she is, woman is a born rebel; for ever in revolt against the law and order and restraints which man has imposed as indispensable to Progress. Whereas men abhor,women exult in crises and upheavals. Because these serve for outlet to their restive emotionalism and supply scope for exotic sensation, while at the same time giving them temporary mastery over the male—who is always at a disadvantage in exhibitions of feeling.

And this temperamental erraticism is valuably disciplined by the masculine bent for rule and method, and normally finds admirable safety-valves in wifely, housewifely, and motherly functions.

To advocate a moral standard higher for women than for men is regarded now as reactionary and regressive.

Nevertheless, it is certain that beyond all the other virtues, personal purity is essentially the highest, and is racially the most valuable of all the Woman-qualities. Lapses in the other sex are in no way comparable, as regards moral, biological, or sociological significance, with kindred lapses in woman. Because of her native non-conformability, once she has deviated from the monogamous code, she is dangerously likely never after to conform to it. (It is a truism thatThe woman who has one, has many lovers.) Her non-conformity requires, accordingly, to be protected by a social ordinance more rigid than is that of man. Man being less complex of psychology, moreover, that which in him is merely biological is vice in woman. The fact alone that the male is able to employ the sex-function as a weapon of brutality (as in violation) proves him totally dissimilar to woman in this relation.

Man disperses; Woman absorbs. And the consistency of Nature is such that these two diametrically-opposite biological modes in reproduction are reflected on the planes of mind and impulse. The diametrical difference of the modes disposes outright of the Feminist demand for identical moral codes for the sexes; the sex-functionsof the two being so intrinsically contrary in method and inherence, with correspondingly signal differences in moral impulse and significance.

Biologically, the masculine function concludes with its fulfilment. Whereas the feminine functionbeginsmainly therewith, and continues thence onward to operate in an ever-deepening, broadening, and intensifying tide of issues; biological and psychological. And so potent and subtle is Nature's consistency with regard to this primary and vital function of woman in Life, that whether or not biological issue results, psychological issues do inevitably. Woman's mode and mood ofreceptivenessin this mysterious union so operate that, in her surrender, she admits to the inmost sanctuary of her being an alien presence—which remains with her till death. Fade as it may from her consciousness, it remains, nevertheless, impressed for ever after on the vibrant records of her sensitive Subconsciousness, as vitally as in the hour of her surrender. And underlying mind and character and conduct ever after, it for ever after contributes its quota to these.

Because of the vivifying potence of her creative womanhood—the function whereof is to engender Life—the stranger admitted to her citadel becomes endued with Life, and takes up his abode with her to the end of her natural term. For this reason, the adulterous woman is adulterous in a sense impossible to man—adulterous in both a vital and an intrinsic psychical sense that is revolting.

With the increasing intensification in the male, with advancing evolution, of his inherited Woman-traits, he has become ever further endowed with Woman's Sub- and Supra-conscious faculties. So that the function which was, in its primal moral, but brief and cursory, ending summarily with its biological fulfilment, has become increasingly endued in him with the vital emotionalism, and accordingly with the moralsignificance inherent to the Woman-nature. If his experiences fade more quickly from his consciousness than hers do, they remain nevertheless (in the degree of his psychical development) potent still in his Subconsciousness—as possibly adulterating and debasing factors. But since his Subconscious emotionalism is an acquired and not an inherent part of his male mentality, it is a medium vastly less sensitised and operative in him than it is in her; of whom it is the very basis of her being.

This is no apology, of course, for masculine aberration, but a counsel of feminine virtue—a counsel making indirectly, therefore, but none the less surely for masculine virtue also. The reasons for chastity in the one sex differ diametrically from those which should be the motive thereof in the other, however.

Chivalry and Prostitution are incompatible.

It must be confessed, however, that deterioration of the woman-organisation and temperament conduces greatly to masculine promiscuity. Not only because this entails loss of power to charm and bind the mate, but because with the sex-immaturity, on the one hand of the over-Feminised type, on the other, of the Mannish woman, women lose, in greater or less degree, the natural power of one sex to assuage passion in the other.

Man is deteriorated, moreover, by moral and psychical deterioration in that sex whence moral impulse springs, because, in such case, the appeal of woman ceases to be, as is normal, to the emotional and chivalrous in him, but evokes, on the contrary, biological instinct mainly, or merely.

It is well-established truth that her first lover (or her husband, supposing she had loved him) retains a unique hold upon a woman's mind throughout her after-life—his personality or memory dominating herimagination as no later-comer is able to do. This is because that first enters into possession of both Consciousness and Subconsciousness while the tablets of these are still virgin and unblotted. This first impresses himself, therefore, clearly and strongly defined upon her exquisitely-sensitised tablets of remembrance.

Latter-day young girls, permitted the injurious licence of free and unchaperoned association with the other sex, even when they come to marriage, inviolate, have, many of them, passed through experiences which so have blurred and sullied their young highly-impressionable temperament and senses as to have despoiled these of that fair purity and freshness indispensable alike to potent impressions and to deep attachments. In natural woman who has arrived at womanhood without premature arousing of the senses, soul and sense are at fine poise, and respond in vital unison to love. In girls whose innocence and conduct have not been duly safeguarded, the prematurely-excited senses have become detached from the soul—from the higher emotions, that is. With the result that this fine poise of mind and body, which is the Hall-mark of Woman-development, and whence romantic passion issues, has been irretrievably lost.

The same is true, in degree, of young men. They too deteriorate when biological instinct is dissociated in them from the higher impulses of passion. But in men, the poise, being less delicate, is not only less readily lost, but it is more readily recovered. In this, as in other things, the normal male makes for means; while woman's bent is toward extremes. Further, physical passion being normally far stronger in him, andinitiativein impulse—whereas in her it is mainlyresponsive—the senses assert sway over him spontaneously. While in natural girls these lie more or less dormant, unless artificially roused, or until aroused in natural response to love.

Early philanderings (more serious than boy-and-girl comradeship and innocent flirtation) prevent women not only from ever attaining their highest levels of organisation and temperament, but they destroy effectually their power to love profoundly and whole-heartedly. They rob them, accordingly, of the greatest transfiguring potence and happiness of life.

III

Odious and startling evidence that because of woman's vital emotionalism and sensitive psychology, her nature retains ineffaceable vestiges of all that has happened to her, is the fact that a woman's children by a second husband may resemble her first husband far more than they resemble their father. A significant and repulsive adulteration of type, and one so intrinsic that a woman who had been previously wife to a negro or a Chinaman will present her second husband, typically European, with offspring of negroid or of Mongolian type. That husbands and wives come to resemble one another in physiognomy and characteristics, is further indication of the subtle and potent temperamental fusion and implications of the mysterious sex-union.

The adulteration of type which may thus repulsively mar the offspring of women twice-mated is seen, at first hand, in that adulteration of personality which results from sex-promiscuity. Not only is the individuality both of mind and character obliterated, but the individuality both of form and feature is obliterated too. The features of persons of irregular life become blurred and more or less mongrel; character and expression so degenerating as to produce eventually that which has been styled a "composite face"—the face resulting when a number of portraits of different persons are printed one over another on the same photographic plate.

The degree to which in the sex-union—howsoever lightly entered on—they twain become intrinsically and remain irrevocably one, in the vital records of individualism and character, is wholly unsuspected. But in this—which is a complex phenomenon of Hypnosis—indelible undying images, such as are impressed upon the Subconscious mind in every other form of Hypnosis, remain impressed thereon; to inspire and fructify, or to weaken and vitiate nature and faculty.

That vigilant supervision of her young daughters for which the early Victorian mother is now decried, secured a purity of racial type, in fine physique and constitution, in notable talent and enterprise, in rare womanly beauty and virile handsomeness, which proves the unique potentialities inherent in our Anglo-Saxon stock. No merely material service a woman can render to the State approaches in value the all-potent one of safeguarding the virtue of its young daughters.

Each sex has its own morale to sustain. And personal virtue is woman's. The desire for equal liberty in this respect is added proof of the ascendancy, in modern women, of Male over their own natural Woman-traits. It springs not from an intensification of passion, but, on the contrary, from a waning of that power to love which holds a woman true to one mate.

Last and most cogent of reasons: In view of those long centuries of suffering and aspiration, by way of which the evolution of the Woman-traits of love and purity has been achieved in blood and tears—albeit the monogamous ideal is far yet from attainment—beyond all else, the sex should strive toward this, both personally and socially.

It is the soul of Love and Life, the impulse of Human advance. With decline of this ideal, the emotions cease to centre in the Home and Family, and civilisation relapses to barbarism.

Ellen Key, inLove and Marriage, observes: "Few propositions are so lacking in proof as that monogamy is the form of sexual life which is indispensable to the vitality and culture of nations." And further: "all the progress that is ascribed to Christian civilisation has taken place while monogamy was indeed the law, but polygamy the custom."

She overlooks the portentous truth that a law is the expression of a general aspiration toward an ideal for which a people is striving. That a law is broken proves that the higher in man moves him to set a standard beyond his power—or beside his inclination—to sustain undeviatingly. Yet although he may not act up to it undeviatingly, it stands, nevertheless, for the ideal he realises that he should reach.

Abolition of a good and elevating law proves, therefore, not only the serious lapse of a community from an established standard of conduct, but it inevitably lowers the level of conduct by removing barriers—self-respect and self-restraint, public opinion and so forth—standing in the way of laxity. Despite the death-penalty, murders are committed. But were the death-penalty to be abolished, murder would increase by leaps and bounds. The human mind is strangely susceptible. And the power of habits acquired under fear of penalties is an invaluable force for good. The higher minds of a community evolve and establish codes for lesser minds to shape by. And undoubtedly the subconscious as well as the conscious shaping toward such standards furthers development in the directions thereof. To make honesty a matter of personal choice, with no penalties attaching to theft, would be in itself an incentive to theft.

Comparison with polygamous countries, of countries in which monogamy is the law, refutes straightway MissKey's discredit of monogamy; showing the polygamous uncivilised, unenlightened, unprogressive, subject to monogamous races, and in every sense, both materially and morally decadent. And if, with a notion of establishing equality in all things between the sexes by emancipating woman from the higher moral code, leasehold marriage or other forms of wedded laxity should be substituted—not only would national purity, but personal character and happiness too would suffer grievously.

If men have not kept the monogamous law, the instinct of jealousy, reinforced by repugnance to supporting alien offspring, has seen to it that wives should trespass as seldom, at all events, as was possible to be guarded against. Custom and public opinion, furthered by personal fear and fear of divorce, have all contributed toward advancing ideals of womanly honour and conduct. And from monogamous mothers—whether voluntarily or involuntarily so—progress has derived immense impulse. Apart from biological considerations, the benefit to the family of the mother's influence centred in her home and kept from straying thence, either by her own aspirations, by public opinion, or by fear of the husband, has been incalculable.

During and since the War, crime among children has increased by 50 per cent., largely owing to absence of mothers from their homes, working or drinking, or otherwise dissipating, while their children have been left to run wild in the streets.

Our reformatories are full to overflowing with these neglected unfortunates; deprived thus of the haven of homes and maternal control. As a man is responsible to the State for the support of his family, so a woman should be held responsible to the State for the proper care and supervision of its future citizens, who, without due care and disciplinary influence, become a burden and scourge to the community.

In all these vitally-momentous issues, let us free our minds alike of sex-bias and false sentiment, in order that we may see clearly, and may act honestly and wisely in the interests not only of women themselves, but in those of the Race.

The sex-instinct in woman having had its origin in surrender, retains much still of this primal element. And both middle-class men of lower evolutionary grade, and men of the working classes, exercise still, to considerable degree, the brute-trait of terrorism over women—moral rather than physical terrorism.

In rescuing young girls from molestation in the streets, one may see in them the panic of such intimidation. They are pale and trembling, with pupils widely dilated. In full daylight, it may be in a crowded thoroughfare, with police at hand, primal instinctive emotionalism paralyses reason, resource and will-power. Weak-minded women, who lack their due share of masculine combativeness to stiffen resistance in them, frequently marry, or otherwise yield to such men, far more because they are afraid than because they are fond of them. And the terrorism husbands have exercised over wives has nerved wives against the terrorism exercised over them by other men; and has thus served to protect them from their own weaknesses.

The Woman-traits, always at a disadvantage in concrete affairs against superior strength, have been buttressed thus and coerced—often cruelly and tyrannously, 'tis true. But they have nevertheless been greatly furthered in development by a mate who, if he did not recognise the higher calibre of woman's nature, nor himself aspired to the code he exacted from her, recognised, at all events, that this higher code he exacted of her was that best adapted to progress. Thus has poor mortality been beaten and shapen on the anvilsof compulsion and exigency. And always the woman has most suffered—to be beautiful of nature.

Were it not that an advance-guard of higher and chivalrous men stand, by force of the laws they have made, between women and the lower and coarser masculine orders, no woman's life would be worth the living because of perpetual affront. With existing laws, indeed, which protect even the most degraded of the sex, the women of the poorer classes are everywhere subject to insult and unseemly jest, open or covert. Because to many men of crude order, the eternal mystery of Sex shows mainly as subject for levity. The crass and unimaginative frequently deride thus things too high for their dense understanding.

Women have come to take their chivalrous protection by law as mere matter-of-course, precisely as they take it as matter-of-course that men should labour, and should endow them with the benefits of their industry. These things are by no means matter-of-course, however, but are matter of chivalry—chivalry so innate as to have become convention.

It would be occasion for laughter, were it not cause for profoundest regret, that the hypertrophy of male-traits in woman has engendered to-day a sex-antagonism which has set her in open revolt against man, from whom, if she has suffered and suffers, and will continue to suffer at the hands of his defects, she nevertheless derives, and has always derived from his chivalries her most gracious human privileges.

That the obligations and the recompenses of the sexes are reciprocal, is true. It is equally true, however, that the choice has lain with men to have ignored the nobler issues of the compact. As the seraglio-imprisoned women of the less manly and progressive peoples prove.

All our civilisation, with its complex sociological, intellectual, and moral developments, rests on a basis of Force. Men must still prove their right to each and all of their laboriously-won achievements by arms and thevalours of war. In peace, the laws—which alone make life tolerable—rest equally upon the powers of masculine will and strength to inflict due punishment for violation thereof.

And laws having been made by men, it was clearly optional with them to have left women unprotected, or far less protected than the other sex; in place of having extended special protection to their more delicate attributes.

In safeguarding women in general, men safeguard their own individual women, of course. Human motive is involved; is the product of a number of factors. That this is so is reason for eliminating no single one of these factors, lest the resultant undergo a wholly unexpected and disastrous transformation.

The Plan sets most women at the mercy of most men, by reason of the greater physical strength of males, and by temptation of their more urgent sex-instinct. In view of her inherent disabilities, it would have seemed,a priori, that no woman could in ruder days have attained to womanhood, inviolate.

And yet that her very disabilities have served for her increasing protection is shown by the fact of her increasing protection as, with the evolution of her higher organisation, her disabilities have intensified.

Civilised woman, with her more delicate organisation, is far more defenceless than was savage woman. But in response to the claims of her increasing defencelessness, the instinctive chivalry of the stronger male, her natural protector, has become progressively the intelligent and moral chivalry of higher man. No strength or capability of woman's own to defend herself could so have served her; nor could so have served the other sex for fine incentive.

To free woman of her highly specialised and inspiring disabilities by substituting in her, powers, muscular and mental, that would fit her to meet the male on equal terms, would be to frustrate the method of the maleevolutionary ascent, by eliminating the humanising and uplifting appeal to his manhood of these her inspiring unfitnesses.

The deplorable decadence in masculine regard for and bearing toward women, which has resulted in direct proportion as the sex has substituted male efficiencies for womanly ineptitudes, serves for one of many other valuable object-lessons of the War.

Among other Feminist fallacies, thedemi-mondainehas come to be regarded as victim merely, on the one hand, of an unjust, man-administered economic system, on the other, of masculine libertinism. The truth is that the vast majority of immoral women are under no compulsion, but voluntarily adopt this mode of life either to escape work, or because of a natural vicious proclivity. A number are mental defectives; some actually feeble-minded, others only morally deficient.

It must always be remembered, moreover, that, biologically speaking, the separation of thegenuswoman into the folds, respectively, of sheep and goats is of signal racial and social service. That some goats are in the sheep-fold, some lambs among the goats, is not to be denied. Fatalities, injustices, and incongruities are inevitable to all broad human classifications. In the main, however, the women who resist temptation and remain virtuous are obviously better fitted to be the wives and mothers of the Race than are they who fall.

And although this is not, of course, the calculated purpose of this lamentable under-world, the rough division of the sex thereby into two main classes has been of service, by supplying a sociological backwater wherein the worst of our racial derelicts—mental and moral defectives—are segregated; and are precluded, for the most part, from perpetuating their mental and moral defectiveness.

Women, like men, must uphold and battle for their standards in the teeth of circumstance. The most notable types of parasite-women, selfish, slothful, worthless, venal, vicious, whose standards are jewels and clothes, their goals luxury and pleasure and the evasion of all that is difficult and distasteful in life, are found among the aristocratic and the plutocratic orders; safely secured against economic necessity or lack of scope and outlet for their powers.

The Feminist fallacy that prostitution is almost entirely a product of male economics has been strikingly refuted, too, by War-conditions, which opened numerous well-remunerated employments for the sex. Yet, coincident with a sad deficit of women to fill these, prostitution has waxed rampant.

Wise and discreet were those early Victorians, with their uncompromising ostracism of loose women. Apart altogether from such salutary expression of their condemnation of impure living, they were vastly too clever and far-seeing to admit persons of notoriously evil habit, peeress or actress, to association with their clean young girls, as modern mothers do; to meet and to mix freely with them socially or at Charity Bazaars, on Flag-Days, and so forth. With the result that girls all the world over have become increasingly lax and decadent in tone and manner, in dress and morale, from confusion of their young standards by social tolerance and recognition of such persons, as also from corruption by demoralising contact with and observation of such.

Intolerance? Pharisaism? By no means!

The strong and straight, uncompromising moral standards of its women serve as landmarks of, and impulse to a nation's progress. Clear and definite lines of demarcation between good and evil, between possible and impossible modes of conduct, point the moral of advance, and turn the scale in the upward direction for the weak, the hesitating, and the imitative.

Dread of consequences went far, in less sophisticateddays, to safeguard and foster womanly virtue. Modern expedients have, unfortunately, removed all cause for fear in this relation; permitting an impunity of action demoralising to the weak in will or principle, who require every possible aid and check to guide them aright. In simpler days, girls who had lapsed were steadied and strengthened in character and self-restraint by the compulsion to support, as too by their natural fondness for the unwanted child. Now the first step—having cost them nothing—predisposes to further backslidings. And both character and self-control degenerate increasingly.

VII

To weaken the marriage-bond by setting it for a term of years only, or by making it terminable by consent, would virtually destroy marriage and family-life. The fact that the bond would not be binding would make persons more careless even than they are at present in selection of the mate, and would thus multiply the number of mis-matings. Which would be still further to deteriorate species, since the finer types of children are born only of well-mated parents.

The finality of the bond, if it does not always prevent one or both from meeting some other they prefer, prevents the scrupulous, at all events, from seeking such. Or having found, it keeps many from fostering and from yielding to temptation. Were marriage terminable, or, as is sometimes proposed, were it abolished wholly, and love the only bond between the sexes, there would be no confidence, no sense of security between the partners, no stability of family life; no centring of interests in this, and but small endeavour to retain affections which for the many could be easily replaced—and replaced, moreover, with the zest of novelty. On the contrary, a curse of unrest would afflict the vast majority of married folk with the unsettling—mayhap with thealluring—prospect of meeting their further "Fate"; perhaps their second, possibly their third, it might be, their seventh "Fate."

Only the few are strong enough of heart or stable enough of character to remain steadfast for a lifetime in any undertaking, unless bound stringently thereto by authorised obligations, incentives, and penalties. Only the few are deep enough of nature to love for a lifetime; or are deep enough of nature to love so intensely as to justify altering the marriage-code in order to spare these few suffering. The wane of nine out of ten honeymoons impresses the value of an inflexible decree that declines to reckon with disillusion, but sternly bids the disillusioned take up their burden and make the best of it. And having no choice, many do this and make a success of it—on new, and, it may be, on far higher lines than those they had set out upon.

That but few love so deeply as to love for life by no means implies that marriage for less than a lifetime should be substituted. It shows, on the contrary, that the majority of persons would prove as incapable of loving No. Two for long as they had been incapable of loving No. One; or as they would be incapable of loving No. Three, or No. Ten. A bond that rivets them for life to No. One therefore, and entails loss or suffering when they fail to abide by it, is safeguard for them against such a succession of loves as would be as demoralising to the individual as it must be destructive of society.

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