definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience

have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge
which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to act

fearlessly than to argue.
Finally, it may be objected to the entrance of woman to the new fields of

labour, and in effect it is often said--"What, and if, all you have sought
be granted you--if it be fully agreed that woman's ancient fields of toil

are slipping from her, and that, if she do not find new, she must fall into
a state of sexual parasitism, dependent on her reproductive functions

alone; and granted, that, doing this, she must degenerate, and that from
her degeneration must arise the degeneration and arrest of development of

the males as well as of the females of her race; and granting also, fully,
that in the past woman has borne one full half, and often more than one

half, of the weight of the productive labours of her societies, in addition
to child-bearing; and allowing more fully that she may be as well able to

sustain her share in the intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual labours of the future as in the more
mechanical labours of the past; granting all this, may there not be one

aspect of the question left out of consideration which may reverse all
conclusions as to the desirability, and the human good to be attained by

woman's enlarged freedom and her entering into the new fields of toil?
What if, the increased culture and mental activity of woman necessary for

her entrance into the new fields, however desirable in other ways for
herself and the race, should result in a diminution, or in an absolute

abolition of the sexualattraction and affection, which in all ages of the
past has bound the two halves of humanity together? What if, though the

stern and unlovely manual labours of the past have never affected her
attractiveness for the male of her own society, nor his for her; yet the

performance by woman of intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual labours, or complex and interesting
manual labour, and her increased intelligence and width, should render the

male objectionable to her, and the woman undesirable to the male; so that
the very race itself might become extinct through the dearth of sexual

affection? What, and if, the woman ceases to value the son she bears, and
to feel desire for and tenderness to the man who begets him; and the man to

value and desire the woman and her offspring? Would not such a result
exceed, or at least equal, in its evil to humanity, anything which could

result from the degeneration and parasitism of woman? Would it not be
well, if there exist any possibility of this danger, that woman, however

conscious that she can perform social labour as nobly and successfully
under the new conditions of life as the old, should yet consciously, and

deliberately, with her eyes open, sink into a state of pure intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual
torpor, with all its attendant evils, rather than face the more irreparable

loss which her development and the exercise of her gifts might entail?
Would it not be well she should deliberately determine, as the lesser of

two evils, to dwarf herself and limit her activities and the expansion of
her faculties, rather than that any risk should be run of the bond of

desire and emotion between the two sexual halves of humanity being severed?
If the race is to decay and become extinct on earth, might it not as well

be through the parasitism and decay of woman, as through the decay of the
sexual instinct?

It is not easy to reply with rationality, or even gravity, to a
supposition, which appears to be based on the conception that a sudden and

entire subversion of the deepest of those elements on which human, and even
animal, life on the globe is based, is possible from so inadequate a cause:

and it might well be passed silently, were it not that, under some form or
other, this argument frequently recurs, now in a more rational and then in

a more irrational form; constituting sometimes an objection in even
moderately intelligent minds, to the entrance of woman into the new fields

of labour.
It must be at once frankly admitted that, were there the smallest possible

danger in this direction, the sooner woman laid aside all endeavour in the
direction of increased knowledge and the attainment of new fields of

activity, the better for herself and for the race.
When one considers the part which sexualattraction plays in the order of

sentient life on the globe, from the almost unconsciousattractions which
draw amoeboid globule to amoeboid globule, on through the endless

progressive forms of life; till in monogamous birds it expresses itself in
song and complexcourtship and sometimes in the life-long conjugal

affection of mates; and which in the human race itself, passing through
various forms, from the imperative but almost purelyphysicalattraction of

savage male and female for each other, till in the highly developed male
and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual but not less

imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes
deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we find

it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is based
sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitelyvaried in its

external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human world,
from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and entertainments

of modern Courts and palaces, the attraction of man and woman for each
other has played an unending part; and, that the most fierce ascetic

religious enthusiasm through the ages, the flagellations and starvations in
endless nunneries and monasteries, have never been able to extirpate nor

seriously to weaken for one moment the master dominance of this emotion;
that the lowest and most brutalignorance, and the highest intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual

culture leave mankind, equally, though in different forms, amenable to its
mastery; that, whether in the brutal guffaw of sex laughter which rings

across the drinking bars of our modern cities, and rises from the
comfortable armchairs in fashionable clubs; or in the poet's dreams, and

the noblest conjugal relations of men and women linked together for life,
it plays still today on earth the vast part it played when hoary monsters

ploughed after each other through Silurian slime, and that still it forms
as ever the warp on which in the loom of human life the web is woven, and

runs as a thread never absent through every design and pattern which
constitutes the individual existence on earth, it appears not merely as

ineradicable; but it is inconceivable to suppose that that attraction of
sex towards sex, which, with hunger and thirst, lie, as the triune

instincts, at the base of animal life on earth, should ever be exterminable
by the comparatively" target="_blank" title="ad.比较地；比较上">comparativelysuperficial changes resulting from the performance of

this or that form of labour, or the little more or less of knowledge in one
direction or another.

That the female who drives steam-driven looms, producing scores of yards of
linen in a day, should therefore desire less the fellowship of her

corresponding male than had she toiled at a spinning-wheel with hand and
foot to produce one yard; that the male should desire less of the

companionship of the woman who spends the morning in doctoring babies in
her consulting-room, according to the formularies of the pharmacopoeia,

than she who of old spent it on the hillside collecting simples for
remedies; that the woman who paints a modern picture or designs a modern

vase should be less lovable by man, than her ancestor who shaped the first
primitive pot and ornamented it with zigzag patterns was to the man of her

day and age; that the woman who contributes to the support of her family by
giving legal opinions will less desire motherhood and wifehood than she who

in the past contributed to the support of her household by bending on hands
and knees over her grindstone, or scrubbing floors, and that the former

should be less valued by man than the latter--these are suppositions which
it is difficult to regard as consonant with any knowledge of human nature

and the laws by which it is dominated.
On the other hand, if it be supposed that the possession of wealth or the

means of earning it makes the human femaleobjectionable to the male, all
history and all daily experience negates it. The eager hunt for heiresses

in all ages and social conditions, make it obvious that the human male has
a strong tendency to value the female who can contribute to the family

expenditure; and the case is yet, we believe, unrecorded of a male who,
attracted to a female, becomes averse to her on finding she has material

good. The female doctor or lawyer earning a thousand a year will always,
and today certainly does, find more suitors than had she remained a

governess or cook, labouring as hard, earning thirty pounds.
While, if the statement that the female entering on new fields of labour

will cease to be lovable to the male be based on the fact that she will
then be free, all history and all human experience yet more negates its

truth. The study of all races in all ages, proves that the greater the
freedom of woman in any society, the higher the sexual value put upon her

by the males of that society. The three squaws who walk behind the Indian,
and whom he has captured in battle or bought for a few axes or lengths of

tobacco, and over whom he exercises the despotic right of life and death,
are probably all three of infinitesimal value in his eyes, compared with

the value of his single, free wife to one of our ancient, monogamous German
ancestors; while the hundred wives and concubines purchased by a Turkish

pasha have probably not even an approximate value in his eyes, when
compared with the value which thousands of modern European males set upon

the one comparatively" target="_blank" title="ad.比较地；比较上">comparatively free woman, whom they may have won, often only after
a long and tediouscourtship.

So axiomatic is the statement that the value of the female to the male