The Truth About Woman

III.—Prostitution

A brief and final section of this chapter on the sexual relationships must be devoted to the question of the conditions of prostitution, which are really part of the conditions of marriage, being correlated with that institution in its present coercive form, in fact, part of it and growing out of it.

The extent of the problems involved here are so immense, the difficulties so great and the issues so involved that I hesitate at making any attempt to treat so wide a subject briefly and necessarily inadequately in the short space at my disposal. Yet it seems to me impossible to take the easy way and pass it over in silence, and I may be able to contribute a word or two of worth to this very complex social phenomenon. I shall limit myself to the aspects of the question that seem to me important, choosing in preference the facts about which I have some little personal knowledge.

Essentially this is a woman's question. What do women know about it? Almost nothing. We are really as ignorant of the character, moral, mental and physical of "the fallen woman," as if she belonged to an extinct species. We know her only to pity her or to despise her, which is, in result, to know nothing that is true about her. To deal with the problem needs women and men of the finest character and the widest sympathy. There are some of them at work now, but these, for the most part, are engaged in the almost impossible task of rescue work, which does not bring, I think, a real understanding of the facts in their wider social aspect.

Women are, however, realising that they cannot continue to shirk this part of their civic duties. These "painted tragedies" of our streets have got to be recognised and dealt with; and this not so much for the sake of the prostitute, but for all women's safety and the health of the race. The time is not far distant when the mothers of the community, the sheltered wives of respectable homes, must come to understand that their own position of moral safety is maintained at the expense of a traffic whose very name they will not mention. For the prostitute, though unable to avenge herself, has had a mighty ally in Nature, who has taken her case in hand and has avenged it on the women and their children, who have received the benefits of our legal marriage system. M. Brieux deals with this question in Les Avariés: it is a tragedy that should be read by all women.

For this reason, if for no other, the existence of prostitution has to be faced by women. Apathy and ignorance will no longer be accepted as excuse, in the light of the sins against the race slowly piled up through the centuries by vice and disease. But what will be the result of women's action in this matter? What will they do? What changes in the law will they demand? The importance of these questions forces itself upon all those who realise at all the difficulties of the problem. What we see and hear does not, I think, give great hopes. Every woman who dares to speak on this great burked subject seems to have "a remedy" ready to her hand. What one hears most frequently are unconsidered denunciations of "the men who are responsible." For example, I heard one woman of education state publicly that there was no problem of prostitution! I mention this because it seems to me a very grave danger, an instance of the feminine over-haste in reform, which, while casting out one devil, but prepares the way for seven other devils worse than the first. Women seem to expect to solve problems that have vexed civilisation since the beginnings of society. This attitude is a little irritating. Every attempt hitherto to grapple with prostitution has been a failure. Women have to remember that it has existed as an institution in nearly all historic times and among nearly all races of men. It is as old as monogamic marriage, and maybe the result of that form of the sexual relationship, and not, as some have held, a survival of primitive sexual licence. The action of women in this question must be based on an educated opinion, which is cognisant with the past history of prostitution, recognises the facts of its action to-day in all civilised countries, and understands the complexity of the problem from the man's side as well as the woman's. Nothing less than this is necessary if any fruitful change is to be effected, when women shall come to have a voice to direct the action the State should assume towards this matter. The one measure which has recently been brought forward and passed, largely aided by women, especially the militant Suffragists—I refer to the White Slave Traffic Bill—is just the most useless, ill-devised and really preposterous law with which this tremendous problem could be mocked. As Bernard Shaw has recently said—

Now all this is true, but is not all the truth. Remove the economic pressure and no woman will be driven, or be likely to be trapped, into entering the oldest profession in the world; but this does not say that she will not enter it. The establishment of a minimum wage will assuredly lighten the evil, but it will not end prostitution. The economic factor is by no means the only factor. It is quite true that poverty drives many women into the profession—that this should be so is one of the social crimes that must, and will, be remedied.

The real problem lies deeper than this. Want is not the incentive to the traffic of sex in the case of the dancer or chorus girl in regular employment, of the forewoman in a factory or shop who earns steady wages, or among numerous women belonging to much higher social positions. These women choose prostitution, they are not driven into it. It is necessary to insist upon this. The belief in the efficacy of economic reform amounts almost to a disease—a kind of unquestioning fanatical faith. Again and again I have been met by the assurance, made by men who should know better, as well as by women, that no woman would sell herself if economic causes were removed. Such opinion proves a very plain ignorance of the history and facts of prostitution. It is only a little more scientific than the view of the woman moral crusader, who believes that the "social evil" can easily be remedied by self-control on the part of men. One of the worst vices common to women at present is spiritual pride. One wonders if these short-cut reformers have ever been acquainted with a single member of this class they hope to repress by legal enactments or other measures, such as early marriage, better wages for women, moral education, the censorship of amusements, and so forth. It is not so simple. You see, what is needed is an understanding of the conditions, not from the reformer's standard of thought, but from that of the prostitute, which is a very different matter. How can any one hope to reform a class whose real lives, thoughts, and desires are unknown to them?

My effort to reach bed-rock facts had led me to seek first-hand information from these women, many of whom I have come to know intimately, and to like. I have learnt a great deal, much more than from all my close study of the problem as it is presented in books. Problems are never so simple in the working out as they appear in theories. Moral doctrines fall to pieces; even statistics and the estimates of expert investigators are apt to become curiously unreal in the light of a very little practical knowledge. I have learnt that there is no one type of prostitute, no one cause of the evil, no one remedy that will cure it.

And here, before I go further, I must in fairness state that I have been compelled to give up the view held by me, in common with most women, that men and their uncontrolled passions are chiefly responsible for this hideous traffic. It is so comfortable to place the sins of society on men's passions. But as an unbiassed inquirer I have learnt that seduction as a cause of prostitution requires very careful examination. We women have got to remember that if many of our fallen sisters have been seduced by men, at least an equal number of men have received their sexual initiation at the hands of our sex. This seduction of men by women is often the starting-point of a young man's association with courtesans. It is time to assert that, if women suffer through men's passion, men suffer no less from women's greed. I am inclined to accept the estimate of Lippert (Prostitution in Hamburg) that the principal motives to prostitution are "idleness, frivolity, and, above all, the love of finery." This last is, as I believe, a far more frequent and stronger factor in determining towards prostitution than actual want, and one, moreover, that is very deeply rooted in the feminine character. I do not wish to be cynical, but facts have forced on me the belief that the majority of prostitutes are simply doing for money what they originally did of their own will for excitement and the gain of some small personal gift.

There are, of course, many types among these unclassed women, as many as there are in any other class, probably even more. Yet, in one respect, I have found them curiously alike. Just as the members of any other trade have a special attitude towards their work, so prostitutes have, I think, a particular way of viewing their trade in sex. It is a mistake of sentiment to believe they have any real dislike to this traffic. Such distaste is felt by the unsuccessful and by others in periods of unprofitable business, but not, I think, otherwise. To me it has seemed in talking with them—as I have done very freely—that they regard the sexual embraces of their partners exactly in the light that I regard the process of the actual writing down of my books—as something, in itself unimportant and tiresome, but necessary to the end to be gained. This was first made clear to me in a conversation with a member of the higher demi-monde, a woman of education and considerable character. "After all," she said, "it is really a very small thing to do, and gives one very little trouble, and men are almost always generous."

This remarkable statement seems to me representative of the attitude of most prostitutes. They are much better paid, if at all successful, than they ever could be as workers. The sale of their sex opens up to them the same opportunities of gain that gambling on the stock-exchange or betting on the racecourse, for instance, opens up to men. It also offers the same joy of excitement, undoubtedly a very important factor. There are a considerable number of women who are drawn to and kept in the profession, not through necessity, but through neurosis.

There is no doubt that prostitution is very profitable to the clever trader. I was informed by one woman, for instance, that a certain country, whose name I had perhaps better withhold, "Is a Paradise for women." Quite a considerable fortune, either in money or jewels, may be reaped in a few months and sometimes in a few weeks. But the woman must keep her head; cleverness is more important even than beauty. I learnt that it was considered foolish to remain with the same partner for more than two nights, the oftener a change was made the greater the chance of gain. The richest presents are given as a rule by young boys or old men: some of these boys are as young as fifteen years.

Now the really extraordinary thing to me was that my informant had plainly no idea of my moral sensibility being shocked at these statements. Of course, if I had shown the least surprise or condemnation, she would at once have agreed with me—but I didn't. I was trying to see things as she saw them, and my interest caused her really to speak to me as she felt. I am certain of this, as was proved to me in a subsequent conversation, in which I was told the history of a girl friend, who had got into difficulties and been helped by my informant. (These women are almost always kind and generous to one another. I know of one case in which a woman who had been trapped into a bogus marriage and then deserted, afterwards helped with money the girl and bastard child, also left by the man who had deceived her.) The story was ended with this extraordinary remark, "It was all my friend's own fault, she was not particular who she went with; she would go with any man just because she took a fancy to him. I often told her how foolish she was, but she always said she could not help it."

It was then that I realised the immensity of the gulf which separated my outlook from that of this successful courtesan. To her to be not particular was to give oneself without a due return in money: to me——! Well, I needed all my control at that moment not to let her see what I felt. I have never been conscious of so deep a pity for any woman before, or felt so fierce an anger against social conditions that made this degradation of love possible. For, mark you, I know this woman well, have known her for years, and I can, and do, testify that in many directions apart from her trade, her virtue, her refinement and her character are equal, even if not superior, to my own. This is the greatest lesson I have learnt. The degradation of prostitution rests not with these women, but on us, the sheltered, happy women who have been content to ignore or despise them. Do you come to know these women (and this is very difficult) you are just as able to like them and in many ways to respect them, as you are to like and to respect any "straight" woman. You may hate their trade, you cannot justly hate them.

I would like here to bring forward as a chief cause of prostitution a factor which, though mentioned by many investigators,[327] has not, I think, been sufficiently recognised. To me it has been brought very forcibly home by my personal investigations. I mean sexual frigidity. This is surely the clearest explanation of the moral insensibility of the prostitute. I have not enough knowledge to say whether this is a natural condition, or whether it is acquired. I am certain, however, that it is present in those courtesans whom I have known. These women have never experienced passion. I believe that the traffic of love's supreme rite means less to them than it would do to me to shake hands with a man I disliked.

Now, if I am right, this fact will explain a great deal. I believe, moreover, that here a way opens out whereby in the future prostitution may be remedied. This is no fanciful statement, but a practical belief in passion as a power containing all forces. To any one who shares the faith I have been developing in this book, what I mean will be evident. If we consider how large a factor physical sex is in the life of woman, it becomes clear that any atrophy of these instincts must be in the highest degree hurtful. Moral insensibility is almost always combined with economic dependence. If all mating was founded, as it ought to be, on love, and all children born from lovers, there would follow as an inevitable result a truer insistence on reality in the relationships of the sexes. With a strengthening of passion in the mothers of the race, sex will return to its right and powerful purpose; love of all types, from the merest physical to the highest soul attraction, will be brought back to its true biological end—the service of the future.

I know, of course, as I have said already, that, just as there are many different forms of prostitution, there are many and varied types of prostitutes, and that, therefore, it is foolishness to hold fast in a one-sided manner to a single theory. There are undoubtedly voluptuous women among prostitutes. These I have not considered. For one thing I have not met them. I have preferred to speak of the women I have known personally. In the light of what I have learnt from them, I have come to believe that only in comparatively few cases does sexual desire lead any woman to adopt a career of prostitution, and in still fewer cases does passion persist. The insistence so often made on this factor as a cause of prostitution is due, in part, to ignorance as to the real feelings of these women, and also, in part, to its moral plausibility. We are so afraid of normal passion that we readily assume abnormal passion to be the cause of the evil. But far truer causes on the women's side are love of luxury and dislike of work. I think the estimates given by men on this subject have to be accepted with great caution. It must be remembered that it is the business of these women to excite passion, and, to do this, they must have learnt to simulate passion; and men, as every woman who is not ignorant or a fool knows, are easy to deceive. It may also be added that to the woman of strong sexuality the career of prostitution is suited. It is possible that in the future and under wiser conditions such women only will choose this profession.

For the same reason I have passed very lightly over the economic factor as a cause of prostitution. I believe that this will be changed. I do not under-estimate the undoubted importance of the driving pressure of want. But, as I have tried to make clear, it does not take us to the root of the problem. Poverty can only be regarded as probably the strongest out of many accessory causes. The socialists and economic apostles have to face this: no possible raising of women's wages can abolish prostitution.[328]

We must hold firmly to the fact that characterlessness, which is incapable of overcoming opposition and takes the path that is easiest, is the result of the individual's inherited disposition, with the addition of his, or her, own experience; and of these it is the former that, as a rule, determines to prostitution. Every kind of moral and intellectual looseness and dullness can, for the most part, be traced to this cause. At all events it is the strongest among many. Not alone for the prostitute's sake must this subject be seriously approached, but for society's sake as well. As things stand with us at present, moral sensitiveness has a poor chance of being cultivated, and those who realise that this is the case are still very few. Women have yet to learn the responsibilities of love, not only in regard to their duties of child-bearing and child-rearing, but in its personal bearing on their own sexual needs and the needs of men. I believe that the degradation of our legitimate love-relationships is the ultimate cause of prostitution, to which all other causes are subsidiary.

If we look now at the position for a moment from the other side—the man's side—a very difficult question awaits us. It is a question that women must answer. What is the real need of the prostitute on the part of men? This demand is present everywhere under civilisation; what are its causes? and how far are these likely to be changed? Now it is easy to bring forward answers, such as the lateness of marriage, difficulty of divorce, and all those social and economic causes which may be grouped together and classed as "lack of opportunity of legitimate love." Without question these causes are important, but, like the economic factor which drives women into prostitution, they are not fundamental; they are also remediable. They do not, however, explain the fact, which all know, that the prostitute is sought out by numberless men who have ample opportunity of unpriced love with other women. Here we have a preference for the prostitute, not the acceptance of her as a substitute taken of necessity. It is, of course, easy to say that such preference is due to the lustful nature of the male. There was a time when I accepted this view—it is, without doubt, a pleasant and a flattering one for women. I have learnt the folly of such shallow condemnations of needs I had not troubled to understand. Possibly no woman can quite get to the truth here; but at least I have tried to see facts straight and without feminine prejudice.

This is what seems to me to be the explanation.

We have got to recognise that there are primitive instincts of tremendous power, which, held in check by our dull and laborious, yet sexually-exciting, civilisation, break out at times in many individuals like a veritable monomania. In earlier civilisations this fact was frankly recognised, and such instincts were prevented from working mischief by the provision of means wherein they might expend themselves. Hence the widespread custom of festivals with the accompanying orgy; but these channels have been closed to us with a result that is often disastrous. No woman can have failed to feel astonishment at the attractive force the prostitute may, and often does, exercise on cultured men of really fine character. There is some deeper cause here than mere sexual necessity. But if we accept, as we must, the existence of these imperatively driving, though usually restrained impulses, it will be readily seen that prostitution provides a channel in which this surplus of wild energy may be expended. It lightens the burden of the customary restraints. There are many men, I believe, who find it a relief just to talk with a prostitute—a woman with whom they have no need to be on guard. The prostitute fulfils that need that may arise in even the most civilised man for something primitive and strong: a need, as has been said by a male writer, better than I can express it, "for woman in herself, not woman with the thousand and one tricks and whimsies of wives, mothers and daughters."

This is a truth that it seems to me it is very necessary for all women to realise. It is in our foolishness and want of knowledge that we cast our contempt upon men. Women flinch from the facts of life. These women who, regarded by us as "the supreme types of vice," are yet, from this point of view, "the most efficient guardians of our virtue." Must we not then rather see if there is no cause in ourselves for blame?

It has been held for generations that woman must practise principles of virtue to counteract man's example. This has led to an entirely false standard. A solving compromise has been found in the ideal of purity in one set of women and passion in another. And this state of things has continued indefinitely until it has become to some extent true. Numberless women have withered in this unprofitable service to chastity. The sexual coldness of the modern woman, which sociologists continually refer to, exists mainly in consequence of this constant system of repression. Female virtue has been over-cultivated, the flower has grown to an enormous size, but it has lost its scent. A hypocritical and a lying system has been set up professing disbelief in that which it knows is necessary to the needs of the individual woman and to the larger needs of the race. Physical love is only inglorious when it is regarded ingloriously. Why this horror of passion? The tragedy of woman it seems is this, that with such power of love as she has in her there should be so little opportunity for its use—so much for its waste. Those of us who believe in passion as the supreme factor in race-building, must know that this view of its shamefulness is weakening the race.

I, therefore, hold firmly as my belief that the hateful traffic in love will flourish just as long, and in proportion, as we regard passion outside of prostitution with shame. Each one of us women is responsible. Do we not know that there is not this difference between our sexual needs and those of men? Let us tear down the old pretence. Do not instincts arise in us, too, that demand expression, free from all coercion of convention? And if we stifle them are we really the better—the more moral sex? I doubt this, as I have come to doubt so many of the lies that have been accepted as the truth about women.

The true hope of the future lies in the undivided recognition of responsibility in love, which alone can make freedom possible. Freedom for all women—the women of the home and the women of the streets. The prostitute woman must be freed from all oppression. We, her sisters, can demand no less than this. If we are to remain sheltered, she must be sheltered too. She must be freed from the oppression of absurd laws, from the terrible oppression of the police and from all economic and social oppression. But to make this possible, these women, who for centuries have been blasted for our sins against love, must be re-admitted by women and men into the social life of our homes and the State. Then, and then alone, can we have any hope that the prostitute will cease to be and the natural woman will take her place.

FOOTNOTES:

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XI

THE END OF THE INQUIRY

CHAPTER XIToC

THE END OF THE INQUIRY

Looking back over the long inquiry which lies behind us, we have come by many and various paths to seek that standpoint from which we started—the Truth about Woman. We must now try to give a brief answer to a difficult question. What is the future of woman? Are we able to recognise in the present upward development of the sex signs of real progress towards better conditions? Is it within the capacity of the female half of human-kind to acquire and keep that position of essential usefulness held by the females of all other species? Will women learn to develop their own nature and to express their own genius? Can their present characteristic weakness, vices, and failings be really overcome under different and freer conditions of domestic and social life? Are we of to-day justified in looking forward to the new woman of the future, with saner aspirations and wider aims, who lives the whole of her life; who will restore to humanity harmony between the sexes, and transform the miseries of love back to its rightful joys? Can these things, indeed, be?

The answer is a confident and joyful "Yes!"

The re-birth of woman is no dream.

We have become accustomed to listen to the opinion voiced by men. We have heard that belief in women is a symptom of youth or of inexperience of the sex, which a riper mind and wider knowledge will invariably tend to dissipate. So woman has come to regard herself as almost an indiscretion on the part of the Creator, necessary indeed to man, but something which he must try to hide and hush up. We have, in fact, put into practice Milton's ideal: "He, for God only, she, for God in him." Some such arguments from the lips of disillusioned men have been possible, perhaps, with some measure of reason. But the time has come for men to hold their peace.

Woman is learning to believe in herself.

Now, so far, the great result of the long years of repression has been the sterility of women's lives. Sterility is a deadly sin. To-day so many of our activities are sterile. The women of our richer classes have been impotent by reason of their soft living; the women of our workers have had their vitality sweated out of them by their filthy labours; they could bear only dead things. Life ought to be a struggle of desire towards adventures of expression, whose nobility will fertilise the mind and lead to the conception of new and glorious births. Women have been forced to use life wastefully. They have been spiritually sterile; consuming, not giving: getting little from life, giving back little to life.

But woman is awakening to find her place in the eternal purpose. She is adding understanding to her feeling and passion.

Never before throughout the history of modern womankind has her own character evoked so earnest and profound an interest as to-day: never has she considered herself from so truly a social standpoint as now. It is true that the change has not yet, except in very few women, reached deep enough to the realities of the things that most matter. Women have to learn to utilise every advantage of their nature, not one side only. They will do this; because they will come to have truer and stronger motives. They are beginning even now to be sifted clean through the sieve of work. The waste of womanhood cannot for long continue.

One great and hopeful sign is a new consciousness among all women of personal responsibility to their own sex. The most fruitful outgrowth from the present agitation for the rights of citizens—the Vote! the symbol of this awakening—is a solidarity unknown among women before, which now binds them in one common purpose. Yet there is a possible danger lurking in this enthusiasm. Women will gain nothing by snatching at reform. Many have no eyes to see the beyond; they are hurried forward by a cry of wrongs, while others are held back by fear of change. Woman is by her temperament inclined to do too much or to do nothing. Looked at from this standpoint of the immediate present, when only the semi-hysterical and illogical aspects of the struggle are manifest, the future may appear dark. The revolution is accompanied by much noise and violence. Perhaps this is inevitable. I do not know. There is, what must seem to many of us who stand outside the fight, a terrible wastage, a straining and a shattering of the forces of life and love. To earn salvation quickly and riotously may not, indeed, be the surest way. It may be only a further development of the sin of woman, the wastage of her womanhood.

Women say that the fault rests with men. Again I do not know. Certainly it is much easier and pleasanter to see the mote in our brother's eye than it is to recognise a possible beam as clouding our own sight. One of the worst results of the protection of woman by man is that he has had to bear her sins. Women have grown accustomed to this; they do not even know how greatly their sex shields them. They will not readily yield up their scapegoat or sacrifice their privileges. But the personal responsibility that is making itself felt among women must teach them to be ready to answer for their own actions, and, if need be, to pay for them. Freedom carries with it the acceptance of responsibility. Women must accept this: they are working towards it.

In a new and free relationship of the sexes women have at least as much to learn as men. The possession of the vote is not going to transform women. Changes that matter are never so simple as that. Women estimating their future powers tend to become presumptuous. One is reminded sometimes of the people Nietzsche describes as "those who 'briefly deal' with all the real problems of life." It frequently appears as if the modern woman expects to hold tight to her old privileges as the protected child, as well as to gain her new rights as the human woman. In a word, to stay on her pedestal when it is convenient, and to climb down whenever she wants to. This cannot be. And the grasping of both sides of the situation leads to what is worse than all else—strife between women and men. Just in measure as the sexes fall away from love and understanding of each other, do they fall away from life into the mere futility of personal ends. It is to go on with man, and not to get from man, that is the goal of Woman's Freedom. There are other conditions of change that women have to be ready to meet. This must be. For however much some may sigh for the ease and the ignorant repose of the passing generation, we cannot go back. It is as impossible to live behind one's generation as before it. We have to live our lives in the pulse of the new knowledge, the new fears, the new increasing responsibilities. Women must train themselves to keep pace with men. There is a price to be paid for free womanhood. Are women ready and willing to pay it? If so, they must cease to profit and live by their sex. They must come out and be common women among common men. This, as I believe, is a better solution than to bring men up to women's level. For, as I have said before, I doubt, and still doubt, if women are really better than men.

If the constructive synthetic purpose of life, which I have tried to make the ruling idea of my book, is that all growth is a succession of upward development through the action of love between the two sexes, then not only must woman in her individual capacity—physically as wife and mother, and mentally as home-builder and teacher—contribute to the further progress of life by a nobler use of her sex; but the collective work of women in their social and political activities must all be set towards the same purpose. It is in this light, the welfare of the lives of the future and the building up of a finer race—that the individual and collective conduct of women must be judged. Women have talked and thought too much about their sex, and all the time they have totally under-estimated the real strength of the strongest thing in life. I think the force, the power, the driving intensity of love will come as a surprise and a wonder to awakened women. I think they will come to realise, as they have never realised before, the tremendous force sex is.

The Woman's movement is inextricably bound up with all the problems of our disorganised love-relationships; and although politicians with their customary blindness have chosen to treat it as a side issue, it is, for this reason, the most serious social question that has come to the front during the century. Woman's position and her efforts to regain her equality with man can never be a thing apart—a side issue—to a responsible State. Love and the relationship of the sexes is the foundation of the social structure itself; it forms the real centre of all the social and economic problems—of the population problem, of the marriage problem, of the problems of education and eugenics, of the future of labour, of the sweating question, and the problem of prostitution. As the Woman's Movement presses forward each and all of these questions will press forward too. All women and men have got to be concerned with sex and its problems until some at least of these wrongs are righted. That any woman can ever regard love as merely a personal matter, "an incident in life," that can be set aside in the rush of new activities, makes one wonder if the delusions of women about themselves can ever end. This misunderstanding of love ought never to be possible to any woman or any man: it is going to be increasingly difficult for it to be possible for the new woman and her mate that is to be. In love all things rest. In love has gathered the strength to be, growing into conscious need of fuller life, growing into completer vision of the larger day.

My faith in womanhood is strong and deep. The manifestations of the present, many of which seem to give cause for fear, are, after all, only the superficial evidence of a deep undercurrent of awakening. The ultimate driving force behind is shaping a social understanding in the woman's spirit. So surely from out of the wreckage and passion a new woman will arise.

For this Nature will see to. Woman, both by physiological and biological causes is the constructive force of life. Nothing that is fine in woman will be lost, nothing that is profitable will be sacrificed. No, the essential feminine in her will be gathered in a more complete, a more enduring synthesis. Woman is the predominant partner in the sexual relationship. We cannot get away from this. It is here, in this wide field, where so many wrongs wait to be righted, that the thrill of her new passion must bring well-being and joy. The female was the start of life, and woman is the main stream of its force. Man is her agent, her helper: hers is the supreme responsibility in creating and moulding life. It is thus certain that woman's present assertion of her age-long rights and claim for truer responsibilities has its cause rooted deep in the needs of the race. She is treading, blindly, perhaps, and stumblingly, in the steps laid down for her by Nature; following in a path not made by man, one that goes back to the beginning of life and is surer and beyond herself; thus she has time as well as right upon her side, and can therefore afford to be patient as well as fearless.

"I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over hither."

From the height of Pisgah there is revealed to women to-day a glimpse of the promised land. But shall we enter therein to take possession? I believe not. It will be given to those who follow us and carry on the work which our passion has begun. For our children's children the joys of reaping, the feast, and the songs of harvest home.

What matter? We shall be there in them.

Shall we, then, complain if for us is the hard toil, the doubts, and the mistakes, the long enduring patience, and the bitter fruits of disappointment? We have opened up the way.

And is not this one with the very purpose of life? We are obeying Nature's law in dedicating ourselves and our work to those who follow us. We have made our record, we can do nothing more. The race flows through us. All our effort lies in this—the giving of all that we have been able to gain. And it is sufficient. This is the end and the beginning.

Thus we are brought back to the truth from which we started. Women are the guardians of the Race-life and the Race-soul. There is no more to be said. It is because we are the mothers of men that we claim to be free. We claim this as our right. We claim it for the sake of men, for our lovers, our husbands, and our sons; we claim it even more for the sake of the life of the race that is to come.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIOLOGICAL PART

*Audubon: Scènes de la nature dans les États Unis (French trans.).
Ornithological Biography: an Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America.

Bateson, W.: Materials for the Study of Variation.
Mendel's Principles of Heredity.

*Bonhote, J. Lewis: Birds of Britain.

Brehm: Tierleben.
Ornithology, or the Science of Birds. (From the text of Brehm.)

Brooks, W.K.: The Law of Heredity.
The Foundations of Zoology.

*Büchner: Mind in Animals (Eng. trans.).
Liebe und Liebesleben in der Tierwelt.

*Butler, Samuel: Life and Habit.
Evolution Old and New.

*Darwin, Charles: The Descent of Man.
The Origin of Species.
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.
The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals.

*Darwin, Francis: Life and Letters of Charles Darwin.

*Ellis, Havelock: Psychology of Sex. Vol. III.

*Espinas: Sociétés animales.

Fabre, J. Henri: Mœurs des insectes.
Life and Love of Insects (trans.).
Insect Life (trans.).
Social Life in the Insect World (trans.).

*Forbes, H.O.: A Naturalist's Wanderings.

*Galton, Francis: Natural Inheritance.
Average Contribution of Each Several Ancestor to the Total Heritage of the Offspring. Pro. Roy. Soc., London, LXI.

*Geddes, Patrick: Articles: "Reproduction," "Sex," "Variation" and "Selection": Encycl. Brit.

*Geddes and Tompson, A.J.: The Evolution of Sex. (Cont. Sci. Series.) Rev. ed.
Problems of Sex.

*Häcker: Der Gesang der Vögel.

*Haeckel: Generelle Morphologie der Organismen.
Evolution of Man (trans. by J. McCabe).

Hertwig: The Biological Problem of To-day (trans. by P. Chalmers Mitchell).

Houzeau: Études sur les facultés mentales des animaux comparés à celles de l'homme.

*Hudson, W.H.: Argentine Ornithology.
The Naturalist in La Plata.
Birds and Man.

*Huxley, T.H.: A Manual of Invertebrate Animals.

Kellogg: Studies of Variation in Insects.
Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature.

Letourneau: Evolution of Marriage. (Cont. Sci. Series.)

*Milne-Edwards, Herni: Leçons sur la physiologie et l'anatomie comparée de l'homme et des animaux.
A Manual of Zoology (trans.).
Histoire naturelle des insectes.

Mivart, St. George: Lessons from Nature as manifested in Mind and Matter.
The Common Frog. (Nat. Series.)
Man and Apes: an Exposition of Structural Resemblance upon the Questions of Affinity and Origin.
On the Genesis of Species.

*Morgan, C. Lloyd: Animal Life and Intelligence.
Habit and Instinct.
Animal Behaviour.

Poulton, E.B.: The Colours of Animals.

Punnett, R.C.: On Nutrition and Sex-determination in Man. (Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc., XII.)

Ribot, Th.: Heredity (Eng. trans.).

Romanes, G.J.: Darwin and after Darwin.
Animal Intelligence. (Int. Sci. Series.)
Mental Evolution in Animals.

*Thomson, J.A.: Synthetic Summary of the Influence of the Environment upon the Organism. (Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc., Edinburgh, IX.)
Heredity. (Pro. Sci. Series.)
The Science of Life.

Varigny, de: Experimental Evolution. (Nat. Series.)

Vernon, H.M.: Variation in Animals and Plants. (Int. Sci. Series.)

Vreis, Hugo de: Species and Varieties (trans.).

*Wallace, A.R.: Darwinism.

*Ward, Lester: Pure Sociology.

*Weissmann: Essays upon Heredity (trans.).
The Germ-plasma Theory of Heredity (trans.).
The Effect of External Influences on Development. Romanes Lecture, Oxford.
The Evolution Theory (trans. by A.J. Tompson).

Wilson, E.B.: The Cell in Development and Inheritance.