The Wise Husband. That almost extinct species is the type of husband who speakes of HIS wife, who knows "women" and what is "good" for them, the home Jehovah, all-knowing and all-powerful, who must be served and obeyed, who, on his return from work must find his wife ready to entertain him if so he wishes, or to plunge back into the depths of the kitchen if his mood so requires, the husband who knows that he is the aim and goal of his wife's existence.
A ridiculous old man, abandoned by his too young wife, made to the reporters a statement betraying sadly the infinite conceit of that type: "She will return to me because I love her so."
A most unprepossessing man was bewailing in my office the fact that his wife had grown sexually indifferent to him. I advised him not to compel her to have intercourse with him against her will, especially as he was diseased. He naïvely remarked: "But she is my wife."
That type of husband, in other words, considers a wife as a chattel, to be submitted to any sort of legal indignity because she is "only a female." He may force motherhood upon her to demonstrate his doubtful virility or to protect his jealous egotism. He would accept with enthusiasm Goldschmidt's theories which I presented for what they were worth in the chapter on Virginity, and according to which, woman is soft wax and characterless, waiting to be shaped into a personality by her husband's caresses.
Scientific investigators of a more reliable type than Goldschmidt and who avoid drawing "yellow" conclusions from their labors, have supplied the reading world with facts which should cause the Jehovah husband to fear for his lofty position.
Is the Male Indispensable? Jacques Loeb and others have demonstrated that as far as the physical results of love, the continuance of the race, is concerned, the male may not be absolutely indispensable.
Loeb had shown that almost anything which causes the protoplasm of the egg to separate itself from its membrane is sufficient to introduce "life" into that curious organism which until then only holds possibilities of life.
Nature, in order to produce one individual demands two principles, one male and one female principle. She must have one egg which is modified by some product of the male organism, pollen or sperm.
Modern Scientists Have Beaten Nature at Her Own Game of creation; they have taken one egg, the female principle and proceeded to fertilise that egg without any male product whatsoever.
The experiment has only been made on low forms of animal life, sea urchins and the like, but the egg of the sea urchin is not different in any essential respect from the egg of the human species.