If, for instance, the ethereal, languishing, angelic and slightly delicate type of female beauty be the type exalted by the current values of his environment, he runs considerable danger of regarding her as the attractive type; and in selecting her he will deliberately overlook her narrow frame, her lack of fire, her lack of exuberance, her lack of positiveness.[42] Where Puritan values prevail, the sexually exuberant female with the ardent and fierce brow and eye will be regarded even as distinctly ugly. It will not surprise some people to hear, therefore, that in France the angelic, passive, and meek expression of most Englishmen’s wives is regarded as strangely incompatible with the frequently robust, self-assertive, exuberant appearance of the Englishmen themselves.
Purity is indeed exhaled by such women: but not the purity that all positive people understand as purity. To them the only purity worth having is that which is the outcome of fire. Everything else is impure. A tepid passion, a non-exuberant passion, is impure: it can wait, it can temporize, it can play with Life; it can even thwart the highest purposes of Life: therefore it is impure.
How often in our own small circle have we not seen a youth that we admired—a positive, robust and savoury fellow, full of trust and energy—condescend to take the most fragile, shadowy reminiscence of Life for a mate and the mother of his children! I say “condescend to take”; but I mean in his sense of course, “aspire to taking”; for it was obvious that he regarded her as the highest example of womanhood that could possibly be discovered; to this extent was he prevailed upon by the Puritanical prejudices of his Age! But it is within the experience of most people that the negative values of an environment will drive some men even farther. There are a few who will not even stop at deformities, sickness, disease. I know of two such cases: one man who fell in love with a consumptive girl, knowing her to be consumptive; and another who loved and married a girl with hip disease. Both of these men were acting in a manner utterly hostile to the highest purposes of Life; their love actually denied, baulked and frustrated the highest purposes of Life; they were, in my sense, therefore, utterly impure, immoral, criminal. But from the point of view of their Age, their class, their religion and their country, what was there, in sooth, to show them that they were wrong?
Had they not heard from their earliest childhood onwards, that the soul was everything and that the body did not matter? Had they not had it dinned into them at every turn along their life’s path, that a pure soul can make up for any physical defect, even foul breath? Had they not learnt to regard brains as better than brawn? And who had ever told them when they were children and when they were quite ready to despise sickness, deformity, or botchedness generally, that their instincts in this respect were quite right and proper? Who had explained to them that things that are unclean (as the good, honest Old Testament has it) should be avoided?[43]
There is no science of physiognomy and of human selection to-day. It will be objected, of course, that no possible elaboration of such a science could ever induce young people to “fall in love” with the proper mates. My reply to that is: Let it be tried. When our young folk tell us that they have fallen in love at first sight, we know that they must have followed some principles of physiognomy and selection. However adventitiously these may have been acquired, they constitute the only guide obtainable. But are these principles any the better for having been acquired by chance, and very often from false and unreliable sources? They must have acquired their principles from some source. Is it better that they should have picked them up, as it were, on life’s way, than that they should have been taught them? It is not a difficult matter to educate the taste of children on certain broad lines. The fact is not that these guiding lines are lacking to-day—on the contrary, they abound—but that they are based on no understanding of essentials and are as a rule not regulated by a deep concern for health and high vitality. And since you can teach mankind the points of a good horse or a good dog, it is surely a little bold to deny that you can teach it the points of a desirable mate.[44] At least you can lay down certain very distinct principles regarding the mate to be avoided. But not even that is attempted nowadays.[45]
The danger at present is that a young man, despite his proper instincts in this matter, may be wrongly influenced by the values and prejudices of his Age, his country and his class, so that willy-nilly he goes astray, and inclines in a negative direction when all the time his instincts are positive.
In regard to sex and the choice of the positive woman, the Englishman particularly, therefore (more especially of the wealthier middle classes), wants re-educating, re-instructing in the values of positive Life. And it is to him, more than to Woman (for, after all, he is the chooser), that the chapters of this book are addressed.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Always from the standpoint of sexual potency be it remembered.