,,in ,,defense ,,of ,,women by ,h4 ,l4 ,mencken ,,contents ,introduction ,i4 ,the ,feminine ,mind #a4 ,the ,maternal ,instinct #b4 ,women's ,intelligence #c4 ,the ,masculine ,bag of ,tricks #d4 ,why ,women ,fail #e4 ,the ,thing ,called ,intuition ,,ii4 ,the ,war ,between the ,sexes #f4 ,how ,marriages are ,arranged #g4 ,the ,feminine ,attitude #h4 ,the ,male ,beauty #i4 ,men as ,aesthetes #aj4 ,the ,process of ,delusion #aa4 ,biological ,considerations #ab4 ,honour #ac4 ,women and the ,emotions #ad4 ,pseudo-,anaesthesia #ae4 ,mythical ,anthropophagi #af4 ,a ,conspiracy of ,silence ,,iii4 ,marriage #ag4 ,fundamental ,motives #ah4 ,the ,process of ,courtship #ai4 ,the ,actual ,husband #bj4 ,the ,unattainable ,ideal #ba4 ,the ,effect on the ,race #bb4 ,compulsory ,marriage #bc4 ,extra-,legal ,devices #bd4 ,intermezzo on ,monogamy #be4 ,late ,marriages #bf4 ,disparate ,unions #bg4 ,the ,charm of ,mystery #bh4 ,woman as ,wife #bi4 ,marriage and the ,law #cj4 ,the ,emancipated ,housewife ,,iv4 ,woman ,suffrage #ca4 ,the ,crowning ,victory #cb4 ,the ,woman ,voter #cc4 ,a ,glance ,into the ,future #cd4 ,the ,suffragette #ce4 ,a ,mythical ,dare-,devil #cf4 ,the ,origin of a ,delusion #cg4 ,women as ,martyrs #ch4 ,pathological ,effects #ci4 ,women as ,christians #dj4 ,piety as a ,social ,habit #da4 ,the ,ethics of ,women ,v4 ,the ,new ,age #db4 ,the ,transvaluation of ,values #dc4 ,the ,lady of ,joy #dd4 ,the ,future of ,marriage #de4 ,effects of the ,war #df4 ,the ,eternal ,romance #dg4 ,apologia in ,conclusion ,introduction ,as a professional critic of life and letters1 my principal business in the world is that of manufacturing platitudes for tomorrow1 which is to say1 ideas so novel that they will be instantly rejected as insane and outrageous by all right thinking men1 and so apposite and sound that they will eventually conquer that instinctive opposition1 and force themselves into the traditional wisdom of the race4 ,i hope ,i need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday1 with new labels stuck rakishly upon them4 ,this borrowing and refurbishing of shop-worn goods1 as a matter of fact1 is the invariable habit of traders in ideas1 at all times and everywhere4 ,it is not1 however1 that all the conceivable human notions have been thought out2 it is simply1 to be quite honest1 that the sort of men who volunteer to think out new ones seldom1 if ever1 have wind enough for a full day's work4 ,the most they can ever accomplish in the way of genuine originality is an occasional brilliant spurt1 and half a dozen such spurts1 particularly if they come close together and show a certain co-ordination1 are enough to make a practitioner celebrated1 and even immortal4 ,nature1 indeed1 conspires against all such genuine originality1 and ,i have no doubt that ,god is against it on ,his heavenly throne1 as ,his vicars and partisans unquestionably are on this earth4 ,the dead hand pushes all of us into intellectual cages2 there is in all of us a strange tendency to yield and have done4 ,thus the impertinent colleague of ,aristotle is doubly beset1 first by a public opinion that regards his enterprise as subversive and in bad taste1 and secondly by an inner weakness that limits his capacity for it1 and especially his capacity to throw off the prejudices and superstitions of his race1 culture anytime4 ,the cell1 said ,haeckel1 does not act1 it reacts--and what is the instrument of reflection and speculation save a congeries of cells8 ,at the moment of the contemporary metaphysician's loftiest flight1 when he is most gratefully warmed by the feeling that he is far above all the ordinary airlanes and has absolutely novel concept by the tail1 he is suddenly pulled up by the discovery that what is entertaining him is simply the ghost of some ancient idea that his school-master forced into him in #ahhg1 or the mouldering corpse of a doctrine that was made official in his country during the late war1 or a sort of fermentation-product1 to mix the figure1 of a banal heresy launched upon him recently by his wife4 ,this is the penalty that the man of intellectual curiosity and vanity pays for his violation of the divine edict that what has been revealed from ,sinai shall suffice for him1 and for his resistance to the natural process which seeks to reduce him to the respectable level of a patriot and taxpayer4 ,i was1 of course1 privy to this difficulty when ,i planned the present work1 and entered upon it with no expectation that ,i should be able to embellish it with1 almost1 more than a very small number of hitherto unutilized notions4 ,moreover1 ,i faced the additional handicap of having an audience of extraordinary antipathy to ideas before me1 for ,i wrote it in war-time1 with all foreign markets cut off1 and so my only possible customers were ,americans4 ,of their unprecedented dislike for novelty in the domain of the intellect ,i have often discoursed in the past1 and so there is no need to go into the matter again4 ,all ,i need do here is to recall the fact that1 in the ,united ,states1 alone among the great nations of history1 there is a right way to think and a wrong way to think in everything--not only in theology1 or politics1 or economics1 but in the most trivial matters of everyday life4 ,thus1 in the average ,american city the citizen who1 in the face of an organized public clamour 7usually managed by interested parties7 for the erection of an equestrian statue of ,susan ,b4 ,anthony1 the apostle of woman suffrage1 in front of the chief railway station1 or the purchase of a dozen leopards for the municipal zoo1 or the dispatch of an invitation to the ,structural ,iron ,workers' ,union to hold its next annual convention in the town ,symphony ,hall--the citizen who1 for any logical reason1 opposes such a proposal--on the ground1 say1 that ,miss ,anthony never mounted a horse in her life1 or that a dozen leopards would be less useful than a gallows to hang the ,city ,council1 or that the ,structural ,iron ,workers would spit all over the floor of ,symphony ,hall and knock down the busts of ,bach1 ,beethoven and ,brahms--this citizen is commonly denounced as an anarchist and a public enemy4 ,it is not only erroneous to think thus2 it has come to be immoral4 ,and many other planes1 high and low4 ,for an ,american to question any of the articles of fundamental faith cherished by the majority is for him to run grave risks of social disaster4 ,the old ,english offence of 8imagining the ,king's death0 has been formally revived by the ,american courts1 and hundreds of men and women are in jail for committing it1 and it has been so enormously extended that1 in some parts of the country at least1 it now embraces such remote acts as believing that the negroes should have equality before the law1 and speaking the language of countries recently at war with the ,republic1 and conveying to a private friend a formula for making synthetic gin4 ,all such toyings with illicit ideas are construed as attentats against democracy1 which1 in a sense1 perhaps they are4 ,for democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos1 else even half-wits would argue it to pieces4 ,its first concern must thus be to penalize the free play of ideas4 ,in the ,united ,states this is not only its first concern1 but also its last concern4 ,no other enterprise1 not even the trade in public offices and contracts1 occupies the rulers of the land so steadily1 or makes heavier demands upon their ingenuity and their patriotic passion4 ,familiar with the risks flowing out of it--and having just had to change the plates of my 8,book of ,prefaces10 a book of purely literary criticism1 wholly without political purpose or significance1 in order to get it through the mails1 ,i determined to make this brochure upon the woman question extremely pianissimo in tone1 and to avoid burdening it with any ideas of an unfamiliar1 and hence illegal nature4 ,so deciding1 ,i presently added a bravura touch3 the unquenchable vanity of the intellectual snob asserting itself over all prudence4 ,that is to say1 ,i laid down the rule that no idea should go into the book that was not already so obvious that it had been embodied in the proverbial philosophy1 or folk-wisdom1 of some civilized nation1 including the ,chinese4 ,to this rule ,i remained faithful throughout4 ,in its original form1 as published in #aiah1 the book was actually just such a pastiche of proverbs1 many of them ,english1 and hence familiar even to ,congressmen1 newspaper editors and other such illiterates4 ,it was not always easy to hold to this program2 over and over again ,i was tempted to insert notions that seemed to have escaped the peasants of ,europe and ,asia4 ,but in the end1 at some cost to the form of the work1 ,i managed to get through it without compromise1 and so it was put into type4 ,there is no need to add that my ideational abstinence went unrecognized and unrewarded4 ,in fact1 not a single ,american reviewer noticed it1 and most of them slated the book violently as a mass of heresies and contumacies1 a deliberate attack upon all the known and revered truths about the woman question1 a headlong assault upon the national decencies4 ,in the ,south1 where the suspicion of ideas goes to extraordinary lengths1 even for the ,united ,states1 some of the newspapers actually denounced the book as ,german propaganda1 designed to break down ,american morale1 and called upon the ,department of ,justice to proceed against me for the crime known to ,american law as 8criminal anarchy10 i4e41 8imagining the ,king's death40 ,why the ,comstocks did not forbid it the mails as lewd and lascivious ,i have never been able to determine4 ,certainly1 they received many complaints about it4 ,i myself1 in fact1 caused a number of these complaints to be lodged1 in the hope that the resultant buffooneries would give me entertainment in those dull days of war1 with all intellectual activities adjourned1 and maybe promote the sale of the book4 ,but the ,comstocks were pursuing larger fish1 and so left me to the righteous indignation of right-thinking reviewers1 especially the suffragists4 ,their concern1 after all1 is not with books that are denounced2 what they concentrate their moral passion on is the book that is praised4 ,the present edition is addressed to a wider audience1 in more civilized countries1 and so ,i have felt free to introduce a number of propositions1 not to be found in popular proverbs1 that had to be omitted from the original edition4 ,but even so1 the book by no means pretends to preach revolutionary doctrines1 or even doctrines of any novelty4 ,all ,i design by it is to set down in more or less plain form certain ideas that practically every civilized man and woman holds in petto1 but that have been concealed hitherto by the vast mass of sentimentalities swathing the whole woman question4 ,it is a question of capital importance to all human beings1 and it deserves to be discussed honestly and frankly1 but there is so much of social reticence1 of religious superstition and of mere emotion intermingled with it that most of the enormous literature it has thrown off is hollow and useless4 ,i point for example1 to the literature of the subsidiary question of woman suffrage4 ,it fills whole libraries1 but nine tenths of it is merely rubbish1 for it starts off from assumptions that are obviously untrue and it reaches conclusions that are at war with both logic and the facts4 ,so with the question of sex specifically4 ,i have read1 literally1 hundreds of volumes upon it1 and uncountable numbers of pamphlets1 handbills and inflammatory wall-cards1 and yet it leaves the primary problem unsolved1 which is to say1 the problem as to what is to be done about the conflict between the celibacy enforced upon millions by civilization and the appetites implanted in all by ,god4 ,in the main1 it counsels yielding to celibacy1 which is exactly as sensible as advising a dog to forget its fleas4 ,here1 as in other fields1 ,i do not presume to offer a remedy of my own4 ,in truth1 ,i am very suspicious of all remedies for the major ills of life1 and believe that most of them are incurable4 ,but ,i at least venture to discuss the matter realistically1 and if what ,i have to say is not sagacious1 it is at all events not evasive4 ,this1 ,i hope1 is something4 ,maybe some later investigator will bring a better illumination to the subject4 ,it is the custom of ,the ,free-,lance ,series to print a paragraph or two about the author in each volume4 ,i was born in ,baltimore1 ,september #ab1 #ahhj1 and come of a learned family1 though my immediate forebears were business men4 ,the tradition of this ancient learning has been upon me since my earliest days1 and ,i narrowly escaped becoming a doctor of philosophy4 ,my father's death1 in #ahii1 somehow dropped me into journalism1 where ,i had a successful career1 as such careers go4 ,at the age of #be ,i was the chief editor of a daily newspaper in ,baltimore4 ,during the same year ,i published my first book of criticism4 ,thereafter1 for ten or twelve years1 ,i moved steadily from practical journalism1 with its dabbles in politics1 economics and soon1 toward purely aesthetic concerns1 chiefly literature and music1 but of late ,i have felt a strong pull in the other direction1 and what interests me chiefly today is what may be called public psychology1 ie41 the nature of the ideas that the larger masses of men hold1 and the processes whereby they reach them4 ,if ,i do any serious writing hereafter1 it will be in that field4 ,in the ,united ,states ,i am commonly held suspect as a foreigner1 and during the war ,i was variously denounced4 ,abroad1 especially in ,england1 ,i am sometimes put to the torture for my intolerable ,americanism4 ,the two views are less far apart than they seem to be4 ,the fact is that ,i am superficially so ,american1 in ways of speech and thought1 that the foreigner is deceived1 whereas the native1 more familiar with the true signs1 sees that under the surface there is incurable antagonism to most of the ideas that ,americans hold to be sound4 ,thus ,i fall between two stools--but it is more comfortable there on the floor than sitting up tightly4 ,i am wholly devoid of public spirit or moral purpose4 ,this is incomprehensible to many men1 and they seek to remedy the defect by crediting me with purposes of their own4 ,the only thing ,i respect is intellectual honesty1 of which1 of course1 intellectual courage is a necessary part4 ,a ,socialist who goes to jail for his opinions seems to me a much finer man than the judge who sends him there1 though ,i disagree with all the ideas of the ,socialist and agree with some of those of the judge4 ,but though he is fine1 the ,socialist is nevertheless foolish1 for he suffers for what is untrue4 ,if ,i knew what was true1 ,i'd probably be willing to sweat and strive for it1 and maybe even to die for it to the tune of bugle-blasts4 ,but so far ,i have not found it4 ,h4 ,l4 ,mencken ,i4 ,the ,feminine ,mind #a4 ,the ,maternal ,instinct ,a man's women folk1 whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority1 always regard him secretly as an ass1 and with something akin to pity4 ,his most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them2 they see the actual man within1 and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow4 ,in this fact1 perhaps1 lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence1 or1 as the common phrase makes it1 feminine intuition4 ,the mark of that so-called intuition is simply a sharp and accurate perception of reality1 an habitual immunity to emotional enchantment1 a relentless capacity for distinguishing clearly between the appearance and the substance4 ,the appearance1 in the normal family circle1 is a hero1 magnifico1 a demigod4 ,the substance is a poor mountebank4 ,the proverb that no man is a hero to his valet is obviously of masculine manufacture4 ,it is both insincere and untrue3 insincere because it merely masks the egotistic doctrine that he is potentially a hero to everyone else1 and untrue because a valet1 being a fourth-rate man himself1 is likely to be the last person in the world to penetrate his master's charlatanry4 ,who ever heard of valet who didn't envy his master wholeheartedly8 who wouldn't willingly change places with his master8 who didn't secretly wish that he was his master8 ,a man's wife labours under no such naive folly4 ,she may envy her husband1 true enough1 certain of his more soothing prerogatives and sentimentalities4 ,she may envy him his masculine liberty of movement and occupation1 his impenetrable complacency1 his peasant-like delight in petty vices1 his capacity for hiding the harsh face of reality behind the cloak of romanticism1 his general innocence and childishness4 ,but she never envies him his puerile ego2 she never envies him his shoddy and preposterous soul4 ,this shrewd perception of masculine bombast and make-believe1 this acute understanding of man as the eternal tragic comedian1 is at the bottom of that compassionate irony which paces under the name of the maternal instinct4 ,a woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness1 his need of an amiable environment1 his touching self delusion4 ,that ironical note is not only daily apparent in real life2 it sets the whole tone of feminine fiction4 ,the woman novelist1 if she be skillful enough to arise out of mere imitation into genuine self-expression1 never takes her heroes quite seriously4 ,from the day of ,george ,sand to the day of ,selma ,lagerlof she has always got into her character study a touch of superior aloofness1 of ill-concealed derision4 ,i can't recall a single masculine figure created by a woman who is not1 at bottom1 a booby4 #b4 ,women's ,intelligence ,that it should still be necessary1 at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation1 incurable prejudice1 and general imbecility of their lords and masters4 ,one finds very few professors of the subject1 even among admitted feminists1 approaching the fact as obvious2 practically all of them think it necessary to bring up a vast mass of evidence to establish what should be an axiom4 ,even the ,franco ,englishman1 ,w4 ,l4 ,george1 one of the most sharp-witted of the faculty1 wastes a whole book up on the demonstration1 and then1 with a great air of uttering something new1 gives it the humourless title of 8,the ,intelligence of ,women40 ,the intelligence of women1 forsooth6 ,as well devote a laborious time to the sagacity of serpents1 pickpockets1 or ,holy ,church6 ,women1 in truth1 are not only intelligent2 they have almost a monopoly of certain of the subtler and more utile forms of intelligence4 ,the thing itself1 indeed1 might be reasonably described as a special feminine character2 there is in it1 in more than one of its manifestations1 a femaleness as palpable as the femaleness of cruelty1 masochism or rouge4 ,men are strong4 ,men are brave in physical combat4 ,men have sentiment4 ,men are romantic1 and love what they conceive to be virtue and beauty4 ,men incline to faith1 hope and charity4 ,men know how to sweat and endure4 ,men are amiable and fond4 ,but in so far as they show the true fundamentals of intelligence--in so far as they reveal a capacity for discovering the kernel of eternal verity in the husk of delusion and hallucination and a passion for bringing it forth--to that extent1 at least1 they are feminine1 and still nourished by the milk of their mothers4 8,human creatures10 says ,george1 borrowing from ,weininger1 8are never entirely male or entirely female2 there are no men1 there are no women1 but only sexual majorities40 ,find me an obviously intelligent man1 a man free from sentimentality and illusion1 a man hard to deceive1 a man of the first class1 and ,i'll show you a man with a wide streak of woman in him4 ,bonaparte had it2 ,goethe had it2 ,schopenhauer had it2 ,bismarck and ,lincoln had it2 in ,shakespeare1 if the ,freudians are to be believed1 it amounted to downright homosexuality4 ,the essential traits and qualities of the male1 the hallmarks of the unpolluted masculine1 are at the same time the hall-marks of the ,schalskopf4 ,the caveman is all muscles and mush4 ,without a woman to rule him and think for him1 he is a truly lamentable spectacle3 a baby with whiskers1 a rabbit with the frame of an aurochs1 a feeble and preposterous caricature of ,god4 ,it would be an easy matter1 indeed1 to demonstrate that superior talent in man is practically always accompanied by this feminine flavour--that complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable4 ,lest ,i be misunderstood ,i hasten to add that ,i do not mean to say that masculinity contributes nothing to the complex of chemico-physiological reactions which produces what we call talent2 all ,i mean to say is that this complex is impossible without the feminine contribution that it is a product of the interplay of the two elements4 ,in women of genius we see the opposite picture4 ,they are commonly distinctly mannish1 and shave as well as shine4 ,think of ,george ,sand1 ,catherine the ,great1 ,elizabeth of ,england1 ,rosa ,bonheur1 ,teresa ,carreo or ,cosima ,wagner4 ,the truth is that neither sex1 without some fertilization by the complementary characters of the other1 is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour4 ,man1 without a saving touch of woman in him1 is too doltish1 too naive and romantic1 too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman1 a theologian or a bank director4 ,and woman1 without some trace of that divine innocence which is masculine1 is too harshly the realist for those vast projections of the fancy which lie at the heart of what we call genius4 ,here1 as elsewhere in the universe1 the best effects are obtained by a mingling of elements4 ,the wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams1 and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all4 #c4 ,the ,masculine ,bag of ,tricks ,what men1 in their egoism1 constantly mistake for a deficiency of intelligence in woman is merely an incapacity for mastering that mass of small intellectual tricks1 that complex of petty knowledges1 that collection of cerebral rubber stamps1 which constitutes the chief mental equipment of the average male4 ,a man thinks that he is more intelligent than his wife because he can add up a column of figures more accurately1 and because he understands the imbecile jargon of the stock market1 and because he is able to distinguish between the ideas of rival politicians1 and because he is privy to the minutiae of some sordid and degrading business or profession1 say soap-selling or the law4 ,but these empty talents1 of course1 are not really signs of a profound intelligence2 they are1 in fact1 merely superficial accomplishments1 and their acquirement puts little more strain on the mental powers than a chimpanzee suffers in learning how to catch a penny or scratch a match4 ,the whole bag of tricks of the average business man1 or even of the average professional man1 is inordinately childish4 ,it takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world1 or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law1 than it takes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish4 ,no observant person1 indeed1 can come into close contact with the general run of business and professional men--,i confine myself to those who seem to get on in the world1 and exclude the admitted failures--without marvelling at their intellectual lethargy1 their incurable ingenuousness1 their appalling lack of ordinary sense4 ,the late ,charles ,francis ,adams1 a grandson of one ,american ,president and a great-grandson of another1 after a long lifetime in intimate association with some of the chief business 8geniuses0 of that paradise of traders and usurers1 the ,united ,states1 reported in his old age that he had never heard a single one of them say anything worth hearing4 ,these were vigorous and masculine men1 and in a man's world they were successful men1 but intellectually they were all blank cartridges4 ,there is1 indeed1 fair ground for arguing that1 if men of that kidney were genuinely intelligent1 they would never succeed at their gross and driveling concerns--that their very capacity to master and retain such balderdash as constitutes their stock in trade is proof of their inferior mentality4 ,the notion is certainly supported by the familiar incompetency of first rate men for what are called practical concerns4 ,one could not think of ,aristotle or ,beethoven multiplying #c1dgb1gja by #ii1iii without making a mistake1 nor could one think of him remembering the range of this or that railway share for two years1 or the number of ten-penny nails in a hundred weight1 or the freight on lard from ,galveston to ,rotterdam4 ,and by the same token one could not imagine him expert at billiards1 or at grouse-shooting1 or at golf1 or at any other of the idiotic games at which what are called successful men commonly divert themselves4 ,in his great study of ,british genius1 ,havelock ,ellis found that an incapacity for such petty expertness was visible in almost all first rate men4 ,they are bad at tying cravats4 ,they do not understand the fashionable card games4 ,they are puzzled by book-keeping4 ,they know nothing of party politics4 ,in brief1 they are inert and impotent in the very fields of endeavour that see the average men's highest performances1 and are easily surpassed by men who1 in actual intelligence1 are about as far below them as the ,simidae4 ,this lack of skill at manual and mental tricks of a trivial character--which must inevitably appear to a barber or a dentist as stupidity1 and to a successful haberdasher as downright imbecility--is a character that men of the first class share with women of the first1 second and even third classes4 ,there is at the bottom of it1 in truth1 something unmistakably feminine2 its appearance in a man is almost invariably accompanied by the other touch of femaleness that ,i have described4 ,nothing1 indeed1 could be plainer than the fact that women1 as a class1 are sadly deficient in the small expertness of men as a class4 ,one seldom1 if ever1 hears of them succeeding in the occupations which bring out such expertness most lavishly--for example1 tuning pianos1 repairing clocks1 practising law1 7ie41 matching petty tricks with some other lawyer71 painting portraits1 keeping books1 or managing factories--despite the circumstance that the great majority of such occupations are well within their physical powers1 and that few of them offer any very formidable social barriers to female entrance4 ,there is no external reason why women shouldn't succeed as operative surgeons2 the way is wide open1 the rewards are large1 and there is a special demand for them on grounds of modesty4 ,nevertheless1 not many women graduates in medicine undertake surgery and it is rare for one of them to make a success of it4 ,there is1 again1 no external reason why women should not prosper at the bar1 or as editors of newspapers1 or as managers of the lesser sort of factories1 or in the wholesale trade1 or as hotel-keepers4 ,the taboos that stand in the way are of very small force2 various adventurous women have defied them with impunity2 once the door is entered there remains no special handicap within4 ,but1 as every one knows1 the number of women actually practising these trades and professions is very small1 and few of them have attained to any distinction in competition with men4 #d4 ,why ,women ,fail ,the cause thereof1 as ,i say1 is not external1 but internal4 ,it lies in the same disconcerting apprehension of the larger realities1 the same impatience with the paltry and meretricious1 the same disqualification for mechanical routine and empty technic which one finds in the higher varieties of men4 ,even in the pursuits which1 by the custom of ,christendom1 are especially their own1 women seldom show any of that elaborately conventionalized and half automatic proficiency which is the pride and boast of most men4 ,it is a commonplace of observation1 indeed1 that a housewife who actually knows how to cook1 or who can make her own clothes with enough skill to conceal the fact from the most casual glance1 or who is competent to instruct her children in the elements of morals1 learning and hygiene--it is a platitude that such a woman is very rare indeed1 and that when she is encountered she is not usually esteemed for her general intelligence4 ,this is particularly true in the ,united ,states1 where the position of women is higher than in any other civilized or semi-civilized country1 and the old assumption of their intellectual inferiority has been most successfully challenged4 ,the ,american dinner-table1 in truth1 becomes a monument to the defective technic of the ,american housewife4 ,the guest who respects his oesophagus1 invited to feed upon its discordant and ill-prepared victuals1 evades the experience as long and as often as he can1 and resigns himself to it as he might resign himself to being shaved by a paralytic4 ,nowhere else in the world have women more leisure and freedom to improve their minds1 and nowhere else do they show a higher level of intelligence1 or take part more effectively in affairs of the first importance4 ,but nowhere else is there worse cooking in the home1 or a more inept handling of the whole domestic economy1 or a larger dependence upon the aid of external substitutes1 by men provided1 for the skill that is wanting where it theoretically exists4 ,it is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup1 of canned pork and beans1 of whole meals in cans1 and of everything else ready-made4 ,and nowhere else is there more striking tendency to throw the whole business of training the minds of children upon professional teachers1 and the whole business of instructing them in morals and religion upon so-called ,sunday-schools1 and the whole business of developing and caring for their bodies upon playground experts1 sex hygienists and other such professionals1 most of them mountebanks4 ,in brief1 women rebel--often unconsciously1 sometimes even submitting all the while--against the dull1 mechanical tricks of the trade that the present organization of society compels them to practise for a living1 and that rebellion testifies to their intelligence4 ,if they enjoyed and took pride in those tricks1 and showed it by diligence and skill1 they would be on all fours with such men as are headwaiters1 ladies' tailors1 schoolmasters or carpet-beaters1 and proud of it4 ,the inherent tendency of any woman above the most stupid is to evade the whole obligation1 and1 if she cannot actually evade it1 to reduce its demands to the minimum4 ,and when some accident purges her1 either temporarily or permanently1 of the inclination to marriage 7of which much more anon71 and she enters into competition with men in the general business of the world1 the sort of career that she commonly carves out offers additional evidence of her mental peculiarity4 ,in whatever calls for no more than an invariable technic and a feeble chicanery she usually fails2 in whatever calls for independent thought and resourcefulness she usually succeeds4 ,thus she is almost always a failure as a lawyer1 for the law requires only an armament of hollow phrases and stereotyped formulae1 and a mental habit which puts these phantasms above sense1 truth and justice2 and she is almost always a failure in business1 for business1 in the main1 is so foul a compound of trivialities and rogueries that her sense of intellectual integrity revolts against it4 ,but she is usually a success as a sick-nurse1 for that profession requires ingenuity1 quick comprehension1 courage in the face of novel and disconcerting situations1 and above all1 a capacity for penetrating and dominating character2 and whenever she comes into competition with men in the arts1 particularly on those secondary planes where simple nimbleness of mind is unaided by the masterstrokes of genius1 she holds her own invariably4 ,the best and most intellectual--i4e41 most original and enterprising play-actors are not men1 but women1 and so are the best teachers and blackmailers1 and a fair share of the best writers1 and public functionaries1 and executants of music4 ,in the demimonde one will find enough acumen and daring1 and enough resilience in the face of special difficulties1 to put the equipment of any exclusively male profession to shame4 ,if the work of the average man required half the mental agility and readiness of resource of the work of the average prostitute1 the average man would be constantly on the verge of starvation4 #e4 ,the ,thing ,called ,intuition ,men1 as every one knows1 are disposed to question this superior intelligence of women2 their egoism demands the denial1 and they are seldom reflective enough to dispose of it by logical and evidential analysis4 ,moreover1 as we shall see a bit later on1 there is a certain specious appearance of soundness in their position2 they have forced upon women an artificial character which well conceals their real character1 and women have found it profitable to encourage the deception4 ,but though every normal man thus cherishes the soothing unction that he is the intellectual superior of all women1 and particularly of his wife1 he constantly gives the lie to his pretension by consulting and deferring to what he calls her intuition4 ,that is to say1 he knows by experience that her judgment in many matters of capital concern is more subtle and searching than his own1 and1 being disinclined to accredit this greater sagacity to a more competent intelligence1 he takes refuge behind the doctrine that it is due to some impenetrable and intangible talent for guessing correctly1 some half mystical super sense1 some vague 7and1 in essence1 infra-human7 instinct4 ,the true nature of this alleged instinct1 however1 is revealed by an examination of the situations which inspire a man to call it to his aid4 ,these situations do not arise out of the purely technical problems that are his daily concern1 but out of the rarer and more fundamental1 and hence enormously more difficult problems which beset him only at long and irregular intervals1 and so offer a test1 not of his mere capacity for being drilled1 but of his capacity for genuine ratiocination4 ,no man1 ,i take it1 save one consciously inferior and hen-pecked1 would consult his wife about hiring a clerk1 or about extending credit to some paltry customer1 or about some routine piece of tawdry swindling2 but not even the most egoistic man would fail to sound the sentiment of his wife about taking a partner into his business1 or about standing for public office1 or about combating unfair and ruinous competition1 or about marrying off their daughter4 ,such things are of massive importance2 they lie at the foundation of well-being2 they call for the best thought that the man confronted by them can muster2 the perils hidden in a wrong decision overcome even the clamors of vanity4 ,it is in such situations that the superior mental grasp of women is of obvious utility1 and has to be admitted4 ,it is here that they rise above the insignificant sentimentalities1 superstitions and formulae of men1 and apply to the business their singular talent for separating the appearance from the substance1 and so exercise what is called their intuition4 ,intuition8 ,with all respect1 bosh6 ,then it was intuition that led ,darwin to work out the hypothesis of natural selection4 ,then it was intuition that fabricated the gigantically complex score of 8,die ,walkure40 ,then it was intuition that convinced ,columbus of the existence of land to the west of the ,azores4 ,all this intuition of which so much transcendental rubbish is merchanted is no more and no less than intelligence--intelligence so keen that it can penetrate to the hidden truth through the most formidable wrappings of false semblance and demeanour1 and so little corrupted by sentimental prudery that it is equal to the even more difficult task of hauling that truth out into the light1 in all its naked hideousness4 ,women decide the larger questions of life correctly and quickly1 not because they are lucky guessers1 not because they are divinely inspired1 not because they practise a magic inherited from savagery1 but simply and solely because they have sense4 ,they see at a glance what most men could not see with searchlights and telescopes2 they are at grips with the essentials of a problem before men have finished debating its mere externals4 ,they are the supreme realists of the race4 ,apparently illogical1 they are the possessors of a rare and subtle super-logic4 ,apparently whimsical1 they hang to the truth with a tenacity which carries them through every phase of its incessant1 jellylike shifting of form4 ,apparently unobservant and easily deceived1 they see with bright and horrible eyes4 ,in men1 too1 the same merciless perspicacity sometimes shows itself--men recognized to be more aloof and uninflammable than the general--men of special talent for the logical--sardonic men1 cynics4 ,men1 too1 sometimes have brains4 ,but that is a rare1 rare man1 ,i venture1 who is as steadily intelligent1 as constantly sound in judgment1 as little put off by appearances1 as the average women of forty-eight4 ,,ii4 ,the ,war ,between the ,sexes #f4 ,how ,marriages are ,arranged ,i have said that women are not sentimental1 i4e41 not prone to permit mere emotion and illusion to corrupt their estimation of a situation4 ,the doctrine1 perhaps1 will raise a protest4 ,the theory that they are is itself a favourite sentimentality2 one sentimentality will be brought up to substantiate another2 dog will eat dog4 ,but an appeal to a few obvious facts will be enough to sustain my contention1 despite the vast accumulation of romantic rubbish to the contrary4 ,turn1 for example1 to the field in which the two sexes come most constantly into conflict1 and in which1 as a result1 their habits of mind are most clearly contrasted--to the field1 to wit1 of monogamous marriage4 ,surely no long argument is needed to demonstrate the superior competence and effectiveness of women here1 and therewith their greater self-possession1 their saner weighing of considerations1 their higher power of resisting emotional suggestion4 ,the very fact that marriages occur at all is a proof1 indeed1 that they are more cool-headed than men1 and more adept in employing their intellectual resources1 for it is plainly to a man's interest to avoid marriage as long as possible1 and as plainly to a woman's interest to make a favourable marriage as soon as she can4 ,the efforts of the two sexes are thus directed1 in one of the capital concerns of life1 to diametrically antagonistic ends4 ,which side commonly prevails8 ,i leave the verdict to the jury4 ,all normal men fight the thing off2 some men are successful for relatively long periods2 a few extraordinarily intelligent and courageous men 7or perhaps lucky ones7 escape altogether4 ,but1 taking one generation with another1 as every one knows1 the average man is duly married and the average woman gets a husband4 ,thus the great majority of women1 in this clear-cut and endless conflict1 make manifest their substantial superiority to the great majority of men4 ,not many men1 worthy of the name1 gain anything of net value by marriage1 at least as the institution is now met with in ,christendom4 ,even assessing its benefits at their most inflated worth1 they are plainly overborne by crushing disadvantages4 ,when a man marries it is no more than a sign that the feminine talent for persuasion and intimidation--i4e41 the feminine talent for survival in a world of clashing concepts and desires1 the feminine competence and intelligence--has forced him into a more or less abhorrent compromise with his own honest inclinations and best interests4 ,whether that compromise be a sign of his relative stupidity or of his relative cowardice it is all one3 the two things1 in their symptoms and effects1 are almost identical4 ,in the first case he marries because he has been clearly bowled over in a combat of wits2 in the second he resigns himself to marriage as the safest form of liaison4 ,in both cases his inherent sentimentality is the chief weapon in the hand of his opponent4 ,it makes him cherish the fiction of his enterprise1 and even of his daring1 in the midst of the most crude and obvious operations against him4 ,it makes him accept as real the bold play-acting that women always excel at1 and at no time more than when stalking a man4 ,it makes him1 above all1 see a glamour of romance in a transaction which1 even at its best1 contains almost as much gross trafficking1 at bottom1 as the sale of a mule4 ,a man in full possession of the modest faculties that nature commonly apportions to him is at least far enough above idiocy to realize that marriage is a bargain in which he gets the worse of it1 even when1 in some detail or other1 he makes a visible gain4 ,he never1 ,i believe1 wants all that the thing offers and implies4 ,he wants1 at most1 no more than certain parts4 ,he may desire1 let us say1 a housekeeper to protect his goods and entertain his friends--but he may shrink from the thought of sharing his bathtub with anyone1 and home cooking may be downright poisonous to him4 ,he may yearn for a son to pray at his tomb--and yet suffer acutely at the mere approach of relatives-in-law4 ,he may dream of a beautiful and complaisant mistress1 less exigent and mercurial than any a bachelor may hope to discover--and stand aghast at admitting her to his bank-book1 his family-tree and his secret ambitions4 ,he may want company and not intimacy1 or intimacy and not company4 ,he may want a cook and not a partner in his business1 or a partner in his business and not a cook4 ,but in order to get the precise thing or things that he wants1 he has to take a lot of other things that he doesn't want--that no sane man1 in truth1 could imaginably want--and it is to the enterprise of forcing him into this almost ,armenian bargain that the woman of his 8choice0 addresses herself4 ,once the game is fairly set1 she searches out his weaknesses with the utmost delicacy and accuracy1 and plays upon them with all her superior resources4 ,he carries a handicap from the start4 ,his sentimental and unintelligent belief in theories that she knows quite well are not true--e4g41 the theory that she shrinks from him1 and is modestly appalled by the banal carnalities of marriage itself--gives her a weapon against him which she drives home with instinctive and compelling art4 ,the moment she discerns this sentimentality bubbling within him--that is1 the moment his oafish smirks and eye rollings signify that he has achieved the intellectual disaster that is called falling in love--he is hers to do with as she will4 ,save for acts of ,god1 he is forthwith as good as married4 #g4 ,the ,feminine ,attitude ,this sentimentality in marriage is seldom1 if ever1 observed in women4 ,for reasons that we shall examine later1 they have much more to gain by the business than men1 and so they are prompted by their cooler sagacity to enter upon it on the most favourable terms possible1 and with the minimum admixture of disarming emotion4 ,men almost invariably get their mates by the process called falling in love2 save among the aristocracies of the ,north and ,latin men1 the marriage of convenience is relatively rare2 a hundred men marry 8beneath0 them to every woman who perpetrates the same folly4 ,and what is meant by this so-called falling in love8 ,what is meant by it is a procedure whereby a man accounts for the fact of his marriage1 after feminine initiative and generalship have made it inevitable1 by enshrouding it in a purple maze of romance--in brief1 by setting up the doctrine that an obviously self-possessed and mammalian woman1 engaged deliberately in the most important adventure of her life1 and with the keenest understanding of its utmost implications1 is a naive1 tender1 moony and almost disembodied creature1 enchanted and made perfect by a passion that has stolen upon her unawares1 and which she could not acknowledge1 even to herself1 without blushing to death4 ,by this preposterous doctrine1 the defeat and enslavement of the man is made glorious1 and even gifted with a touch of flattering naughtiness4 ,the sheer horsepower of his wooing has assailed and overcome her maiden modesty2 she trembles in his arms2 he has been granted a free franchise to work his wicked will upon her4 ,thus do the ambulant images of ,god cloak their shackles proudly1 and divert the judicious with their boastful shouts4 ,women1 it is almost needless to point out1 are much more cautious about embracing the conventional hocus-pocus of the situation4 ,they never acknowledge that they have fallen in love1 as the phrase is1 until the man has formally avowed the delusion1 and so cut off his retreat2 to do otherwise would be to bring down upon their heads the mocking and contumely of all their sisters4 ,with them1 falling in love thus appears in the light of an afterthought1 or1 perhaps more accurately1 in the light of a contagion4 ,the theory1 it would seem1 is that the love of the man1 laboriously avowed1 has inspired it instantly1 and by some unintelligible magic2 that it was non-existent until the heat of his own flames set it off4 ,this theory1 it must be acknowledged1 has a certain element of fact in it4 ,a woman seldom allows herself to be swayed by emotion while the principal business is yet afoot and its issue still in doubt2 to do so would be to expose a degree of imbecility that is confined only to the half-wits of the sex4 ,but once the man is definitely committed1 she frequently unbends a bit1 if only as a relief from the strain of a fixed purpose1 and so1 throwing off her customary inhibitions1 she1 indulges in the luxury of a more or less forced and mawkish sentiment4 ,it is1 however1 almost unheard of for her to permit herself this relaxation before the sentimental intoxication of the man is assured4 ,to do otherwise--that is1 to confess1 even post facto1 to an anterior descent1--would expose her1 as ,i have said1 to the scorn of all other women4 ,such a confession would be an admission that emotion had got the better of her at a critical intellectual moment1 and in the eyes of women1 as in the eyes of the small minority of genuinely intelligent men1 no treason to the higher cerebral centres could be more disgraceful4 #h4 ,the ,male ,beauty ,this disdain of sentimental weakness1 even in those higher reaches where it is mellowed by aesthetic sensibility1 is well revealed by the fact that women are seldom bemused by mere beauty in men4 ,save on the stage1 the handsome fellow has no appreciable advantage in amour over his more ,gothic brother4 ,in real life1 indeed1 he is viewed with the utmost suspicion by all women save the most stupid4 ,in him the vanity native to his sex is seen to mount to a degree that is positively intolerable4 ,it not only irritates by its very nature2 it also throws about him a sort of unnatural armour1 and so makes him resistant to the ordinary approaches4 ,for this reason1 the matrimonial enterprises of the more reflective and analytical sort of women are almost always directed to men whose lack of pulchritude makes them easier to bring down1 and1 what is more important still1 easier to hold down4 ,the weight of opinion among women is decidedly against the woman who falls in love with an ,apollo4 ,she is regarded1 at best1 as flighty creature1 and at worst1 as one pushing bad taste to the verge of indecency4 ,such weaknesses are resigned to women approaching senility1 and to the more ignoble variety of women labourers4 ,a shop girl1 perhaps1 may plausibly fall in love with a moving-picture actor1 and a half-idiotic old widow may succumb to a youth with shoulders like the ,parthenon1 but no woman of poise and self-respect1 even supposing her to be transiently flustered by a lovely buck1 would yield to that madness for an instant1 or confess it to her dearest friend4 ,women know how little such purely superficial values are worth4 ,the voice of their order1 the first taboo of their freemasonry1 is firmly against making a sentimental debauch of the serious business of marriage4 ,this disdain of the pretty fellow is often accounted for by amateur psychologists on the ground that women are anesthetic to beauty--that they lack the quick and delicate responsiveness of man4 ,nothing could be more absurd4 ,women1 in point of fact1 commonly have a far keener aesthetic sense than men4 ,beauty is more important to them2 they give more thought to it2 they crave more of it in their immediate surroundings4 ,the average man1 at least in ,england and ,america1 takes a sort of bovine pride in his anaesthesia to the arts2 he can think of them only as sources of tawdry and somewhat discreditable amusement2 one seldom hears of him showing half the enthusiasm for any beautiful thing that his wife displays in the presence1 of a fine fabric1 an effective colour1 or a graceful form1 say in millinery4 ,the truth is that women are resistant to so-called beauty in men for the simple and sufficient reason that such beauty is chiefly imaginary4 ,a truly beautiful man1 indeed1 is as rare as a truly beautiful piece of jewelry4 ,what men mistake for beauty in themselves is usually nothing save a certain hollow gaudiness1 a revolting flashiness1 the superficial splendour of a prancing animal4 ,the most lovely moving picture actor1 considered in the light of genuine aesthetic values1 is no more than a piece of vulgarity2 his like is to be found1 not in the ,uffizi gallery or among the harmonies of ,brahms1 but among the plush sofas1 rococo clocks and hand-painted oil-paintings of a third-rate auction room4 ,all women1 save the least intelligent1 penetrate this imposture with sharp eyes4 ,they know that the human body1 except for a brief time in infancy1 is not a beautiful thing1 but a hideous thing4 ,their own bodies give them no delight2 it is their constant effort to disguise and conceal them2 they never expose them aesthetically1 but only as an act of the grossest sexual provocation4 ,if it were advertised that a troupe of men of easy virtue were to appear half-clothed upon a public stage1 exposing their chests1 thighs1 arms and calves1 the only women who would go to the entertainment would be a few delayed adolescents1 a psychopathic old maid or two1 and a guard of indignant members of the parish ,ladies ,aid ,society4 #i4 ,men as ,aesthetes ,men show no such sagacious apprehension of the relatively feeble loveliness of the human frame4 ,the most effective lure that a woman can hold out to a man is the lure of what he fatuously conceives to be her beauty4 ,this so-called beauty1 of course1 is almost always a pure illusion4 ,the female body1 even at its best is very defective in form2 it has harsh curves and very clumsily distributed masses2 compared to it the average milk-jug1 or even cuspidor1 is a thing of intelligent and gratifying design--in brief1 an objet d'art4 ,the fact was curiously 7and humorously7 display during the late war1 when great numbers of women in all the belligerent countries began putting on uniforms4 ,instantly they appeared in public in their grotesque burlesques of the official garb of aviators1 elevator boys1 bus conductors1 train guards1 and so on1 their deplorable deficiency in design was unescapably revealed4 ,a man1 save he be fat1 i4e41 of womanish contours1 usually looks better in uniform than in mufti2 the tight lines set off his figure4 ,but a woman is at once given away3 she look like a dumbbell run over by an express train4 ,below the neck by the bow and below the waist astern there are two masses that simply refuse to fit into a balanced composition4 ,viewed from the side1 she presents an exaggerated ,s bisected by an imperfect straight line1 and so she inevitably suggests a drunken dollar-mark4 ,her ordinary clothing cunningly conceals this fundamental imperfection4 ,it swathes those impossible masses in draperies soothingly uncertain of outline4 ,but putting her into uniform is like stripping her4 ,instantly all her alleged beauty vanishes4 ,moreover1 it is extremely rare to find a woman who shows even the modest sightliness that her sex is theoretically capable of2 it is only the rare beauty who is even tolerable4 ,the average woman1 until art comes to her aid1 is ungraceful1 misshapen1 badly calved and crudely articulated1 even for a woman4 ,if she has a good torso1 she is almost sure to be bow-legged4 ,if she has good legs1 she is almost sure to have bad teeth4 ,if she has good teeth1 she is almost sure to have scrawny hands1 or muddy eyes1 or hair like oakum1 or no chin4 ,a woman who meets fair tests all 'round is so uncommon that she becomes a sort of marvel1 and usually gains a livelihood by exhibiting herself as such1 either on the stage1 in the half-world1 or as the private jewel of some wealthy connoisseur4 ,but this lack of genuine beauty in women lays on them no practical disadvantage in the primary business of their sex1 for its effects are more than overborne by the emotional suggestibility1 the herculean capacity for illusion1 the almost total absence of critical sense of men4 ,men do not demand genuine beauty1 even in the most modest doses2 they are quite content with the mere appearance of beauty4 ,that is to say1 they show no talent whatever for differentiating between the artificial and the real4 ,a film of face powder1 skilfully applied1 is as satisfying to them as an epidermis of damask4 ,the hair of a dead ,chinaman1 artfully dressed and dyed1 gives them as much delight as the authentic tresses of ,venus4 ,a false hip intrigues them as effectively as the soundest one of living fascia4 ,a pretty frock fetches them quite as surely and securely as lovely legs1 shoulders1 hands or eyes4 ,in brief1 they estimate women1 and hence acquire their wives1 by reckoning up purely superficial aspects1 which is just as intelligent as estimating an egg by purely superficial aspects4 ,they never go behind the returns2 it never occurs to them to analyze the impressions they receive4 ,the result is that many a man1 deceived by such paltry sophistications1 never really sees his wife--that if1 as ,god is supposed to see her1 and as the embalmer will see her--until they have been married for years4 ,all the tricks may be infantile and obvious1 but in the face of so naive a spectator the temptation to continue practising them is irresistible4 ,a trained nurse tells me that even when undergoing the extreme discomforts of parturition the great majority of women continue to modify their complexions with pulverized talcs1 and to give thought to the arrangement of their hair4 ,such transparent devices1 to be sure1 reduce the psychologist to a sour sort of mirth1 and yet it must be plain that they suffice to entrap and make fools of men1 even the most discreet4 ,i know of no man1 indeed1 who is wholly resistant to female beauty1 and ,i know of no man1 even among those engaged professionally by aesthetic problems1 who habitually and automatically distinguishes the genuine1 from the imitation4 ,he may do it now and then2 he may even preen himself upon his unusual discrimination2 but given the right woman and the right stage setting1 and he will be deceived almost as readily as a yokel fresh from the cabbage-field4 #aj4 ,the ,process of ,delusion ,such poor fools1 rolling their eyes in appraisement of such meagre female beauty as is on display in ,christendom1 bring to their judgments a capacity but slightly greater than that a cow would bring to the estimation of epistemologies4 ,they are so unfitted for the business that they are even unable to agree upon its elements4 ,let one such man succumb to the plaster charms of some prancing miss1 and all his friends will wonder what is the matter with him4 ,no two are in accord as to which is the most beautiful woman in their own town or street4 ,turn six of them loose in millinery shop or the parlour of a bordello1 and there will be no dispute whatsoever2 each will offer the crown of love and beauty to a different girl4 ,and what aesthetic deafness1 dumbness and blindness thus open the way for1 vanity instantly reinforces4 ,that is to say1 once a normal man has succumbed to the meretricious charms of a definite fair one 7or1 more accurately1 once a definite fair one has marked him out and grabbed him by the nose71 he defends his choice with all the heat and steadfastness appertaining to the defense of a point of the deepest honour4 ,to tell a man flatly that his wife is not beautiful1 or even that his stenographer or manicurist is not beautiful1 is so harsh and intolerable an insult to his taste that even an enemy seldom ventures upon it4 ,one would offend him far less by arguing that his wife is an idiot4 ,one would relatively speaking1 almost caress him by spitting into his eye4 ,the ego of the male is simply unable to stomach such an affront4 ,it is a weapon as discreditable as the poison of the ,borgias4 ,thus1 on humane grounds1 a conspiracy of silence surrounds the delusion of female beauty1 and so its victim is permitted to get quite as much delight out of it as if it were sound4 ,the baits he swallows most are not edible and nourishing baits1 but simply bright and gaudy ones4 ,he succumbs to a pair of well-managed eyes1 a graceful twist of the body1 a synthetic complexion or a skilful display of ankles without giving the slightest thought to the fact that a whole woman is there1 and that within the cranial cavity of the woman lies a brain1 and that the idiosyncrasies of that brain are of vastly more importance than all imaginable physical stigmata combined4 ,those idiosyncrasies may make for amicable relations in the complex and difficult bondage called marriage2 they may1 on the contrary1 make for joustings of a downright impossible character4 ,but not many men1 laced in the emotional maze preceding1 are capable of any very clear examination of such facts4 ,the truth is that they dodge the facts1 even when they are favourable1 and lay all stress upon the surrounding and concealing superficialities4 ,the average stupid and sentimental man1 if he has a noticeably sensible wife1 is almost apologetic about it4 ,the ideal of his sex is always a pretty wife1 and the vanity and coquetry that so often go with prettiness are erected into charms4 ,in other words1 men play the love game so unintelligently that they often esteem a woman in proportion as she seems to disdain and make a mock of her intelligence4 ,women seldom1 if ever1 make that blunder4 ,what they commonly value in a man is not mere showiness1 whether physical or spiritual1 but that compound of small capacities which makes up masculine efficiency and passes for masculine intelligence4 ,this intelligence1 at its highest1 has a human value substantially equal to that of their own4 ,in a man's world it at least gets its definite rewards2 it guarantees security1 position1 a livelihood2 it is a commodity that is merchantable4 ,women thus accord it a certain respect1 and esteem it in their husbands1 and so seek it out4 #aa4 ,biological ,considerations ,so far as ,i can make out by experiments on laboratory animals and by such discreet vivisections as are possible under our laws1 there is no biological necessity for the superior acumen and circumspection of women4 ,that is to say1 it does not lie in any anatomical or physiological advantage4 ,the essential feminine machine is no better than the essential masculine machine2 both are monuments to the maladroitness of a much over-praised ,creator4 ,women1 it would seem1 actually have smaller brains than men1 though perhaps not in proportion to weight4 ,their nervous responses1 if anything1 are a bit duller than those of men2 their muscular coordinations are surely no prompter4 ,one finds quite as many obvious botches among them2 they have as many bodily blemishes2 they are infested by the same microscopic parasites2 their senses are as obtuse2 their ears stand out as absurdly4 ,even assuming that their special malaises are wholly offset by the effects of alcoholism in the male1 they suffer patently from the same adenoids1 gastritis1 cholelithiasis1 nephritis1 tuberculosis1 carcinoma1 arthritis and so on--in short1 from the same disturbances of colloidal equilibrium that produce religion1 delusions of grandeur1 democracy1 pyaemia1 night sweats1 the yearning to save humanity1 and all other such distempers in men4 ,they have1 at bottom1 the same weaknesses and appetites4 ,they react in substantially the same way to all chemical and mechanical agents4 ,a dose of hydrocyanic acid1 administered per ora to the most sagacious woman imaginable1 affects her just as swiftly and just as deleteriously as it affects a tragedian1 a crossing-sweeper1 or an ambassador to the ,court of ,st4 ,james4 ,and once a bottle of ,cote ,rotie or ,scharlachberger is in her1 even the least emotional woman shows the same complex of sentimentalities that a man shows1 and is as maudlin and idiotic as he is4 ,nay2 the superior acumen and self-possession of women is not inherent in any peculiarity of their constitutions1 and above all1 not in any advantage of a purely physical character4 ,its springs are rather to be sought in a physical disadvantage--that is1 in the mechanical inferiority of their frames1 their relative lack of tractive capacity1 their deficiency as brute engines4 ,that deficiency1 as every one knows1 is partly a direct heritage from those females of the ,pongo pygmaeus who were their probable fore-runners in the world2 the same thing is to be observed in the females of almost all other species of mammals4 ,but it is also partly due to the effects of use under civilization1 and1 above all1 to what evolutionists call sexual selection4 ,in other words1 women were already measurably weaker than men at the dawn of human history1 and that relative weakness has been progressively augmented in the interval by the conditions of human life4 ,for one thing1 the process of bringing forth young has become so much more exhausting as refinement has replaced savage sturdiness and callousness1 and the care of them in infancy has become so much more onerous as the growth of cultural complexity has made education more intricate1 that the two functions now lay vastly heavier burdens upon the strength and attention of a woman than they lay upon the strength and attention of any other female4 ,and for another thing1 the consequent disability and need of physical protection1 by feeding and inflaming the already large vanity of man1 have caused him to attach a concept of attractiveness to feminine weakness1 so that he has come to esteem his woman1 not in proportion as she is self-sufficient as a social animal but in proportion as she is dependent4 ,in this vicious circle of influences women have been caught1 and as a result their chief physical character today is their fragility4 ,a woman cannot lift as much as a man4 ,she cannot walk as far4 ,she cannot exert as much mechanical energy in any other way4 ,even her alleged superior endurance1 as ,havelock ,ellis has demonstrated in 8,man and ,woman10 is almost wholly mythical2 she cannot1 in point of fact1 stand nearly so much hardship as a man can stand1 and so the law1 usually an ass1 exhibits an unaccustomed accuracy of observation in its assumption that1 whenever husband and wife are exposed alike to fatal suffering1 say in a shipwreck1 the wife dies first4 ,so far we have been among platitudes4 ,there is less of overt platitude in the doctrine that it is precisely this physical frailty that has given women their peculiar nimbleness and effectiveness on the intellectual side4 ,nevertheless1 it is equally true4 ,what they have done is what every healthy and elastic organism does in like case2 they have sought compensation for their impotence in one field by employing their resources in another field to the utmost1 and out of that constant and maximum use has come a marked enlargement of those resources4 ,on the one hand the sum of them present in a given woman has been enormously increased by natural selection1 so that every woman1 so to speak1 inherits a certain extra-masculine mental dexterity as a mere function of her femaleness4 ,and on the other hand every woman1 over and above this almost unescapable legacy from her actual grandmothers1 also inherits admission to that traditional wisdom which constitutes the esoteric philosophy of woman as a whole4 ,the virgin at adolescence is thus in the position of an unusually fortunate apprentice1 for she is not only naturally gifted but also apprenticed to extraordinarily competent masters4 ,while a boy at the same period is learning from his elders little more than a few empty technical tricks1 a few paltry vices and a few degrading enthusiasms1 his sister is under instruction in all those higher exercises of the wits that her special deficiencies make necessary to her security1 and in particular in all those exercises which aim at overcoming the physical1 and hence social and economic superiority of man by attacks upon his inferior capacity for clear reasoning1 uncorrupted by illusion and sentimentality4 #ab4 ,honour ,here1 it is obvious1 the process of intellectual development takes colour from the ,sklavenmoral1 and is1 in a sense1 a product of it4 ,the ,jews1 as ,nietzsche has demonstrated1 got their unusual intelligence by the same process2 a contrary process is working in the case of the ,english and the ,americans1 and has begun to show itself in the case of the ,french and ,germans4 ,the sum of feminine wisdom that ,i have just mentioned--the body of feminine devices and competences that is handed down from generation to generation of women--is1 in fact1 made up very largely of doctrines and expedients that infallibly appear to the average sentimental man1 helpless as he is before them1 as cynical and immoral4 ,he commonly puts this aversion into the theory that women have no sense of honour4 ,the criticism1 of course1 is characteristically banal4 ,honour is a concept too tangled to be analyzed here1 but it may be sufficient to point out that it is predicated upon a feeling of absolute security1 and that1 in that capital conflict between man and woman out of which rises most of man's complaint of its absence--to wit1 the conflict culminating in marriage1 already described--the security of the woman is not something that is in actual being1 but something that she is striving with all arms to attain4 ,in such a conflict it must be manifest that honor can have no place4 ,an animal fighting for its very existence uses all possible means of offence and defence1 however foul4 ,even man1 for all his boasting about honor1 seldom displays it when he has anything of the first value at hazard4 ,he is honorable1 perhaps1 in gambling1 for gambling is a mere vice1 but it is quite unusual for him to be honorable in business1 for business is bread and butter4 ,he is honorable 7so long as the stake is trivial7 in his sports1 but he seldom permits honor to interfere with his perjuries in a lawsuit1 or with hitting below the belt in any other sort of combat that is in earnest4 ,the history of all his wars is a history of mutual allegations of dishonorable practices1 and such allegations are nearly always well grounded4 ,the best imitation of honor that he ever actually achieves in them is a highly self-conscious sentimentality which prompts him to be humane to the opponent who has been wounded1 or disarmed1 or otherwise made innocuous4 ,even here his so-called honor is little more than a form of playacting1 both maudlin and dishonest4 ,in the actual death-struggle he invariably bites4 ,perhaps one of the chief charms of woman lies precisely in the fact that they are dishonorable1 i4e41 that they are relatively uncivilized4 ,in the midst of all the puerile repressions and inhibitions that hedge them round1 they continue to show a gipsy spirit4 ,no genuine woman ever gives a hoot for law if law happens to stand in the way of her private interest4 ,she is essentially an outlaw1 a rebel1 what ,h4 ,g4 ,wells calls a nomad4 ,the boons of civilization are so noisily cried up by sentimentalists that we are all apt to overlook its disadvantages4 ,intrinsically1 it is a mere device for regimenting men4 ,its perfect symbol is the goose-step4 ,the most civilized man is simply that man who has been most successful in caging and harnessing his honest and natural instincts-that is1 the man who has done most cruel violence to his own ego in the interest of the commonweal4 ,the value of this commonweal is always overestimated4 ,what is it at bottom8 ,simply the greatest good to the greatest number--of petty rogues1 ignoramuses and poltroons4 ,the capacity for submitting to and prospering comfortably under this cheese-monger's civilization is far more marked in men than in women1 and far more in inferior men than in men of the higher categories4 ,it must be obvious to even so pathetic an ass as a university professor of history that very few of the genuinely first-rate men of the race have been1 wholly civilized1 in the sense that the term is employed in newspapers and in the pulpit4 ,think of ,caesar1 ,bonaparte1 ,luther1 ,frederick the ,great1 ,cromwell1 ,barbarossa1 ,innocent ,,iii1 ,bolivar1 ,hannibal1 ,alexander1 and to come down to our own time1 ,grant1 ,stonewall ,jackson1 ,bismarck1 ,wagner1 ,garibaldi and ,cecil ,rhodes4 #ac4 ,women and the ,emotions ,the fact that women have a greater capacity than men for controlling and concealing their emotions is not an indication that they are more civilized1 but a proof that they are less civilized4 ,this capacity1 so rare today1 and withal so valuable and worthy of respect1 is a characteristic of savages1 not of civilized men1 and its loss is one of the penalties that the race has paid for the tawdry boon of civilization4 ,your true savage1 reserved1 dignified1 and courteous1 knows how to mask his feelings1 even in the face of the most desperate assault upon them2 your civilized man is forever yielding to them4 ,civilization1 in fact1 grows more and more maudlin and hysterical2 especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes2 the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed 7and hence clamorous to be led to safety7 by an endless series of hobgoblins1 most of them imaginary4 ,wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men1 capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them4 ,they are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic2 they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury4 ,here the effect of civilization has been to reduce the noblest of the arts1 once the repository of an exalted etiquette and the chosen avocation of the very best men of the race1 to the level of a riot of peasants4 ,all the wars of ,christendom are now disgusting and degrading2 the conduct of them has passed out of the hands of nobles and knights and into the hands of mob-orators1 money-lenders1 and atrocity-mongers4 ,to recreate one's self with war in the grand manner1 as ,prince ,eugene1 ,marlborough and the ,old ,dessauer knew it1 one must now go among barbarian peoples4 ,women are nearly always against war in modern times1 for the reasons brought forward to justify it are usually either transparently dishonest or childishly sentimental1 and hence provoke their scorn4 ,but once the business is begun1 they commonly favour its conduct outrance1 and are thus in accord with the theory of the great captains of more spacious days4 ,in ,germany1 during the late war1 the protests against the ,schrecklichkeit practised by the imperial army and navy did not come from women1 but from sentimental men2 in ,england and the ,united ,states there is no record that any woman ever raised her voice against the blockade which destroyed hundreds of thousands of ,german children4 ,i was on both sides of the bloody chasm during the war1 and ,i cannot recall meeting a single woman who subscribed to the puerile doctrine that1 in so vast a combat between nations1 there could still be categories of non-combatants1 with a right of asylum on armed ships and in garrisoned towns4 ,this imbecility was maintained only by men1 large numbers of whom simultaneously took part in wholesale massacres of such non-combatants4 ,the women were superior to such hypocrisy4 ,they recognized the nature of modern war instantly and accurately1 and advocated no disingenuous efforts to conceal it4 #ad4 ,pseudo-,anaesthesia ,the feminine talent for concealing emotion is probably largely responsible for the common masculine belief that women are devoid of passion1 and contemplate its manifestations in the male with something akin to trembling4 ,here the talent itself is helped out by the fact that very few masculine observers1 on the occasions when they give attention to the matter1 are in a state of mind conducive to exact observation4 ,the truth is1 of course1 that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the normal woman is passionless1 or that the minority of women who unquestionably are is of formidable dimensions4 ,to be sure1 the peculiar vanity of men1 particularly in the ,northern countries1 makes them place a high value upon the virginal type of woman1 and so this type tends to grow more common by sexual selection1 but despite that fact1 it has by no means superseded the normal type1 so realistically described by the theologians and publicists of the ,middle ,ages4 ,it would1 however1 be rash to assert that this long continued sexual selection has not made itself felt1 even in the normal type4 ,its chief effect1 perhaps1 is to make it measurably easier for a woman to conquer and conceal emotion than it is for a man4 ,but this is a mere reinforcement of a native quality or1 at all events1 a quality long antedating the rise of the curious preference just mentioned4 ,that preference obviously owes its origin to the concept of private property and is most evident in those countries in which the largest proportion of males are property owners1 i4e41 in which the property-owning caste reaches down into the lowest conceivable strata of bounders and ignoramuses4 ,the low-caste man is never quite sure of his wife unless he is convinced that she is entirely devoid of amorous susceptibility4 ,thus he grows uneasy whenever she shows any sign of responding in kind to his own elephantine emotions1 and is apt to be suspicious of even so trivial a thing as a hearty response to a connubial kiss4 ,if he could manage to rid himself of such suspicions1 there would be less public gabble about anesthetic wives1 and fewer books written by quacks with sure cures for them1 and a good deal less cold-mutton formalism and boredom at the domestic hearth4 ,i have a feeling that the husband of this sort--he is very common in the ,united ,states1 and almost as common among the middle classes of ,england1 ,germany and ,scandinavia--does himself a serious disservice1 and that he is uneasily conscious of it4 ,having got himself a wife to his austere taste1 he finds that she is rather depressing--that his vanity is almost as painfully damaged by her emotional inertness as it would have been by a too provocative and hedonistic spirit4 ,for the thing that chiefly delights a man1 when some woman has gone through the solemn buffoonery of yielding to his great love1 is the sharp and flattering contrast between her reserve in the presence of other men and her enchanting complaisance in the presence of himself4 ,here his vanity is enormously tickled4 ,to the world in general she seems remote and unapproachable2 to him she is docile1 fluttering1 gurgling1 even a bit abandoned4 ,it is as if some great magnifico male1 some inordinate czar or kaiser1 should step down from the throne to play dominoes with him behind the door4 ,the greater the contrast between the lady's two fronts1 the greater his satisfaction-up to1 of course1 the point where his suspicions are aroused4 ,let her diminish that contrast ever so little on the public side--by smiling at a handsome actor1 by saying a word too many to an attentive head-waiter1 by holding the hand of the rector of the parish1 by winking amiably at his brother or at her sister's husband--and at once the poor fellow begins to look for clandestine notes1 to employ private inquiry agents1 and to scrutinize the eyes1 ears1 noses and hair of his children with shameful doubts4 ,this explains many domestic catastrophes4 #ae4 ,mythical ,anthropophagi ,the man-hating woman1 like the cold woman1 is largely imaginary4 ,one often encounters references to her in literature1 but who has ever met her in real life8 ,as for me1 ,i doubt that such a monster has ever actually existed4 ,there are1 of course1 women who spend a great deal of time denouncing and reviling men1 but these are certainly not genuine man-haters2 they are simply women who have done their utmost to snare men1 and failed4 ,of such sort are the majority of inflammatory suffragettes of the sex-hygiene and birth-control species4 ,the rigid limitation of offspring1 in fact1 is chiefly advocated by women who run no more risk of having unwilling motherhood forced upon them than so many mummies of the ,tenth ,dynasty4 ,all their unhealthy interest in such noisome matters has behind it merely a subconscious yearning to attract the attention of men1 who are supposed to be partial to enterprises that are difficult or forbidden4 ,but certainly the enterprise of dissuading such a propagandist from her gospel would not be difficult1 and ,i know of no law forbidding it4 ,i'll begin to believe in the man-hater the day ,i am introduced to a woman who has definitely and finally refused a chance of marriage to a man who is of her own station in life1 able to support her1 unafflicted by any loathsome disease1 and of reasonably decent aspect and manners--in brief a man who is thoroughly eligible4 ,i doubt that any such woman breathes the air of ,christendom4 ,whenever one comes to confidential terms with an unmarried woman1 of course1 she favours one with a long chronicle of the men she has refused to marry1 greatly to their grief4 ,but unsentimental cross-examination1 at least in my experience1 always develops the fact that every one of these suffered from some obvious and intolerable disqualification4 ,either he had a wife already and was vague about his ability to get rid of her1 or he was drunk when he was brought to his proposal and repudiated it or forgot it the next day1 or he was a bankrupt1 or he was old and decrepit1 or he was young and plainly idiotic1 or he had diabetes or a bad heart1 or his relatives were impossible1 or he believed in spiritualism1 or democracy1 or the ,baconian theory1 or some other such nonsense4 ,restricting the thing to men palpably eligible1 ,i believe thoroughly that no sane woman has ever actually muffed a chance4 ,now and then1 perhaps1 a miraculously fortunate girl has two victims on the mat simultaneously1 and has to lose one4 ,but they are seldom1 if ever1 both good chances2 one is nearly always a duffer1 thrown in in the telling to make the bourgeoisie marvel4 #af4 ,a ,conspiracy of ,silence ,the reason why all this has to be stated here is simply that women1 who could state it much better1 have almost unanimously refrained from discussing such matters at all4 ,one finds1 indeed1 a sort of general conspiracy1 infinitely alert and jealous1 against the publication of the esoteric wisdom of the sex1 and even against the acknowledgment that any such body of erudition exists at all4 ,men1 having more vanity and less discretion1 area good deal less cautious4 ,there is1 in fact1 a whole literature of masculine babbling1 ranging from ,machiavelli's appalling confession of political theory to the egoistic confidences of such men as ,nietzsche1 ,jean-,jacques ,rousseau1 ,casanova1 ,max ,stirner1 ,benvenuto ,cellini1 ,napoleon ,bonaparte and ,lord ,chesterfield4 ,but it is very rarely that a ,marie ,bashkirtsev or ,margot ,asquith lets down the veils which conceal the acroamatic doctrine of the other sex4 ,it is transmitted from mother to daughter1 so to speak1 behind the door4 ,one observes its practical workings1 but hears little about its principles4 ,the causes of this secrecy are obvious4 ,women1 in the last analysis1 can prevail against men in the great struggle for power and security only by keeping them disarmed1 and1 in the main1 unwarned4 ,in a pitched battle1 with the devil taking the hindmost1 their physical and economic inferiority would inevitably bring them to disaster4 ,thus they have to apply their peculiar talents warily1 and with due regard to the danger of arousing the foe4 ,he must be attached without any formal challenge1 and even without any suspicion of challenge4 ,this strategy lies at the heart of what ,nietzsche called the slave morality--in brief1 a morality based upon a concealment of egoistic purpose1 a code of ethics having for its foremost character a bold denial of its actual aim4 ,,iii4 ,marriage #ag4 ,fundamental ,motives ,how successful such a concealment may be is well displayed by the general acceptance of the notion that women are reluctant to enter into marriage--that they have to be persuaded to it by eloquence and pertinacity1 and even by a sort of intimidation4 ,the truth is that1 in a world almost divested of intelligible idealism1 and hence dominated by a senseless worship of the practical1 marriage offers the best career that the average woman can reasonably aspire to1 and1 in the case of very many women1 the only one that actually offers a livelihood4 ,what is esteemed and valuable1 in our materialistic and unintelligent society1 is precisely that petty practical efficiency at which men are expert1 and which serves them in place of free intelligence4 ,a woman1 save she show a masculine strain that verges upon the pathological1 cannot hope to challenge men in general in this department1 but it is always open to her to exchange her sexual charm for a lion's share in the earnings of one man1 and this is what she almost invariably tries to do4 ,that is to say1 she tries to get a husband1 for getting a husband means1 in a sense1 enslaving an expert1 and so covering up her own lack of expertness1 and escaping its consequences4 ,thereafter she has at least one stout line of defence against a struggle for existence in which the prospect of survival is chiefly based1 not upon the talents that are typically hers1 but upon those that she typically lacks4 ,before the average woman succumbs in this struggle1 some man or other must succumb first4 ,thus her craft converts her handicap into an advantage4 ,in this security lies the most important of all the benefits that a woman attains by marriage4 ,it is1 in fact1 the most important benefit that the mind can imagine1 for the whole effort of the human race1 under our industrial society1 is concentrated upon the attainment of it4 ,but there are other benefits1 too4 ,one of them is that increase in dignity which goes with an obvious success2 the woman who has got herself a satisfactory husband1 or even a highly imperfect husband1 is regarded with respect by other women1 and has a contemptuous patronage for those who have failed to do likewise4 ,again1 marriage offers her the only safe opportunity1 considering the levantine view of women as property which ,christianity has preserved in our civilization1 to obtain gratification for that powerful complex of instincts which we call the sexual1 and1 in particular1 for the instinct of maternity4 ,the woman who has not had a child remains incomplete1 ill at ease1 and more than a little ridiculous4 ,she is in the position of a man who has never stood in battle2 she has missed the most colossal experience of her sex4 ,moreover1 a social odium goes with her loss4 ,other women regard her as a sort of permanent tyro1 and treat her with ill-concealed disdain1 and deride the very virtue which lies at the bottom of her experiential penury4 ,there would seem to be1 indeed1 but small respect among women for virginity per se4 ,they are against the woman who has got rid of hers outside marriage1 not because they think she has lost anything intrinsically valuable1 but because she has made a bad bargain1 and one that materially diminishes the sentimental respect for virtue held by men1 and hence one against the general advantage and well-being of the sex4 ,in other words1 it is a guild resentment that they feel1 not a moral resentment4 ,women1 in general1 are not actively moral1 nor1 for that matter1 noticeably modest4 ,every man1 indeed1 who is in wide practice among them is occasionally astounded and horrified to discover1 on some rainy afternoon1 an almost complete absence of modesty in some women of the highest respectability4 ,but of all things that a woman gains by marriage the most valuable is economic security4 ,such security1 of course1 is seldom absolute1 but usually merely relative3 the best provider among husbands may die without enough life insurance1 or run off with some preposterous light of love1 or become an invalid or insane1 or step over the intangible and wavering line which separates business success from a prison cell4 ,again1 a woman may be deceived3 there are stray women who are credulous and sentimental1 and stray men who are cunning4 ,yet again1 a woman may make false deductions from evidence accurately before her1 ineptly guessing that the clerk she marries today will be the head of the firm tomorrow1 instead of merely the bookkeeper tomorrow4 ,but on the whole it must be plain that a woman1 in marrying1 usually obtains for herself a reasonably secure position in that station of life to which she is accustomed4 ,she seeks a husband1 not sentimentally1 but realistically2 she always gives thought to the economic situation2 she seldom takes a chance if it is possible to avoid it4 ,it is common for men to marry women who bring nothing to the joint capital of marriage save good looks and an appearance of vivacity2 it is almost unheard of for women to neglect more prosaic inquiries4 ,many a rich man1 at least in ,america1 marries his typist or the governess of his sister's children and is happy thereafter1 but when a rare woman enters upon a comparable marriage she is commonly set down as insane1 and the disaster that almost always ensues quickly confirms the diagnosis4 ,the economic and social advantage that women thus seek in marriage--and the seeking is visible no less in the kitchen wench who aspires to the heart of a policeman than in the fashionable flapper who looks for a husband with a ,rolls-,royce--is1 by a curious twist of fate1 one of the underlying causes of their precarious economic condition before marriage rescues them4 ,in a civilization which lays its greatest stress upon an uninspired and almost automatic expertness1 and offers its highest rewards to the more intricate forms thereof1 they suffer the disadvantage of being less capable of it than men4 ,part of this disadvantage1 as we have seen1 is congenital2 their very intellectual enterprise makes it difficult for them to become the efficient machines that men are4 ,but part of it is also due to the fact that1 with marriage always before them1 coloring their every vision of the future1 and holding out a steady promise of swift and complete relief1 they are under no such implacable pressure as men are to acquire the sordid arts they revolt against4 ,the time is too short and the incentive too feeble4 ,before the woman employee of twenty-one can master a tenth of the idiotic 8knowledge0 in the head of the male clerk of thirty1 or even convince herself that it is worth mastering1 she has married the head of the establishment or maybe the clerk himself1 and so abandons the business4 ,it is1 indeed1 not until a woman has definitely put away the hope of marriage1 or1 at all events1 admitted the possibility that she1 may have to do so soon or late1 that she buckles down in earnest to whatever craft she practises1 and makes a genuine effort to develop competence4 ,no sane man1 seeking a woman for a post requiring laborious training and unremitting diligence1 would select a woman still definitely young and marriageable4 ,to the contrary1 he would choose either a woman so unattractive sexually as to be palpably incapable of snaring a man1 or one so embittered by some catastrophe of amour as to be pathologically emptied of the normal aspirations of her sex4 #ah4 ,the ,process of ,courtship ,this bemusement of the typical woman by the notion of marriage has been noted as self-evident by every literate student of the phenomena of sex1 from the early ,christian fathers down to ,nietzsche1 ,ellis and ,shaw4 ,that it is denied by the current sentimentality of ,christendom is surely no evidence against it4 ,what we have in this denial1 as ,i have said1 is no more than a proof of woman's talent for a high and sardonic form of comedy and of man's infinite vanity4 8,i wooed and won her10 says ,sganarelle of his wife4 8,i made him run10 says the hare of the hound4 ,when the thing is maintained1 not as a mere windy sentimentality1 but with some notion of carrying it logically1 the result is invariably a display of paralogy so absurd that it becomes pathetic4 ,such nonsense one looks for in the works of gyneophile theorists with no experience of the world1 and there is where one finds it4 ,it is almost always wedded to the astounding doctrine that sexual frigidity1 already disposed of1 is normal in the female1 and that the approach of the male is made possible1 not by its melting into passion1 but by a purely intellectual determination1 inwardly revolting1 to avoid his ire by pandering to his gross appetites4 ,thus the thing is stated in a book called 8,the ,sexes in ,science and ,history10 by ,eliza ,burt ,gamble1 an ,american lady anthropologist3 ,the beautiful coloring of male birds and fishes1 and the various appendages acquired by males throughout the various orders below man1 and which1 sofar as they themselves are concerned1 serve no other useful purpose than to aid them in securing the favours of the females1 have by the latter been turned to account in the processes of reproduction4 ,the female made the male beautiful ,that ,she ,might ,endure ,his ,caresses4 ,the italics are mine4 ,from this premiss the learned doctor proceeds to the classical sentimental argument that the males of all species1 including man1 are little more than chronic seducers1 and that their chief energies are devoted to assaulting and breaking down the native reluctance of the aesthetic and anesthetic females4 ,in her own words3 8,regarding males1 outside of the instinct for self-preservation1 which1 by the way is often overshadowed by their great sexual eagerness1 no discriminating characters have been acquired and transmitted1 other than those which have been the result of passion1 namely1 pugnacity and perseverance40 ,again the italics are mine4 ,what we have here is merely the old1 old delusion of masculine enterprise in amour--the concept of man as a lascivious monster and of woman as his shrinking victim--in brief1 the ,don ,juan idea in fresh bib and tucker4 ,in such bilge lie the springs of many of the most vexatious delusions of the world1 and of some of its loudest farce no less4 ,it is thus that fatuous old maids are led to look under their beds for fabulous ravishers1 and to cry out that they have been stabbed with hypodermic needles in cinema theatres1 and to watch furtively for white slavers in railroad stations4 ,it is thus1 indeed1 that the whole white-slave mountebankery has been launched1 with its gaudy fictions and preposterous alarms4 ,and it is thus1 more importantly1 that whole regiments of neurotic wives have been convinced that their children are monuments1 not to a co-operation in which their own share was innocent and cordial1 but to the solitary libidinousness of their swinish and unconscionable husbands4 ,dr4 ,gamble1 of course1 is speaking of the lower fauna in the time of ,noah4 ,a literal application of her theory to man today is enough to bring it to a reductio ad absurdum4 ,which sex of ,homo sapiens actually does the primping and parading that she describes8 ,which runs to 8beautiful coloring10 sartorial1 hirsute1 facial8 ,which encases itself in vestments which 8serve no other useful purpose than to aid in securing the favours0 of the other8 ,the insecurity of the gifted savante's position is at once apparent4 ,the more convincingly she argues that the primeval mud-hens and she mackerel had to be anesthetized with spectacular decorations in order to 8endure the caresses0 of their beaux1 the more she supports the thesis that men have to be decoyed and bamboozled into love today4 ,in other words1 her argument turns upon and destroys itself4 ,carried to its last implication1 it holds that women are all ,donna ,juanitas1 and that if they put off their millinery and cosmetics1 and abandoned the shameless sexual allurements of their scanty dress1 men could not 8endure their caresses40 ,to be sure1 ,dr4 ,gamble by no means draws this disconcerting conclusion herself4 ,to the contrary1 she clings to the conventional theory that the human female of today is no more than the plaything of the concupiscent male1 and that she must wait for the feminist millenium to set her free from his abominable pawings4 ,but she can reach this notion only by standing her whole structure of reasoning on its head--in fact1 by knocking it over and repudiating it4 ,on the one hand1 she argues that splendour of attire is merely a bait to overcome the reluctance of the opposite sex1 and on the other hand she argues1 at least by fair inference1 that it is not4 ,this grotesque switching of horses1 however1 need not detain us4 ,the facts are too plain to be disposed of by a lady anthropologist's theorizings4 ,those facts are supported1 in the field of animal behaviour1 by the almost unanimous evidence of zoologists1 including that of ,dr4 ,gamble herself4 ,they are supported1 in the field of human behaviour1 by a body of observation and experience so colossal that it would be quite out of the question to dispose of it4 ,women1 as ,i have shown1 have a more delicate aesthetic sense than men2 in a world wholly rid of men they would probably still array themselves with vastly more care and thought of beauty than men would ever show in like case4 ,but with the world what it is1 it must be obvious that their display of finery--to say nothing of their display of epidermis--has the conscious purpose of attracting the masculine eye4 ,a normal woman1 indeed1 never so much as buys a pair of shoes or has her teeth plugged without considering1 in the back of her mind1 the effect upon some unsuspecting candidate for her 8reluctant0 affections4 #ai4 ,the ,actual ,husband ,so far as ,i can make out1 no woman of the sort worth hearing--that is1 no woman of intelligence1 humour and charm1 and hence of success in the duel of sex--has ever publicly denied this2 the denial is confined entirely to the absurd sect of female bachelors of arts and to the generality of vain and unobservant men4 ,the former1 having failed to attract men by the devices described1 take refuge behind the sour grapes doctrine that they have never tried1 and the latter1 having fallen victims1 sooth their egoism by arrogating the whole agency to themselves1 thus giving it a specious appearance of the volitional1 and even of the audacious4 ,the average man is an almost incredible popinjay2 he can think of himself only as at the centre of situations4 ,all the sordid transactions of his life appear to him1 and are depicted in his accounts of them1 as feats1 successes1 proofs of his acumen4 ,he regards it as an almost magical exploit to operate a stock-brokerage shop1 or to get elected to public office1 or to swindle his fellow knaves in some degrading commercial enterprise1 or to profess some nonsense or other in a college1 or to write so platitudinous a book as this one4 ,and in the same way he views it as a great testimony to his prowess at amour to yield up his liberty1 his property and his soul to the first woman who1 in despair of finding better game1 turns her appraising eye upon him4 ,but if you want to hear a mirthless laugh1 just present this masculine theory to a bridesmaid at a wedding1 particularly after alcohol and crocodile tears have done their disarming work upon her4 ,that is to say1 just hint to her that the bride harboured no notion of marriage until stormed into acquiescence by the moonstruck and impetuous bridegroom4 ,i have used the phrase1 8in despair of finding better game40 ,what ,i mean is this that not one woman in a hundred ever marries her first choice among marriageable men4 ,that first choice is almost invariably one who is beyond her talents1 for reasons either fortuitous or intrinsic4 ,let us take1 for example1 a woman whose relative naivete makes the process clearly apparent1 to wit1 a simple shop-girl4 ,her absolute first choice1 perhaps1 is not a living man at all1 but a supernatural abstraction in a book1 say1 one of the heroes of ,hall ,caine1 ,ethel ,m4 ,dell1 or ,marie ,corelli4 ,after him comes a moving-picture actor4 ,then another moving-picture actor4 ,then1 perhaps1 many more--ten or fifteen head4 ,then a sebaceous young clergyman4 ,then the junior partner in the firm she works for4 ,then a couple of department managers4 ,then a clerk4 ,then a young man with no definite profession or permanent job--one of the innumerable host which flits from post to post1 always restive1 always trying something new--perhaps a neighborhood garage-keeper in the end4 ,well1 the girl begins with the ,caine colossus3 he vanishes into thin air4 ,she proceeds to the moving picture actors3 they are almost as far beyond her4 ,and then to the man of ,god1 the junior partner1 the department manager1 the clerk2 one and all they are carried off by girls of greater attractions and greater skill--girls who can cast gaudier flies4 ,in the end1 suddenly terrorized by the first faint shadows of spinsterhood1 she turns to the ultimate numskull--and marries him out of hand4 ,this1 allowing for class modifications1 is almost the normal history of a marriage1 or1 more accurately1 of the genesis of a marriage1 under ,protestant ,christianity4 ,under other rites the business is taken out of the woman's hands1 at least partly1 and so she is less enterprising in her assembling of candidates and possibilities4 ,but when the whole thing is left to her own heart--i4e41 to her head--it is but natural that she should seek as wide a range of choice as the conditions of her life allow1 and in a democratic society those conditions put few if any fetters upon her fancy4 ,the servant girl1 or factory operative1 or even prostitute of today may be the chorus girl or moving picture vampire of tomorrow and the millionaire's wife of next year4 ,in ,america1 especially1 men have no settled antipathy to such stooping alliances2 in fact1 it rather flatters their vanity to play ,prince ,charming to ,cinderella4 ,the result is that every normal ,american young woman1 with the practicality of her sex and the inner confidence that goes therewith1 raises her amorous eye as high as it will roll4 ,and the second result is that every ,american man of presentable exterior and easy means is surrounded by an aura of discreet provocation3 he cannot even dictate a letter1 or ask for a telephone number without being measured for his wedding coat4 ,on the ,continent of ,europe1 and especially in the ,latin countries1 where class barriers are more formidable1 the situation differs materially1 and to the disadvantage of the girl4 ,if she makes an overture1 it is an invitation to disaster2 her hope of lawful marriage by such means is almost nil4 ,in consequence1 the prudent and decent girl avoids such overtures1 and they must be made by third parties or by the man himself4 ,this is the explanation of the fact that a ,frenchman1 say1 is habitually enterprising in amour1 and hence bold and often offensive1 whereas an ,american is what is called chivalrous4 ,the ,american is chivalrous for the simple reason that the initiative is not in his hands4 ,his chivalry is really a sort of coquetry4 #bj4 ,the ,unattainable ,ideal ,but here ,i rather depart from the point1 which is this3 that the average woman is not strategically capable of bringing down the most tempting game within her purview1 and must thus content herself with a second1 third1 or nth choice4 ,the only women who get their first choices are those who run in almost miraculous luck and those too stupid to formulate an ideal--two very small classes1 it must be obvious4 ,a few women1 true enough1 are so pertinacious that they prefer defeat to compromise4 ,that is to say1 they prefer to put off marriage indefinitely rather than to marry beneath the highest leap of their fancy4 ,but such women may be quickly dismissed as abnormal1 and perhaps as downright diseased in mind2 the average woman is well-aware that marriage is far better for her than celibacy1 even when it falls a good deal short of her primary hopes1 and she is also well aware that the differences between man and man1 once mere money is put aside1 are so slight as to be practically almost negligible4 ,thus the average woman is under none of the common masculine illusions about elective affinities1 soul mates1 love at first sight1 and such phantasms4 ,she is quite ready to fall in love1 as the phrase is1 with any man who is plainly eligible1 and she usually knows a good many more such men than one4 ,her primary demand in marriage is not for the agonies of romance1 but for comfort and security2 she is thus easier satisfied than a man1 and oftener happy4 ,one frequently hears of remarried widowers who continue to moon about their dead first wives1 but for a remarried widow to show any such sentimentality would be a nine days' wonder4 ,once replaced1 a dead husband is expunged from the minutes4 ,and so is a dead love4 ,one of the results of all this is a subtle reinforcement of the contempt with which women normally regard their husbands--a contempt grounded1 as ,i have shown1 upon a sense of intellectual superiority4 ,to this primary sense of superiority is now added the disparagement of a concrete comparison1 and over all is an ineradicable resentment of the fact that such a comparison has been necessary4 ,in other words1 the typical husband is a second-rater1 and no one is better aware of it than his wife4 ,he is1 taking averages1 one who has been loved1 as the saying goes1 by but one woman1 and then only as a second1 third or nth choice4 ,if any other woman had ever loved him1 as the idiom has it1 she would have married him1 and so made him ineligible for his present happiness4 ,but the average bachelor is a man who has been loved1 so to speak1 by many women1 and is the lost first choice of at least some of them4 ,here presents the unattainable1 and hence the admirable2 the husband is the attained and disdained4 ,here we have a sufficient explanation of the general superiority of bachelors1 so often noted by students of mankind--a superiority so marked that it is difficult1 in all history1 to find six first-rate philosophers who were married men4 ,the bachelor's very capacity to avoid marriage is no more than a proof of his relative freedom from the ordinary sentimentalism of his sex--in other words1 of his greater approximation to the clear headedness of the enemy sex4 ,he is able to defeat the enterprise of women because he brings to the business an equipment almost comparable to their own4 ,herbert ,spencer1 until he was fifty1 was ferociously harassed by women of all sorts4 ,among others1 ,george ,eliot tried very desperately to marry him4 ,but after he had made it plain1 over a long series of years1 that he was prepared to resist marriage to the full extent of his military and naval power1 the girls dropped off one by one1 and so his last decades were full of peace and he got a great deal of very important work done4 #ba4 ,the ,effect on the ,race ,it is1 of course1 not well for the world that the highest sort of men are thus selected out1 as the biologists say1 and that their superiority dies with them1 whereas the ignoble tricks and sentimentalities of lesser men are infinitely propagated4 ,despite a popular delusion that the sons of great men are always dolts1 the fact is that intellectual superiority is inheritable1 quite as easily as bodily strength2 and that fact has been established beyond cavil by the laborious inquiries of ,galton1 ,pearson and the other anthropometricians of the ,english school4 ,if such men as ,spinoza1 ,kant1 ,schopenhauer1 ,spencer1 and ,nietzsche had married and begotten sons1 those sons1 it is probable1 would have contributed as much to philosophy as the sons and grandsons of ,veit ,bach contributed to music1 or those of ,erasmus ,darwin to biology1 or those of ,henry ,adams to politics1 or those of ,hamilcar ,barca to the art of war4 ,i have said that ,herbert ,spencer's escape from marriage facilitated his life-work1 and so served the immediate good of ,english philosophy1 but in the long run it will work a detriment1 for he left no sons to carry on his labours1 and the remaining ,englishmen of his time were unable to supply the lack4 ,his celibacy1 indeed1 made ,english philosophy co-extensive with his life2 since his death the whole body of metaphysical speculation produced in ,england has been of little more1 practical value to the world than a drove of bogs4 ,in precisely the same way the celibacy of ,schopenhauer1 ,kant and ,nietzsche has reduced ,german philosophy to feebleness4 ,even setting aside this direct influence of heredity1 there is the equally potent influence of example and tuition4 ,it is a gigantic advantage to live on intimate terms with a first-rate man1 and have his care4 ,hamilcar not only gave the ,carthagenians a great general in his actual son2 he also gave them a great general in his son-in-law1 trained in his camp4 ,but the tendency of the first-rate man to remain a bachelor is very strong1 and ,sidney ,lee once showed that1 of all the great writers of ,england since the ,renaissance1 more than half were either celibates or lived apart from their wives4 ,even the married ones revealed the tendency plainly4 ,for example1 consider ,shakespeare4 ,he was forced into marriage while still a minor by the brothers of ,ann ,hathaway1 who was several years his senior1 and had debauched him and gave out that she was enceinte by him4 ,he escaped from her abhorrent embraces as quickly as possible1 and thereafter kept as far away from her as he could4 ,his very distaste for marriage1 indeed1 was the cause of his residence in ,london1 and hence1 in all probability1 of the labours which made him immortal4 ,in different parts of the world various expedients have been resorted to to overcome this reluctance to marriage among the better sort of men4 ,christianity1 in general1 combats it on the ground that it is offensive to ,god--though at the same time leaning toward an enforced celibacy among its own agents4 ,the discrepancy is fatal to the position4 ,on the one hand1 it is impossible to believe that the same ,god who permitted ,his own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin1 and on the other hand1 it is obvious that the average cleric would be damaged but little1 and probably improved appreciably1 by having a wife to think for him1 and to force him to virtue and industry1 and to aid him otherwise in his sordid profession4 ,where religious superstitions have died out the institution of the dot prevails--an idea borrowed by ,christians from the ,jews4 ,the dot is simply a bribe designed to overcome the disinclination of the male4 ,it involves a frank recognition of the fact that he loses by marriage1 and it seeks to make up for that loss by a money payment4 ,its obvious effect is to give young women a wider and better choice of husbands4 ,a relatively superior man1 otherwise quite out of reach1 may be brought into camp by the assurance of economic ease1 and what is more1 he may be kept in order after he has been taken by the consciousness of his gain4 ,among hardheaded and highly practical peoples1 such as the ,jews and the ,french1 the dot flourishes1 and its effect is to promote intellectual suppleness in the race1 for the average child is thus not inevitably the offspring of a woman and a noodle1 as with us1 but may be the offspring of a woman and a man of reasonable intelligence4 ,but even in ,france1 the very highest class of men tend to evade marriage2 they resist money almost as unanimously as their ,anglo-,saxon brethren resist sentimentality4 ,in ,america the dot is almost unknown1 partly because money-getting is easier to men than in ,europe and is regarded as less degrading1 and partly because ,american men are more naive than ,frenchmen and are thus readily intrigued without actual bribery4 ,but the best of them nevertheless lean to celibacy1 and plans for overcoming their habit are frequently proposed and discussed4 ,one such plan involves a heavy tax on bachelors4 ,the defect in it lies in the fact that the average bachelor1 for obvious reasons1 is relatively well to do1 and would pay the tax rather than marry4 ,moreover1 the payment of it would help to salve his conscience1 which is now often made restive1 ,i believe1 by a maudlin feeling that he is shirking his duty to the race1 and so he would be confirmed and supported in his determination to avoid the altar4 ,still further1 he would escape the social odium which now attaches to his celibacy1 for whatever a man pays for is regarded as his right4 ,as things stand1 that odium is of definite potency1 and undoubtedly has its influence upon a certain number of men in the lower ranks of bachelors4 ,they stand1 so to speak1 in the twilight zone of bachelorhood1 with one leg furtively over the altar rail2 it needs only an extra pull to bring them to the sacrifice4 ,but if they could compound for their immunity by a cash indemnity it is highly probable that they would take on new resolution1 and in the end they would convert what remained of their present disrepute into a source of egoistic satisfaction1 as is done1 indeed1 by a great many bachelors even today4 ,these last immoralists are privy to the elements which enter into that disrepute3 the ire of women whose devices they have resisted and the envy of men who have succumbed4 #bb4 ,compulsory ,marriage ,i myself once proposed an alternative scheme1 to wit1 the prohibition of sentimental marriages by law1 and the substitution of match-making by the common hangman4 ,this plan1 as revolutionary as it may seem1 would have several plain advantages4 ,for one thing1 it would purge the serious business of marriage of the romantic fol-de-rol that now corrupts it1 and so make for the peace and happiness of the race4 ,for another thing1 it would work against the process which now selects out1 as ,i have said1 those men who are most fit1 and so throws the chief burden of paternity upon the inferior1 to the damage of posterity4 ,the hangman1 if he made his selections arbitrarily1 would try to give his office permanence and dignity by choosing men whose marriage would meet with public approbation1 i4e41 men obviously of sound stock and talents1 i4e41 the sort of men who now habitually escape4 ,and if he made his selection by the hazard of the die1 or by drawing numbers out of a hat1 or by any other such method of pure chance1 that pure chance would fall indiscriminately upon all orders of men1 and the upper orders would thus lose their present comparative immunity4 ,true enough1 a good many men would endeavour to influence him privately to their own advantage1 and it is probable that he would occasionally succumb1 but it must be plain that the men most likely to prevail in that enterprise would not be philosophers1 but politicians1 and so there would be some benefit to the race even here4 ,posterity surely suffers no very heavy loss when a ,congressman1 a member of the ,house of ,lords or even an ambassador or ,prime ,minister dies childless1 but when a ,herbert ,spencer goes to the grave without leaving sons behind him there is a detriment to all the generations of the future4 ,i did not offer the plan1 of course1 as a contribution to practical politics1 but merely as a sort of hypothesis1 to help clarify the problem4 ,many other theoretical advantages appear in it1 but its execution is made impossible1 not only by inherent defects1 but also by a general disinclination to abandon the present system1 which at least offers certain attractions to concrete men and women1 despite its unfavourable effects upon the unborn4 ,women would oppose the substitution of chance or arbitrary fiat for the existing struggle for the plain reason that every woman is convinced1 and no doubt rightly1 that her own judgment is superior to that of either the common hangman or the gods1 and that her own enterprise is more favourable to her opportunities4 ,and men would oppose it because it would restrict their liberty4 ,this liberty1 of course1 is largely imaginary4 ,in its common manifestation1 it is no more1 at bottom1 than the privilege of being bamboozled and made a mock of by the first woman who ventures to essay the business4 ,but none the less it is quite as precious to men as any other of the ghosts that their vanity conjures up for their enchantment4 ,they cherish the notion that unconditioned volition enters into the matter1 and that under volition there is not only a high degree of sagacity but also a touch of the daring and the devilish4 ,a man is often almost as much pleased and flattered by his own marriage as he would be by the achievement of what is currently called a seduction4 ,in the one case1 as in the other1 his emotion is one of triumph4 ,the substitution of pure chance would take away that soothing unction4 ,the present system1 to be sure1 also involves chance4 ,every man realizes it1 and even the most bombastic bachelor has moments in which he humbly whispers3 8,there1 but for the grace of ,god1 go ,i40 ,but that chance has a sugarcoating2 it is swathed in egoistic illusion2 it shows less stark and intolerable chanciness1 so to speak1 than the bald hazard of the die4 ,thus men prefer it1 and shrink from the other4 ,in the same way1 ,i have no doubt1 the majority of foxes would object to choosing lots to determine the victim of a projected fox-hunt4 ,they prefer to take their chances with the dogs4 #bc4 ,extra-,legal ,devices ,it is1 of course1 a rhetorical exaggeration to say that all first-class men escape marriage1 and even more of an exaggeration to say that their high qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity4 ,on the one hand it must be obvious that an appreciable number of them1 perhaps by reason of their very detachment and preoccupation1 are intrigued into the holy estate1 and that not a few of them enter it deliberately1 convinced that it is the safest form of liaison possible under ,christianity4 ,and on the other hand one must not forget the biological fact that it is quite feasible to achieve offspring without the imprimatur of ,church and ,state4 ,the thing1 indeed1 is so commonplace that ,i need not risk a scandal by uncovering it in detail4 ,what ,i allude to1 ,i need not add1 is not that form of irregularity which curses innocent children with the stigma of illegitimacy1 but that more refined and thoughtful form which safeguards their social dignity while protecting them against inheritance from their legal fathers4 ,english philosophy1 as ,i have shown1 suffers by the fact that ,herbert ,spencer was too busy to permit himself any such romantic altruism--just as ,american literature gains enormously by the fact that ,walt ,whitman adventured1 leaving seven sons behind him1 three of whom are now well-known ,american poets and in the forefront of the ,new ,poetry movement4 ,the extent of this correction of a salient evil of monogamy is very considerable2 its operations explain the private disrepute of perhaps a majority of first-rate men2 its advantages have been set forth in ,george ,moore's 8,euphorion in ,texas10 though in a clumsy and sentimental way4 ,what is behind it is the profound race sense of women--the instinct which makes them regard the unborn in their every act--perhaps1 too1 the fact that the interests of the unborn are here identical1 as in other situations1 with their own egoistic aspirations4 ,as a popular philosopher has shrewdly observed1 the objections to polygamy do not come from women1 for the average woman is sensible enough to prefer half or a quarter or even a tenth of a first-rate man to the whole devotion of a third-rate man4 ,considerations of much the same sort also justify polyandry--if not morally1 then at least biologically4 ,the average woman1 as ,i have shown1 must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain2 he is anything but her ideal4 ,in consequence1 she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father1 nor can she help feeling guilty about it2 for she knows that he is their father only by reason of her own initiative in the proceedings anterior to her marriage4 ,if1 now1 an opportunity presents itself to remove that handicap from at least some of them1 and at the same time to realize her ideal and satisfy her vanity--if such a chance offers it is no wonder that she occasionally embraces it4 ,here we have an explanation of many lamentable and otherwise inexplicable violations of domestic integrity4 ,the woman in the case is commonly dismissed as vicious1 but that is no more than a new example of the common human tendency to attach the concept of viciousness to whatever is natural1 and intelligent1 and above the comprehension of politicians1 theologians and green-grocers4 #bd4 ,intermezzo on ,monogamy ,the prevalence of monogamy in ,christendom is commonly ascribed to ethical motives4 ,this is quite as absurd as ascribing wars to ethical motives which is1 of course1 frequently done4 ,the simple truth is that ethical motives are no more than deductions from experience1 and that they are quickly abandoned whenever experience turns against them4 ,in the present case experience is still overwhelming on the side of monogamy2 civilized men are in favour of it because they find that it works4 ,and why does it work8 ,because it is the most effective of all available antidotes to the alarms and terrors of passion4 ,monogamy1 in brief1 kills passion--and passion is the most dangerous of all the surviving enemies to what we call civilization1 which is based upon order1 decorum1 restraint1 formality1 industry1 regimentation4 ,the civilized man--the ideal civilized man--is simply one who never sacrifices the common security to his private passions4 ,he reaches perfection when he even ceases to love passionately--when he reduces the most profound of all his instinctive experience from the level of an ecstasy to the level of a mere device for replenishing armies and workshops of the world1 keeping clothes in repair1 reducing the infant death-rate1 providing enough tenants for every landlord1 and making it possible for the ,polizei to know where every citizen is at any hour of the day or night4 ,monogamy accomplishes this1 not by producing satiety1 but by destroying appetite4 ,it makes passion formal and uninspiring1 and so gradually kills it4 ,the advocates of monogamy1 deceived by its moral overtones1 fail to get all the advantage out of it that is in it4 ,consider1 for example1 the important moral business of safeguarding the virtue of the unmarried--that is1 of the still passionate4 ,the present plan in dealing1 say1 with a young man of twenty1 is to surround him with scare-crows and prohibitions--to try to convince him logically that passion is dangerous4 ,this is both supererogation and imbecility--supererogation because he already knows that it is dangerous1 and imbecility because it is quite impossible to kill a passion by arguing against it4 ,the way to kill it is to give it rein under unfavourable and dispiriting conditions--to bring it down1 by slow stages1 to the estate of an absurdity and a horror4 ,how much more1 then1 could be accomplished if the wild young man were forbidden polygamy1 before marriage1 but permitted monogamy6 ,the prohibition in this case would be relatively easy to enforce1 instead of impossible1 as in the other4 ,curiosity would be satisfied2 nature would get out of her cage2 even romance would get an inning4 ,ninety-nine young men out of a hundred would submit1 if only because it would be much easier to submit that to resist4 ,and the result8 ,obviously1 it would be laudable--that is1 accepting current definitions of the laudable4 ,the product1 after six months1 would be a well-regimented and disillusioned young man1 as devoid of disquieting and demoralizing passion as an ancient of eighty--in brief1 the ideal citizen of ,christendom4 ,the present plan surely fails to produce a satisfactory crop of such ideal citizens4 ,on the one hand its impossible prohibitions cause a multitude of lamentable revolts1 often ending in a silly sort of running amok4 ,on the other hand they fill the ,y4 ,m4 ,c4 ,a4's with scared poltroons full of indescribably disgusting ,freudian suppressions4 ,neither group supplies many ideal citizens4 ,neither promotes the sort of public morality that is aimed at4 #be4 ,late ,marriages ,the marriage of a first-rate man1 when it takes place at all1 commonly takes place relatively late4 ,he may succumb in the end1 but he is almost always able to postpone the disaster a good deal longer than the average poor clodpate1 or normal man4 ,if he actually marries early1 it is nearly always proof that some intolerable external pressure has been applied to him1 as in ,shakespeare's case1 or that his mental sensitiveness approaches downright insanity1 as in ,shelley's4 ,this fact1 curiously enough1 has escaped the observation of an otherwise extremely astute observer1 namely ,havelock ,ellis4 ,in his study of ,british genius he notes the fact that most men of unusual capacities are the sons of relatively old fathers1 but instead of exhibiting the true cause thereof1 he ascribes it to a mysterious quality whereby a man already in decline is capable of begetting better offspring than one in full vigour4 ,this is a palpable absurdity1 not only because it goes counter to facts long established by animal breeders1 but also because it tacitly assumes that talent1 and hence the capacity for transmitting it1 is an acquired character1 and that this character may be transmitted4 ,nothing could be more unsound4 ,talent is not an acquired character1 but a congenital character1 and the man who is born with it has it in early life quite as well as in later life1 though ,its manifestation may have to wait4 ,james ,mill was yet a young man when his son1 ,john ,stuart ,mill1 was born1 and not one of his principle books had been written4 ,but though the 8,elements of ,political ,economy0 and the 8,analysis of the ,human ,mind0 were thus but vaguely formulated in his mind1 if they were actually so much as formulated at all1 and it was fifteen years before he wrote them1 he was still quite able to transmit the capacity to write them to his son1 and that capacity showed itself1 years afterward1 in the latter's 8,principles of ,political ,economy0 and 8,essay on ,liberty40 ,but ,ellis' faulty inference is still based upon a sound observation1 to wit1 that the sort of man capable of transmitting high talents to a son is ordinarily a man who does not have a son at all1 at least in wedlock1 until he has advanced into middle life4 ,the reasons which impel him to yield even then are somewhat obscure1 but two or three of them1 perhaps1 may be vaguely discerned4 ,one lies in the fact that every man1 whether of the first-class or of any other class1 tends to decline in mental agility as he grows older1 though in the actual range and profundity of his intelligence he may keep on improving until he collapses into senility4 ,obviously1 it is mere agility of mind1 and not profundity1 that is of most value and effect in so tricky and deceptive a combat as the duel of sex4 ,the aging man1 with his agility gradually withering1 is thus confronted by women in whom it still luxuriates as a function of their relative youth4 ,not only do women of his own age aspire to ensnare him1 but also women of all ages back to adolescence4 ,hence his average or typical opponent tends to be progressively younger and younger than he is1 and in the end the mere advantage of her youth may be sufficient to tip over his tottering defences4 ,this1 ,i take it1 is why oldish men are so often intrigued by girls in their teens4 ,it is not that age calls maudlinly to youth1 as the poets would have it2 it is that age is no match for youth1 especially when age is male and youth is female4 ,the case of the late ,henrik ,ibsen was typical4 ,at forty ,ibsen was a sedate family man1 and it is doubtful that he ever so much as glanced at a woman2 all his thoughts were upon the composition of 8,the ,league of ,youth10 his first social drama4 ,at fifty he was almost as preoccupied2 8,a ,doll's ,house0 was then hatching4 ,but at sixty1 with his best work all done and his decline begun1 he succumbed preposterously to a flirtatious damsel of eighteen1 and thereafter1 until actual insanity released him1 he mooned like a provincial actor in a sentimental melodrama4 ,had it not been1 indeed1 for the fact that he was already married1 and to a very sensible wife1 he would have run off with this flapper1 and so made himself publicly ridiculous4 ,another reason for the relatively late marriages of superior men is found1 perhaps1 in the fact that1 as a man grows older1 the disabilities he suffers by marriage tend to diminish and the advantages to increase4 ,at thirty a man is terrified by the inhibitions of monogamy and has little taste for the so-called comforts of a home2 at sixty he is beyond amorous adventure and is in need of creature ease and security4 ,what he is oftenest conscious of1 in these later years1 is his physical decay2 he sees himself as in imminent danger of falling into neglect and helplessness4 ,he is thus confronted by a choice between getting a wife or hiring a nurse1 and he commonly chooses the wife as the less expensive and exacting4 ,the nurse1 indeed1 would probably try to marry him anyhow2 if he employs her in place of a wife he commonly ends by finding himself married and minus a nurse1 to his confusion and discomfiture1 and to the far greater discomfiture of his heirs and assigns4 ,this process is so obvious and so commonplace that ,i apologize formally for rehearsing it4 ,what it indicates is simply this3 that a man's instinctive aversion to marriage is grounded upon a sense of social and economic self-sufficiency1 and that it descends into a mere theory when this self-sufficiency disappears4 ,after all1 nature is on the side of mating1 and hence on the side of marriage1 and vanity is a powerful ally of nature4 ,if men1 at the normal mating age1 had half as much to gain by marriage as women gain1 then1 all men would be as ardently in favour of it as women are4 #bf4 ,disparate ,unions ,this brings us to a fact frequently noted by students of the subject3 that first-rate men1 when they marry at all1 tend to marry noticeably inferior wives4 ,the causes of the phenomenon1 so often discussed and so seldom illuminated1 should be plain by now4 ,the first-rate man1 by postponing marriage as long as possible1 often approaches it in the end with his faculties crippled by senility1 and is thus open to the advances of women whose attractions are wholly meretricious1 e4g41 empty flappers1 scheming widows1 and trained nurses with a highly developed professional technic of sympathy4 ,if he marries at all1 indeed1 he must commonly marry badly1 for women of genuine merit are no longer interested in him2 what was once a lodestar is now no more than a smoking smudge4 ,it is this circumstance that account for the low calibre of a good many first-rate men's sons1 and gives a certain support to the common notion that they are always third-raters4 ,those sons inherit from their mothers as well as from their fathers1 and the bad strain is often sufficient to obscure and nullify the good strain4 ,mediocrity1 as every ,mendelian knows1 is a dominant character1 and extraordinary ability is recessive character4 ,in a marriage between an able man and a commonplace woman1 the chances that any given child will resemble the mother are1 roughly speaking1 three to one4 ,the fact suggests the thought that nature is secretly against the superman1 and seeks to prevent his birth4 ,we have1 indeed1 no ground for assuming that the continued progress visualized by man is in actual accord with the great flow of the elemental forces4 ,devolution is quite as natural as evolution1 and may be just as pleasing1 or even a good deal more pleasing1 to ,god4 ,if the average man is made in ,god's image1 then a man such as ,beethoven or ,aristotle is plainly superior to ,god1 and so ,god may be jealous of him1 and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame4 ,all animal breeders know how difficult it is to maintain a fine strain4 ,the universe seems to be in a conspiracy to encourage the endless reproduction of peasants and ,socialists1 but a subtle and mysterious opposition stands eternally against the reproduction of philosophers4 ,per corollary1 it is notorious that women of merit frequently marry second-rate men1 and bear them children1 thus aiding in the war upon progress4 ,one is often astonished to discover that the wife of some sordid and prosaic manufacturer or banker or professional man is a woman of quick intelligence and genuine charm1 with intellectual interests so far above his comprehension that he is scarcely so much as aware of them4 ,again1 there are the leading feminists1 women artists and other such captains of the sex2 their husbands are almost always inferior men1 and sometimes downright fools4 ,but not paupers6 ,not incompetents in a man's world6 ,not bad husbands6 ,what we here encounter1 of course1 is no more than a fresh proof of the sagacity of women4 ,the first-rate woman is a realist4 ,she sees clearly that1 in a world dominated by second-rate men1 the special capacities of the second-rate man are esteemed above all other capacities and given the highest rewards1 and she endeavours to get her share of those rewards by marrying a second-rate man at the top of his class4 ,the first-rate man is an admirable creature2 his qualities are appreciated by every intelligent woman2 as ,i have just said1 it may be reasonably argued that he is actually superior to ,god4 ,but his attractions1 after a certain point1 do not run in proportion to his deserts2 beyond that he ceases to be a good husband4 ,hence the pursuit of him is chiefly maintained1 not by women who are his peers1 but by women who are his inferiors4 ,here we unearth another factor3 the fascination of what is strange1 the charm of the unlike1 heliogabalisme4 ,as ,shakespeare has put it1 there must be some mystery in love--and there can be no mystery between intellectual equals4 ,i dare say that many a woman marries an inferior man1 not primarily because he is a good provider 7though it is impossible to imagine her overlooking this71 but because his very inferiority interests her1 and makes her want to remedy it and mother him4 ,egoism is in the impulse3 it is pleasant to have a feeling of superiority1 and to be assured that it can be maintained4 ,if now1 that feeling be mingled with sexual curiosity and economic self-interest1 it obviously supplies sufficient motivation to account for so natural and banal a thing as a marriage4 ,perhaps the greatest of all these factors is the mere disparity1 the naked strangeness4 ,a woman could not love a man1 as the phrase is1 who wore skirts and pencilled his eye-brows1 and by the same token she would probably find it difficult to love a man who matched perfectly her own sharpness of mind4 ,what she most esteems in marriage1 on the psychic plane1 is the chance it offers for the exercise of that caressing irony which ,i have already described4 ,she likes to observe that her man is a fool--dear1 perhaps1 but none the less damned4 ,her so-called love for him1 even at its highest1 is always somewhat pitying and patronizing4 #bg4 ,the ,charm of ,mystery ,monogamous marriage1 by its very conditions1 tends to break down this strangeness4 ,it forces the two contracting parties into an intimacy that is too persistent and unmitigated2 they are in contact at too many points1 and too steadily4 ,by and by all the mystery of the relation is gone1 and they stand in the unsexed position of brother and sister4 ,thus that 8maximum of temptation0 of which ,shaw speaks has within itself the seeds of its own decay4 ,a husband begins by kissing a pretty girl1 his wife2 it is pleasant to have her so handy and so willing4 ,he ends by making machiavellian efforts to avoid kissing the every day sharer of his meals1 books1 bath towels1 pocketbook1 relatives1 ambitions1 secrets1 malaises and business3 a proceeding about as romantic as having his boots blacked4 ,the thing is too horribly dismal for words4 ,not all the native sentimentalism of man can overcome the distaste and boredom that get into it4 ,not all the histrionic capacity of woman can attach any appearance of gusto and spontaneity to it4 ,an estimable lady psychologist of the ,american ,republic1 ,mrs4 ,marion ,cox1 in a somewhat florid book entitled 8,ventures into ,worlds10 has a sagacious essay upon this subject4 ,she calls the essay 8,our ,incestuous ,marriage10 and argues accurately that1 once the adventurous descends to the habitual1 it takes on an offensive and degrading character4 ,the intimate approach1 to give genuine joy1 must be a concession1 a feat of persuasion1 a victory2 once it loses that character it loses everything4 ,such a destructive conversion is effected by the average monogamous marriage4 ,it breaks down all mystery and reserve1 for how can mystery and reserve survive the use of the same hot water bag and a joint concern about butter and egg bills8 ,what remains1 at least on the husband's side1 is esteem--the feeling one1 has for an amiable aunt4 ,and confidence--the emotion evoked by a lawyer1 a dentist or a fortune-teller4 ,and habit--the thing which makes it possible to eat the same breakfast every day1 and to windup one's watch regularly1 and to earn a living4 ,mrs4 ,cox1 if ,i remember her dissertation correctly1 proposes to prevent this stodgy dephlogistication of marriage by interrupting its course--that is1 by separating the parties now and then1 so that neither will become too familiar and commonplace to the other4 ,by this means1 she1 argues1 curiosity will be periodically revived1 and there will be a chance for personality to expand a cappella1 and so each reunion will have in it something of the surprise1 the adventure and the virtuous satanry of the honeymoon4 ,the husband will not come back to precisely the same wife that he parted from1 and the wife will not welcome precisely the same husband4 ,even supposing them to have gone on substantially as if together1 they will have gone on out of sight and hearing of each other1 ,thus each will find the other1 to some extent at least1 a stranger1 and hence a bit challenging1 and hence a bit charming4 ,the scheme has merit4 ,more1 it has been tried often1 and with success4 ,it is1 indeed1 a familiar observation that the happiest couples are those who are occasionally separated1 and the fact has been embalmed in the trite maxim that absence makes the heart grow fonder4 ,perhaps not actually fonder1 but at any rate more tolerant1 more curious1 more eager4 ,two difficulties1 however1 stand in the way of the widespread adoption of the remedy4 ,one lies in its costliness3 the average couple cannot afford a double establishment1 even temporarily4 ,the other lies in the fact that it inevitably arouses the envy and ill-nature of those who cannot adopt it1 and so causes a gabbling of scandal4 ,the world invariably suspects the worst4 ,let man and wife separate to save their happiness from suffocation in the kitchen1 the dining room and the connubial chamber1 and it will immediately conclude that the corpse is already laid out in the drawing-room4 #bh4 ,woman as ,wife ,this boredom of marriage1 however1 is not nearly so dangerous a menace to the institution as ,mrs4 ,cox1 with evangelistic enthusiasm1 permits herself to think it is4 ,it bears most harshly upon the wife1 who is almost always the more intelligent of the pair2 in the case of the husband its pains are usually lightened by that sentimentality with which men dilute the disagreeable1 particularly in marriage4 ,moreover1 the average male gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him4 ,a man who spends six or eight hours a day acting as teller in a bank1 or sitting upon the bench of a court1 or looking to the inexpressibly trivial details of some process of manufacturing1 or writing imbecile articles for a newspaper1 or managing a tramway1 or administering ineffective medicines to stupid and uninteresting patients--a man so engaged during all his hours of labour1 which means a normal1 typical man1 is surely not one to be oppressed unduly by the dull round of domesticity4 ,his wife may bore him hopelessly as mistress1 just as any other mistress inevitably bores a man 7though surely not so quickly and so painfully as a lover bores a woman71 but she is not apt to bore him so badly in her other capacities4 ,what he commonly complains about in her1 in truth1 is not that she tires him by her monotony1 but that she tires him by her variety--not that she is too static1 but that she is too dynamic4 ,he is weary when he gets home1 and asks only the dull peace of a hog in a comfortable sty4 ,this peace is broken by the greater restlessness of his wife1 the fruit of her greater intellectual resilience and curiosity4 ,of far more potency as a cause of connubial discord is the general inefficiency of a woman at the business of what is called keeping house--a business founded upon a complex of trivial technicalities4 ,as ,i have argued at length1 women are congenitally less fitted for mastering these technicalities than men2 the enterprise always costs them more effort1 and they are never able to reinforce mere diligent application with that obtuse enthusiasm which men commonly bring to their tawdry and childish concerns4 ,but in addition to their natural incapacity1 there is a reluctance based upon a deficiency in incentive1 and deficiency in incentive is due to the maudlin sentimentality with which men regard marriage4 ,in this sentimentality lie the germs of most of the evils which beset the institution in ,christendom1 and particularly in the ,united ,states1 where sentiment is always carried to inordinate lengths4 ,having abandoned the mediaeval concept of woman as temptress the men of the ,nordic race have revived the correlative mediaeval concept of woman as angel and to bolster up that character they have create for her a vast and growing mass of immunities culminating of late years in the astounding doctrine that1 under the contract of marriage1 all the duties lie upon the man and all the privileges appertain to the woman4 ,in part this doctrine has been established by the intellectual enterprise and audacity of woman4 ,bit by bit1 playing upon masculine stupidity1 sentimentality and lack of strategical sense1 they have formulated it1 developed it1 and entrenched it in custom and law4 ,but in other part it is the plain product of the donkeyish vanity which makes almost every man view the practical incapacity of his wife as1 in some vague way1 a tribute to his own high mightiness and consideration4 ,whatever is revolt against her immediate indolence and efficiency1 his ideal is nearly always a situation in which she will figure as a magnificent drone1 a sort of empress without portfolio1 entirely discharged from every unpleasant labour and responsibility4 #bi4 ,marriage and the ,law ,this was not always the case4 ,no more than a century ago1 even by ,american law1 the most sentimental in the world1 the husband was the head of the family firm1 lordly and autonomous4 ,he had authority over the purse-strings1 over the children1 and even over his wife4 ,he could enforce his mandates by appropriate punishment1 including the corporal4 ,his sovereignty and dignity were carefully guarded by legislation1 the product of thousands of years of experience and ratiocination4 ,he was safeguarded in his self-respect by the most elaborate and efficient devices1 and they had the support of public opinion4 ,consider1 now1 the changes that a few short years have wrought4 ,today1 by the laws of most ,american states--laws proposed1 in most cases1 by maudlin and often notoriously extravagant agitators1 and passerby sentimental orgy--all of the old rights of the husband have been converted into obligations4 ,he no longer has any control over his wife's property2 she may devote its income to the family or she may squander that income upon idle follies1 and he can do nothing4 ,she has equal authority in regulating and disposing of the children1 and in the case of infants1 more than he4 ,there is no law compelling her to do her share of the family labour3 she may spend her whole time in cinema theatres or gadding about the shops as she will4 ,she cannot be forced to perpetuate the family name if she does not want to4 ,she cannot be attacked with masculine weapons1 e4g41 fists and firearms1 when she makes an assault with feminine weapons1 e4g41 snuffling1 invective and sabotage4 ,finally1 no lawful penalty can be visited upon her if she fails absolutely1 either deliberately or through mere incapacity1 to keep the family habitat clean1 the children in order1 and the victuals eatable4 ,now view the situation of the husband4 ,the instant he submits to marriage1 his wife obtains a large and inalienable share in his property1 including all he may acquire in future2 in most ,american states the minimum is one-third1 and1 failing children1 one-half4 ,he cannot dispose of his real estate without her consent2 he cannot even deprive her of it by will4 ,she may bring up his children carelessly and idiotically1 cursing them with abominable manners and poisoning their nascent minds against him1 and he has no redress4 ,she may neglect her home1 gossip and lounge about all day1 put impossible food upon his table1 steal his small change1 pry into his private papers1 hand over his home to the ,periplaneta americana1 accuse him falsely of preposterous adulteries1 affront his friends1 and lie about him to the neighbours--and he can do nothing4 ,she may compromise his honour by indecent dressing1 write letters to moving-picture actors1 and expose him to ridicule by going into politics--and he is helpless4 ,let him undertake the slightest rebellion1 over and beyond mere rhetorical protest1 and the whole force of the state comes down upon him4 ,if he corrects her with the bastinado or locks her up1 he is good for six months in jail4 ,if he cuts off her revenues1 he is incarcerated until he makes them good4 ,and if he seeks surcease in flight1 taking the children with him1 he is pursued by the gendarmerie1 brought back to his duties1 and depicted in the public press as a scoundrelly kidnapper1 fit only for the knout4 ,in brief1 she is under no legal necessity whatsoever to carry out her part of the compact at the altar of ,god1 whereas he faces instant disgrace and punishment for the slightest failure to observe its last letter4 ,for a few grave crimes of commission1 true enough1 she may be proceeded against4 ,open adultery is a recreation that is denied to her4 ,she cannot poison her husband4 ,she must not assault him with edged tools1 or leave him altogether1 or strip off her few remaining garments and go naked4 ,but for the vastly more various and numerous crimes of omission--and in sum they are more exasperating and intolerable than even overt felony--she cannot be brought to book at all4 ,the scene ,i depict is ,american1 but it will soon extend its horrors to all ,protestant countries4 ,the newly enfranchised women of every one of them cherish long programs of what they call social improvement1 and practically the whole of that improvement is based upon devices for augmenting their own relative autonomy and power4 ,the ,english wife of tradition1 so thoroughly a femme covert1 is being displaced by a gadabout1 truculent1 irresponsible creature1 full of strange new ideas about her rights1 and strongly disinclined to submit to her husband's authority1 or to devote herself honestly to the upkeep of his house1 or to bear him a biological sufficiency of heirs4 ,and the ,german ,hausfrau1 once so innocently consecrated to ,kirche1 ,kuche und ,kinder1 is going the same way4 #cj4 ,the ,emancipated ,housewife ,what has gone on in the ,united ,states during the past two generations is full of lessons and warnings for the rest of the world4 ,the ,american housewife of an earlier day was famous for her unremitting diligence4 ,she not only cooked1 washed and ironed2 she also made shift to master such more complex arts as spinning1 baking and brewing4 ,her expertness1 perhaps1 never reached a high level1 but at all events she made a gallant effort4 ,but that was long1 long ago1 before the new enlightenment rescued her4 ,today1 in her average incarnation1 she is not only incompetent 7alack1 as ,i have argued1 rather beyond her control72 she is also filled with the notion that a conscientious discharge of her few remaining duties is1 in some vague way1 discreditable and degrading4 ,to call her a good cook1 ,i daresay1 was never anything but flattery2 the early ,american cuisine was probably a fearful thing1 indeed4 ,but today the flattery turns into a sort of libel1 and she resents it1 or1 at all events1 does not welcome it4 ,i used to know an ,american literary man1 educated on the ,continent1 who married a woman because she had exceptional gifts in this department4 ,years later1 at one of her dinners1 a friend of her husband's tried to please her by mentioning the fact1 to which he had always been privy4 ,but instead of being complimented1 as a man might have been if told that his wife had married him because he was a good lawyer1 or surgeon1 or blacksmith1 this unusual housekeeper1 suffering a renaissance of usualness1 denounced the guest as a liar1 ordered him out of the house1 and threatened to leave her husband4 ,this disdain of offices that1 after all1 are necessary1 and might as well be faced with some show of cheerfulness1 takes on the character of a definite cult in the ,united ,states1 and the stray woman who attends to them faithfully is laughed at as a drudge and a fool1 just as she is apt to be dismissed as a 8brood sow0 7,i quote literally1 craving absolution for the phrase3 a jury of men during the late war1 on very thin patriotic grounds1 jailed the author of it7 if she favours her lord with viable issue4 ,one result is the notorious villainousness of ,american cookery--a villainousness so painful to a cultured uvula that a ,french hack-driver1 if his wife set its masterpieces before him1 would brain her with his linoleum hat4 ,to encounter a decent meal in an ,american home of the middle class1 simple1 sensibly chosen and competently cooked1 becomes almost as startling as to meet a ,y4 ,m4 ,c4 ,a4 secretary in a bordello1 and a good deal rarer4 ,such a thing1 in most of the large cities of the ,republic1 scarcely has any existence4 ,if the average ,american husband wants a sound dinner he must go to a restaurant to get it1 just as if he wants to refresh himself with the society of charming and well-behaved children1 he has to go to an orphan asylum4 ,only the immigrant can take his case and invite his soul within his own house4 ,,iv4 ,woman ,suffrage #ca4 ,the ,crowning ,victory ,it is my sincere hope that nothing ,i have here exhibited will be mistaken by the nobility and gentry for moral indignation4 ,no such feeling1 in truth1 is in my heart4 ,moral judgments1 as old ,friedrich used to say1 are foreign to my nature4 ,setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all1 it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue4 ,my experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibber is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist1 and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge1 and that the worst white1 slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader4 ,in the same way ,i am convinced that the average woman1 whatever her deficiencies1 is greatly superior to the average man4 ,the very ease with which she defies and swindles him in several capital situations of life is the clearest of proofs of her general superiority4 ,she did not obtain her present high immunities as a gift from the gods1 but only after a long and often bitter fight1 and in that fight she exhibited forensic and tactical talents of a truly admirable order4 ,there was no weakness of man that she did not penetrate and take advantage of4 ,there was no trick that she did not put to effective use4 ,there was no device so bold and inordinate that it daunted her4 ,the latest and greatest fruit of this feminine talent for combat is the extension of the suffrage1 now universal in the ,protestant countries1 and even advancing in those of the ,greek and ,latin rites4 ,this fruit was garnered1 not by an attack en masse1 but by a mere foray4 ,i believe that the majority of women1 for reasons that ,i shall presently expose1 were not eager for the extension1 and regard it as of small value today4 ,they know that they can get what they want without going to the actual polls for it2 moreover1 they are out of sympathy with most of the brummagem reforms advocated by the professional suffragists1 male and female4 ,the mere statement of the current suffragist platform1 with its long list of quack sure-cures for all the sorrows of the world1 is enough to make them smile sadly4 ,in particular1 they are sceptical of all reforms that depend upon the mass action of immense numbers of voters1 large sections of whom are wholly devoid of sense4 ,a normal woman1 indeed1 no more believes in democracy in the nation than she believes in democracy at her own fireside2 she knows that there must be a class to order and a class to obey1 and that the two can never coalesce4 ,nor is she susceptible to the stock sentimentalities upon which the whole democratic process is based4 ,this was shown very dramatically in the ,united ,states at the national election of #aibj1 in which the late ,woodrow ,wilson was brought down to colossal and ignominious defeat--the first general election in which all ,american women could vote4 ,all the sentimentality of the situation was on the side of ,wilson1 and yet fully three-fourths of the newly-enfranchised women voters voted against him4 ,he is1 despite his talents for deception1 a poor popular psychologist1 and so he made an inept effort to fetch the girls by tear-squeezing3 every connoisseur will remember his bathos about breaking the heart of the world4 ,well1 very few women believe in broken hearts1 and the cause is not far to seek3 practically every woman above the age of twenty-five has a broken heart4 ,that is to say1 she has been vastly disappointed1 either by failing to nab some pretty fellow that her heart was set on1 or1 worse1 by actually nabbing him1 and then discovering him to be a bounder or an imbecile1 or both4 ,thus walking the world with broken hearts1 women know that the injury is not serious4 ,when he pulled out the ,vox angelica stop and began sobbing and snuffling and blowing his nose tragically1 the learned doctor simply drove all the women voters into the arms of the ,hon4 ,warren ,gamaliel ,harding1 who was too stupid to invent any issues at all1 but simply took negative advantage of the distrust aroused by his opponent4 ,once the women of ,christendom become at ease in the use of the ballot1 and get rid of the preposterous harridans who got it for them and who now seek to tell them what to do with it1 they will proceed to a scotching of many of the sentimentalities which currently corrupt politics4 ,for one thing1 ,i believe that they will initiate measures against democracy--the worst evil of the present-day world4 ,when they come to the matter1 they will certainly not ordain the extension of the suffrage to children1 criminals and the insane in brief1 to those ever more inflammable and knavish than the male hinds who have enjoyed it for so long2 they will try to bring about its restriction1 bit by bit1 to the small minority that is intelligent1 agnostic and self-possessed--say six women to one man4 ,thus1 out of their greater instinct for reality1 they will make democracy safe for a democracy4 ,the curse of man1 and the cause of nearly all his woes1 is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible4 ,he is forever embracing delusions1 and each new one is worse than all that have gone before4 ,but where is the delusion that women cherish--,i mean habitually1 firmly1 passionately8 ,who will draw up a list of propositions1 held and maintained by them in sober earnest1 that are obviously not true8 7,i allude here1 of course1 to genuine women1 not to suffragettes and other such pseudo-males74 ,as for me1 ,i should not like to undertake such a list4 ,i know of nothing1 in fact1 that properly belongs to it4 ,women1 as a class1 believe in none of the ludicrous rights1 duties and pious obligations that men are forever gabbling about4 ,their superior intelligence is in no way more eloquently demonstrated than by their ironical view of all such phantasmagoria4 ,their habitual attitude toward men is one of aloof disdain1 and their habitual attitude toward what men believe in1 and get into sweats about1 and bellow for1 is substantially the same4 ,it takes twice as long to convert a body of women to some new fallacy as it takes to convert a body of men1 and even then they halt1 hesitate and are full of mordant criticisms4 ,the women of ,colorado had been voting for #ba years before they succumbed to prohibition sufficiently to allow the man voters of the state to adopt it2 their own majority voice was against it to the end4 ,during the interval the men voters of a dozen non-suffrage ,american states had gone shrieking to the mourners' bench4 ,in ,california1 enfranchised in #aiaa1 the women rejected the dry revelation in #aiad4 ,national prohibition was adopted during the war without their votes--they did not get the franchise throughout the country until it was in the ,constitution--and it is without their support today4 ,the ,american man1 despite his reputation for lawlessness1 is actually very much afraid of the police1 and in all the regions where prohibition is now actually enforced he makes excuses for his poltroonish acceptance of it by arguing that it will do him good in the long run1 or that he ought to sacrifice his private desires to the common weal4 ,but it is almost impossible to find an ,american woman of any culture who is in favour of it4 ,one and all1 they are opposed to the turmoil and corruption that it involves1 and resentful of the invasion of liberty underlying it4 ,being realists1 they have no belief in any program which proposes to cure the natural swinishness of men by legislation4 ,every normal woman believes1 and quite accurately1 that the average man is very much like her husband1 ,john1 and she knows very well that ,john is a weak1 silly and knavish fellow1 and that any effort to convert him into an archangel overnight is bound to come to grief4 ,as for her view of the average creature of her own sex1 it is marked by a cynicism so penetrating and so destructive that a clear statement of it would shock beyond endurance4 #cb4 ,the ,woman ,voter ,thus there is not the slightest chance that the enfranchised women of ,protestantdom1 once they become at ease in the use of the ballot1 will give any heed to the ex-suffragettes who now presume to lead and instruct them in politics4 ,years ago ,i predicted that these suffragettes1 tried out by victory1 would turn out to be idiots4 ,they are now hard at work proving it4 ,half of them devote themselves to advocating reforms1 chiefly of a sexual character1 so utterly preposterous that even male politicians and newspaper editors laugh at them2 the other half succumb absurdly to the blandishments of the old-time male politicians1 and so enroll themselves in the great political parties4 ,a woman who joins one of these parties simply becomes an imitation man1 which is to say1 a donkey4 ,thereafter she is nothing but an obscure cog in an ancient and creaking machine1 the sole intelligible purpose of which is to maintain a horde of scoundrels in public office4 ,her vote is instantly set off by the vote of some sister who joins the other camorra4 ,parenthetically1 ,i may add that all of the ladies to take to this political immolation seem to me to be frightfully plain4 ,i know those of ,england1 ,germany and ,scandinavia only by their portraits in the illustrated papers1 but those of the ,united ,states ,i have studied at close range at various large political gatherings1 including the two national conventions first following the extension of the suffrage4 ,i am surely no fastidious fellow--in fact1 ,i prefer a certain melancholy decay in women to the loud1 circus-wagon brilliance of youth--but ,i give you my word that there were not five women at either national convention who could have embraced me in camera without first giving me chloral4 ,some of the chief stateswomen on show1 in fact1 were so downright hideous that ,i felt faint every time ,i had to look at them4 ,the reform-monging suffragists seem to be equally devoid of the more caressing gifts4 ,they may be filled with altruistic passion1 but they certainly have bad complexions1 and not many of them know how to dress their hair4 ,nine-tenths of them advocate reforms aimed at the alleged lubricity of the male-the single standard1 medical certificates for bridegrooms1 birth-control1 and so on4 ,the motive here1 ,i believe1 is mere rage and jealousy4 ,the woman who is not pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive to her sex1 and wants to make it a felony4 ,no genuinely attractive woman has any such desire4 ,she likes masculine admiration1 however violently expressed1 and is quite able to take care of herself4 ,more1 she is well aware that very few men are bold enough to offer it without a plain invitation1 and this awareness makes her extremely cynical of all women who complain of being harassed1 beset1 storied1 and seduced4 ,all the more intelligent women that ,i know1 indeed1 are unanimously of the opinion that no girl in her right senses has ever been actually seduced since the world began2 whenever they hear of a case1 they sympathize with the man4 ,yet more1 the normal woman of lively charms1 roving about among men1 always tries to draw the admiration of those who have previously admired elsewhere2 she prefers the professional to the amateur1 and estimates her skill by the attractiveness of the huntresses who have hitherto stalked it4 ,the iron-faced suffragist propagandist1 if she gets a man at all1 must get one wholly without sentimental experience4 ,if he has any1 her crude manoeuvres make him laugh and he is repelled by her lack of pulchritude and amiability4 ,all such suffragists 7save a few miraculous beauties7 marry ninth-rate men when they marry at all4 ,they have to put up with the sort of castoffs who are almost ready to fall in love with lady physicists1 embryologists1 and embalmers4 ,fortunately for the human race1 the campaigns of these indignant viragoes will come to naught4 ,men will keep on pursuing women until hell freezes over1 and women will keep luring them on4 ,if the latter enterprise were abandoned1 in fact1 the whole game of love would play out1 for not many men take any notice of women spontaneously4 ,nine men out of ten would be quite happy1 ,i believe1 if there were no women in the world1 once they had grown accustomed to the quiet4 ,practically all men are their happiest when they are engaged upon activities--for example1 drinking1 gambling1 hunting1 business1 adventure--to which women are not ordinarily admitted4 ,it is women who seduce them from such celibate doings4 ,the hare postures and gyrates in front of the hound4 ,the way to put an end to the gaudy crimes that the suffragist alarmists talk about is to shave the heads of all the pretty girls in the world1 and pluck out their eyebrows1 and pull their teeth1 and put them in khaki1 and forbid them to wriggle on dance-floors1 or to wear scents1 or to use lip-sticks1 or to roll their eyes4 ,reform1 as usual1 mistakes the fish for the fly4 #cc4 ,a ,glance ,into the ,future ,the present public prosperity of the ex-suffragettes is chiefly due to the fact that the old-time male politicians1 being naturally very stupid1 mistake them for spokesmen for the whole body of women1 and so show them politeness4 ,but soon or late--and probably disconcertingly soon--the great mass of sensible and agnostic women will turn upon them and depose them1 and thereafter the woman vote will be no longer at the disposal of bogus ,great ,thinkers and messiahs4 ,if the suffragettes continue to fill the newspapers with nonsense1 once that change has been effected1 it will be only as a minority sect of tolerated idiots1 like the ,swedenborgians1 ,christian ,scientists1 ,seventh ,day ,adventists and other such fanatics of today4 ,this was the history of the extension of the suffrage in all of the ,american states that made it before the national enfranchisement of women and it will be repeated in the nation at large1 and in ,great ,britain and on the ,continent4 ,women are not taken in by quackery as readily as men are2 the hardness of their shell of logic makes it difficult to penetrate to their emotions4 ,for one woman who testifies publicly that she has been cured of cancer by some swindling patent medicine1 there are at least twenty masculine witnesses4 ,even such frauds as the favourite ,american elixir1 ,lydia ,pinkham's ,vegetable ,compound1 which are ostensibly remedies for specifically feminine ills1 anatomically impossible in the male1 are chiefly swallowed1 so an intelligent druggist tells me1 by men4 ,my own belief1 based on elaborate inquiries and long meditation1 is that the grant of the ballot to women marks the concealed but none the less real beginning of an improvement in our politics1 and1 in the end1 in our whole theory of government4 ,as things stand1 an intelligent grappling with some of the capital problems of the commonwealth is almost impossible4 ,a politician normally prospers under democracy1 not in proportion as his principles are sound and his honour incorruptible1 but in proportion as she excels in the manufacture of sonorous phrases1 and the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defences against them4 ,our politics thus degenerates into a mere pursuit of hobgoblins2 the male voter1 a coward as well as an ass1 is forever taking fright at a new one and electing some mountebank to lay it4 ,for a hundred years past the people of the ,united ,states1 the most terrible existing democratic state1 have scarcely had a political campaign that was not based upon some preposterous fear--first of slavery and then of the manumitted slave1 first of capitalism and then of communism1 first of the old and then of the novel4 ,it is a peculiarity of women that they are not easily set off by such alarms1 that they do not fall readily into such facile tumults and phobias4 ,what starts a male meeting to snuffling and trembling most violently is precisely the thing that would cause a female meeting to sniff4 ,what we need1 to ward off mobocracy and safeguard a civilized form of government1 is more of this sniffing4 ,what we need--and in the end it must come--is a sniff so powerful that it will call a halt upon the navigation of the ship from the forecastle1 and put a competent staff on the bridge1 and lay a course that is describable in intelligible terms4 ,the officers nominated by the male electorate in modern democracies before the extension of the suffrage were usually chosen1 not for their competence but for their mere talent for idiocy2 they reflected accurately the male weakness for whatever is rhetorical and sentimental and feeble and untrue4 ,consider1 for example1 what happened in a salient case4 ,every four years the male voters of the ,united ,states chose from among themselves one who was put forward as the man most fit1 of all resident men1 to be the first citizen of the commonwealth4 ,he was chosen after interminable discussion2 his qualifications were thoroughly canvassed2 very large powers and dignities were put into his hands4 ,well1 what did we commonly find when we examined this gentleman8 ,we found1 not a profound thinker1 not a leader of sound opinion1 not a man of notable sense1 but merely a wholesaler of notions so infantile that they must needs disgust a sentient suckling--in brief1 a spouting geyser of fallacies and sentimentalities1 a cataract of unsupported assumptions and hollow moralizings1 a tedious phrase-merchant and platitudinarian1 a fellow whose noblest flights of thought were flattered when they were called comprehensible--specifically1 a ,wilson1 a ,taft1 a ,roosevelt1 or a ,harding4 ,this was the male champion4 ,i do not venture upon the cruelty of comparing his bombastic flummeries to the clear reasoning of a woman of like fame and position2 all ,i ask of you is that you weigh them1 for sense1 for shrewdness1 for intelligent grasp of obscure relations1 for intellectual honesty and courage1 with the ideas of the average midwife4 #cd4 ,the ,suffragette ,i have spoken with some disdain of the suffragette4 ,what is the matter with her1 fundamentally1 is simple3 she is a woman who has stupidly carried her envy of certain of the superficial privileges of men to such a point that it takes on the character of an obsession1 and makes her blind to their valueless and often chiefly imaginary character4 ,in particular1 she centres this frenzy of hers upon one definite privilege1 to wit1 the alleged privilege of promiscuity in amour1 the modern droit du seigneur4 ,read the books of the chief lady ,savonarolas1 and you will find running through them an hysterical denunciation of what is called the double standard of morality2 there is1 indeed1 a whole literature devoted exclusively to it4 ,the existence of this double standard seems to drive the poor girls half frantic4 ,they bellow raucously for its abrogation1 and demand that the frivolous male be visited with even more idiotic penalties than those which now visit the aberrant female2 some even advocate gravely his mutilation by surgery1 that he may be forced into rectitude by a physical disability for sin4 ,all this1 of course1 is hocus-pocus1 and the judicious are not deceived by it for an instant4 ,what these virtuous bel dames actually desire in their hearts is not that the male be reduced to chemical purity1 but that the franchise of dalliance be extended to themselves4 ,the most elementary acquaintance with ,freudian psychology exposes their secret animus4 ,unable to ensnare males under the present system1 or at all events1 unable to ensnare males sufficiently appetizing to arouse the envy of other women1 they leap to the theory that it would be easier if the rules were less exacting4 ,this theory exposes their deficiency in the chief character of their sex3 accurate observation4 ,the fact is that1 even if they possessed the freedom that men are supposed to possess1 they would still find it difficult to achieve their ambition1 for the average man1 whatever his stupidity1 is at least keen enough in judgment to prefer a single wink from a genuinely attractive woman to the last delirious favours of the typical suffragette4 ,thus the theory of the whoopers and snorters of the cause1 in its esoteric as well as in its public aspect1 is unsound4 ,they are simply women who1 in their tastes and processes of mind1 are two-thirds men1 and the fact explains their failure to achieve presentable husbands1 or even consolatory betrayal1 quite as effectively as it explains the ready credence they give to political and philosophical absurdities4 #ce4 ,a ,mythical ,dare-,devil ,the truth is that the picture of male carnality that such women conjure up belongs almost wholly to fable1 as ,i have already observed in dealing with the sophistries of ,dr4 ,eliza ,burt ,gamble1 a paralogist on a somewhat higher plane4 ,as they depict him in their fevered treatises on illegitimacy1 white-slave trading and ophthalmia neonatorum1 the average male adult of the ,christian and cultured countries leads a life of gaudy lubricity1 rolling magnificently from one liaison to another1 and with an almost endless queue of ruined milliners1 dancers1 charwomen1 parlour-maids and waitresses behind him1 all dying of poison and despair4 ,the life of man1 as these furiously envious ones see it1 is the life of a leading actor in a boulevard revue4 ,he is a polygamous1 multigamous1 myriadigamous2 an insatiable and unconscionable debauche1 a monster of promiscuity2 prodigiously unfaithful to his wife1 and even to his friends' wives2 fathomlessly libidinous and superbly happy4 ,needless to say1 this picture bears no more relation to the facts than a dissertation on major strategy by a military 8expert0 promoted from dramatic critic4 ,if the chief suffragette scare mongers 7,i speak without any embarrassing naming of names7 were attractive enough to men to get near enough to enough men to know enough about them for their purpose they would paralyze the ,dorcas societies with no such cajoling libels4 ,as a matter of sober fact1 the average man of our time and race is quite incapable of all these incandescent and intriguing divertisements4 ,he is far more virtuous than they make him out1 far less schooled in sin1 far less enterprising and ruthless4 ,i do not say1 of course1 that he is pure in heart1 for the chances are that he isn't2 what ,i do say is that1 in the overwhelming majority of cases1 he is pure in act1 even in the face of temptation4 ,and why8 ,for several main reasons1 not to go into minor ones4 ,one is that he lacks the courage4 ,another is that he lacks the money4 ,another is that he is fundamentally moral1 and has a conscience4 ,it takes more sinful initiative than he has in him to plunge into any affair save the most casual and sordid2 it takes more ingenuity and intrepidity than he has in him to carry it off2 it takes more money than he can conceal from his consort to finance it4 ,a man may force his actual wife to share the direst poverty1 but even the least vampirish woman of the third part demands to be courted in what1 considering his station in life1 is the grand manner1 and the expenses of that grand manner scare off all save a small minority of specialists in deception4 ,so long1 indeed1 as a wife knows her husband's income accurately1 she has a sure means of holding him to his oaths4 ,even more effective than the fiscal barrier is the barrier of poltroonery4 ,the one character that distinguishes man from the other higher vertebrate1 indeed1 is his excessive timorousness1 his easy yielding to alarms1 his incapacity for adventure without a crowd behind him4 ,in his normal incarnation he is no more capable of initiating an extra-legal affair--at all events1 above the mawkish harmlessness of a flirting match with a cigar girl in a cafe-than he is of scaling the battlements of hell4 ,he likes to think of himself doing it1 just as he likes to think of himself leading a cavalry charge or climbing the ,matterhorn4 ,often1 indeed1 his vanity leads him to imagine the thing done1 and he admits by winks and blushes that he is a bad one4 ,but at the bottom of all that tawdry pretence there is usually nothing more material than an oafish smirk at some disgusted shop-girl1 or a scraping of shins under the table4 ,let any woman who is disquieted by reports of her husband's derelictions figure to herself how long it would have taken him to propose to her if left to his own enterprise1 and then let her ask herself if so pusillanimous a creature could be imaged in the role of ,don ,giovanni4 ,finally1 there is his conscience--the accumulated sediment of ancestral faintheartedness in countless generations1 with vague religious fears and superstitions to leaven and mellow it4 ,what6 a conscience8 ,yes1 dear friends1 a conscience4 ,that conscience may be imperfect1 inept1 unintelligent1 brummagem4 ,it may be indistinguishable1 at times1 from the mere fear that someone may be looking4 ,it may be shot through with hypocrisy1 stupidity1 play-acting4 ,but nevertheless1 as consciences go in ,christendom1 it is genuinely entitled to the name--and it is always in action4 ,a man1 remember1 is not a being in vacuo2 he is the fruit and slave of the environment that bathes him4 ,one cannot enter the ,house of ,commons1 the ,united ,states ,senate1 or a prison for felons without becoming1 in some measure1 a rascal4 ,one cannot fall overboard without shipping water4 ,one cannot pass through a modern university without carrying away scars4 ,and by the same token one cannot live and have one's being in a modern democratic state1 year in and year out1 without falling1 to some extent at least1 under that moral obsession which is the hall-mark of the mob-man set free4 ,a citizen of such a state1 his nose buried in ,nietzsche1 8,man and ,superman10 and other such advanced literature1 may caress himself with the notion that he is an immoralist1 that his soul is full of soothing sin1 that he has cut himself loose from the revelation of ,god4 ,but all the while there is a part of him that remains a sound ,christian1 a moralist1 a right thinking and forward-looking man4 ,and that part1 in times of stress1 asserts itself4 ,it may not worry him on ordinary occasions4 ,it may not stop him when he swears1 or takes a nip of whiskey behind the door1 or goes motoring on ,sunday2 it may even let him alone when he goes to a leg-show4 ,but the moment a concrete ,temptress rises before him1 her nose snow-white1 her lips rouged1 her eyelashes drooping provokingly--the moment such an abandoned wench has at him1 and his lack of ready funds begins to conspire with his lack of courage to assault and wobble him--at that precise moment his conscience flares into function1 and so finishes his business4 ,first he sees difficulty1 then he sees the danger1 then he sees wrong4 ,the result is that he slinks off in trepidation1 and another vampire is baffled of her prey4 ,it is1 indeed1 the secret scandal of ,christendom1 at least in the ,protestant regions1 that most men are faithful to their wives4 ,you will a travel a long way before you find a married man who will admit that he is1 but the facts are the facts1 and ,i am surely not one to flout them4 #cf4 ,the ,origin of a ,delusion ,the origin of the delusion that the average man is a ,leopold ,,ii or ,augustus the ,strong1 with the amorous experience of a guinea pig1 is not far to seek4 ,it lies in three factors1 the which ,i rehearse briefly3 #a4 ,the idiotic vanity of men1 leading to their eternal boasting1 either by open lying or sinister hints4 #b4 ,the notions of vice crusaders1 nonconformist divines1 ,y4 ,m4 ,c4 ,a4 secretaries1 and other such libidinous poltroons as to what they would do themselves if they had the courage4 #c4 ,the ditto of certain suffragettes as to ditto4 ,here you have the genesis of a generalization that gives the less critical sort of women a great deal of needless uneasiness and vastly augments the natural conceit of men4 ,some pornographic old fellow1 in the discharge of his duties as director of an anti-vice society1 puts in an evening ploughing through such books as 8,the ,memoirs of ,fanny ,hill10 ,casanova's ,confessions1 the ,cena ,trimalchionis of ,gaius ,petronius1 and ,,ii ,samuel4 ,from this perusal he arises with the conviction that life amid the red lights must be one stupendous whirl of deviltry1 that the clerks he sees in ,broadway or ,piccadilly at night are out for revels that would have caused protests in ,sodom and ,nineveh1 that the average man who chooses hell leads an existence comparable to that of a ,mormon bishop1 that the world outside the ,bible class is packed like a sardine-can with betrayed salesgirls1 that every man who doesn't believe that ,jonah swallowed the whale spends his whole leisure leaping through the seventh hoop of the ,decalogue4 8,if ,i were not saved and anointed of ,god10 whispers the vice director into his own ear1 8that is what ,i1 the ,rev4 ,dr4 ,jasper ,barebones1 would be doing4 ,the late ,king ,david did it2 he was human1 and hence immoral4 ,the late ,king ,edward ,,vii was not beyond suspicion3 the very numeral in his name has its suggestions4 ,millions of others go the same route4444 ,ergo1 ,up1 guards1 and at 'em6 ,bring me the pad of blank warrants6 ,order out the seachlights and scaling-ladders6 ,swear in four hundred more policemen6 ,let us chase these hell-hounds out of ,christendom1 and make the world safe for monogamy1 poor working girls1 and infant damnation60 ,thus the hound of heaven1 arguing fallaciously from his own secret aspirations4 ,where he makes his mistake is in assuming that the unconsecrated1 while sharing his longing to debauch and betray1 are free from his other weaknesses1 e4g41 his timidity1 his lack of resourcefulness1 his conscience4 ,as ,i have said1 they are not4 ,the vast majority of those who appear in the public haunts of sin are there1 not to engage in overt acts of ribaldry1 but merely to tremble agreeably upon the edge of the abyss4 ,they are the same skittish experimentalists1 precisely1 who throng the midway at a world's fair1 and go to smutty shows1 and take in sex magazines1 and read the sort of books that our vice crusading friend reads4 ,they like to conjure up the charms of carnality1 and to help out their somewhat sluggish imaginations by actual peeps at it1 but when it comes to taking a forthright header into the sulphur they usually fail to muster up the courage4 ,for one clerk who succumbs to the houris of the pave1 there are five hundred who succumb to lack of means1 the warnings of the sex hygienists1 and their own depressing consciences4 ,for one 8clubman0--i4e41 bagman or suburban vestryman--who invades the women's shops1 engages the affection of some innocent miss1 lures her into infamy and then sells her to the ,italians1 there are one thousand who never get any further than asking the price of cologne water and discharging a few furtive winks4 ,and for one husband of the ,nordic race who maintains a blonde chorus girl in oriental luxury around the corner1 there are ten thousand who are as true to their wives1 year in and year out1 as so many convicts in the death-house1 and would be no more capable of any such loathsome malpractice1 even in the face of free opportunity1 than they would be of cutting off the ears of their young4 ,i am sorry to blow up so much romance4 ,in particular1 ,i am sorry for the suffragettes who specialize in the double standard1 for when they get into pantaloons at last1 and have the new freedom1 they will discover to their sorrow that they have been pursuing a chimera--that there is really no such animal as the male anarchist they have been denouncing and envying--that the wholesale fornication of man1 at least under ,christian democracy1 has little more actual existence than honest advertising or sound cooking4 ,they have followed the porno maniacs in embracing a piece of buncombe1 and when the day of deliverance comes it will turn to ashes in their arms4 ,their error1 as ,i say1 lies in overestimating the courage and enterprise of man4 ,they themselves1 barring mere physical valour1 a quality in which the average man is far exceeded by the average jackal or wolf1 have more of both4 ,if the consequences1 to a man1 of the slightest descent from virginity were one-tenth as swift and barbarous as the consequences to a young girl in like case1 it would take a division of infantry to dredge up a single male flouter of that lex talionis in the whole western world4 ,as things stand today1 even with the odds so greatly in his favour1 the average male hesitates and is thus not lost4 ,turn to the statistics of the vice crusaders if you doubt it4 ,they show that the weekly receipts of female recruits upon the wharves of sin are always more than the demand2 that more young women enter upon the vermilion career than can make respectable livings at it2 that the pressure of the temptation they hold out is the chief factor in corrupting our undergraduates4 ,what was the first act of the ,american ,army when it began summoning its young clerks and college boys and plough hands to conscription camps8 ,its first act was to mark off a so-called moral zone around each camp1 and to secure it with trenches and machine guns1 and to put a lot of volunteer termagants to patrolling it1 that the assembled jeunesse might be protected in their rectitude from the immoral advances of the adjacent milkmaids and poor working girls4 #cg4 ,women as ,martyrs ,i have given three reasons for the prosperity of the notion that man is a natural polygamist1 bent eternally upon fresh dives into ,lake of ,brimstone ,no4 #g4 ,to these another should be added3 the thirst for martyrdom which shows itself in so many women1 particularly under the higher forms of civilization4 ,this unhealthy appetite1 in fact1 may be described as one of civilization's diseases2 it is almost unheard of in more primitive societies4 ,the savage woman1 unprotected by her rude culture and forced to heavy and incessant labour1 has retained her physical strength and with it her honesty and self-respect4 ,the civilized woman1 gradually degenerated by a greater ease1 and helped down that hill by the pretensions of civilized man1 has turned her infirmity into a virtue1 and so affects a feebleness that is actually far beyond the reality4 ,it is by this route that she can most effectively disarm masculine distrust1 and get what she wants4 ,man is flattered by any acknowledgment1 however insincere1 of his superior strength and capacity4 ,he likes to be leaned upon1 appealed to1 followed docilely4 ,and this tribute to his might caresses him on the psychic plane as well as on the plane of the obviously physical4 ,he not only enjoys helping a woman over a gutter2 he also enjoys helping her dry her tears4 ,the result is the vast pretence that characterizes the relations of the sexes under civilization--the double pretence of man's cunning and autonomy and of woman's dependence and deference4 ,man is always looking for someone to boast to2 woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on4 ,this feminine affectation1 of course1 has gradually taken on the force of a fixed habit1 and so it has got a certain support1 by a familiar process of self-delusion1 in reality4 ,the civilized woman inherits that habit as she inherits her cunning4 ,she is born half convinced that she is really as weak and helpless as she later pretends to be1 and the prevailing folklore offers her endless corroboration4 ,one of the resultant phenomena is the delight in martyrdom that one so often finds in women1 and particularly in the least alert and introspective of them4 ,they take a heavy1 unhealthy pleasure in suffering2 it subtly pleases them to be hard put upon2 they like to picture themselves as slaughtered saints4 ,thus they always find something to complain of2 the very conditions of domestic life give them a superabundance of clinical material4 ,and if1 by any chance1 such material shows a falling off1 they are uneasy and unhappy4 ,let a woman have a husband whose conduct is not reasonably open to question1 and she will invent mythical offences to make him bearable4 ,and if her invention fails she will be plunged into the utmost misery and humiliation4 ,this fact probably explains many mysterious divorces3 the husband was not too bad1 but too good4 ,for public opinion among women1 remember1 does not favour the woman who is full of a placid contentment and has no masculine torts to report2 if she says that her husband is wholly satisfactory she is looked upon as a numskull even more dense that he is himself4 ,a man1 speaking of his wife to other men1 always praises her extravagantly4 ,boasting about her soothes his vanity2 he likes to stir up the envy of his fellows4 ,but when two women talk of their husbands it is mainly atrocities that they describe4 ,the most esteemed woman gossip is the one with the longest and most various repertoire of complaints4 ,this yearning for martyrdom explains one of the commonly noted characters of women3 their eager flair for bearing physical pain4 ,as we have seen1 they have actually a good deal less endurance than men2 massive injuries shock them more severely and kill them more quickly4 ,but when acute algesia is unaccompanied by any profounder phenomena they are undoubtedly able to bear it with a far greater show of resignation4 ,the reason is not far to seek4 ,in pain a man sees only an invasion of his liberty1 strength and self-esteem4 ,it floors him1 masters him1 and makes him ridiculous4 ,but a woman1 more subtle and devious in her processes of mind1 senses the dramatic effect that the spectacle of her suffering makes upon the spectators1 already filled with compassion for her feebleness4 ,she would thus much rather be praised for facing pain with a martyr's fortitude than for devising some means of getting rid of it--the first thought of a man4 ,no woman could have invented chloroform1 nor1 for that matter1 alcohol4 ,both drugs offer an escape from situations and experiences that1 even in aggravated forms1 women relish4 ,the woman who drinks as men drink--that is1 to raise her threshold of sensation and ease the agony of living--nearly always shows a deficiency in feminine characters and an undue preponderance of masculine characters4 ,almost invariably you will find her vain and boastful1 and full of other marks of that bombastic exhibitionism which is so sterlingly male4 #ch4 ,pathological ,effects ,this feminine craving for martyrdom1 of course1 often takes on a downright pathological character1 and so engages the psychiatrist4 ,women show many other traits of the same sort4 ,to be a woman under our ,christian civilization1 indeed1 means to live a life that is heavy with repression and dissimulation1 and this repression and dissimulation1 in the long run1 cannot fail to produce effects that are indistinguishable from disease4 ,you will find some of them described at length in any handbook on psychoanalysis4 ,the ,viennese1 ,adler1 and the ,dane1 ,poul ,bjerre1 argue1 indeed1 that womanliness itself1 as it is encountered under ,christianity1 is a disease4 ,all women suffer from a suppressed revolt against the inhibitions forced upon them by our artificial culture1 and this suppressed revolt1 by well known ,freudian means1 produces a complex of mental symptoms that is familiar to all of us4 ,at one end of the scale we observe the suffragette1 with her grotesque adoption of the male belief in laws1 phrases and talismans1 and her hysterical demand for a sexual libertarianism that she could not put to use if she had it4 ,and at the other end we find the snuffling and neurotic woman1 with her bogus martyrdom1 her extravagant pruderies and her pathological delusions4 ,as ,ibsen observed long ago1 this is a man's world4 ,women have broken many of their old chains1 but they are still enmeshed in a formidable network of man-made taboos and sentimentalities1 and it will take them another generation1 at least1 to get genuine freedom4 ,that this is true is shown by the deep unrest that yet marks the sex1 despite its recent progress toward social1 political and economic equality4 ,it is almost impossible to find a man who honestly wishes that he were a woman1 but almost every woman1 at some time or other in her life1 is gnawed by a regret that she is not a man4 ,two of the hardest things that women have to bear are 7a7 the stupid masculine disinclination to admit their intellectual superiority1 or even their equality1 or even their possession of a normal human equipment for thought1 and 7b7 the equally stupid masculine doctrine that they constitute a special and ineffable species of vertebrate1 without the natural instincts and appetites of the order--to adapt a phrase from ,hackle1 that they are transcendental and almost gaseous mammals1 and marked by a complete lack of certain salient mammalian characters4 ,the first imbecility has already concerned us at length4 ,one finds traces of it even in works professedly devoted to disposing of it4 ,in one such book1 for example1 ,i come upon this3 8,what all the skill and constructive capacity of the physicians in the ,crimean ,war failed to accomplish ,florence ,nightingale accomplished by her beautiful femininity and nobility of soul40 ,in other words1 by her possession of some recondite and indescribable magic1 sharply separated from the ordinary mental processes of man4 ,the theory is unsound and preposterous4 ,miss ,nightingale accomplished her useful work1 not by magic1 but by hard common sense4 ,the problem before her was simply one of organization4 ,many men had tackled it1 and all of them had failed stupendously4 ,what she did was to bring her feminine sharpness of wit1 her feminine clear-thinking1 to bear upon it4 ,thus attacked1 it yielded quickly1 and once it had been brought to order it was easy for other persons to carry on what she had begun4 ,but the opinion of a man's world still prefers to credit her success to some mysterious angelical quality1 unstatable in lucid terms and having no more reality than the divine inspiration of an archbishop4 ,her extraordinarily acute and accurate intelligence is thus conveniently put upon the table1 and the amour propre of man is kept inviolate4 ,to confess frankly that she had more sense than any male ,englishman of her generation would be to utter a truth too harsh to be bearable4 ,the second delusion commonly shows itself in the theory1 already discussed1 that women are devoid of any sex instinct--that they submit to the odious caresses of the lubricious male only by a powerful effort of the will1 and with the sole object of discharging their duty to posterity4 ,it would be impossible to go into this delusion with proper candour and at due length in a work designed for reading aloud in the domestic circle2 all ,i can do is to refer the student to the books of any competent authority on the psychology of sex1 say ,ellis1 or to the confidences 7if they are obtainable7 of any complaisant bachelor of his acquaintance4 #ci4 ,women as ,christians ,the glad tidings preached by ,christ were obviously highly favourable to women4 ,he lifted them to equality before the ,lord when their very possession of souls was still doubted by the majority of rival theologians4 ,moreover1 ,he esteemed them socially and set value upon their sagacity1 and one of the most disdained of their sex1 a lady formerly in public life1 was among ,his regular advisers4 ,mariolatry is thus by no means the invention of the mediaeval popes1 as ,protestant theologians would have us believe4 ,on the contrary1 it is plainly discernible in the ,four ,gospels4 ,what the mediaeval popes actually invented 7or1 to be precise1 reinvented1 for they simply borrowed the elements of it from ,st4 ,paul7 was the doctrine of women's inferiority1 the precise opposite of the thing credited to them4 ,committed1 for sound reasons of discipline1 to the celibacy of the clergy1 they had to support it by depicting all traffic with women in the light of a hazardous and ignominious business4 ,the result was the deliberate organization and development of the theory of female triviality1 lack of responsibility and general looseness of mind4 ,woman became a sort of devil1 but without the admired intelligence of the regular demons4 ,the appearance of women saints1 however1 offered a constant and embarrassing criticism of this idiotic doctrine4 ,if occasional women were fit to sit upon the right hand of ,god--and they were often proving it1 and forcing the church to acknowledge it--then surely all women could not be as bad as the books made them out4 ,there thus arose the concept of the angelic woman1 the natural vestal2 we see her at full length in the romances of mediaeval chivalry4 ,what emerged in the end was a sort of double doctrine1 first that women were devils and secondly that they were angels4 ,this preposterous dualism has merged1 as we have seen1 into a compromise dogma in modern times4 ,by that dogma it is held1 on the one hand1 that women are unintelligent and immoral1 and on the other hand1 that they are free from all those weaknesses of the flesh which distinguish men4 ,this1 roughly speaking1 is the notion of the average male numskull today4 ,christianity has thus both libelled women and flattered them1 but with the weight always on the side of the libel4 ,it is therefore1 at bottom1 their enemy1 as the religion of ,christ1 now wholly extinct1 was their friend4 ,and as they gradually throw off the shackles that have bound them for a thousand years they show appreciation of the fact4 ,women1 indeed1 are not naturally religious1 and they are growing less and less religious as year chases year4 ,their ordinary devotion has little if any pious exaltation in it2 it is a routine practice1 force on them by the masculine notion that an appearance of holiness is proper to their lowly station1 and a masculine feeling that church-going somehow keeps them in order1 and out of doings that would be less reassuring4 ,when they exhibit any genuine religious fervour1 its sexual character is usually so obvious that even the majority of men are cognizant of it4 ,women never go flocking ecstatically to a church in which the agent of ,god in the pulpit is an elderly asthmatic with a watchful wife4 ,when one finds them driven to frenzies by the merits of the saints1 and weeping over the sorrows of the heathen1 and rushing out to haul the whole vicinage up to grace1 and spending hours on their knees in hysterical abasement before the heavenly throne1 it is quite safe to assume1 even without an actual visit1 that the ecclesiastic who has worked the miracle is a fair and toothsome fellow1 and a good deal more aphrodisiacal than learned4 ,all the great preachers to women in modern times have been men of suave and ingratiating habit1 and the great majority of them1 from ,henry ,ward ,beecher up and down1 have been taken1 soon or late1 in transactions far more suitable to the boudoir than to the footstool of the ,almighty4 ,their famous killings have always been made among the silliest sort of women--the sort1 in brief1 who fall so short of the normal acumen of their sex that they are bemused by mere beauty in men4 ,such women are in a minority1 and so the sex shows a good deal fewer religious enthusiasts per mille than the sex of sentiment and belief4 ,attending1 several years ago1 the gladiatorial shows of the ,rev4 ,dr4 ,billy ,sunday1 the celebrated ,american pulpit-clown1 ,i was constantly struck by the great preponderance of males in the pen devoted to the saved4 ,men of all ages and in enormous numbers came swarming to the altar1 loudly bawling for help against their sins1 but the women were anything but numerous1 and the few who appeared were chiefly either chlorotic adolescents or pathetic old ,saufschwestern4 ,for six nights running ,i sat directly beneath the gifted exhorter without seeing a single female convert of what statisticians call the child-bearing age--that is1 the age of maximum intelligence and charm4 ,among the male simpletons bagged by his yells during this time were the president of a railroad1 half a dozen rich bankers and merchants1 and the former governor of an ,american state4 ,but not a woman of comparable position or dignity4 ,not a woman that any self-respecting bachelor would care to chuck under the chin4 ,this cynical view of religious emotionalism1 and with it of the whole stock of ecclesiastical balderdash1 is probably responsible1 at least in part1 for the reluctance of women to enter upon the sacerdotal career4 ,in those ,christian sects which still bar them from the pulpit--usually on the imperfectly concealed ground that they are not equal to its alleged demands upon the morals and the intellect--one never hears of them protesting against the prohibition2 they are quite content to leave the degrading imposture to men1 who are better fitted for it by talent and conscience4 ,and in those baroque sects1 chiefly ,american1 which admit them they show no eagerness to put on the stole and chasuble4 ,when the first clergywoman appeared in the ,united ,states1 it was predicted by alarmists that men would be driven out of the pulpit by the new competition4 ,nothing of the sort has occurred1 nor is it in prospect4 ,the whole corps of female divines in the country might be herded into one small room4 ,women1 when literate at all1 are far too intelligent to make effective ecclesiastics4 ,their sharp sense of reality is in endless opposition to the whole sacerdotal masquerade1 and their cynical humour stands against the snorting that is inseparable from pulpit oratory4 ,those women who enter upon the religious life are almost invariably moved by some motive distinct from mere pious inflammation4 ,it is a commonplace1 indeed1 that1 in ,catholic countries1 girls are driven into convents by economic considerations or by disasters of amour far oftener than they are drawn there by the hope of heaven4 ,read the lives of the female saints1 and you will see how many of them tried marriage and failed at it before ever they turned to religion4 ,in ,protestant lands very few women adopt it as a profession at all1 and among the few a secular impulse is almost always visible4 ,the girl who is suddenly overcome by a desire to minister to the heathen in foreign lands is nearly invariably found1 on inspection1 to be a girl harbouring a theory that it would be agreeable to marry some heroic missionary4 ,in point of fact1 she duly marries him4 ,at home1 perhaps1 she has found it impossible to get a husband1 but in the remoter marches of ,china1 ,senegal and ,somaliland1 with no white competition present1 it is equally impossible to fail4 #dj4 ,piety as a ,social ,habit ,what remains of the alleged piety of women is little more than a social habit1 reinforced in most communities by a paucity of other and more inviting divertissements4 ,if you have ever observed the women of ,spain and ,italy at their devotions you need not be told how much the worship of ,god may be a mere excuse for relaxation and gossip4 ,these women1 in their daily lives1 are surrounded by a formidable network of mediaeval taboos2 their normal human desire for ease and freedom in intercourse is opposed by masculine distrust and superstition2 they meet no strangers2 they see and hear nothing new4 ,in the house of the ,most ,high they escape from that vexing routine4 ,here they may brush shoulders with a crowd4 ,here1 so to speak1 they may crane their mental necks and stretch their spiritual legs4 ,here1 above all1 they may come into some sort of contact with men relatively more affable1 cultured and charming than their husbands and fathers--to wit1 with the rev4 clergy4 ,elsewhere in ,christendom1 though women are not quite so relentlessly watched and penned up1 they feel much the same need of variety and excitement1 and both are likewise on tap in the temples of the ,lord4 ,no one1 ,i am sure1 need be told that the average missionary society or church sewing circle is not primarily a religious organization4 ,its actual purpose is precisely that of the absurd clubs and secret orders to which the lower and least resourceful classes of men belong3 it offers a means of refreshment1 of self-expression1 of personal display1 of political manipulation and boasting1 and1 if the pastor happens to be interesting1 of discreet and almost lawful intrigue4 ,in the course of a life largely devoted to the study of pietistic phenomena1 ,i have never met a single woman who cared an authentic damn for the actual heathen4 ,the attraction in their salvation is always almost purely social4 ,women go to church for the same reason that farmers and convicts go to church4 ,finally1 there is the aesthetic lure4 ,religion1 in most parts of ,christendom1 holds out the only bait of beauty that the inhabitants are ever cognizant of4 ,it offers music1 dim lights1 relatively ambitious architecture1 eloquence1 formality and mystery1 the caressing meaninglessness that is at the heart of poetry4 ,women are far more responsive to such things than men1 who are ordinarily quite as devoid of aesthetic sensitiveness as so many oxen4 ,the attitude of the typical man toward beauty in its various forms is1 in fact1 an attitude of suspicion and hostility4 ,he does not regard a work of art as merely inert and stupid2 he regards it as1 in some indefinable way1 positively offensive4 ,he sees the artist as a professional voluptuary and scoundrel1 and would no more trust him in his household than he would trust a coloured clergyman in his hen-yard4 ,it was men1 and not women1 who invented such sordid and literal faiths as those of the ,mennonites1 ,dunkards1 ,wesleyans and ,scotch ,presbyterians1 with their antipathy to beautiful ritual1 their obscene buttonholing of ,god1 their great talent for reducing the ineffable mystery of religion to a mere bawling of idiots4 ,the normal woman1 in so far as she has any religion at all1 moves irresistibly toward ,catholicism1 with its poetical obscurantism4 ,the evangelical ,protestant sects have a hard time holding her4 ,she can no more be an actual ,methodist than a gentleman can be a ,methodist4 ,this inclination toward beauty1 of course1 is dismissed by the average male blockhead as no more than a feeble sentimentality4 ,the truth is that it is precisely the opposite4 ,it is surely not sentimentality to be moved by the stately and mysterious ceremony of the mass1 or even1 say1 by those timid imitations of it which one observes in certain ,protestant churches4 ,such proceedings1 whatever their defects from the standpoint of a pure aesthetic1 are at all events vastly more beautiful than any of the private acts of the folk who take part in them4 ,they lift themselves above the barren utilitarianism of everyday life1 and no less above the maudlin sentimentalities that men seek pleasure in4 ,they offer a means of escape1 convenient and inviting1 from that sordid routine of thought and occupation which women revolt against so pertinaciously4 #da4 ,the ,ethics of ,women ,i have said that the religion preached by ,jesus 7now wholly extinct in the world7 was highly favourable to women4 ,this was not saying1 of course1 that women have repaid the compliment by adopting it4 ,they are1 in fact1 indifferent ,christians in the primitive sense1 just as they are bad ,christians in the antagonistic modern sense1 and particularly on the side of ethics4 ,if they actually accept the renunciations commanded by the ,sermon on the ,mount1 it is only in an effort to flout their substance under cover of their appearance4 ,no woman is really humble2 she is merely politic4 ,no woman1 with a free choice before her1 chooses self-immolation2 the most she genuinely desires in that direction is a spectacular martyrdom4 ,no woman delights in poverty4 ,no woman yields when she can prevail4 ,no woman is honestly meek4 ,in their practical ethics1 indeed1 women pay little heed to the precepts of the ,founder of ,christianity1 and the fact has passed into proverb4 ,their gentleness1 like the so-called honour of men1 is visible only in situations which offer them no menace4 ,the moment a woman finds herself confronted by an antagonist genuinely dangerous1 either to her own security or to the well-being of those under her protection--say a child or a husband--she displays a bellicosity which stops at nothing1 however outrageous4 ,in the courts of law one occasionally encounters a male extremist who tells the truth1 the whole truth and nothing but the truth1 even when it is against his cause1 but no such woman has ever been on view since the days of ,justinian4 ,it is1 indeed1 an axiom of the bar that women invariably lie upon the stand1 and the whole effort of a barrister who has one for a client is devoted to keeping her within bounds1 that the obtuse suspicions of the male jury may not be unduly aroused4 ,women litigants almost always win their cases1 not1 as is commonly assumed1 because the jurymen fall in love with them1 but simply and solely because they are clear-headed1 resourceful1 implacable and without qualms4 ,what is here visible in the halls of justice1 in the face of a vast technical equipment for combating mendacity1 is ten times more obvious in freer fields4 ,any man who is so unfortunate as to have a serious controversy with a woman1 say in the departments of finance1 theology or amour1 must inevitably carry away from it a sense of having passed through a dangerous and almost gruesome experience4 ,women not only bite in the clinches2 they bite even in open fighting2 they have a dental reach1 so to speak1 of amazing length4 ,no attack is so desperate that they will not undertake it1 once they are aroused2 no device is so unfair and horrifying that it stays them4 ,in my early days1 desiring to improve my prose1 ,i served for a year or so as reporter for a newspaper in a police court1 and during that time ,i heard perhaps four hundred cases of so-called wife-beating4 ,the husbands1 in their defence1 almost invariably pleaded justification1 and some of them told such tales of studied atrocity at the domestic hearth1 both psychic and physical1 that the learned magistrate discharged them with tears in his eyes and the very catchpolls in the courtroom had to blow their noses4 ,many more men than women go insane1 and many more married men than single men4 ,the fact puzzles no one who has had the same opportunity that ,i had to find out what goes on1 year in and year out1 behind the doors of apparently happy homes4 ,a woman1 if she hates her husband 7and many of them do71 can make life so sour and obnoxious to him that even death upon the gallows seems sweet by comparison4 ,this hatred1 of course1 is often1 and perhaps almost invariably1 quite justified4 ,to be the wife of an ordinary man1 indeed1 is an experience that must be very hard to bear4 ,the hollowness and vanity of the fellow1 his petty meanness and stupidity1 his puling sentimentality and credulity1 his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill1 his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit1 above all1 his loathsome clumsiness in amour--all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest4 ,to be the object of the oafish affections of such a creature1 even when they are honest and profound1 cannot be expected to give any genuine joy to a woman of sense and refinement4 ,his performance as a gallant1 as ,honor de ,balzac long ago observed1 unescapably suggests a gorilla's efforts to play the violin4 ,women survive the tragicomedy only by dint of their great capacity for play-acting4 ,they are able to act so realistically that often they deceive even themselves2 the average woman's contentment1 indeed1 is no more than a tribute to her histrionism4 ,but there must be innumerable revolts in secret1 even so1 and one sometimes wonders that so few women1 with the thing so facile and so safe1 poison their husbands4 ,perhaps it is not quite as rare as vital statistics make it out2 the deathrate among husbands is very much higher than among wives4 ,more than once1 indeed1 ,i have gone to the funeral of an acquaintance who died suddenly1 and observed a curious glitter in the eyes of the inconsolable widow4 ,even in this age of emancipation1 normal women have few serious transactions in life save with their husbands and potential husbands2 the business of marriage is their dominant concern from adolescence to senility4 ,when they step outside their habitual circle they show the same alert and eager wariness that they exhibit within it4 ,a man who has dealings with them must keep his wits about him1 and even when he is most cautious he is often flabbergasted by their sudden and unconscionable forays4 ,whenever woman goes into trade she quickly gets a reputation as a sharp trader4 ,every little town in ,america has its ,hetty ,green1 each sweating blood from turnips1 each the terror of all the male usurers of the neighbourhood4 ,the man who tackles such an amazon of barter takes his fortune into his hands2 he has little more chance of success against the feminine technique in business than he has against the feminine technique in marriage4 ,in both arenas the advantage of women lies in their freedom from sentimentality4 ,in business they address themselves wholly to their own profit1 and give no thought whatever to the hopes1 aspirations and amour propre of their antagonists4 ,and in the duel of sex they fence1 not to make points1 but to disable and disarm4 ,a man1 when he succeeds in throwing off a woman who has attempted to marry him1 always carries away a maudlin sympathy for her in her defeat and dismay4 ,but no one ever heard of a woman who pitied the poor fellow whose honest passion she had found it expedient to spurn4 ,on the contrary1 women take delight in such clownish agonies1 and exhibit them proudly1 and boast about them to other women4 ,v4 ,the ,new ,age #db4 ,the ,transvaluation of ,values ,the gradual emancipation of women that has been going on for the last century has still a long way to proceed before they are wholly delivered from their traditional burdens and so stand clear of the oppressions of men4 ,but already1 it must be plain1 they have made enormous progress--perhaps more than they made in the ten thousand years preceding4 ,the rise of the industrial system1 which has borne so harshly upon the race in general1 has brought them certain unmistakable benefits4 ,their economic dependence1 though still sufficient to make marriage highly attractive to them1 is nevertheless so far broken down that large classes of women are now almost free agents1 and quite independent of the favour of men4 ,most of these women1 responding to ideas that are still powerful1 are yet intrigued1 of course1 by marriage1 and prefer it to the autonomy that is coming in1 but the fact remains that they now have a free choice in the matter1 and that dire necessity no longer controls them4 ,after all1 they needn't marry if they don't want to2 it is possible to get their bread by their own labour in the workshops of the world4 ,their grandmothers were in a far more difficult position4 ,failing marriage1 they not only suffered a cruel ignominy1 but in many cases faced the menace of actual starvation4 ,there was simply no respectable place in the economy of those times for the free woman4 ,she either had to enter a nunnery or accept a disdainful patronage that was as galling as charity4 ,nothing could be plainer than the effect that the increasing economic security of women is having upon their whole habit of life and mind4 ,the diminishing marriage rate and the even more rapidly diminishing birth rates show which way the wind is blowing4 ,it is common for male statisticians1 with characteristic imbecility1 to ascribe the fall in the marriage rate to a growing disinclination on the male side4 ,this growing disinclination is actually on the female side4 ,even though no considerable body of women has yet reached the definite doctrine that marriage is less desirable than freedom1 it must be plain that large numbers of them now approach the business with far greater fastidiousness than their grandmothers or even their mothers exhibited4 ,they are harder to please1 and hence pleased less often4 ,the woman of a century ago could imagine nothing more favourable to her than marriage2 even marriage with a fifth rate man was better than no marriage at all4 ,this notion is gradually feeling the opposition of a contrary notion4 ,women in general may still prefer marriage to work1 but there is an increasing minority which begins to realize that work may offer the greater contentment1 particularly if it be mellowed by a certain amount of philandering4 ,there already appears in the world1 indeed1 a class of women1 who1 while still not genuinely averse to marriage1 are yet free from any theory that it is necessary1 or even invariably desirable4 ,among these women are a good many somewhat vociferous propagandists1 almost male in their violent earnestness2 they range from the man-eating suffragettes to such preachers of free motherhood as ,ellen ,key and such professional shockers of the bourgeoisie as the ,american prophetess of birth-control1 ,margaret ,sanger4 ,but among them are many more who wake the world with no such noisy eloquence1 but content themselves with carrying out their ideas in a quiet and respectable manner4 ,the number of such women is much larger than is generally imagined1 and that number tends to increase steadily4 ,they are women who1 with their economic independence assured1 either by inheritance or by their own efforts1 chiefly in the arts and professions1 do exactly as they please1 and make no pother about it4 ,naturally enough1 their superiority to convention and the common frenzy makes them extremely attractive to the better sort of men1 and so it is not uncommon for one of them to find herself voluntarily sought in marriage1 without any preliminary scheming by herself--surely an experience that very few ordinary women ever enjoy1 save perhaps in dreams or delirium4 ,the old order changeth and giveth place to the new4 ,among the women's clubs and in the women's colleges1 ,i have no doubt1 there is still much debate of the old and silly question3 ,are platonic relations possible between the sexes8 ,in other words1 is friendship possible without sex8 ,many a woman of the new order dismisses the problem with another question3 ,why without sex8 ,with the decay of the ancient concept of women as property there must come inevitably a reconsideration of the whole sex question1 and out of that reconsideration there must come a revision of the mediaeval penalties which now punish the slightest frivolity in the female4 ,the notion that honour in women is exclusively a physical matter1 that a single aberrance may convert a woman of the highest merits into a woman of none at all1 that the sole valuable thing a woman can bring to marriage is virginity--this notion is so preposterous that no intelligent person1 male or female1 actually cherishes it4 ,it survives as one of the hollow conventions of ,christianity2 nay1 of the levantine barbarism that preceded ,christianity4 ,as women throw off the other conventions which now bind them they will throw off this one1 too1 and so their virtue1 grounded upon fastidiousness and self-respect instead of upon mere fear and conformity1 will become afar more laudable thing than it ever can be under the present system4 ,and for its absence1 if they see fit to dispose of it1 they will no more apologize than a man apologizes today4 #dc4 ,the ,lady of ,joy ,even prostitution1 in the long run1 may become a more or less respectable profession1 as it was in the great days of the ,greeks4 ,that quality will surely attach to it if ever it grows quite unnecessary2 whatever is unnecessary is always respectable1 for example1 religion1 fashionable clothing1 and a knowledge of ,latin grammar4 ,the prostitute is disesteemed today1 not because her trade involves anything intrinsically degrading or even disagreeable1 but because she is currently assumed to have been driven into it by dire necessity1 against her dignity and inclination4 ,that this assumption is usually unsound is no objection to it2 nearly all the thinking of the world1 particularly in the field of morals1 is based upon unsound assumption1 e4g41 that ,god observes the fall of a sparrow and is shocked by the fall of a ,sunday-school superintendent4 ,the truth is that prostitution is one of the most attractive of the occupations practically open to the sort of women who engage in it1 and that the prostitute commonly likes her work1 and would not exchange places with a shop-girl or a waitress for anything in the world4 ,the notion to the contrary is propagated by unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the hands of professional reformers1 and who assent to the imbecile theories of the latter in order to cultivate their good will1 just as convicts in prison1 questioned by tee-totalers1 always ascribe their rascality to alcohol4 ,no prostitute of anything resembling normal intelligence is under the slightest duress2 she is perfectly free to abandon her trade and go into a shop or factory or into domestic service whenever the impulse strikes her2 all the prevailing gabble about white slave jails and kidnappers comes from pious rogues who make a living by feeding such nonsense to the credulous4 ,so long as the average prostitute is able to make a good living1 she is quite content with her lot1 and disposed to contrast it egotistically with the slavery of her virtuous sisters4 ,if she complains of it1 then you may be sure that her success is below her expectations4 ,a starving lawyer always sees injustice1 in the courts4 ,a bad physician is a bitter critic of ,ehrlich and ,pasteur4 ,and when a suburban clergyman is forced out of his cure by a vestry-room revolution he almost invariably concludes that the sinfulness of man is incurable1 and sometimes he even begins to doubt some of the typographical errors in ,holy ,writ4 ,the high value set upon virginity by men1 whose esteem of it is based upon a mixture of vanity and voluptuousness1 causes many women to guard it in their own persons with a jealousy far beyond their private inclinations and interests4 ,it is their theory that the loss of it would materially impair their chances of marriage4 ,this theory is not supported by the facts4 ,the truth is that the woman who sacrifices her chastity1 everything else being equal1 stands a much better chance of making a creditable marriage than the woman who remains chaste4 ,this is especially true of women of the lower economic classes4 ,at once they come into contact1 hitherto socially difficult and sometimes almost impossible1 with men of higher classes1 and begin to take on1 with the curious facility of their sex1 the refinements and tastes and points of view of those classes4 ,the mistress thus gathers charm1 and what has begun as a sordid sale of amiability not uncommonly ends with formal marriage4 ,the number of such marriages is enormously greater than appears superficially1 for both parties obviously make every effort to conceal the facts4 ,within the circle of my necessarily limited personal acquaintance ,i know of scores of men1 some of them of wealth and position1 who have made such marriages1 and who do not seem to regret it4 ,it is an old observation1 indeed1 that a woman who has previously disposed of her virtue makes a good wife4 ,the common theory is that this is because she is grateful to her husband for rescuing her from social outlawry2 the truth is that she makes a good wife because she is a shrewd woman1 and has specialized professionally in masculine weakness1 and is thus extra-competent at the traditional business of her sex4 ,such a woman often shows a truly magnificent sagacity4 ,it is very difficult to deceive her logically1 and it is impossible to disarm her emotionally4 ,her revolt against the pruderies and sentimentalities of the world was evidence1 to begin with1 of her intellectual enterprise and courage1 and her success as a rebel is proof of her extraordinary pertinacity1 resourcefulness and acumen4 ,even the most lowly prostitute is better off1 in all worldly ways1 than the virtuous woman of her own station in life4 ,she has less work to do1 it is less monotonous and dispiriting1 she meets a far greater variety of men1 and they are of classes distinctly beyond her own4 ,nor is her occupation hazardous and her ultimate fate tragic4 ,a dozen or more years ago ,i observed a somewhat amusing proof of this last4 ,at that time certain sentimental busybodies of the ,american city in which ,i lived undertook an elaborate inquiry into prostitution therein1 and some of them came to me in advance1 as a practical journalist1 for advice as to how to proceed4 ,i found that all of them shared the common superstition that the professional life of the average prostitute is only five years long1 and that she invariably ends in the gutter4 ,they were enormously amazed when they unearthed the truth4 ,this truth was to the effect that the average prostitute of that town ended her career1 not in the morgue but at the altar of ,god1 and that those who remained unmarried often continued in practice for ten1 fifteen and even twenty years1 and then retired on competences4 ,it was established1 indeed1 that fully eighty per cent married1 and that they almost always got husbands who would have been far beyond their reach had they remained virtuous4 ,for one who married a cabman or petty pugilist there were a dozen who married respectable mechanics1 policemen1 small shopkeepers and minor officials1 and at least two or three who married well-to-do tradesmen and professional men4 ,among the thousands whose careers were studied there was actually one who ended as the wife of the town's richest banker--that is1 one who bagged the best catch in the whole community4 ,this woman had begun as a domestic servant1 and abandoned that harsh and dreary life to enter a brothel4 ,her experiences there polished and civilized her1 and in her old age she was a grande dame of great dignity4 ,much of the sympathy wasted upon women of the ancient profession is grounded upon an error as to their own attitude toward it4 ,an educated woman1 hearing that a frail sister in a public stew is expected to be amiable to all sorts of bounders1 thinks of how she would shrink from such contacts1 and so concludes that the actual prostitute suffers acutely4 ,what she overlooks is that these men1 however gross and repulsive they may appear to her1 are measurably superior to men of the prostitute's own class--say her father and brothers--and that communion with them1 far from being disgusting1 is often rather romantic4 ,i well remember observing1 during my collaboration with the vice-crusaders aforesaid1 the delight of a lady of joy who had attracted the notice of a police lieutenant2 she was intensely pleased by the idea of having a client of such haughty manners1 such brilliant dress1 and what seemed to her to be so dignified a profession4 ,it is always forgotten that this weakness is not confined to prostitutes1 but run through the whole female sex4 ,the woman who could not imagine an illicit affair with a wealthy soap manufacturer or even with a lawyer finds it quite easy to imagine herself succumbing to an ambassador or a duke4 ,there are very few exceptions to this rule4 ,in the most reserved of modern societies the women who represent their highest flower are notoriously complaisant to royalty4 ,and royal women1 to complete the circuit1 not infrequently yield to actors and musicians1 i4e41 to men radiating a glamour not encountered even in princes4 #dd4 ,the ,future of ,marriage ,the transvaluation of values that is now in progress will go on slowly and for a very long while4 ,that it will ever be quite complete is1 of course1 impossible4 ,there are inherent differences will continue to show themselves until the end of time4 ,as woman gradually becomes convinced1 not only of the possibility of economic independence1 but also of its value1 she will probably lose her present overmastering desire for marriage1 and address herself to meeting men in free economic competition4 ,that is to say1 she will address herself to acquiring that practical competence1 that high talent for puerile and chiefly mechanical expertness1 which now sets man ahead of her in the labour market of the world4 ,to do this she will have to sacrifice some of her present intelligence2 it is impossible to imagine a genuinely intelligent human being becoming a competent trial lawyer1 or buttonhole worker1 or newspaper sub-editor1 or piano tuner1 or house painter4 ,women1 to get upon all fours with men in such stupid occupations1 will have to commit spiritual suicide1 which is probably much further than they will ever actually go4 ,thus a shade of their present superiority to men will always remain1 and with it a shade of their relative inefficiency1 and so marriage will remain attractive to them1 or at all events to most of them1 and its overthrow will be prevented4 ,to abolish it entirely1 as certain fevered reformers propose1 would be as difficult as to abolish the precession of the equinoxes4 ,at the present time women vacillate somewhat absurdly between two schemes of life1 the old and the new4 ,on the one hand1 their economic independence is still full of conditions1 and on the other hand they are in revolt against the immemorial conventions4 ,the result is a general unrest1 with many symptoms of extravagant and unintelligent revolt4 ,one of those symptoms is the appearance of intellectual striving in women--not a striving1 alas1 toward the genuine pearls and rubies of the mind1 but one merely toward the acquirement of the rubber stamps that men employ in their so-called thinking4 ,thus we have women who launch themselves into party politics1 and fill their heads with a vast mass of useless knowledge about political tricks1 customs1 theories and personalities4 ,thus1 too1 we have the woman social reformer1 trailing along ridiculously behind a tatterdemalion posse of male utopians1 each with something to sell4 ,and thus we have the woman who goes in for advanced wisdom of the sort on draught in women's clubs--in brief1 the sort of wisdom which consists entirely of a body of beliefs and propositions that are ignorant1 unimportant and untrue4 ,such banal striving is most prodigally on display in the ,united ,states1 where superficiality amounts to a national disease4 ,its popularity is due to the relatively greater leisure of the ,american people1 who work less than any other people in the world1 and1 above all1 to the relatively greater leisure of ,american women4 ,thousands of them have been emancipated from any compulsion to productive labour without having acquired any compensatory intellectual or artistic interest or social duty4 ,the result is that they swarm in the women's clubs1 and waste their time1 listening to bad poetry1 worse music1 and still worse lectures on ,maeterlinck1 ,balkan politics and the subconscious4 ,it is among such women that one observes the periodic rages for ,bergsonism1 the ,montessori method1 the twilight sleep and other such follies1 so pathetically characteristic of ,american culture4 ,one of the evil effects of this tendency ,i have hitherto descanted upon1 to wit1 the growing disposition of ,american women to regard all routine labour1 particularly in the home1 as infra dignitatem and hence intolerable4 ,out of that notion arise many lamentable phenomena4 ,on the one hand1 we have the spectacle of a great number of healthy and well-fed women engaged in public activities that1 nine times out of ten1 are meaningless1 mischievous and a nuisance1 and on the other hand we behold such a decay in the domestic arts that1 at the first onslaught of the late war1 the national government had to import a foreign expert to teach the housewives of the country the veriest elements of thrift4 ,no such instruction was needed by the housewives of the ,continent4 ,they were simply told how much food they could have1 and their natural competence did the rest4 ,there is never any avoidable waste there1 either in peace or in war4 ,a ,french housewife has little use for a garbage can1 save as a depository for uplifting literature4 ,she does her best with the means at her disposal1 not only in war time but at all times4 ,as ,i have said over and over again in this inquiry1 a woman's disinclination to acquire the intricate expertness that lies at the bottom of good housekeeping is due primarily to her active intelligence2 it is difficult for her to concentrate her mind upon such stupid and meticulous enterprises4 ,but whether difficult or easy1 it is obviously important for the average woman to make some effort in that direction1 for if she fails to do so there is chaos4 ,that chaos is duly visible in the ,united ,states4 ,here women reveal one of their subterranean qualities3 their deficiency in conscientiousness4 ,they are quite without that dog-like fidelity to duty which is one of the shining marks of men4 ,they never summon up a high pride in doing what is inherently disagreeable2 they always go to the galleys under protest1 and with vows of sabotage2 their fundamental philosophy is almost that of the syndicalists4 ,the sentimentality of men connives at this1 and is thus largely responsible for it4 ,before the average puella1 apprenticed in the kitchen1 can pick up a fourth of the culinary subtleties that are commonplace even to the chefs on dining cars1 she has caught a man and need concern herself about them no more1 for he has to eat1 in the last analysis1 whatever she sets before him1 and his lack of intelligence makes it easy for her to shut off his academic criticisms by bald appeals to his emotions4 ,by an easy process he finally attaches a positive value to her indolence4 ,it is a proof1 he concludes1 of her fineness of soul4 ,in the presence of her lofty incompetence he is abashed4 ,but as women1 gaining economic autonomy1 meet men in progressively bitterer competition1 the rising masculine distrust and fear of them will be reflected even in the enchanted domain of marriage1 and the husband1 having yielded up most of his old rights1 will begin to reveal a new jealousy of those that remain1 and particularly of the right to a fair quid pro quo for his own docile industry4 ,in brief1 as women shake off their ancient disabilities they will also shake off some of their ancient immunities1 and their doings will come to be regarded with a soberer and more exigent scrutiny than now prevails4 ,the extension of the suffrage1 ,i believe1 will encourage this awakening2 in wresting it from the reluctant male the women of the western world have planted dragons' teeth1 the which will presently leap up and gnaw them4 ,now that women have the political power to obtain their just rights1 they will begin to lose their old power to obtain special privileges by sentimental appeals4 ,men1 facing them squarely1 will consider them anew1 not as romantic political and social invalids1 to be coddled and caressed1 but as free competitors in a harsh world4 ,when that reconsideration gets under way there will be a general overhauling of the relations between the sexes1 and some of the fair ones1 ,i suspect1 will begin to wonder why they didn't let well enough alone4 #de4 ,effects of the ,war ,the present series of wars1 it seems likely1 will continue for twenty or thirty years1 and perhaps longer4 ,that the first clash was inconclusive was shown brilliantly by the preposterous nature of the peace finally reached--a peace so artificial and dishonest that the signing of it was almost equivalent to a new declaration of war4 ,at least three new contests in the grand manner are plainly insight--one between ,germany and ,france to rectify the unnatural tyranny of a weak and incompetent nation over a strong and enterprising nation1 one between ,japan and the ,united ,states for the mastery of the ,pacific1 and one between ,england and the ,united ,states for the control of the sea4 ,to these must be added various minor struggles1 and perhaps one or two of almost major character3 the effort of ,russia to regain her old unity and power1 the effort of the ,turks to put down the slave rebellion 7of ,greeks1 ,armenians1 ,arabs1 etc47which now menaces them1 the effort of the ,latin-,americans to throw off the galling ,yankee yoke1 and the joint effort of ,russia and ,germany 7perhaps with ,england and ,italy aiding7 to get rid of such international nuisances as the insane ,polish republic1 the petty states of the ,baltic1 and perhaps also most of the ,balkan states4 ,i pass over the probability of a new mutiny in ,india1 of the rising of ,china against the ,japanese1 and of a general struggle for a new alignment of boundaries in ,south ,america4 ,all of these wars1 great and small1 are probable2 most of them are humanly certain4 ,they will be fought ferociously1 and with the aid of destructive engines of the utmost efficiency4 ,they will bring about an unparalleled butchery of men1 and a large proportion of these men will be under forty years of age4 ,as a result there will be a shortage of husbands in ,christendom1 and as a second result the survivors will be appreciably harder to snare than the men of today4 ,every man of agreeable exterior and easy means will be pursued1 not merely by a few dozen or score of women1 as now1 but by whole battalions and brigades of them1 and he will be driven in sheer self-defence into very sharp bargaining4 ,perhaps in the end the state will have to interfere in the business1 to prevent the potential husband going to waste in the turmoil of opportunity4 ,just what form this interference is likely to take has not yet appeared clearly4 ,in ,france there is already a wholesale legitimization of children born out of wedlock and in ,eastern ,europe there has been a clamour for the legalization of polygamy1 but these devices do not meet the main problem1 which is the encouragement of monogamy to the utmost4 ,a plan that suggests itself is the amelioration of the position of the monogamous husband1 now rendered increasingly uncomfortable by the laws of most ,christian states4 ,i do not think that the more intelligent sort of women1 faced by a perilous shortage of men1 would object seriously to that amelioration4 ,they must see plainly that the present system1 if it is carried much further1 will begin to work powerfully against their best interests1 if only by greatly reinforcing the disinclination to marriage that already exists among the better sort of men4 ,the woman of true discretion1 ,i am convinced1 would much rather marry a superior man1 even on unfavourable terms1 than make ,john ,smith her husband1 serf and prisoner at one stroke4 ,the law must eventually recognize this fact and make provision for it4 ,the average husband1 perhaps1 deserves little succour4 ,the woman who pursues and marries him1 though she may be moved by selfish aims1 should be properly rewarded by the state for her service to it--a service surely not to be lightly estimated in a military age4 ,and that reward may conveniently take the form1 as in the ,united ,states1 of statutes giving her title to a large share of his real property and requiring him to surrender most of his income to her1 and releasing her from all obedience to him and from all obligation to keep his house in order4 ,but the woman who aspires to higher game should be quite willing1 it seems to me1 to resign some of these advantages in compensation for the greater honour and satisfaction of being wife to a man of merit1 and mother to his children4 ,all that is needed is laws allowing her1 if she will1 to resign her right of dower1 her right to maintenance and her immunity from discipline1 and to make any other terms that she may be led to regard as equitable4 ,at present women are unable to make most of these concessions even if they would3 the laws of the majority of western nations are inflexible4 ,if1 for example1 an ,englishwoman should agree1 by an ante-nuptial contract1 to submit herself to the discipline1 not of the current statutes1 but of the elder common law1 which allowed a husband to correct his wife corporally with a stick no thicker than his thumb1 it would be competent for any sentimental neighbour to set the agreement at naught by haling her husband before a magistrate for carrying it out1 and it is a safe wager that the magistrate would jail him4 ,this plan1 however novel it may seem1 is actually already in operation4 ,many a married woman1 in order to keep her husband from revolt1 makes more or less disguised surrenders of certain of the rights and immunities that she has under existing laws4 ,there are1 for example1 even in ,america1 women who practise the domestic arts with competence and diligence1 despite the plain fact that no legal penalty would be visited upon them if they failed to do so4 ,there are women who follow external trades and professions1 contributing a share to the family exchequer4 ,there are women who obey their husbands1 even against their best judgments4 ,there are1 most numerous of all1 women who wink discreetly at husbandly departures1 overt or in mere intent1 from the oath of chemical purity taken at the altar4 ,it is a commonplace1 indeed1 that many happy marriages admit a party of the third part4 ,there would be more of them if there were more women with enough serenity of mind to see the practical advantage of the arrangement4 ,the trouble with such triangulations is not primarily that they involve perjury or that they offer any fundamental offence to the wife2 if she avoids banal theatricals1 in fact1 they commonly have the effect of augmenting the husband's devotion to her and respect for her1 if only as the fruit of comparison4 ,the trouble with them is that very few men among us have sense enough to manage them intelligently4 ,the masculine mind is readily taken in by specious values2 the average married man of ,protestant ,christendom1 if he succumbs at all1 succumbs to some meretricious and flamboyant creature1 bent only upon fleecing him4 ,here is where the harsh realism of the ,frenchman shows its superiority to the sentimentality of the men of the ,teutonic races4 ,a ,frenchman would no more think of taking a mistress without consulting his wife than he would think of standing for office without consulting his wife4 ,the result is that he is seldom victimized4 ,for one ,frenchman ruined by women there are at least a hundred ,englishmen and ,americans1 despite the fact that a hundred times as many ,frenchmen engage in that sort of recreation4 ,the case of ,zola is typical4 ,as is well known1 his amours were carefully supervised by ,mme4 ,zola from the first days of their marriage1 and in consequence his life was wholly free from scandals and his mind was never distracted from his work4 #df4 ,the ,eternal ,romance ,but whatever the future of monogamous marriage1 there will never be any decay of that agreeable adventurousness which now lies at the bottom of all transactions between the sexes4 ,women may emancipate themselves1 they may borrow the whole bag of masculine tricks1 and they may cure themselves of their present desire for the vegetable security of marriage1 but they will never cease to be women1 and so long as they are women they will remain provocative to men4 ,their chief charm today lies precisely in the fact that they are dangerous1 that they threaten masculine liberty and autonomy1 that their sharp minds present a menace vastly greater than that of acts of ,god and the public enemy--and they will be dangerous for ever4 ,men fear them1 and are fascinated by them4 ,they know how to show their teeth charmingly2 the more enlightened of them have perfected a superb technique of fascination4 ,it was ,nietzsche who called them the recreation of the warrior--not of the poltroon1 remember1 but of the warrior4 ,a profound saying4 ,they have an infinite capacity for rewarding masculine industry and enterprise with small and irresistible flatteries2 their acute understanding combines with their capacity for evoking ideas of beauty to make them incomparable companions when the serious business of the day is done1 and the time has come to expand comfortably in the interstellar ether4 ,every man1 ,i daresay1 has his own notion of what constitutes perfect peace and contentment1 but all of those notions1 despite the fundamental conflict of the sexes1 revolve around women4 ,as for me--and ,i hope ,i may be pardoned1 at this late stage in my inquiry1 for intruding my own personality--,i reject the two commonest of them3 passion1 at least in its more adventurous and melodramatic aspects1 is too exciting and alarming for so indolent a man1 and ,i am too egoistic to have much desire to be mothered4 ,what1 then1 remains for me8 ,let me try to describe it to you4 ,it is the close of a busy and vexatious day--say half past five or six o'clock of a winter afternoon4 ,i have had a cocktail or two1 and am stretched out on a divan in front of a fire1 smoking4 ,at the edge of the divan1 close enough for me to reach her with my hand1 sits a woman not too young1 but still good-looking and well-dressed--above all1 a woman with a soft1 low-pitched1 agreeable voice4 ,as ,i snooze she talks--of anything1 everything1 all the things that women talk of3 books1 music1 the play1 men1 other women4 ,no politics4 ,no business4 ,no religion4 ,no metaphysics4 ,nothing challenging and vexatious--but remember1 she is intelligent2 what she says is clearly expressed1 and often picturesquely4 ,i observe the fine sheen of her hair1 the pretty cut of her frock1 the glint of her white teeth1 the arch of her eye-brow1 the graceful curve of her arm4 ,i listen to the exquisite murmur of her voice4 ,gradually ,i fall asleep--but only for an instant4 ,at once1 observing it1 she raises her voice ever so little1 and ,i am awake4 ,then to sleep again--slowly and charmingly down that slippery hill of dreams4 ,and then awake again1 and then asleep again1 and so on4 ,i ask you seriously3 could anything be more unutterably beautiful8 ,the sensation of falling asleep is to me the most exquisite in the world4 ,i delight in it so much that ,i even look forward to death itself with a sneaking wonder and desire4 ,well1 here is sleep poetized and made doubly sweet4 ,here is sleep set to the finest music in the world4 ,i match this situation against any that you ran think of4 ,it is not only enchanting2 it is also1 in a very true sense1 ennobling4 ,in the end1 when the girl grows prettily miffed and throws me out1 ,i return to my sorrows somehow purged and glorified4 ,i am a better man in my own sight4 ,i have grazed upon the fields of asphodel4 ,i have been genuinely1 completely and unregrettably happy4 #dg4 ,apologia in ,conclusion ,at the end ,i crave the indulgence of the cultured reader for the imperfections necessarily visible in all that ,i have here set down--imperfections not only due to incomplete information and fallible logic1 but also1 and perhaps more importantly1 to certain fundamental weaknesses of the sex to which ,i have the honour to belong4 ,a man is inseparable from his congenital vanities and stupidities1 as a dog is inseparable from its fleas4 ,they reveal themselves in everything he says and does1 but they reveal themselves most of all when he discusses the majestic mystery of woman4 ,just as he smirks and rolls his eyes in her actual presence1 so he puts on apathetic and unescapable clownishness when he essays to dissect her in the privacy of the laboratory4 ,there is no book on woman by a man that is not a stupendous compendium of posturings and imbecilities4 ,there are but two books that show even a superficial desire to be honest--8,the ,unexpurgated ,case ,against ,woman ,suffrage10 by ,sir ,almroth ,wright1 and this one4 ,wright made a gallant attempt to tell the truth1 but before he got half way through his task his ineradicable donkeyishness as a male overcame his scientific frenzy as a psychologist1 and so he hastily washed his hands of the business1 and affronted the judicious with a half baked and preposterous book4 ,perhaps ,i have failed too1 and even more ingloriously4 ,if so1 ,i am full of sincere and indescribable regret4