But under the progressive effects of purely masculine dominance we find
the broader human elements of dancing left out, and the sex-element more
and more emphasized. As practiced by men alone dancing has become a
mere display of physical agility, a form of exhibition common to all
males. As practiced by men and women together we have our social
dances, so lacking in all the varied beauty of posture and expression,
so steadily becoming a pleasant form of dalliance.

As practiced by women alone we have one of the clearest proofs of the
degrading effect of masculine dominance:--the dancing girl. In the
frank sensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on
her merits. We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly
about "the bald-headed row," and occasionally burst forth in shrill
scandal over some dinner party where ladies clad in a veil and a
bracelet dance on the table. Nowhere else in the whole range of life on
earth, is this degradation found--the female capering and prancing
before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not
hers. That we, as a race, present this pitiful spectacle, a natural art
wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art degraded to ignoble ends, has one
clear cause.

Architecture, in its own nature, is least affected by that same cause.
The human needs secured by it, are so human, so unescapably human, that
we find less trace of excessive masculinity than in other arts. It
meets our social demands, it expresses in lasting form our social
feeling, up to the highest; and it has been injured not so much by an
excess of masculinity as by a lack of femininity.

The most universal architectural expression is in the home; the home is