larger number, a number increasing in every generation, suffered unmistakably from the severity of the mental discipline to which they were subjected.  The advocates of female equality made a very hard fight for equal culture; but the physical consequences were perfectly clear and perfectly intolerable.  When a point was reached at which one half the girls of each generation were rendered invalids for life, and the other half protected only by a dense stupidity or volatile idleness which no school punishments could overcome, the Equalists were driven from one untenable point to another, and forced at last to demand a reduction of the masculine standard of education to the level of feminine capacities.  Upon this ground they took their last stand, and were hopelessly beaten.  The reaction was so complete that for the last two hundred and forty generations, the standard of female education has been lowered to that which by general confession ordinary female brains can stand without injury to the physique.  The practical consequences of sexual equality have re-established in a more absolute form than ever the principle that the first purpose of female life is marriage and maternity; and that, for their own sakes as for the sake of each successive generation, women should be so trained as to be attractive wives and mothers of healthy children, all other considerations being subordinated to these.  A certain small number of ladies avail themselves of the legal equality they still enjoy, and live in the world much as men.  But we regard them as third-rate men in petticoats, hardly as women at all.  Marriage with one of them is the last resource to which a man too idle or too foolish to earn his own living will betake himself.  Whatever their education, our women have always found that such independence as they could earn by hard work was less satisfactory than the dependence, coupled with assured comfort and ease, which they enjoy as the consorts, playthings, or slaves of the other sex; and they are only too glad to barter their legal equality for the certainty of protection, indolence, and permanent support.”

“Then your marriages,” I said, “are permanent?”

“Not by law,” he replied.  “Nothing like what our remote ancestors called marriage is recognised at all.  The maidens who come of age each year sell themselves by a sort of auction, those who purchase them arranging with the girls themselves the terms on which the latter will enter their family.  Custom has fixed the general conditions which every girl expects, and which only the least attractive are forced to forego.  They are promised a permanent maintenance from their master’s estate, and promise in return a fixed term of marriage.  After two or three years they are free to rescind the contract; after ten or twelve they may leave their husbands with a stipulated pension.  They receive an allowance for dress and so forth proportionate to their personal attractions or to the fancy of the suitor; and of course the richest men can offer the best terms, and generally secure the most agreeable wives, in whatever number they please or think they can without inconvenience support.”