person, in the act of child-bearing, and her mere sexualattributes being

an object of desire and cupidity to the male, she is liable in a peculiarly
insidious and gradual manner to become dependent on this one sexual

function alone for her support. So much is this the case, that even when
she does not in any way perform this function there is still a curious

tendency for the kudos of the function still to hang about her, and for her
mere potentiality in the direction of a duty which she may never fulfil, to

be confused in her own estimation and that of society with the actual
fulfilment of that function. Under the mighty aegis of the woman who bears

and rears offspring and in other directions labours greatly and actively
for her race, creeps in gradually and unnoticed the woman who does none of

these things. From the mighty labouring woman who bears human creatures to
the full extent of her power, rears her offspring unaided, and performs at

the same time severe social labour in other directions (and who is,
undoubtedly, wherever found, the most productive toiler known to the race);

it is but one step, though a long one, from this woman to the woman who
produces offspring freely but does not herself rear them, and performs no

compensatory social labour. While from this woman, again, to the one who
bears few or no children, but who, whether as a wife or mistress, lives by

the exercise of her sex function alone, the step is short. There is but
one step farther to the prostitute, who affects no form of productive

labour, and who, in place of life, is recognised as producing disease and
death, but who exists parasitically through her sexualattribute. Enormous

as is the distance between the women at the two extremes of this series,
and sharply opposed as their relation to the world is, there is yet, in

actual life, no sharp, clear, sudden-drawn line dividing the women of the
one type from those of the other. They shade off into each other by

delicate and in sensible degrees. And it is down this inclined plane that
the women of civilised races are peculiarly tempted, unconsciously, to

slip; from the noble height of a condition of the most strenuous social
activity, into a condition of complete, helpless, and inactive parasitism,

without being clearly aware of the fact themselves, and without society's
becoming so--the woman who has ceased to rear her own offspring, or who has

ceased to bear offspring at all, and who performs no other productive
social function, yet shields the fact from her own eyes by dwelling on the

fact that she is a woman, in whom the capacity is at least latent. (There
is, indeed, an interesting analogous tendency on the part of the parasitic

male, wherever found, to shield his true condition from his own eyes and
those of the world by playing at the ancient ancestral forms of male

labour. He is almost always found talking loudly of the protection he
affords to helplessfemales and to society, though he is in truth himself

protected through the exertion of soldiers, policemen, magistrates, and
society generally; and he is almost invariably fond of dangling a sword or

other weapon, and wearing some kind of uniform, for the assumption of
militarism without severe toil delights him. But it is in a degenerate

travesty of the ancient labour of hunting (where, at terrible risk to
himself, and with endless fatigue, his ancestors supplied the race with its

meat and defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds his
greatest satisfaction; it serves to render the degradation and uselessness

of his existence less obvious to himself and to others than if he passed
his life reclining in an armchair.

On Yorkshire moors today may be seen walls of sod, behind which hide
certain human males, while hard-labouring men are employed from early dawn

in driving birds towards them. As the birds are driven up to him, the
hunter behind his wall raises his deadlyweapon, and the bird, which it had

taken so much human labour to rear and provide, falls dead at his feet;
thereby greatly to the increase of the hunter's glory, when, the toils of

the chase over, he returns to his city haunts to record his bag. One might
almost fancy one saw arise from the heathery turf the shade of some ancient

Teutonic ancestor, whose dust has long reposed there, pointing a finger of
scorn at his degeneratedescendant, as he leers out from behind the sod

wall. During the the later Roman Empire, Commodus, in the degenerate days
of Rome, at great expense had wild beasts brought from distant lands that

he might have the glory of slaying them in the Roman circus; and medals
representing himself as Hercules slaying the Nemean lion were struck at his

orders. We are not aware that any representation has yet been made in the
region of plastic art of the hero of the sod wall; but history repeats

itself--and that also may come. It is to be noted that these hunters are
not youths, but often ripely adult men, before whom all the lofty

enjoyments and employments possible to the male in modern life, lie open.)
These peculiarities in her condition have in all civilised societies laid

the female more early and seriously open to the attacks of parasitism than
the male. And while the accumulation of wealth has always been the

antecedent condition, and the degeneracy and effeteness of the male the
final and obvious cause, of the decay of the great dominant races of the

past; yet, between these two has always lain, as a great middle term, the
parasitism of the female, without which the first would have been

inoperative and the last impossible.
Not slavery, nor the most vast accumulations of wealth, could destroy a

nation by enervation, whose women remained active, virile, and laborious.
The conception which again and again appears to have haunted successive

societies, that it was a possibility for the human male to advance in
physical power and intellectualvigour, while his companionfemale became

stationary and inactive, taking no share in the labours of society beyond
the passivefulfilment of sexualfunctions, has always been negated. It

has ended as would end the experiment of a man seeking to raise a breed of
winning race-horses out of unexercised, short-winded, knock-kneed mares.

No, more disastrously! For while the female animal transmits herself to
her descendant only or mainly by means of germinal inheritance, and through

the influence she may exert over it during gestation, the human female, by
producing the intellectual and moral atmosphere in which the early infant

years of life are passed, impresses herself far more indelibly on her
descendants. Only an able and labouring womanhood can permanently produce

an able and labouring manhood; only an effete and inactive male can
ultimately be produced by an effete and inactive womanhood. The curled

darling, scented and languid, with his drawl, his delicateapparel, his
devotion to the rarity and variety of his viands, whose severest labour is

the search after pleasure, and for whom even the chase, which was for his
remoteancestor an invigorating and manly toil essential for the meat and

life of his people, becomes a luxurious and farcical amusement;--this male,
whether found in the later Roman Empire, the Turkish harem of today, or in

our Northern civilisations, is possible only because generations of
parasitic women have preceded him. More repulsive than the parasitefemale

herself, because a yet further product of decay, it is yet only the scent
of his mother's boudoir that we smell in his hair. He is like to the bald

patches and rotten wool on the back of a scabby sheep; which indeed
indicate that, deep beneath the surface, a parasiteinsect is eating its

way into the flesh, but which are not so much the cause of disease, as its
final manifestation.

As we have said it is the power of the human female to impress herself on
her descendants, male and female, not only through germinal inheritance,

through influence during the period of gestation, but above all by
producing the mentalatmosphere in which the impressionable infant years of

life are passed, which makes the condition of the child-bearing female one
of paramount interest of the race. It is this fact which causes even

prostitution (in many other respects the most repulsive of all the forms of
female parasitism which afflicts humanity) to be, probably, not more

adverse to the advance and even to the conservation of a healthy and
powerful society, than the parasitism of its child-bearing women. For the

prostitute, heavily as she weights society for her support, returning
disease and mental and emotional disintegration for what she consumes, does

not yet so immediately affect the next generation as the kept wife, or kept
mistress, who impresses her effete image indelibly on the generations

succeeding. (It cannot be too often repeated that the woman who merely
bears and brings a child into the world, and then leaves it to be fed and

reared by the hands of another, has performed very much less than half of
the labour of producing adult humans; in such cases it is the nurse and not

the mother who is the most important labourer.)
No man ever yet entered life farther than the length of one navel-cord from

the body of the woman who bore him. It is the woman who is the final
standard of the race, from which there can be no departure for any distance

for any length of time, in any direction: as her brain weakens, weakens
the man's she bears; as her muscle softens, softens his; as she decays,

decays the people.
Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and degeneration of a

class or race; the parasitism of its child-bearing women must.
We, the European women of this age, stand today where again and again, in

the history of the past, women of other races have stood; but our condition
is yet more grave, and of wider import to humanity as a whole than theirs

ever was. Let us again consider more closely why this is so.
Chapter III. Parasitism (continued).

We have seen that, in the past, no such thing as the parasitism of the
entire body or large majority of the females inhabiting any territory was