race were systematically belittled. Paternity is but a mere incident, it
was argued, in man's life: why should maternity be more than a mere
incident in woman's life? In England, by a curiously perverted form of
sexual attraction, women were so fascinated by the glamour that surrounded
men that they desired to suppress or forget all the facts of organic
constitution which made them unlike men, counting their glory as their
shame, and sought the same education as men, the same occupations as men,
even the same sports. As we know, there was at the origin an element of
rightness in this impulse.[2] It was absolutely right in so far as it was
a claim for freedom from artificial restriction, and a demand for economic
independence. But it became mischievous and absurd when it developed into
a passion for doing, in all respects, the same things as men do; how
mischievous and how absurd we may realize if we imagine men developing a
passion to imitate the ways and avocations of women. Freedom is only good
when it is a freedom to follow the laws of one's own nature; it ceases to
be freedom when it becomes a slavish attempt to imitate others, and would
be disastrous if it could be successful.[3]

At the present day this movement on the theoretical side has ceased to
possess any representatives who exert serious influence. Yet its practical
results are still prominently exhibited in England and the other countries
in which it has been felt. Infantile mortality is enormous, and in England
at all events is only beginning to show a tendency to diminish; motherhood
is without dignity, and the vitality of mothers is speedily crushed, so
that often they cannot so much as suckle their infants; ignorant
girl-mothers give their infants potatoes and gin; on every hand we are
told of the evidence of degeneracy in the race, or if not in the race, at
all events, in the young individuals of to-day.

It would be out of place, and would lead us too far, to discuss