Science, which, under the able guidance of Mrs. Eddy, has sprung up and flourished. It is instructive to note that both these religions are connected with, and largely established on, magical faith and esoteric doctrines and practices. In almost all the religions founded by women. we may trace a similar relation with hypnotic phenomena which must be regarded as closely dependent on sexual sources. The proof is wider even than these particular instances. It is without doubt the transformation of suppressed sexual instincts that has made women the chief supporters of all religions.

It may be said that the religious impulse has to a large extent lost its hold upon women. This is true. A new age must expect to see a new departure. As women take active participation in the work of the world their sense of dependence and need for protection will diminish, and we may look for a corresponding decrease in that display of excessive religious emotion that dependence has fostered. But the needs of woman can never be satisfied alone with work. The natural desires remain imperative; deny these, and there will be left only the barren tree robbed of its fruits. Sexuality first breathes into woman's spiritual being warm and blooming life.

The religious ascetic is not common among us to-day. Yet the old seeking for something is there. The impulse towards asceticism has, I think, rather changed its form than passed from women. The place of the female saint is being taken by the social ascetic. Desire is not now set to gain salvation, but is turned towards a heightened intellectual individuation, showing itself in nervous

mental activity. No one can have failed to note the immense egoism of the modern woman. Women are still in fear of life and love. They have been made ascetics through the long exercise of restraint upon their explosively emotional temperament. They have restrained their natures to remain pure. This false ideal of chastity was in the first place forced upon them, but by long habit it has been accentuated and has been backed up by woman's own blindness and fear. Thus to-day, in their new-found freedom, women are seeking to bind men up in the same bonds of denial which have restrained them. In the past they have over-readily imbibed the doctrine of a different standard of purity for the sexes, now they are in revolt-indeed, they are only just emerging from a period of bitterness in relation to this matter. Men made women into puritans, and women are arising in the strength of their faith to enforce puritanism on men. Is this malice or is it revenge? In any case it is foolishness. Bound up as the sexual impulse is with the entire psychic emotional being, there would be left behind without it only the wilderness of a cold abstraction. The Christian belief in souls and bodies separate, and souls imprisoned in vile clay, has wrought terrible havoc to women. I believe the twosoul and body-are one and indivisible. Women have yet this lesson to learn: the capacity for sense-experience is the sap of life. The power to feel passion is in direct ratio to the strength of the individual's hold upon life; and may be said to mark the height of his, or her, attainment in the scale of being. It is only another out many indications of the strength of sexual emotion

of

in women that so many of them are afraid of the beauty and the natural joys of love.

There is one thing more I would wish to point out in closing this very insufficient survey of an exceedingly complicated and difficult subject. To me it seems that here, in this finer understanding of love, we open the door to the only remedy that will wipe out the hateful fear of women, which has wrought such havoc in the relationship between the sexes. Woman, restrained to purity, has of necessity fallen often into impurity. And men, knowing this better than woman herself, have feared her, though they have failed in any true understanding of the cause. Let me give you the estimate of woman which Maupassant, in Moonlight, has placed in the mouth of a priest. It is the most illuminating passage in one of the most exquisite of his stories

"He hated woman, hated her unconsciously and instinctively despised her. He often repeated to himself the words of Christ: Woman, what have I to do with thee?' And he would add, 'It seems as if God Himself felt discontented with that particular creation.' For him was that child of whom the poet speaks, impure, through and through impure. She was the temptress who had led away the first man, and still continued her work of perdition; a frail creature but dangerous, mysteriously disturbing. And even more than their sinful bodies he hated their loving souls. ... God, in his opinion, had created woman solely to tempt man, to put him to the proof."

One lesson women and men have to learn: so easy to be put into words, so difficult to carry out by deeds. To get good from each other the sexes must give love the one to the other. The human heart in loneliness eats out itself, causes its own emptiness, creates its own

terrors. Nature gives lavishly, wantonly, and woman is nearer to Nature than man is, therefore she must give the more freely, the more generously. There can be no such thing as the goodness of one-half of life without the goodness of the other half. Love between woman and man is mutual, is continual giving. Not by storing up for the good of one sex or in waste for the pleasure of the other, but by free bestowing is salvation. Wherefore, not in the enforced chastity of woman, but in her love, will man gain his new redemption.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X

THE SOCIAL FORMS OF THE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP

I.-Marriage

The difficulty of the problem of marriage-Facts to be consideredMarriage and the family among the animals-Among primitive peoples-Progress from lower to higher forms of the sexual association-An examination of the purpose of marriage-The fear of hasty reforms-Practical morality-Marriage an institution older than mankind-The practical moral ends of marriage-The racial and individual factors-No real antagonism between the twoWhat is good for the individual must react also for the benefit of the race-Various systems of marriage-Monogamy the form that has prevailed-The higher law of the true marriage-Conventional monogamic marriage-Its failure in practical morality-Coexistence with polygamy and prostitution-Chief grounds for the reform of marriage-An indictment by Mr. Wells-Our marriage system based upon the rights of property-This not necessarily evil-The Egyptian marriage contracts-The Roman marriageThe influence of Christianity-Asceticism and the glorification of virginity-Confusions and absurdities-The failure of our sexual morality-Mammon marriages-Sins against the race-Two examples from my own experience-The iniquity of our bastardy laws-The waste of love-Free-love-Its failure as a practical solution-The reform of marriage-The tendency to place the form of the sexual relationship above the facts of love-The dependence of the consciousness of duty upon freedom-The sexual responsibility

of women.

II.-Divorce

Traditional morality-Practical conditions of divorce-The moral code-This must be modified to meet new conditions-The enforced continuance of an unreal marriage-This the grossest form of immorality-The barbarism of our divorce laws-The action of the Church and State-Confusion and absurdities-Divorce relief from misfortune, not a crime-Personal responsibility in marriage— A recognition of the equality of the mother with the father-Sanction by the State of free divorce-The example of Egypt and Babylon-The Roman divorce by consent-The condemnation of free divorce not the outcome of true morality-The immorality of indissoluble marriage-Loyalty and duty in love-The claims of the child-One advantage of free divorce-Adoption of children under the State-Growing disinclination against coercive marriage -The waste to the race-Our responsibility to the future.