[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] STR,—I have not read
the book reviewed by Professor Julian Huxley in your recent number, but his criticism is so illumin- ating and instructing that it obviously brings the authors' points to a comprehensive issue. The newest woman makes one feel a little anxious lest national extinction should follow the predominance of the unfeminine feminine element. The girl of to-day contradicts the contention of Otto Weininger, suicidal-misogynist, and his British disciples, that she is a blind worm in eternal search of man as a means to one of two ends—promiscuity or motherhood.
Like the worm, however, in that she can turn, she maps out many paths that diverge from sexual desires.
Sport, travel, the chess-board of national exigencies, all beguile her from waiting on a man's pleasure or populating his home. It is checkmate in every move She renders physical disabilities, nature's shackle, almost non-existent. She is so muscular, so enduring, so confident, and she begins to make a plaything of man. He has to work quite hard to compete with her ; will he in consequence dwindle in proportions and energy ?
Looking at woman through the 11 glazed window of time, one sees her past running to the left and upwards to the starting-point, her future on the right ascending gradually to the apex again. Far beyond the rim of the horizon there looms through the mist a biological inception of woman, an oval form, complete and chaste in her self-enclosure, man and woman in one, with divinity sealing the triune. Through uncounted aeons she hovers, brooding, mysterious, fashioned by some miracle of spontaneity, creative, reproducing exact replicas of herself. Then comes the moment of rebellion against monotony, and with a supreme effort she eliminates from her person one component item of mechanism, giving to it a separate and provocative entity. It grows from depend- ance through equality to superiority—and becomes man. Theorists maintain that she will weary of this reciprocal state, and, exerting herself afresh, will regain her dominion and eventually her power of absorption until the incorporate unit once more represents the human race.
They suggest that the " third " sex, whether neuter or duplicate, is the sure sign of this ultimatum. Reversion to type on the enormous scale of this ancient pattern is not palatable to the majority ; three sexes, and one sex only, are equally uncomfortable ideas. The optimist sees much that is wholesome and desirable in the existence of two distinct sexes, egos though not necessarily egotistic, attractive one to the other, and able with physical discretion and mental self- control to join in a dual mutual life, or, remaining apart, work out separate and satisfying careers. The one state for the many, the other for the few. The idealist redeems sex- emotion from the crudity of Shavian doctrines, the coarseness of some of our modern stimulants in dress and words and deeds, the commonplace of what is called—libellously- animal life. The materialist ignores the danger of the new sex-struggle tending to masculinity in women and femininity in men.
Pessimists see a far-reaching drawback in the rapid pro- gression of woman to-day. Riches, crankism, and self- advertisement are powerful levers ; will the wrong sort of woman get to the front or shall we put the brake on soon enough, not only for the continuance of the race, but for the continued distinction of sex ? Most of us like to think, I imagine, that our individuality is immortal, no matter what science may teach.—I am, Sir, &c.,
BEATRICE HERON-MAXWELL.
Ladies' Army and Navy Club, W.
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