CHAPTER XIV
WOMAN AND MANKIND
At last we are ready, clear-eyed and well armed, to deal with the question of the emancipation of women. Our eyes are clear, for we have freed them from the thronging specks of dubiety that had hitherto obscured the question, and we are armed with a well-founded grasp of theory, and a secure ethical basis. We are far from the maze in which this controversy usually lies, and our investigation has got beyond the mere statement of different natural capacity for men and women, to a point whence the part of women in the world-whole and the meaning of her relation to humanity can be estimated. I am not going to deal with any practical applications of my results; the latter are not nearly optimistic enough for me to hope that they could have any effect on the progress of political movements. I refrain from working out laws of social hygiene, and content myself with facing the problem from the standpoint of that conception of humanity which pervades the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
This conception is in great danger from woman. Woman is able, in a quite extraordinary way, to produce the impression that she herself is really non-sexual, and that her sexuality is only a concession to man. But be that as it may, at the present time men have almost allowed themselves to be persuaded by woman that their strongest and most markedly characteristic desire lies in sexuality, that it is only through woman that they can hope to satisfy their truest and best ambitions, and that chastity is an unnatural and impossible state for them. How often it
