The reader may reply that this proves that woman is not sensual. But I invite him to consider the process of bearing and rearing children. Surely it is from start to finish—from the coitus to the weaning—a sensuous process; and in that sense woman’s sensuality is entirely laudable. When once this sensuous process ceases from being pleasant in all its stages, disease is present, and the species is in danger of extermination.[227] This danger may be remote, but it must be recognized. Now, how can we expect a creature to find pleasure in a sensuous process lasting over such a long period of time unless sensuality plays a great part in her constitution?
The only point we have to settle here (since we have placed sensuality among woman’s vices) is at what point does her sensuality become vicious. Now let it be thoroughly understood that two-thirds of our middle-class and certainly three-quarters of our wealthiest classes can hardly produce a positive woman among them, and, therefore, that there can be no question of sensuality in the women of these sections of the community. To be sensual a woman must at least be positive; she must at least have healthy and tonic organs, both of alimentation, etc., and of sex; hence, we shall not be thinking of the bulk of British women when we proceed to show how the natural and laudable sensuality of the positive woman becomes a vice.
Like all the other vital qualities of woman—her tastelessness, her vulgarity, her love of petty power, and her vanity—sensuality only becomes a vice when it is out of hand. It is, therefore, in greatest danger of becoming a vice when men have conceded overmuch liberty to their womenfolk, and where woman, by having her own way, can indulge her proclivities without limitation. But this is the state in which we find ourselves in England to-day, and if it were not for the fact that three-quarters of our women are negative (that is to say, too unhealthy and too atonic in their alimentary, sexual and other organs to derive any pleasure from their functions), sensuality would be one of the worst vices of the times.
How does it operate harmfully when once it has become a vice through positive women having their own way? It operates as a vice by breaking up the family unit, by unduly exhausting the menfolk of the nation, by leading to promiscuity and thence to disease, by making woman the only subject whether of agreement or disagreement among men, and by elevating to the first place among the virtues a caprine degree of masculine potency.
The way of arresting this vice, however, is not, as our ancestors of the seventeenth century thought (and did), to eradicate woman’s sensuality and to make her negative; for that is tantamount to destroying a portion of her vitality, and of her valuable vital impulses. The only remedy, here again, is to circumscribe woman’s powers, and to place each woman under the tutelage of some responsible man. But in order to do this successfully you must have the men who can undertake the charge. Besides, is it not too late to speak of this now? Has not the wrong remedy, the rearing of negative and non-sexual women, gone too far? I doubt whether, in view of humanity’s infinite possibilities, anything could have gone too far. But the revulsion of feeling that would be required to alter our present condition in suchwise as (1) to rear a majority of positive women once more, and (2) to rear the men who could take charge of them and account for their actions appears, as things are, to be so remote that, although everything is possible, it is doubtful whether precisely this thing is probable.
Certainly the choice taken by our ancestors cannot have been the right one.[228] It cannot be right to suppress a vice by eradicating or detoning the vital principle that causes it[229]; and now that we have the fruits of this method about us, in our millions of negative women, it may reasonably be asked whether we do not see the necessity of starting a counter movement which, while it will increase the proportion of positive women in our midst, will also and concurrently rear the men who can take charge of them.
“Day and night woman must be kept in dependence by the males of their families,” says Manu, “and if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control.”[230]
Thus we have seen that both in her virtues and her vices woman is entirely the creature of vital impulses. Her virtues, like her vices, arise from principles within her that are valuable—nay indispensable, to the species. Furthermore, we have seen that her vices are not vices in their origin, but only become so when certain vital principles within her get out of hand, or find expression in a way they were not intended to adopt. To attempt to correct these vices by extirpation is dangerous, seeing that to do so is to ruin instincts upon which the race depends for its survival.[231] If therefore society is to be protected from women’s vices, and the future of mankind guaranteed against the deteriorating effect of woman’s spiritual influence, the only practical remedy that does not menace the species is to emulate the great wisdom of the Orient, and to place woman once more under man’s charge. To attempt any other method, such as the one advocated by the Feminists for instance, is, as we have seen, to involve one of two difficulties: either the need of eradicating some of woman’s most vital principles in order to make her liberty innocuous to society (this we have already partially done with regard to her sensuality), or else the necessity of suffering the gradual deterioration of life through her influence, if she remain uncontrolled. Either alternative is bad; because in either event the ruin of civilization is a mathematical certainty. You cannot eradicate woman’s most vital principles without destroying her usefulness, and yet you cannot tolerate her deteriorating influence if her vital principles are allowed to get out of hand. There remains, therefore, but the alternative of restoring women to the charge of men—an alternative which involves the denial, the overthrow, and the rout of Feminism.
The only difficulty we can see in the way of this desirable reform, is the absence of the men who would be capable of carrying it out. For women themselves are already half-convinced that Feminism is wrong, and that J. S. Mill is actually the pernicious liar I have shown him to be.