Now, if we are right in inferring from the many signs and portents to which attention has been called, that our values are largely body-despising values, and that modern conditions already reveal these values well on their way to a complete triumph; if we are right, moreover, in recognizing in modern degeneration, science, Feminism, Puritanism, and the increasing cleavage between the sexes the logical outcome of these values, then there can be but two possible alternatives for the future: either the complete realization of the desiderata implicit in these body-despising values, or else a revolt against them, the strength for which will be drawn from the æsthetic, older, and more healthy side of our nature. As both of these alternatives are possible, and, moreover, each will mean a different future for women, it will be necessary to examine them separately.
Dealing first with the future which will result from the complete realization of the desiderata implicit in our body-despising values, we must now recall the main tendencies of the present day, so that we may discover whither they must necessarily lead.
We have seen that in our present world we have:
(a) A population the bulk of which are physiologically sub-human, and frivolously oblivious of this fact. It is a population, therefore, to which the value of Life and Love is beginning to be a matter of doubt, and among which Puritanical prejudices are likely to become a spontaneous growth where they are not already present. Puritanism, however, must also bring about this indirect and unexpected result: that, where it prevails, man is likely to become an object of general disapproval; because, since the desires of the body are regarded as sinful, man as the initiator, instigator, and active agent in the sexual encounter, will gradually appear as the traditional villain of creation, the natural butt of all gratuitous moral indignation.
(b) A body of sciences and commercial enterprises which, guided by body-despising values, tends rather to provide us with an extra-corporeal equipment for our declining bodies than to aim at restoring to us our pristine functions and original corporeal equipment. This enhances our doubt concerning the value of Love and Life, though it helps us to “carry on.”
(c) A marked decline in the ability, versatility, and masculinity of men, which is the outcome partly of physical and partly of intellectual inferiority, brought about on the one hand by besotting and cramping labour for generations, and, on the other, by the deliberate attempt, throughout Anglo-Saxon civilization and its imitations, to limit the notion of manliness to martial bravery and proficiency at sports. This has led to a loss of mastery over all things which is far from edifying, and has enabled women during the last century and recently to draw unduly favourable comparisons between themselves and men—which, while comprehensible in the circumstances, give quite a distorted view of the situation. It is the case of two climbers, M. and W. who, while ascending a hill, find that, through the sudden weakness of M., W.’s pace appears to be wonderfully enhanced. W., however, interprets M.’s retrograde movement not as abnormal weakness but as accelerated speed on her part, and therefore feels contempt for M. as M., not merely as enfeebled M.
(d) A large body of disgruntled women, mostly unmarried, who, having turned away from Life and Love either through lack of mates or the nausea acquired in modern matrimony, are prepared to slander not only Life, but also motherhood, domesticity, and Man, and who, in their conscious or unconscious jealousy of younger women and girls, try to convince the latter that life can be lived happily without bodily adaptation.
(e) Social circumstances which force millions of women into open competition with men, and therefore increase the initial hostility fostered by (a), (c), and (d).
(f) A state of abnormality so acute in some of the chief functions connected with the sexual life that more and more cogent arguments are found ready to hand for those who, through Puritanism, jealousy of the rising generation, or hostility to the male, wish to slander life and emancipate themselves and others from “that side of it.”
(g) A movement known as Feminism, generated chiefly by (a), (c), and (d), and greatly reinforced by (e) and (f), but having also a strong trace of (b) in its attitude, which claims that it can recruit among its own supporters the mastery, ability, and strength to put the world right, and which proposes to do so by superseding man everywhere, if possible, even in his reproductive rôle.