Taken From "The Egoist: An Individualist Review." Formerly "The New Freewoman."

No. 3, Vol. I, Monday, February 2, 1914.

It is the distinguishing mark of the "Verbal Age " that when the vogue of any of its shibboleths is at its zenith and exerting its strongest influence it is the least open to the questioning of sense. The hypnotism of sound lulls sense into accepting a "thought," i.e. an error born of ineffectual thinking, into its categories of existent things, and giving to it a "local habitation and a name." The name is all important since over and above the name there is nothing of reality connected with it. Men cling to the names of thoughts because they are dimly aware that in abandoning the names they abandon all. The name of a spade can be abandoned and beyond a little hesitancy, a greater circumlocution in speech, nothing is changed; the spade remains: but abandon the names of thoughts and you have nothing left. Hence the device of making "sacred" names-the sacred names of "Duty," "Right," "Obedience," "Liberty" and the entire "moral" outfit, whereby it becomes sinful to question names. The sole purpose in fact in making a concept sacred is to ensure its immunity from being questioned.

It is therefore because this has been the "Age of Progress" that those who believe in "Progress" have regarded it as blasphemous to attempt its definition. Differing things may have been for or against progress, but as for "progress" itself-it is just "progress." That has not prevented assumptions in regard to "progress " being made. It is in fact under cover of the sacred aegis that the largest assumptions always contrive to pass muster, and as far as "progress" is concerned it has been tacitly assumed that progress and an easing of the struggle with external environment are one. If the powers inherent in Nature can be set in such relation that one will overcome the other, and this with decreasing human effort so to set them: that it is assumed, is progress.

It happens that two pronouncements, one being an Individualist manifesto (which its author Mr. Heinrich Charles describes as The Anti-Thesis to the Communistic Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the Synthesis of Social-Individualism) and the other that of a journal which believes itself to be the intellectual organ of English Socialism, both making this same assumption in regard to "progress" come to our hands together. Upon that on which individualist and socialist agree it is worth while to pause to consider. Thus the manifesto:

What has been the world's greatest curse? Physical labour! Manual work! Mechanical drudgery! Toil oppressive to mind and body! Compulsory service! Who shall hew the wood? Who shall draw the water? Who shall do the dirty work? This has been the bone of contention... the immediate sole cause of all wars: of all the bloodshed and struggles between man and man; of all the land-hunger and the great migratory movements... of all the revolts, rebellions, and revolutions, the division of classes, of slavery; serfdom and the modern system of exploitation.... Man's main mental work has been how to escape physical work. All the social systems and organisations of the past, all the mighty empires and republics, all the nations and states were based on one proposition: that there must be one class which does the work. To escape from this class was the ruling ambition.

It is the writer's contention that that which distinguishes developed man from the savage is the possession of knowledge relating to inventions which relieve men from the necessity of physical toil; that the genius of the few will never rest until it has discovered a power upon which can be thrown the performance of the labouring work of the world. All tools he maintains are efforts in this direction. Harnessed to the energy of the human hand and arms, a tool will lighten labour; tools harnessed to the tremendous power in steam will turn the world into a hive of industry where the man's task is that of mere minder of the tool; progress is due to the men who are possessed of unusual faculties, which provided them with the inspiration and intuitive sense to see relations between things which the ordinary man would never think of relating. The pioneers of science are the true forces of progress. Not the world's fifteen or sixteen great battles-but the fifteen or sixteen decisive discoveries and intentions, from those of fire and missiles onwards. It is not surprising therefore, holding such views, that in judging the calibre of the thinkers of the nineteenth century Mr. Charles should award the palm to Marx and Engels!

Great men were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels! There is no doubt that they were the most scientific and deepest thinkers, economists and sociologists of the nineteenth Century. But with all their genius in seeing and relating things as others in their day did not, they were still hampered by human limitations. They could not foresee that subsequent revolutionary changes, new inventions entirely beyond the vision of even the loftiest imagination, would make.

Marx and Engels (inevitably Mr. Charles thinks) faced with the advent of steam-machinery came to the conclusion that men must of necessity supply themselves with a new philosophy of living, to wit, one which would fit them-men-to the increased dimensions of the tool. The desire to own things individually must give way and adjust itself to collective ownership. Hence Socialism in all its varieties: Communism, Collectivism, Guildism, which is Syndicalism without its soul; and Syndicalism itself, of which the soul is anarchistic temper and the body of a heavy-footed communism.

All these in his opinion were "moulds of thought" to which the minds of thinkers of the 19th century, no matter how virile, penetrative and original, must accommodate themselves, because forsooth the day of the steam engine was here. It will not be necessary for us to say that we disagree entirely with the dictum that a thinker, however great, is unable to think around or away from the mechanistic appliances of his age, but it is worth pointing out that the 19th century thinker who preceded Marx provides a direct refutation of it. Max Stirner was not hypnotised by the steam-engine. Nor would any thinker who knew his own temper sufficiently well be capable of exercising a selection among the services which his time and age were able to offer him. "Das Kapital" was refuted before it was written. Its theories based on word-values had already been proved empty of relevance. Once it is recognised that individual human temper is the standard against which all tools are measured, a proposal to adjust temper to fit the mechanism reveals itself as the flimsy excuse to cover the feebleness of those who are so spiritless as to allow even their tools to become their masters. Steam even with the machinery, enormous and cumbersome which its nature seems to demand, is not too big to be the tool of those who have the audacity to use it so. It is the tool of the capitalists, and there is no preordained class of capitalists. All may be capitalists who can be. Men who know their own minds know that they need tools, i.e. instruments subjected and amenable to their own wills, and by hook or crook they will get them. They cannot be bluffed by the mere size of a machine into accepting a master and calling it a tool; they leave that sort of thing to the philosophers. But, unless that which has been the desideratum of all who since the history of the world began have looked in pity at the hard lot of their fellows be achieved-a change of heart-there will always be those who are born tools, those who to relieve themselves of the burden of being responsible for themselves are more than willing to become not merely the appendages and tools of others but the tools of any instrument which should yield itself to their service. It is not the kind of tool which is the decisive factor: it is the lack of temper in the man who uses it. It is not the steam engine which has created slaves and slaves will not be abolished by its supersession. Before its advent, when tools were of a maniable size, the slaves existed, hounded, beaten, branded and manacled.

So it seems worth while to get behind the generality "Progress" since obviously there exists no such thing. A person or thing can progress: that is, advance in any number of ways. He or it can "progress" downwards, upwards or onwards. But "Progress" as a generality is the instrument of the rhetorician and the professional exploiter of the brainless. In relation to the human kingdom, especially since the rise to popularity among the word-stunned of its related conceptual spook, "evolution," human progress has been regarded as an inevitable transmutation of this planet into a human world where men can live without hardship, toil, danger and difficulty.

The "progress of civilisation" has been the softening of the rigours of the external world, the dwindling of harshness and asperity in the struggle with "nature." "Progress," so it is held, has proceeded pari passu with inventive energy expended to subject the power of nature into the service of men, relieving them of toil. That this is true to a large extent of "progress" in the development of tools cannot be denied. That it is true, explains why civilisation has become synonymous with decay, a blight eating into the individual lives which make up the human kingdom.

The notion that the condition of slavery and submission among men fluctuates about the type of tool which is prevalent in any age has arisen from thinking that the "progress of civilisation" need have any antecedent causal relation to the "progress of men": that the easy submissiveness of matter to handling by men has of necessity direct beneficial results for the advancement of men.

Increase in the amenities of a progressively softened environment, and the growth of men's sensitive power are two totally different things: they are almost opposites; in fact the greater part of the development wherein men have become more sensitive, aware and able has been achieved by rough and harsh experience, which has accentuated their consciousness of the difference which exists between them and their environment. It has broken the hypnotic spell which made them at one with it. They have veritably cut their teeth on the sharp edge of difficulties. The difficult task has been the anvil on which human strength has been forged, and if history is allowed to speak in the matter, life on a "press the button" basis will be none too friendly to the growth of men. "To increase the penetrative power of the senses" is the periphrasis which should oust "progress" as a term applicable to living development from language. Reference to environment is excessive because unnecessary. The "environment" is what it is. Its potential powers and uses are given quantities: postulates to be learned in order to be accepted, and thereafter used. Matter is not altered when it is used. It is accepted for what it is. What alters is the intelligence which is increasingly able to recognise the existent character of environment. To stand on the sea-shore and hold communion as power to power with a jelly-fish for instance will make it all plain. Any ordinary human intelligence regarding it is aware that the inert mass of substance is surrounded by what the intellect calls the "wonders" of the universe. Yet if the choicest of such wonders were gathered from all the corners of the world into its immediate vicinity it would make no difference to the jelly-fish. The "discoveries" are there; what is behind time is the fish. Everything awaits its awareness, and to intensify this by even so much as a tremor means more for it than the whole world beside. "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" No more than it profits the fish. Environment is a wholly secondary matter-a result and not a cause. It will be acted upon readily enough when the intelligence becomes alive to it. To reverse the order of the relation between intelligence and its environment is not a matter of more or less: it is rather one of truth and its opposite. All thinkers of any value have risen superior to the environmental conditions accidental to their age. It is a sufficient condemnation of the Socialist thinkers merely to state that they have not, and their Nemesis is already treading at their heel. While yet the filthy spectacle of the industrial towns which an easy acceptance of steam machinery made possible still befouls the countryside, the hollowness of Marxian economics with their theories of value can be made demonstrable to the mind of a child.

Having said this, it will be easier to allow full value to the illuminating suggestion as to the tendency in labour-saving machinery which it is the purpose of the Manifesto, to which we have already referred, to define. Its description is not merely an Individualist manifesto: it calls itself an " Electro Individualistic Manifesto, " and powerfully suggestive of enormous changes in industrial enterprise it is. Electricity is displacing steam as a servant power: a commonly-observed fact but of which few have noticed any important implications. The import of electricity in relation to industrialism is according to the Manifesto this: its use will abolish the machine of enormous magnitude: its natural "bent" favours the miniature machine which is a "tool": whereas steam-power favours the machine of enormous magnitude which cannot be individually owned on any extended scale. The use of electricity means therefore the return-after an enormous sweep round the circle which includes the machine-to the tool: not indeed as it was harnessed to the human energy of hand and arm, but to a power which can be regulated to almost unlimited strength or shaded off to the most delicate fineness. But the unique importance lies in the possibility of such miniature tools being individually owned: the personal possession of the user: capable of being stored and used in the home. The break-up of the factory-system therefore: break up of the towns: decentralisation and disintegration of the industrial system! No wonder Mr. Charles is intoxicated by his imaginative sweep into the possibilities of electricity. He quotes T. A. Edison and his comment on this modern Prometheus he shall make for himself. He says "Thomas Alva Edison has spoken ax cathedra:" Not individualism but social labour will dominate in the future. You can't have individual machines and every man working for himself. Pace, Mr. Edison: you may be a great inventor and a magnificent organiser of inventive talent, but don't prophesy until you know. What for instance is your endeavour to make a form which would cast in one mould a complete cement-house in a variation of styles, but an attempt to create an individual machine in house-building ? Is not your electric vehicle an individual machine in locomotion ? Is not the tiny motor on the sewing machine a magnificent example of individual miniature machinery ? Is not all the inventive talent busy now to invent a practical tractor for the small farm ? Is this not an individual machine? Almost all inventors of modern times are in the direction of the individual machine. "

Of how it will be possible to "burst the steel trust" without striking a single blow at its armour, the Manifesto illustrates by the following from the "Scientific American." (It is now possible to produce steel by electricity at almost a commercial price in a miniature cylindrical furnace about 18 inches high and 14 inches in diameter.)

"ELECTRICALLY-REFINED STEEL FOR AUTOMOBILES.- Apropos of the recent article in the `Scientific American' on the growth of electrical refining of steel, we note that the automobile manufacturers are availing themselves of the new process for the production of mild steel castings. One of the largest English automobile manufacturers has installed an electric furnace for supplying castings of this kind for machines made at his factory."

The Manifesto would be made more valuable by an augmentation of its list of such instances: but those who are on the look-out for the first appearance of a type of labour-saving tool which can be used apart from a herd will be sufficiently heartened by the sight of a single instance. That others will follow there is no need to fear. The Manifesto prophesies that by the year 2000 a single unsupported individual will be able to produce almost without manual labour, and certainly without overwhelmingly harsh labour, the entire round of tasks necessary for the complete service of his needs. The regulation of light and heat which electricity gives promise of suggests the creation of artificially-created climatic conditions which will make the present vast transport trade of the world appear a costly and barbarously crude effort. Indeed if economy has any voice in the matter, the transport trade of the world will cease, seeing that the present cost of the transportation of goods averages out at 100% of the cost of production.

In view of the foregoing it is easy to arrive at an intellectual estimate of the value of those communistic writers who have been endeavouring to scarify the much-though-miserably advised proletariat into an acceptance of their particular nostrums. We can take as typical of the rest a recent jeremiad of the Editor of the "New Age" in reply to a challenge from one of the capitalistic press to refute its defence of the South African Government's action during the recent disturbances. The "reply" contains the following:

We come to that aspect of the problem which as we said at the outset will raise the question . . . of the very existence of society.... Does it not exist in part ... of the class we call the proletariat? . . . In all affairs concerning society . . . they have as much title as any of us, to ask where, and exactly where they come in. But their only means of existence . . . is to sell their labour. What is to happen . . . . . . if nobody chances to think their labour worth the cost of reproduction and . . . . if human labour power ceases to be of sufficient value to command the price of subsistence? Under these circumstances the proletariat is in the position of horses . . . threatened with the extinction of petrol . . . the fact that . . . the obsolescent material consists of human beings, each made in the image of God does not disqualify it from falling under the general rule of Economics. . . . Economists measure the advance of an industry, not by the increase in the number of men it employs, but by the increase of production at a diminished cost . . . and the economists, as we say are right in measuring progress by the ease with which production is maintained.... Such schemes, of labour-saving appliances . . . are numerous as the Armada, and as threatening to the existence of the proletariat as that was to England. Now will Mr. Strachey begin to see where retrenchments for economy may carry us? Now will he look like a Statesman, etc., etc. Would we . . . stop science . . . put period to progress, cease inventing proletariat saving machinery? . . . We would not ! What then? There only remain two means of dealing with them . . . one is castration and the lethal chamber for every proletarian, . . . and the other is the . . . social device for at once saving part of society ... from extinction which is known to our readers as the National Guild System.

In the same calm hypnotised way one could imagine an insane mathematician attempting to prove a proposition to an understanding listener, by a careful proof of its contrary. It is the concept, dear reader, which has made this hapless writer mad. By generalising from the verb "to produce"-a word which to mean anything at all requires specific limitation by subject and object-he has arrived at a "conception," a "thought," i.e. production, to which by the very act of generalising he gives absolute unconditioned existence. After that of course he has no control over it; it simply runs away with him, to the extent that he is driven to make proof to workers, who would not willingly produce a pin did they not think they were producing something to live on: he assures such that "the economists are right in measuring progress by the ease with which produc tion is maintained"! Ease with which the production of lethal-chambers is maintained! might not the worker be "right" in thinking them maintained somewhat too easily-even with progress at stake?

It is this kind of mind which accepts slavishly an accepted but erroneous mould of speech in the face of common sense-a mind unoriginal and conventional, which is ready to be hypnotised by an existent, what though hateful, mode of labour. It cannot think or imagine beyond it. It fails to appreciate that creator and creation are not on equal standing: that the intelligence that created a monster can create its destroyer; that only by the consent of its creator and user can the machine do anything either for or to the mind which creates it. The machine is powerless to vary itself or its powers: its use even lies at the mercy of men of whom the only constant thing which can truly be asserted is that they change, who can destroy it or supersede it: or simply neglect it. To base a way of living on the assumption that a type of machine is permanent and that men will submit their variable ways permanently to it, is to be dazzled and therefore deluded by a single chance discovery of a facile way of handling the vast inanimate-power stored up in the world. It is sure that there must be billions of possible alternatives to this present way of handling, but that the sensitive observation of a Watt happened to concentrate, probably if the truth were known on account of a habit of mooching over the fire, upon this one, which suggested to him the possibility of steam-machinery. Had Watts had the type of mind which is hypnotised by its environment, deadened in its powers of observing new relations by a too strong "set" towards the accepted conventional way of regarding them, he could never have been impressed by a commonplace phenomenon in such a degree. But it is just this "set" type of intelligence which has seen finality in the system he established; who are persuaded that men must either adapt themselves to its ungainly services or present themselves at the door of the lethal-chamber, unwilling but persuaded that they must die.

Of all these "means of production" to which one philosopher says that the workers must either become adaptable or succumb, the Manifesto makes very short work: "Why not make every proletarian also a possessor? Why use legal and revolutionary methods to gain possession of something that will be of no value in the near future? Electricity will do all the necessary dispossessing and expropriation. It will rapidly put all the present means of production on the junk heap."

It seems a little ominous to be speaking already of "making" the proletarian into a possessor. Is he never going to throw off his non-possessing character on his own account and become a possessor without waiting to be made? Is he in fact going to dodge the uprising-the insurrection-after all ? For it is not the question of dispossessing and expropriation that anyone is much concerned with: it is the appropriation and possession: and who or what is the benevolent despot which is going to make him proprietor save at the length of the only efficient demand -i.e. the power to take.

And, once given-or taken, though one might like to think that if work is to be reduced to the level of pressing a button, the button to be small and modest enough for a humble man to consider its possession not wholly above his station, and in the limits of his own home too, he will surely have the spirit to stick to the button and defend the home. But there is no knowing: to those of the serving habit there is no limit to the number of ways they will devise for slipping into the mud and sticking in it, just as there are a million ways to the intelligence of a Napoleon who wants a continent or an Alexander who wants rhe world, for getting what they want. What for instance instead of the happy dream that with electricity's advent each member of the proletariat will be presented with a neat little electric outfit, with land and climate, all complete, merely requiring that he shall "press the button"-what is to prevent some erratic genius being seized with the quite conceivable and quite overpowering dislike to their faces and devising a machine to wipe them out of existence? Indeed until now electrocution is the most familiar of the dramatic forms in which the ordinary public have been made aware of its possibilities. There is nothing moreover in the past service of machines sufficient to induce men to set them up as saviours of Society, and electricity fitted to no matter what kind of machine, unless it is kept in its place as a servant will become the master of the unintelligent. Every thing turns on courage and temper in the long run, and if it is absent mechanical labour-saving power might as well have developed in the direction of a ring through the nose and a clamp through the foot for any virtue it might have to save men from slavery. There will always be men who will contrive to be masters as long as there are men willing to be slaves. The temper which will submit itself; adapt itself easily to systems either mechanical or spiritual, to anything other than its own personal preferences, is the dry-rot in the spirit which makes slavery. It may be objected that this temper is born and not made. Very well then, why kick against the pricks on its behalf? If men are born with that kind of temper they are born slaves and will sink to slavery in spite of every effort of born masters to hold them up. Whether they are or no remains to be seen. At any rate the passing away of the dead weight of an industrial system, fitted to the requirements of huge composite machines will give the egoist temper a chance to breathe if it exists though ever so feebly.

The same brand of counsel which expounds to the "poor" how the true and inevitable economy of production is that which must lead the majority of the populace to the electrocuting chair, also expounds to them the doctrine of "ought." The Editor of the "New Age" must recently have frightened the capitalist press greatly by giving them a good talking to--administering rebukes all round, ranging from the "Booming impertinence" for the "Times," "omniscient twaddle" for the "Nation," "yap" for something else, down to one which he distinguishes as being the "meanest jackal-pup of the litter" because forsooth all these have not interpreted the true truth of the South African business for the proletariat as they "ought" and because even its untrue truth when supplied was late-the old dodge of leading the poor to expect outrageous philanthropy from the enemy, but not the spunk of a chicken from themselves. The Capitalist press is the Capitalists' press, the lips and tongue of the Capitalist body. It is the mouthpiece contrived, bought and set working for the one purpose of telling forth their praise and aiding their own schemes. Why should it give utterance to anything that would make difficulties for capitalists or give away the secret where their strength lies? If it can give the impression that their supremacy pivots round a question of "Right" or "Wrong" and can keep their journals such as the "New Age" busy debating it, why not? The Editor of the "New Age" would do well by himself if he were to re-read the story of Samson and Delilah, which applies very pertinently to the situation. No one we think from the day that story was written through the thousands of years down to this has seen anything but wisdom in the giant's fictions concerning the withes, the plaited ropes and what not. Where men have seen folly plainly visible was in finally putting an enemy in possession of the truth. The capitalist press is quite capable of learning a lesson like that even if the "humanitarian" journals are not. If the poor want true descriptions prompt and to time they must become articu1ate and supply themselves with a mouthpiece of their own. At present they have neither the brains to conceive nor the strength to produce nor the intelligence to devise the like. If such a one were created and run in their interests they would look on at its slow strangling as calmly as they would regard a military garrison. Both phenomena would be to them equally devoid of significance. It is not the poor who maintain such scattered shreds as exist of a poor man's press. Then why whine because they are not told what it would be very good for them to know, but not so good for those upon whom they rely to do the telling.

Taken From "The Egoist: An Individualist Review." Formerly "The New Freewoman."

No. 3, Vol. I, Monday, February 2, 1914.

We have just finished reading Miss Christabel Pankhurst's magnum opus "The Hidden Scourge and how to end it." The scourge is venereal disease and the end of it is Votes for Women as for men, and Chastity for Men as for women: a reasonable attitude of give and take apparently. As throughout the length of her hundred and fifty pages Miss Pankhurst does not once venture the indiscretion of an individual observation, but contents herself with the repetition of the tale of social illnesses such as the maiden of sixteen on the orange-box at the corner has for a long time made us familiar with, alongside generous extracts from various medical works which the reader can consult for himself, we need do no more than summarise the argument and by preference in the manner which Miss Pankhurst herself has chosen- the ingenious manner of the compiler of the rhyme "This is the House that Jack built." Omitting the cumulative renderings and repetitions the tale of "The Hidden Scourge and How to end it" stands on this wise:

These are the Doctors
Who told the Tale
Of the Scrofulous Child
Of the Infected Wife
Of the Lustful Man
Who before his Marriage
Visited the Women
Whom Poverty led
To wander the Streets
To Minister to Fiends
Who contracted the Disease
Which was the Scourge
Which destroyed the " Spiritual Ideals" Of the " Normal Woman who regards the Sex Act as the Final Pledge of her Faith and her Love."

Miss Pankhurst, risking no observations, limits herself to pronouncing judgment, the which is that of the "pure" woman, and runs to the effect that it is all very wicked and has got to be stopped. Thus: First get votes for women, then get chastity for men by grafting them with the sexual habits of women. It sounds simple: though the author is not very explicit as to the manner in which the remedy is to be applied: whether inwardly or outwardly for instance, though she does in one place suggest a "dose."

The manner of application however we may leave, and limit our attention to the remedy: the chastity of women administered to men. The chastity of women is an exceedingly interesting subject. It appears useless to try to define chastity. Chastity is the generalisation and means nothing. We can however arrive at the mental attitude of those who speak of chastity as a virtue relating to themselves and others: who actually think of themselves and others as being chaste: and virtuous on that account. To such, to be chaste means to give an inner intellectual or emotional assent to the absence of an experience which outwardly is indicated by the physical state known under the name of virgin. To be chaste is the inner invisible spiritual side of the outward evident physical state of being a virgin. We need not linger over the fact that though there are many virgins there are but few who are chaste. The flesh is strong and intact, but the spirit is confused and stricken: considering which circumstances it would have been less perplexing had the author in offering the sexual habits of women for the emulation of men spoken of her panacea as "Virginity." Perhaps such was her intention and the distinction is nothing more than a linguistic nicety which Miss Pankhurst does not think it worthwhile to make. That it is to be "virgin" rather than chaste she has in mind is supported by the fact that the word she uses in developing her argument is "untouched," which is speaking enough and might be taken to be conclusive.

Now once the "chastity" argument comes down to the mere virginal, to conditions of being "touched" or "untouched," it shrinks to very measurable dimensions. Its "moral" thunders die away at once or change to cheerful laughter. For the cult of the virginal is on all fours with the cult of many other odd emphases which have made their way into an ancient and sophisticated civilisation. The emphasis which allows of a distinction of importance between the virginal and non-virginal condition entails-or rather it follows from-the quite arbitrary concentration of attention on a fixed point-the question whether it is fixed in repulsion or attraction emotionally being of little importance. Both forms fundamentally are made up of attraction: superficially there may appear to be some qualitative difference, but it would be hard to define: which explains why ordinary fastidious persons feel that an atmosphere turns sniffy immediately a female speaks in terms other than scoffing of the "pure" or the "chaste" or the "virginal." Why it does so they themselves would probably be at a loss to explain. The explanation is that the woman who calls herself-or others-"pure" is objectionable because she appears stupid: stupid in the precise way that the followers of the "unnatural" practices Miss Pankhurst refers to, in speaking of that now famous Piccadilly Flat which figured recently in the Police Courts are stupid. Such practices are due to quite identical psychological vagaries with those which cause women suffragists to concentrate on virginity, the only degree of "unnaturalness" which distinguishes such persons from the suffragists lying in the fact that the former had become bored with the nob of attention which now holds the suffragists, having fixed it in quite as arbitrary a spirit, on other "nobs." To call such persons "foul" is silly-and shirks the question. The explanation appears to be that there are parts of the body more sensitive than other parts, which may be stimulated into sensation by fixing attention on them. The vicious amuse themselves by imagining and thereafter "touching"; the "pure" prolong the excitement by imagining and thereafter refraining. Fundamentally there is nothing to choose between them: but in the sequel, owing to this difference of treatment, the "vicious" put the image to the test of experience and for the time being destroy it: the "pure" "suppress" it and turn it inward where it grows into an atmosphere and a permanent obsession. To compare, for instance, the value of the two methods few people would disallow that the occupants of the Flat in question derived far less feverish excitement out of the stupid exploits than did the "pure" ladies who got wind of the affair and clamoured for their blood. These considerations explain why erotic emotion is a more permanent part of a "pure" woman's life than it ever is or has been of a used-up rake's. He has intermittently his "un-fixed" moments: the "pure" woman has none: it is the essence of her creed of "purity" that her attention should always remain fixed at a point.

The mark of the stupid which these share in common with one another is attached to them because they allot an excessive importance pertaining either one way or another to a stimulation roused by excitation of sensitive points of the body from outside. None would hesitate to call a person (well-meaning possibly) who found his pleasure in having the soles of his feet tickled, stupid. Yet the difference between his mode and that of the "pure" and of the "rake" is only a slight difference in degree: none in kind: which explains why the "rakes" demand the "pure." It is the instinctive appreciation of like for like.

It is clear why as long as the "pure" women persist there can be no abatement of "lust." It is not merely that by their very distinction they stand pointer in hand as it were stimulating it first by concentration and then by a refusal which is in itself a further stimulation, a retiring which is flight inviting chase; they make the error, as negative persons, of mistaking for lust love itself when it is offered to them. We have already elsewhere made the distinction between the two and the phrases in which the "pure" refer to their conduct in marriage unmistakably show which of the two they are looking forward to in anticipation. They "give" themselves in marriage: that is, they permit: as negatives they submit themselves to a positive will: they feel in short that a deed is done to them which they, in virtue of the consideration that they are now married, allow. They are the true "womanly"; the attitude they adopt is not that of persons who satisfy their own desires, but of those who in kindness allow others to satisfy theirs. Having held back during the requisite period which serves to keep up their value as saleable goods before marriage, the bargain being struck they allow them selves to be "touched" as Miss Pankhurst would put it, that is, they submit to what to them, is lust. That is why they feel that they in "giving" themselves have given so much: given so much in fact that they have a reasonable claim for a lifetime of devotion: and a sound grievance if they do not get it: quite naturally too, since they have for so long set such unparalleled importance on it. During their fleeing period they have kept themselves in good countenance by imagining a sentimental heaven as an inevitable return to be made for what is so persistently sought. That is why the "pure" women are always disappointed with marriage. They find themselves in the position of the remnants of a dinner after a hungry person has dined; a position which is the Nemesis of the womanly woman: the person who thinks it of more importance to charm than to be charmed: to be the repast rather than the diner. They make the mistake of commiserating too much, and putting too much weight upon the outcry and woes of the person with an appetite: of putting the value of the request and the refusal on the same footing: whereas they are of as wholly differing orders as are the appetite and the dinner, for the latter of which almost anything will serve, provided the appetite can be maintained. However-to get rid of this material metaphor-let us rather say that the temperament which seeks first and foremost to be charmed is of an altogether higher order than that which seeks first and foremost to charm. To have someone who charms us is a matter of infinite importance to us: as to whom we charm, provided we can keep our special magnet sufficiently within our vicinity as to keep hope alive, is of little importance at all- to us. It is the question of what we want, not of what others want-even though it happens to turn out that we are the wanted article-that is of material importance to the positive, dominating selfish master mind. Those who charm us we adore because they mean so much to our own life and growth. It is not their growth or their convenience that matters- the reason that gifts are lavished on them and their conveniences and wishes served as soon as they are spoken, is to keep them fixed where they will be serviceable to us and as token of how much they mean to us. When therefore Miss Pankhurst with a toss of the head speaks thus: "There can be no mating between the spiritually developed women of this new day and the men vho in thought or in conduct with regard to sex affairs are their inferiors," she speaks -true, to the womanly woman-in the terms of one who rebuts the efforts to win her to that which she allows but does not desire. She speaks as one who is administering a rebuff to someone else, not as one who is obstructing the satisfaction of her own needs. Nor is she. Womanly women do not pretend to love: they are loved. Their attitude of pride is strongly illuminating: in love we are humble, in miserably-happy fear of our fate; but the "pure" women having no desire in the matter fear nothing, having nothing at stake. Their pride is the subtle expression of their nothingness: the unconscious expression of self contempt. If they knew anything of the positive element of love, of being charmed, they would understand that it is the most valuable thing in the world: the one which stimulates growth- from within, increases capacity and stimulates effort. With the verdict of tbe world in general in view, one does work just sufficiently well to escape its active censure for scamping. Our best work we do to satisfy ourselves: but the work which we achieve by a sort of inspiration beyond our best, by the establishing of a new record; we do it under the influence and to please the one or two people in the world who have the power to charm us for the sake of an-"It's rather good" from them. It is not so much that the charm they exert helps to surmount effort it removes the sense of effort: it is a lubricant: or a powerful magnet capable of drawing one up a steep place. Why then this hoity-toity "Spiritual women will not mate with" . . . any whatsoever? The personal value of charm to oneself is such that were a tree or a lamp-post capable of exerting it, women would mate with these. The "health" or "record" of men and women does not enter into the matter: the only question is: whether they can do it; the charming, to wit. It is a question of power, not of an adjunct intellectually considered desirable, and the vision of "suitors" with aspect as wholesome as sound field-turnips each having a doctor's certificate in his pockets is powerfully unalluring: because, one must suppose, the efficiency of one to charm must be proved by the sole fact of charming.

It is the failure to appreciate the fact about life that it is only its positive aspect that matters, which causes such radically different attitudes towards life. All the negative things, fear, hopeless misery, all forms of the thing called "disease" are specific forms of weak vitality. It is more important to heighten vitality than to combat disease: which as a matter of fact can only be over come by increased vitality, and there is more danger to "health" to be awaited from the misery of renunciation and the dull heats of virginity than from the ills of syphilis and gonorrhaea. There can be no disease of "matter": it can be broken but it is incapable of contracting disease. There can only be such a breaking down of the spiritual unitary stream as to render it incapable of penetrating the material which it has assimilated and organised into a body. The sole thing which can be called a "cause" of disease is low vitality and of all the things which tend to lower it, the chief is dulness. (Miss Pankhurst should have referred to the "health" of the virgins as also to our vigorous "virgin" civilisation.) Both the "pure" and the "vicious" are in and to themselves dull and stupid: they are duller still to those associated with them: the obsession in their interests of necessity makes them so. The "pure" moreover add to their lack of interest a pose of virtue which creates the close atmosphere to which we have referred: they assume the pose instinctively for a defence because fundamentally they know they are not genuine. They cannot be truthful and by contrast with their theatricality the frank bargaining of the prostitute is a relief. So the "purity" atmosphere lays a pall of dulness all about: no one escapes it: whatever the role we adopt we are caught in its folds. Dulness is death in life: disease has at least the relative advantage of being discomfort. In disease life is afflicted, but it is petrified by dulness; any form of torture is preferable to it; any small "vice" which offers a trivial variation of sense perception. The seeking after the "vicious" is a small ineffectual wriggle which life makes to escape the boredom of the "pure," but "vice" cannot throw off its "pure" character. The two are one- related to each other as the observe and reverse of a coin: the under and over of the same psychological condition: as the prostitute is the twin-trader of the legally-protected "pure" woman. Where there are excise officials there are smugglers. Let therefore the womanly women abandon the "privileges" which enable them to make a corner in a commodity the demand for which they sedulously stimulate, and the pirate brigs which ply on the outskirts of the trade will become purposeless. The entreaty of the cry "Virginity for men" coming from so favoured a class as those of the "pure" women has a comical sound, and Miss Pankhurst's disease-story is overdone. If seventy-five per cent. of men have one form of venereal disease and twenty per cent. have another and both kinds are contagious and possibly ineradicable, it follows that the number of those who are free from it neither means nor matters: that we are all tainted and presumably all inoculated in fact. If Miss Pinkhurst desires in the interests of a fad successfully to exploit human boredom and the ravages of dirt she will require to call in the aid af a more subtle intenigence than she herself appears to possess.