FOOTNOTES:
[70] See Chapter 44 of the Ergänzung zum vierten Buch of the Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. In La Femme Criminelle et la Prostituée, by C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero (Paris, Felix Alcan, 1896) the authors, wishing to emphasize the same fact, say very plainly: “C’est le besoin de l’espèce, le besoin maternel, qui pousse la femme vers l’homme, l’amour féminin étant une fonction subordonnée à la maternité” (p. 107).
[71] See ante, p. 148. See also Lombroso and Ferrero, Op. cit. (p. 112): “Psychiquement, l’amour de la mère se greffe toujours et l’emporte sur le besoin du sexe.”
[72] See Sir Bargrave Deane’s evidence before the Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, 1912, para. 1163: “My impression is that it is a very serious question—this absence of children—to the married life, and I believe you will find (I am certain it is so from my experience this term) that if there are children it keeps the home together, and they both work together.” Lord Salvesen (Judge of Court of Sessions, Scotland), speaking before the same Commission, and discussing the statistics as to childless and fruitful marriages, said: “I draw this inference, that I think they show where there are children the union is strengthened, and parties are more unwilling to have it dissolved” (para. 6214 of the Report).
[73] In addition to the engrossing character of the rôle of mother, and the tendency it has to invade every controlling centre in a positive woman’s nature, we should also remember that, inasmuch as man is only important to woman as a means to an end, his importance must diminish pro rata as the end tends to be achieved and visibly materialized in the form of the growing family.
[74] The modern man’s chief safeguard against becoming a complete nonentity in the home is, of course, his hold on the purse-strings. This procures him a sort of perfunctory regard.
[76] Buffon in his Discours sur la nature des Animaux makes the following profound remark which English people as a whole would do well to take to heart: “Amour, pourquoi fais-tu l’état heureux de tous les êtres, et le malheur de l’homme? C’est qu’il n’y a que le physique de cette passion qui soit bon; c’est que, malgré ce que peuvent dire les gens épris, le moral n’en vaut rien” (see Oeuvres Complètes, Tome 3me, Paris, 1837, pp. 21-22).
[77] As a proof of this, behold the aggressive exultation of the ordinary man over every fresh addition to his family.
[78] So far from being conscious of the will to the multiplication of life, it frequently happens that women do all that is required in order to achieve fertilization, and yet protest that they do not wish to have children, or that they do not care for children.
[79] The ancient Hindus, from whose great wisdom nothing was hidden, not only openly recognized this fact, but made special provision for it. In the Book of Manu there were special periods of absence allowed for husbands, beyond which their wives were no longer forbidden from seeking fertilization elsewhere (see Book IX, verse 76). It should be borne in mind, however, that a very large proportion of the women who committed adultery during the war did so out of vanity rather than out of passion. The preponderance of negative women in England makes the passionate crime a much rarer occurrence than is generally supposed. See explanation of the rôle of vanity in adultery in the second half of this chapter.
[80] Even in regard to the legendary Penelope we have to remember that tradition relates certain facts about her that cast some reflection upon her normality. Why, for instance, was she thrown into the sea by her parents? Both of her parents came from Sparta, and the Spartans did not scruple to destroy abnormal children. In fact, they regarded it as a religious duty to do so. At the very beginning of her life, therefore, some suspicion is cast which entitles us to question whether she can have been as desirable as the numbers of her suitors leads us to believe. Further, we may quite pertinently inquire what it was that ever induced Odysseus to spend twenty years of his life away from his wife, unless there were some secret and profound reason. It is true that his adventures are presented to us in the narrative as being forced upon him. But who has ever known an adventurer whose adventures were not inevitable?
[81] The realism and methodical certainty with which adultery was expected in the wife by the absent husband both in antiquity and the Middle Ages is shown (1) by the general attitude of wonder and admiration maintained towards Penelope, and (2) by the famous ceintures de chasteté in which the aid of the locksmith was enlisted in order to safeguard an absent husband’s honour.
[82] The fact that during the war numbers of married women were thus served by men very much older than themselves, only shows how, as his years increase, a foolish man’s vanity sets ever greater store by a female’s favours. It is too easily forgotten that when a man is a born fool, old age does but increase his foolishness; it does not, as most people suppose, turn bad wine into good.
[83] In one case this occurred, despite the fact that all the woman’s relatives and friends constantly urged her to rid herself of her useless mate by fair means or foul.
[84] The Laws of Manu make special provision for a woman who is childless owing to her husband’s fault.
[85] A good deal of the pseudo-scientific literature of their day even tells them that the orgasm is just as important to them as to the male, and lays such stress upon it that they may be forgiven for misunderstanding its real value to their lives.
[86] Women of a slightly more intellectual mould of mind generally become interested in some public movement or Cause, or begin to take up a new religion or philosophy, or express the desire to go in for acting at this stage. But the same forces are at work in them as in the woman described above—that is to say, their old environment having failed to procure them the whole physiological cycle which they need, their instincts urge them blindly to seek a fresh environment.
[87] Women are particularly prone to endeavour to rule in the home by means of this trick of giving their spouse a guilty conscience, and they do not mind much what words they use or abuse to achieve that end. The word “selfish,” however, is a very convenient word for this purpose, particularly if they happen to be dealing with a man who believes, as they do, that it has a meaning and that this meaning is offensive.
[88] All this time she may have been protesting consciously that she does not want children and that she is quite happy without them. It is her blind instinct and the impelling force of her dissatisfied reproductive organs that have been driving her (despite her conscious disinclination or indifference to motherhood) into situations in which she can be fertilized.
[89] To this anthropologists may object: What about the Australian Bushmen who did not associate the coitus with reproduction? True; but they knew that children came with marriage, although they did not know that the coitus had anything to do with their appearance. And the fact of being a married man would thus become inextricably mingled with the condition of paternity.
[90] Among the reasons given for the wife’s unfaithfulness there are of course a few that apply also to the husband. These the reader will readily pick out, and they do not require to be re-stated here. To give one example of these common reasons, however, I would remind the reader of the effect of the continued use of contraceptives on happy sexual relations.
[91] “H” signifies husband’s petition: “W” signifies wife’s.
[92] Unfortunately these figures were unobtainable, as for the previous years, distinct for husband and wife.
[93] Figures for the years 1913 and 1914 unobtainable.
[94] Priests of the Holy Catholic Church not included.
[95] As they include unmarried men, they are somewhat in excess of the correct figures for families, but the proportions between them would not be so very much affected by the omission of the unmarried.
[96] It is this omission to draw a sharp distinction between the proclivities of flourishing health and those of lack of health or of sub-normal health, that vitiates the arguments and conclusions in such books as Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character, and essays like Schopenhauer’s on Woman and The Metaphysics of Love. This omission is more particularly fatal to-day when negative people are becoming very much more numerous than positive people.
[97] The reason why women live in such dread of the man who can see through them, and endeavour to heap every kind of ignominy upon him, is that in their alleged “mystery” lies their power over the average man, and that their sentiments and insistence on a sentimental view of their sex, all help to furnish their arsenal with the weapons they can wield most effectively against man in general. The wonder is that they have been able to impose their view of the penetrating man upon the mass of British mankind.
[98] The same lack of caution probably led to his marriage; for, in view of the negative character of his constitution he is not likely to marry in order to meet the deep bodily need St. Paul speaks of.
[99] Truth to tell, the proud man is disliked nowadays. There is no place for him. The whole of the modern world is run and organized on such lines, that only the vain man and woman are regarded as desirable. The bulk of modern men are of the modest-vain type, who purr contentedly when their fellows smile upon them; hence the enormous increase in futile and meaningless orders and badges of honour in recent years, and the stampede there is to obtain them.
[100] In his House of the Dead, Dostoiewsky lays some stress on the frequent occurrence of vanity in criminals. See particularly Chapter I.
[101] It is this fact that makes the judgments of vain people so unreliable and worthless; because a vain person always judges all people, not according to their true worth, but according to the satisfaction his vanity has derived from them. Thus a genius who mortifies a vain man’s vanity (or a vain woman’s vanity) is called a “fool,” a “detestable fraud,” a “stuck-up, pretentious prig,” etc., etc. On the other hand, the fool who knows how to flatter is regarded as intelligent, understanding, perspicacious, knowledgeable, etc., etc., by the vain person. The whole of modern opinion, based as it largely is upon vain impulses, thus becomes quite worthless.