the foundation. Primordially and fundamentally the virtue of a woman is not man's, but nature's, care.

Now you cannot get behind a difference so fundamental, so primordial as this. That consecration of woman's womanhood to suffering, that fore-ordained sacrifice of her flesh, that perpetual payment in blood and tears, is no more to be altered than it is to be gainsaid. And if man is not responsible for it, neither, up to a certain point, is he responsible for the inferiority in sexual virtue that springs from the ethical inferiority of his sexual rôle. Up to a certain point that difference and inferiority is bound to be.

And that is man's tragedy. It is tragic that, in the stern economy of nature, woman's spirituality has been bought at the sacrifice of his. My friends the Feminists no doubt will tell me that the deplorable creature cannot sacrifice what he hasn't got. True-but he can perfectly well sacrifice what he might have had. He, too, has paid. He has paid with his spiritual prospects as she has with her body.

I am not sure that this indictment of man comes with a good grace from a sex that has been compelled to accept that sacrifice; a sex that not only has received the larger share of nature's stock of virtue, but that has been schooled, disciplined and tortured both by nature and by civilization into the practice of it. That sex has monopolized virtue at man's expense. He may plead in extenuation of his frailty that he is the spoiled darling of nature and that he hasn't had a chance.

It is a plea that Feminists cannot disregard. When the inferiority of woman in any branch of art or science is brought up against them, their answer is that she hasn't been so long at it as man, and that circumstances have been against her. She hasn't had a chance. And so it is with this inferiority of man in sexual morality. He hasn't been so long at it and circumstances have been against him. He has been handicapped throughout the ages. First, by this cruel economy of nature that has condemned him forever to the inferior moral rôle. Next, by the very conditions of his life. Throughout the ages he has been the getter, the procurer of life and of the means of life; and the struggle and labor of getting are not favorable to the development of

is becoming more and more comprehensible to woman. But so far from being done for, he, like woman, is only just coming into his own. The Woman Question has brought a most formidable Man Question in its train. And I believe (if tout comprendre is not always tout pardonner) man, that is to say the Race, has nothing to fear from a more perfect understanding. In the long run he can only come out purified from this fiery ordeal of women's eyes.

In the long run. But now, when you have sifted all the evidence, what do you find at the bottom of the showing-up? What does it all amount to? Simply to what most people knew perfectly well before, not that man has no virtues, but that "virtue" is not conspicuously one of them, that in matters of sex feeling and of a sex morality man (let us admit it at once) is different from and inferior to woman.

I will not say how far this difference, this inferiority is fundamental and final; how far the difference is based on a vital difference of physiological function, and the inferiority on a social tradition that has almost the force and sanction of a vital law. There is a considerable divergence of opinion on both these heads. But it would seem that, though the difference may be final because fundamental, the inferiority is by no means so. Hitherto the difference and the inferiority have been bound up together, because hitherto the social tradition has followed more or less the laws of physiological function. These demand from the one sex an endurance, a devotion, a capacity for self-immolation, which, for the ends of nature and the race, would be not only a superfluous but a suicidal tax upon the other. That only one sex should pay is nature's economy. It happens to be woman. And you are bound, on a one-sided arrangement of this sort, to get, in sexual relations, a profounder feeling, a finer moral splendor, a superior sex virtue in the sex that pays. And that, I contend against all the Feminists, is not man's fault. It is something more primordial,, more fundamental, and therefore more inevitable than his lust for possession, his sense of property in woman, or the subtle allurement of chastity for the unchaste. These things may have followed from many causes in the course of ages, but they belong to the superstructure, not to

the foundation. Primordially and fundamentally the virtue of a woman is not man's, but nature's, care.

Now you cannot get behind a difference so fundamental, so primordial as this. That consecration of woman's womanhood to suffering, that fore-ordained sacrifice of her flesh, that perpetual payment in blood and tears, is no more to be altered than it is to be gainsaid. And if man is not responsible for it, neither, up to a certain point, is he responsible for the inferiority in sexual virtue that springs from the ethical inferiority of his sexual rôle. Up to a certain point that difference and inferiority is bound to be.

And that is man's tragedy. It is tragic that, in the stern economy of nature, woman's spirituality has been bought at the sacrifice of his. My friends the Feminists no doubt will tell me that the deplorable creature cannot sacrifice what he hasn't got. True-but he can perfectly well sacrifice what he might have had. He, too, has paid. He has paid with his spiritual prospects as she has with her body.

I am not sure that this indictment of man comes with a good grace from a sex that has been compelled to accept that sacrifice; a sex that not only has received the larger share of nature's stock of virtue, but that has been schooled, disciplined and tortured both by nature and by civilization into the practice of it. That sex has monopolized virtue at man's expense. He may plead in extenuation of his frailty that he is the spoiled darling of nature and that he hasn't had a chance.

It is a plea that Feminists cannot disregard. When the inferiority of woman in any branch of art or science is brought up against them, their answer is that she hasn't been so long at it as man, and that circumstances have been against her. She hasn't had a chance. And so it is with this inferiority of man in sexual morality. He hasn't been so long at it and circumstances have been against him. He has been handicapped throughout the ages. First, by this cruel economy of nature that has condemned him forever to the inferior moral rôle. Next, by the very conditions of his life. Throughout the ages he has been the getter, the procurer of life and of the means of life; and the struggle and labor of getting are not favorable to the development of

the highest spirituality. "The upward look while the hand is busy" has not been possible for man, since.his very existence has depended on the alertness of his earthward gaze. Spirituality, so difficult for him to come by, has been positively thrust upon woman. Born of her sacrificial destiny, it has been expected of her, nourished in her, guarded by all the sanctions of her life. She has had time for it, all the time of all the ages.

And yet, in spite of that, in spite of the comparative grossness of the male, fostered in him by nature and by circumstances, it has been men who throughout the ages have been the founders of religion, the pioneers of spiritual progress. Man's physical rôle has asserted itself on the immaterial plane. He is the begetter and the creator there. Woman has guarded and preserved the spiritual life his impulse gave her, if she has added to it inexhaustibly of her own. Insist, if you like, on man's grossness; it is hard to reconcile with the passion and vitality that has charged his spiritual impulse, if it be not the defect of his quality, the corruption of the best in him.

That corruption has been seldom more apparent than at the present day. For it is a day of getting, of concentration on material things. At the top of the social scale there is a struggle for the means of wealth and yet more wealth-at the bottom, a fiercer struggle for the very means of life. And whatever spiritual ferment works in the present industrial disturbance, man, immersed in the material welter, is more than ever handicapped. He is handicapped also by the past. What with past and present he hasn't had a chance.

And he may plead further that what chance he might have had has been taken from him by women. Women have, up till now, so played into his hands that, like Warren Hastings on his trial, he might protest that, when he considers his opportunities, he is astounded at his moderation. Women have been sedulously guarded from opportunity. Man, throughout the ages, has had opportunities hurled at him. All the princesses of Oude have thrown themselves at his feet or at his head.

And here, before I proceed further with this defence, let me say that I am aware of every count in the indictment. Much of it is justified, for in a wholesale charge many bullets find their

billet. Much of it, equally, is bound to be wide of the mark. I have never known a wholesale charge that was not based on generalization from a collection of the worst cases. Arguments of that sort are dangerous, for they cut both ways. If man, brutal man, has preyed upon woman's weakness as well as on her strength, woman, the woman that civilization has produced, preys no less upon his. She preys with her strength, with her comparative coldness and security of temperament, upon passions whose violence and significance she realizes only as so much tribute to her power. She preys, not only with her strength, but with the irresistible appeal of her weakness. I do not hesitate to say that the pass we have come to, the extreme shakiness of man's standard of sexual morality to-day, is largely due to the debilitating, the disastrous influence of the Early and Mid-Victorian woman. Her wilful ignorance, her sentimentalism, her sex-servility amounted to positive vice, and could only be productive of viciousness in the unhappy males exposed to it. I say hers; because, if we may judge from the letters and memoirs of their times, the women of a century and more before her were not like her. Outspokenness, courage, an utter absence of the deceptions, hypocrisies and corruptions of sentimentalism characterized the Stellas and Vanessas of the first half of the eighteenth century and the women of Fanny Burney's generation. Prone to excess and trained to repression, the Victorian woman "took it out" in orgies of emotion. The perilous stuff in her showed itself either in supine adoration of the male, or in an exalted sensibility which was a subtle sensualism disguised. The man was not human who was not deceived and corrupted by it. His mother, his sisters, his wife, his aunts and his cousins worshipped him as a god on his own hearth, and when he left it he could not rid himself of the superstition of his divinity. No enlightenment came to him, for his women never saw him as he was. A god-like impunity sheltered him in all his lapses. He ran no risk of being found out, for he knew that his women did not want to find him out. They would have died rather. In the Victorian age man hadn't the ghost of a chance.

And the same matchless impunity hangs round him to-day; though we are far from the superstition of the hearth.