females are developing, that there does exist in our modern societies, and
often among the very classes forming our typically advanced sections, so
much of pain, unrest, and sexual disco-ordination at the present day?

The reply to this pertinent suggestion is, that the disco-ordination,
struggle, and consequent suffering which undoubtedly do exist when we
regard the world of sexual relationships and ideals in our modern
societies, do not arise in any way from a disco-ordination between the
sexes as such, but are a part of the general upheaval, of the conflict
between old ideals and new; a struggle which is going on in every branch
the human life in our modern societies, and in which the determining
element is not sex, but the point of evolution which the race or the
individual has reached.

It cannot be too often repeated, even at the risk of the most wearisome
reiteration, that our societies are societies in a state of rapid evolution
and change. The continually changing material conditions of life, with
their reaction on the intellectual, emotional, and moral aspects of human
affairs, render our societies the most complex and probably the most mobile
and unsettled which the world has ever seen. As the result of this
rapidity of change and complexity, there must continually exist a large
amount of disco-ordination, and consequently, of suffering.

In a stationary society where generation has succeeded generation for
hundreds, or it may be for thousands, of years, with little or no change in
the material conditions of life, the desires, institutions, and moral
principles of men, their religious, political, domestic, and sexual
institutions, have gradually shaped themselves in accordance with these
conditions; and a certain harmony, and homogeneity, and tranquillity,
pervades the society.