bought, the keeper and the kept; the ideal of the typically modern man
departs quite as strongly from that of his forefathers in the direction of
finding in woman active companionship and co-operation rather than passive
submission. If the New Woman's conception of parenthood differs from the
old in the greater sense of the gravity and obligation resting on those who
are responsible for the production of the individual life, making her
attitude toward the production of her race widely unlike the reckless,
unreasoning, maternal reproduction of the woman of the past, the most
typical male tends to feel in at least the same degree the moral and social
obligation entailed by awakening lifehood: if the ideal which the New
Woman shapes for herself of a male companion excludes the crudely animal
hard-drinking, hard-swearing, licentious, even if materially wealthy
gallant of the past; the most typically modern male's ideal for himself
excludes at least equally this type. The brothel, the race-course, the
gaming-table, and habits of physical excess among men are still with us;
but the most superficial study of our societies will show that these have
fallen into a new place in the scale of social institutions and manners.
The politician, the clergyman, or the lawyer does not improve his social or
public standing by violent addictions in these directions; to drink his
companions under the table, to be known to have the largest number of
illicit sex relations, to be recognised as an habitual visitant of the
gambling saloon, does not, even in the case of a crowned head, much enhance
his reputation, and with the ordinary man may ultimately prove a bar to all
success. If the New Woman's conception of love between the sexes is one
more largely psychic and intellectual than crudely and purely physical, and
wholly of an affection between companions; the New Man's conception as
expressed in the most typical literature and art, produced by typically
modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed to the same
new ideal. If to the typical modern woman the lifelong companionship of a
Tom Jones or Squire Western would be more intolerable than death or the