Three Things Part 2

Thousands of people who read the new ethical or religious books which are abroad, and even exploit their propaganda--thousands who attend the various meetings and services and lectures of the different societies, be they "New Thought" or any of the others on more or less the same lines--never dream of applying the teachings to a single ordinary thing, and still go on with their tempers and melancholy and flurry and fuss, just as they did before they ever heard of the idea that they can control and eliminate these things. An enormous majority of the public are frightened at the very name of a new religion or ethical teaching, and think it wrong even to investigate what it teaches. But the broad-minded are unafraid of any knowledge, and can gain good by knowing about all developments of human thought, provided they approach each point with common sense and without hysteria, dismissing the idea of what we are accustomed to call the supernatural, and realising that everything has a perfectly natural explanation when it can be understood, and it is only our ignorance which makes us shy at it.

And so I would appeal to those who credit this power of thought to employ it responsibly, and to realise that they are all G.o.d's atoms in the great scheme of things, and must use their personal force as a contribution to the vast thought-waves which can advance, or which, when ill directed, can sweep away a nation.

III

MARRIAGE

It is an interesting subject--and one which has touched, or will probably touch, most of our lives, therefore it may not be unprofitable to study it a little, and what it means and what it should mean; because, in the present upheaval of all our old beliefs, marriage, as a sensible inst.i.tution, is being attacked upon many sides.

It is extremely easy to pull down a house, but it requires skill and special training to rebuild it again; and before dragging the roof off and demolis.h.i.+ng the walls, it would be wiser to have made a distinct plan and provided the materials ready for the reconstruction of a new habitation, that the rain and the wind may not overcome us when we have no shelter for our heads. But this is what the attackers of marriage have failed to do as yet. Here are three facts which we can begin by looking at.

_Firstly._ Some kind of union between man and woman, consolidated by the law, is necessary for the continuation of a race in vigour and moral upliftment.

_Secondly._ It is admitted by great philosophers and deep thinkers that the welfare of the community is of more importance than the fluctuating desires of the individual.

_Thirdly._ A fine ideal, however impossible of attainment, is a force for good to be held up before the eyes of the ma.s.s of the people, who, however much actual education has advanced, are still too unendowed with personal brain to have any judgment themselves--their capacities only allowing them to see the effects of things upon their immediate surroundings without perceiving the causes, and therefore leaving them incapable of judging what could be good for the country, the race, or humanity in general.

After all these centuries, legal marriage still holds, because no one has been able to suggest any other union which could take its place without bringing chaos. And it seems more than likely that no one will ever be sufficiently inspired so to do! Thus let us now consider the present legal marriage as still being a stable fact, and see how we can make the best of it. In it there are two things which both man and woman forget--or refuse to face--and which are perhaps the chief causes of most unhappiness. Man forgets that his kind _words_ of love and sympathy matter far more to the actual happiness of the woman than any of his _deeds_: because words fill and satisfy her imagination, which is active whenever she is alone; and kind deeds, with few or indifferent words, make very little impression upon it. Woman forgets--or will not face--the fact that man is by nature a polygamous animal. There is no use in arguing about this and saying he ought not to be, and that it is a horrible idea. It is a physiological fact, and to dispute it is to criticise the Almighty's scheme for ensuring a continued population. That man should have polygamous instincts is essential for this scheme to work against any odds.

Whatever we choose to say in contradiction to this resolves itself into empty words, the fact of nature remaining. It would be just as sensible to try to argue that, because we do not like to drink sea water, it has no business to be salt! and to decide that it is _not_ salt! and that we will not recognise that _it is_ salt! The ocean would just laugh at us, and remain briny! And no doubt Nature laughs at silly woman too, when she tries to judge man without understanding the elementary principle of creation.

This being grasped clearly, it must be seen that monogamous marriage is _an ideal state_, not a _natural state_, and it must be admitted to be such, and lived up to as an ideal, not undertaken with the notion that fidelity in man is _natural_, and infidelity an _unnatural_ thing. It is the other way about because of the fundamental instincts of man, which continuously and subconsciously suggest to him the necessity for self-preservation, and in its larger sense self-preservation means species-preservation.

Woman, on the other hand, although unconsciously inspired by this same fundamental instinct of species-preservation, is not naturally polygamous, or rather polyandrous, because such a state would militate against this end by eventually destroying pure offspring. She only becomes so under certain conditions. Fidelity, then, is, so to speak, a natural state for woman, and she has not to fight against any fundamental instinct of her s.e.x in order to preserve it--she has only to resist perverted desire, which is an exotic growth, the outcome of civilisation. Thus fidelity is much harder for man, who, to succeed in being faithful, is obliged to dominate a natural instinct, which is a far more difficult thing to do than to fight against an exotic desire; because all natural things are governed by inexorable and eternal laws, and are not at the mercy of circ.u.mstance. Thus the natural instinct of man is at work all the time in continuous activity--and the exotic desire of woman is intermittent, and the result of circ.u.mstance.

Of course, all this has been said before by every serious thinker, and I am only reiterating these facts because the general readers may have forgotten them, and I must bring them to their recollection to make the rest of our discussion upon marriage clear.

These nature instincts being admitted, we can get on to a survey of legal marriage. At first, it must have been an affair of expediency.

The woman was probably expected to be faithful, and brute force took care that she was so, or that she immediately paid the price of possible contamination of offspring by being killed. She was expected to be faithful for a natural reason, not for a spiritual or sentimental one; the reason being, as already inferred, to ensure the purity of the offspring. Man had no need to be faithful to one woman to secure this end, and never, in consequence, dreamed of being so.

All through Pagan times infidelity in man was rampant and recognised, and not looked upon as sin. And when woman became civilised enough to have exotic desires, she lost her natural instinct, that of preservation of pure offspring, and became liable to vagrant fancies and often a vicious creature.

Then the Church arrived and turned marriage into a sacrament; presumably with the n.o.ble intention of trying to elevate man and overcome his carnal nature. Man outwardly conformed, and, with his whole soul's desire to be true and to uplift himself, each individual who really believed no doubt did war with his instincts, and numbers probably succeeded in conquering them. While woman, always a creature of more delicate nervous susceptibilities, flung herself with furore under the influences of spiritual things, and in the truly devout cases overcame her grafted desires and returned to natural instincts.

But in beings of both s.e.xes who were unconvinced by religion, infidelity continued to flourish, as it does even to this day. A man who truly believes that he is sinning in being unfaithful, and who understands that outside opinion is nothing in the soiling of his own soul, but that the matter is between himself and G.o.d, will always be faithful _in body_ to a woman he has wedded, whether he cares for her or not. But a man who has not this conviction, and who does not live in this intimate relation to G.o.d, has no reason to hold him from indulging his natural instinct, except the fear of being found out, and when his sagacity has suggested safeguards against this, his instinct will certainly give itself expression. It is all a question of personal belief. There are numbers of good and honest characters who do not feel convinced that entire fidelity in man to one woman was intended by the Creator, and who therefore feel no degradation in the lat.i.tude they allow themselves. It is not for us to argue which are right and which are wrong, but to stick to the subject of marriage and how it can perhaps be made happier in these present days, when all other conditions of life are changing, by a better comprehension of fundamental instincts and laws of nature.

Woman has developed so far that generally she thinks she is (and sometimes she really is!) a reasonable and balanced creature, with strong individuality--and personal tastes and likes and dislikes. She is now ill-fitted to keep them all in subservience to man, unless he is her intellectual master. She may have wedded only because the emotion of s.e.x (not understood as such, and called by a number of other names such as "love," "devotion," "attraction") forced her at one of its powerful moments to take a physical mate--totally unsuited to her moral calibre. But she has knelt at the altar and sworn vows before G.o.d--and perhaps has fulfilled woman's original mission in the world, and become the mother of children--so what is to be done to rectify her mistake and its unhappy consequences?

She must look the whole circ.u.mstances of it in the face and ask herself whether she herself threw dust in her own eyes as regards the character of her husband, whether he deceived her in this, or whether they just drifted together, each to blame as much as the other, through the attraction of s.e.x and the cruelty of ignorance. She may regret it a thousandfold--but she has done the thing of her own free will, no one forced her to wed the man; she may have done so unwillingly in some cases--and for ulterior motives, but at all events she was consenting and not dragged to church resisting, and so if she is sensible she will use the whole of her intelligence to make the best of it. She will look to the end of her every action and her every thought. Will brooding over her "rights," and the wrongs he has inflicted, mend them? Will it do anything but give her vanity--the satisfaction of self-pity? Certainly not.

If she has really evolved enough to wish to impose her opinions and individuality upon her household or the community, she will have realised that the welfare of the home for which she is responsible, and the community to which she belongs, are, or ought to be, of far more consequence to her than her own personal emotions. Therefore she must ask herself whether she has any right to upset the happiness of the one, and the conception of good of the other, by indulging in personal quarrels and bickerings, or open scandal with her mate. A really n.o.ble and unselfish woman would never consider her personal emotion before her duty to G.o.d and to her neighbour. It is because the outlook of woman is as a rule so pitifully narrow and self-centred that she often makes a useless and unhappy wife, and s.h.i.+pwrecks her own and others' futures.

Man has gone on with his brute force, and his physical and mental attraction, and his tastes and beliefs and aspirations very much the same for thousands of years. Numbers of them were brutes then, and numbers are brutes still and will remain so. It is only woman who has so incredibly changed, and after staying immeasurably behind in importance and in intellectuality for countless centuries, now seeks to equal if not outstep man in all things. It would be well for man to wake up to the fact that he is now wedding a woman with every sense and nerve and conception of life far in advance of what his mother believed herself to be capable of--and so his methods towards her in return must not be as his father's were. If man wishes to have the good, domestic, obedient wife his father--perhaps one should go farther back and say grandfather!--expected--and got--he must either choose a timid weakling who becomes just his echo, or he must learn to treat the modern woman as a comrade, a being who mentally can understand and follow his aspirations and even a.s.sist him in his desires, a creature to respect and consult, and whom he cannot rule just because he is a man and she is a woman--but can only do so, and bring her to obedience, when he has shown her his intellectual superiority and his wisdom.

Woman is as willing to be ruled as ever she was--she always adores a master; but she has grown too intelligent to bow her head just because a man is a _man_--he must be _the man_. Man is naturally fighting for his old omnipotence, which he possessed regardless of his personal endowment, simply because he was a male creature--and the foolish section of woman is fighting man, with bombs and tricks and frantic words, instead of _convincing_ him by her wisdom and attainments, by her demonstrations of knowledge of life and its duties and responsibilities, that she has grown at last indeed fitted to be treated as an equal and a comrade, not as a plaything and a slave.

Who does not respect a woman who fulfils all her obligations with grace and charm, whose house is well ordered, whose friends are well entertained by her fine mind, and whose children are well brought up and full of understanding? She is indeed more precious than rubies and far more full of influence for the good of her community than she who shouts of rights and wrongs and votes and such-like. The first woman could control a hundred votes, and help a government, but the second can only clog the wheels of the s.e.x's advancement.

Now we get back to marriage!

And the first and foremost thing to be understood is that it is a frightful responsibility to undertake, and that all those who enter into this bond lightly and for frivolous motives, or from just drifting, will be made by fate to pay the price.

Think of it! Two people stand up and swear before G.o.d to continue to love one another until death do them part. They solemnly stand there and make vows about an emotion over which they have no more control than they have over the keeping of the wind in the south. They have only control, if they have strong wills, over its demonstration. And then in nine cases out of ten neither thinks for a moment afterwards, of his or her responsibility _of trying to make possible_ the observance of these vows, by keeping alight the flame of love in the other's heart. A man utterly disillusions a woman and then blames her, not himself, for her ceasing to care for him, and being eventually attracted by some one else! A woman disgusts or bores a man, and then bewails her sad lot, and calls the man a brute for being indifferent, and a shameful creature for looking elsewhere for consolation! In all marriages there is no one to blame or praise for unhappiness or happiness but the two individuals themselves. It is his fault--or misfortune--if she no longer cares, and likewise hers in the parallel case--and it is owing to the weakness of either if outside circ.u.mstances have been able to interfere. Thus to ensure happiness there must be a tremendous sense of personal responsibility, and there should be understanding of life and understanding of nature instincts and understanding of s.e.x instincts; and a ruthless tearing away of the false values which a Victorian age grafted upon religion, narrowing the mind of woman as to man's needs--and narrowing man's conception of woman's mental capacity.

No woman must ever forget in her relation to man that "he who pays the piper calls the tune," and in this I am not only speaking literally of shekels of gold and silver, but of the power incorporated in certain personalities; and man, if he chose to exert it, has always _force majeure_ at his command in the last extremity, although in these days of Herculean young women he may lose even this in time!

Before undertaking to play that most difficult part of wife, every girl ought to ask herself, Does she really care for the man enough to make her use her intelligence to understand him, and to try to keep him loving her? Or if she does not personally care enough for him to trouble about this--will the situation of her husband in the world satisfy her, and make the bondage, unleavened by love, of the care of house, servants, and possible children, worth while?

Before undertaking the situation she ought to look at every aspect of the case, and question herself searchingly upon her own aims and ends, and if the actual facts will or will not fit in with them. Having made up her mind that for one reason or another it is for her happiness to take a certain man for her mate, she ought then sedulously to cultivate all the aspects of the condition which can conduce to peace and to the attainment and enjoyment of that end. She must not forget that the man has paid her the highest honour a man can pay a woman. He has selected her to be his life's companion. He proposes in nine cases out of ten, to provide her with a home and a position in life, and to take upon himself the responsibility of her maintenance (when the woman has money of her own this question is different naturally). But in all cases the man in asking her to marry him has shown that something in her--or in her possessions--makes her appear worth the giving up of his liberty. So she owes him just as much as the thing he took her for. If for her money, and she knows it is for that, and she has been sufficiently humble to accept him on those terms--she owes him money. If for love--she owes him at least the outside observances of love. If he has pretended love and it is for some other motive, his Nemesis will fall upon himself in the disillusion and contempt he will inspire. But in all cases the woman, through want of intelligence or pure misfortune, has crossed the Rubicon with him; she has allowed him to teach her the meaning of dual life--she has put it into his power with her to create future lives. She cannot, for any price or any prayers, recross that fatal stream. So for all reasons of common sense--and above all, sense of responsibility to the community--she had better make the best of her bargain.

Likewise, man should pause and think, Is it merely because I cannot obtain this woman upon any other terms that I am offering her marriage? Have I respect for her? Do I think she will bring happiness into my house as well as pleasure to my body? Is she suited to my brain capacity when I am not exalted by physical emotion? Am I going to curb my selfishness and behave decently towards her?

If he cannot answer these questions satisfactorily he may know that he is undertaking a hundred-to-one chance of peace and happiness. But if the physical desire is stronger than all these considerations, then he must _know and realise_ that whatever happens _he must never blame the woman_. He has succ.u.mbed to the most material and alas! the most hideously strong force in nature--not because the woman tempted him, as it has been the fas.h.i.+on for man to say since the days of Adam--but because there is something in himself which is so weak that it cannot listen to the promptings of the spirit when the body calls.

In each and every case it is a man's duty to be kind and courteous to a woman who is his wife. He has made her so by his free vows before G.o.d (because no one can be forced to the altar against his absolute will in these days), or he has made her so by vows and business agreement, according to the laws of his country, before the Registrar.

In either case he has made her his legal wife and the possible mother of his children--units unborn who can affect the welfare of his country. He has, then, his great duties towards her. If she was a girl, he has taken from her that which nothing on earth can restore; he has made her into another being. He has been instrumental in making her--this other human soul--accept responsibilities, and he is bound as an honourable man to school himself so as to be able to help the mutual happiness and peace of their dual existence. And if he wishes to be obeyed, loved, and respected, he has to look to himself that he inspires obedience, love, and respect in his mate. She will not experience these feelings to order; and fear alone, or some other and lower motive, would make her simulate them. Man must not forget that nothing simulated can last. Truth alone remains at the end of the year.

No marriage can be certain of continuing happy which has been entered into in the spirit of taking a lottery ticket. But most marriages could be fairly happy if both man and woman looked the thing squarely in the face and made up their minds that they would run together in harness as two well-trained carriage horses, both knowing of the pole, both pulling at the collar and not over-straining the traces, both taking pride in their high stepping and their unity of movement. How much more dignified than to make a pitiful exhibition of incompatibility like two wild creatures kicking and plunging, and finally upsetting the vehicle they had agreed to draw?

I would like to discuss now the problem of whether or not marriage could be made happy no matter how it starts, by using common sense, but the deep interest of the whole subject has made my pen already cover too much s.p.a.ce and I must refrain in this chapter.

Only, men and women who read this, do not pa.s.s it by, but stop and _think_ before you plunge, through the giving and the taking of a wedding ring, into happiness or misery.

IV

AFTER MARRIAGE

Considering the instability of all our tastes and desires and the almost total want of personal discipline which prevails in the present day, it is really remarkable that the legal marriage goes on even as well as it does!--but that the state could be much happier is patent to any understanding, and it may be interesting to look at one or two aspects of it, and see from whence comes the discord. A woman enters into matrimony for various reasons, but, in the majority of cases in England and America at least, it is because she is, or fancies she is, in love with the man at the time. He, therefore, if this is so, starts with an enormous power over her, which, if he chooses to keep it, will enable him to turn their future life in any way he will, because the greatest desire even of the most strong-minded and domineering woman when in love is to please the man. A woman only becomes indifferent as to whether or no she is doing this when she no longer cares.

Therefore, it is the man's business to keep her in this state if he wants his home to be happy. The first thing for him to realise is that she cannot remain in love with him by her own will, any more than she can cease to love him by her own will--these states are produced in her by something in himself. And if he discontinues using the arts and attractions which awakened her love, he cannot expect it to continue its demonstration, any more than a kettle will go on boiling if the heat beneath is removed from it. This argument, of course, applies to both s.e.xes. Unfortunately, in a great many cases of marriage, the simple attraction of s.e.x has been the unconscious motive which has caused the man to enter the bond, and naturally, when he has gained his wishes he ceases to endeavour consciously to attract the woman.

And then one of two things happens; either she grows to love him more for a time, because of that contrariness in human beings which always puts abnormal value upon the thing which is slipping out of reach--or she herself becomes indifferent; and then it is a mere chance if they both, or either of them, possess character and a sense of duty as to how the marriage goes along. We will take the case of a union when both parties are in love when they start, and really desire that their marriage should remain happy. Each ought to decide that he or she will do his or her uttermost to continue to put forth those charms which enchanted the mate before the ceremony. No one would expect the bloom to remain upon grapes if he carelessly rubbed it off, but both man and woman are extraordinarily surprised and disgusted when they find their partners are no longer in love with them, and at once blame them for fickleness, instead of examining themselves to see what caused this ceasing to care--what they did--or omitted to do--which made themselves no longer able to call forth love from their mates. And until it can be grasped that all emotion of love is produced by something consciously or unconsciously possessed by the other person--and that it is not in the power of the individual to order himself to feel it, or not to feel it, but that only the demonstration of the state is in his power--unions will go on with mutual recriminations and the hitting of the heads against a stone wall.

Some natures are naturally fickle and unstable--and no matter how good and sweet the partner may be, they break away. These cases are misfortunes, but in a.n.a.lysing the facts the actual responsibility cannot be laid at the doors of such people, since they could not _by will_ have kept the sensation of love for their partners, any more than by will they could have ceased to care for them. They could only _by will_ have been able to control the expression of their feelings.

I seem to be reiterating this point to the verge of tiresomeness, but it is so vitally important to understand, because its non-comprehension produces such injustice. If John _by his will_ were able to make himself remain in love with Mary, and failed to do so, then she might have a right to blame him because he had sworn that he would at the altar. But as he cannot command his actual emotion, she can only blame him for infidelity of the body, since of that, at least, it is possible he could be master. But, alas! Mary very seldom realises this, and reproaches John for ceasing _to feel loving_ towards her!

which is as sensible on her part as to reproach him for the skies pouring rain. John, on his side, in like case does the same thing, because he also has not understood the truth. A valuable point for both to keep in remembrance is that the attraction of s.e.x is the basis of all "being in love." However enn.o.bled the emotion may become afterwards, it always starts with that. (This fact is explained and elaborated in the conversation between the Russian and the Clergyman in my story, "The Point of View.") If common sense is used in thinking about this matter, it will be seen that if this was not the foundation of "being in love" the emotion would be calm, and like that of brother and sister. So, admitting that this is the foundation, it can be understood how important a part it plays in the happiness of two people bound together by law for life, and how important it is to the woman to endeavor to continue to make herself lovable in the eyes of the man--and _vice versa_--_it is of supreme importance to whichever of them cares the most_. When the thing starts equally, the man nearly always cools the soonest, because of his fundamental instincts, and the force of satiation. He then probably goes on liking his wife--perhaps he admires and respects her intellect, but the thrill which used to come when her hand even touched his hand is no longer there, and he only feels emotion towards her _when he is in the mood, which would make him feel it towards any woman_ who happened to be there at the moment. And just in the measure that he was pa.s.sionate towards his wife, so he will be the easy or difficult prey of a new emotion. And if this aspect of the case distresses the woman, she must look to her guns--so to speak--and use the whole of her intelligence to regain her hold over his affection. She will not improve matters by lamenting or reproaching the man. If it does not distress her, then she can congratulate herself that a time of peace has come!

A woman must face the fact that man is a totally different creature from herself, governed by other instincts, which can be best explained by realising them in animals in their boldest nature aspect, _i.e._ a male dog at times will tear down any barrier that is within his personal strength to enable him to get to his mate, and a female dog will fight through unheard-of obstacles to reach her puppies. Here is a plain ill.u.s.tration of the different ruling original instincts in animals, and human beings are only the highest form of animal, given by G.o.d a more developed soul and a choice of action, but still influenced by fundamental nature instincts, which, beneath all the training of civilisation, unconsciously still direct their actions and affect their point of view. Civilisation, on its good side, teaches man to overcome his bodily desires and to keep them in check, but not to eliminate them, to do which would militate against the Creator's scheme of things. Civilisation on its evil side has frequently perverted woman's natural instinct, so that in numbers of cases the wonderful devotion of the animal to her young has become numb in her, or dead. If only all women would bravely face these facts of nature instincts in themselves and in men, they would approach marriage with much broader-minded views, and would have a much greater chance of happiness, because they would realise that they must be lenient to man in the matter of his fidelity to them; and if man realised these instincts, he would enter marriage knowing he must make a fight with nature to keep the vows he has sworn, and so he would be on his guard against the first inclination to stray, instead of an easy prey to it.

For, as it is, there is a recognised unwritten law among most men that honour must always be kept with "the other woman," but that it is not necessary with a wife. A man's honour towards a woman is only certain of holding with his inclinations--that is: A married to B will be unfaithful to her with C--which is technically dishonour. He will not consider that, but will tell any lie to protect C and stick to her, because his sense of honour has gone with his inclination. He feels he must "never give away C to B," although he experiences no qualm in having already tacitly "given away" B to C, by his very part of taking C for his mistress. B is also a woman, but only his wife! He has not been the least aware of it, but his sense of honour has followed his inclination, in a way it would never do over a business arrangement with another man. To give a parallel case in a business arrangement: A makes a bargain with B that he will deal with him alone; he then finds he likes the goods of C better than those of B--but no honest tradesman would think of breaking his contract even secretly with B and dealing with C, for, if he did, he would know himself that he was dishonest, and that all his fellows who knew he had done this thing would despise and ostracise him. But a man when deceiving his wife not only generally feels no shame himself, but knows his male friends will probably not think the worse of him for it. There is not the slightest use in arguing about these facts, any more than, as I said in my first paper upon marriage, there is in arguing about fundamental instincts, and it would be well for women to realise this elastic, unwritten law of honour in men towards them, and so not expect, at the present state of man's evolution, that they will receive anything different. They must never forget that this adjustable sense of honour springs from the same fundamental male instinct we spoke of--and therefore cannot be turned round by women and applied to their own cases, because the same instincts do not come into force with them. Woman must always remember that _man is conquering primitive nature in being faithful to her at all_, and therefore she ought, if she desires that he shall be so, to look to her own every point of attraction to make it possible (if not easy!) for him to fulfil her desire. I must reiterate again that it is wiser to remember that it is civilisation alone (civilisation embracing development of moral sense, and religious sense, and the force of custom) which keeps him from straying whenever he feels inclined, and that all she can do to prevent it is to redouble her own attractions, and to help the women of the future by instilling into her own sons' minds the idea that, as marriage is _an ideal and not a natural state_, the man who enters into it must be prepared to school himself to live up to an ideal, and control his vagrant emotions. To teach the boys a new and higher sense of honour is the only possible way to alter matters, as a grown man is seldom changed. In marriage, both partners must understand that they are undertaking to do a most difficult thing in vowing to live together and love for ever! Whichever cares the most will have to use _intelligence_ to keep the other--and if it is the woman who is unfortunate enough to occupy this position, she generally absolutely sacrifices herself to gratify the man's smallest wish, and so makes herself cheap. She should use her wits and keep a firm hand over herself so as not to let herself become in his eyes of no importance.

Selfishness is another basic instinct of man, caused because he was originally and unquestionably Lord of Creation, and only in the countries where men are in the majority are the greater number of them unselfish even now to woman. In England, where women are in the majority, selfishness in every male child is fostered from his cradle.

So women must not indiscriminately condemn every man as being selfish, as though it was his personal fault; they must look to the cause, and condemn that if they want to, or, better still, try to eradicate it in the future by influencing their own sons to desire to be chivalrous and unselfish to the woman of the next generation. In this way they would help to raise the standard of honour and responsibility in humanity in general.

The most selfish man is not often selfish to the woman whom he is in love with. While she excites these emotions, however he shows his cloven hoof to the rest of the household, he will not show it to her.