capital!” or “Barkis is willin’,” or something of that kind.  This manner of regarding human beings as homogeneous is preserved even by the great Moliere. Harpagon is nothing but miserly, although Harpagon might as well have been at once miserly and a financial genius, a fine father, and a public-spirited citizen.  What is worse yet, his “defect” is of distinct advantage to his son-in-law and daughter, who are his heirs, and for that reason should not find fault with him, even if they have to wait a little for their wedding.  I do not believe, therefore, in simple characters on the stage.  And the summary judgments of the author upon men—­this one stupid, and that one brutal, this one jealous, and that one stingy—­should be challenged by the naturalists, who know the fertility of the soul-complex, and who realise that “vice” has a reverse very much resembling virtue.

Because they are modern characters, living in a period of transition more hysterically hurried than its immediate predecessor at least, I have made my figures vacillating, out of joint, torn between the old and the new.  And I do not think it unlikely that, through newspaper reading and overheard conversations, modern ideas may have leaked down to the strata where domestic servants belong.

My souls (or characters) are conglomerates, made up of past and present stages of civilisation, scraps of humanity, torn-off pieces of Sunday clothing turned into rags—­all patched together as is the human soul itself.  And I have furthermore offered a touch of evolutionary history by letting the weaker repeat words stolen from the stronger, and by letting different souls accept “ideas”—­or suggestions, as they are called—­from each other.

Miss Julia is a modern character, not because the man-hating half-woman may not have existed in all ages, but because now, after her discovery, she has stepped to the front and begun to make a noise.  The half-woman is a type coming more and more into prominence, selling herself nowadays for power, decorations, distinctions, diplomas, as formerly for money, and the type indicates degeneration.  It is not a good type, for it does not last, but unfortunately it has the power of reproducing itself and its misery through one more generation.  And degenerate men seem instinctively to make their selection from this kind of women, so that they multiply and produce indeterminate sexes to whom life is a torture.  Fortunately, however, they perish in the end, either from discord with real life, or from the irresistible revolt of their suppressed instincts, or from foiled hopes of possessing the man.  The type is tragical, offering us the spectacle of a desperate struggle against nature.  It is also tragical as a Romantic inheritance dispersed by the prevailing Naturalism, which wants nothing but happiness:  and for happiness strong and sound races are required.