them meet. It is utterly astounding to note the way in which modern
writers and talkers miss this plain, wide, and overwhelming fact: one
would suppose woman a victim and nothing else. By this account ideal,
emancipated woman has, age after age, been knocked silly with a stone axe.
But really there is no fact to show that ideal, emancipated woman was
ever knocked silly; except the fact that she is silly. And that might
have arisen in so many other ways. Real responsible woman has never been
silly; and any one wishing to knock her would be wise (like the
streetboys) to knock and run away. It is ultimately idiotic to compare
this prehistoric participation with any royalties or rebellions. Genuine
royalties wish to crush rebellions. Genuine rebels wish to destroy kings.
The sexes cannot wish to abolish each other; and if we allow them any
sort of permanent opposition it will sink into something as base as a
party system.

As marriage, therefore, is rooted in an aboriginal unity of instincts, you
cannot compare it, even in its quarrels, with any of the mere collisions
of separate institutions. You could compare it with the emancipation of
negroes from planters--if it were true that a white man in early youth
always dreamed of the abstract beauty of a black man. You could compare
it with the revolt of tenants against a landlord--if it were true that
young landlords wrote sonnets to invisible tenants. You could compare it
to the fighting policy of the Fenians--if it were true that every normal
Irishman wanted an Englishman to come and live with him. But as we know
there are no instincts in any of these directions, these analogies are not
only false but false on the cardinal fact. I do not speak of the
comparative comfort or merit of these different things: I say they are
different. It may be that love turned to hate is terribly common in
sexual matters: it may be that hate turned to love is not uncommon in the
rivalries of race or class. But any philosophy about the sexes that