Fortunately, if Nature alone gets a fair chance, she teaches the girl that a man should "play the game," and should not be afraid of "having a go," that of the two classes into which, as one used to tell a little girl, people are divided—those who "stick to it," and those who do not—the former are the worthy for her. But Nature is specially handicapped by stupid convention, not least in Anglo-Saxon countries, as regards a woman's estimation of tenderness in a man. The parental instinct with its correlate emotion of tenderness, is the highest of existing things, and though it is less characteristic of men than of women, it is none the less supreme when men exhibit it. In days to come, when women can choose, as they should be able to choose to-day, they may well be counselled to use as a touchstone of their suitor's quality that line of Wordsworth, "Wisdom doth live with children round her knees." A man who thinks that "rot" is rot, or soon will be.
But in the minds of men and women there is a half implicit assumption that tenderness is incompatible with manliness. "Let not women's weapons, water-drops, stain my man's cheeks," says Lear. But it is quite possible for a man to be manly and yet tender, and to the highest type of women it is the combination of strength and tenderness in a man that appeals beyond aught else.
It has always seemed to the present writer that the followers of Christ have done him far less than justice in insisting upon one aspect of his character disproportionately with another. They speak of him as the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild "; they tend to describe him as almost or wholly effeminate; and the representations of him in art, with small, feminine and conspicuously un-Jewish features, with long feminine hair and the hands of a consumptive woman, join with sacred poetry in furthering this impression. Nothing can be truer than that he was tender, and that he had a passion for childhood and realized, as we may dare to say, its divinity, as only the very few in any age have done. But this "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," was also he whose blazing words against established iniquity and hypocrisy constitute him the supreme exemplar not only of love but of moral indignation, and of a sublime invective which has been equalled not even by Dante at his highest. We forget, perhaps, when we use such a phrase as "whited sepulchre," that we are quoting the untamable fierceness, the courage, fatal and vital, of the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," who was murdered not for loving children, but for hating established wickedness. Why have Christians not recognized that it is this perhaps unexampled combination of strength and tenderness which makes their Founder worthy for all time to be regarded as the Highest of Mankind?
One more counsel to the girl who can choose. It is contained in the saying of Marcus Aurelius that the worth of a man may be measured by the worth of the things to which he devotes his life.
We must now pass to consider the sociological fact that, under present conditions, the sole use of this chapter for a very large proportion of women can merely consist in suggesting to them that they are better unmarried than married without love. It is not possible for them to exercise the great function of choice which is theirs by natural right. Evil and ominous of more evil are whatever facts deprive woman of this her birthright.
CHAPTER XVII
THE CONDITIONS OF MARRIAGE
In my volume introductory to Eugenics I have dealt at length with marriage from that point of view. Here our concern is with the individual woman, and though neither in theory nor in practice can we entirely dissociate the question of the future from that of the individual's needs, it is necessary here to discuss the present conditions of marriage in the civilized world, from the woman's point of view. We have to ask ourselves how these conditions act in selecting women from the ranks of the unmarried; whether the transition proceeds from random chance, or whether there is a selection in certain definite directions, and if so, what directions? We have to ask whether different women would pass into the ranks of the married if the conditions of marriage were other than they are; and we shall assuredly arrive at the principle that whatever changes are necessary in the conditions of marriage, so that the best women shall become the mothers of the future, must be and will be effected.