FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 40: In this chapter I have quoted some passages from an article of mine, “The Apocalypse of Evil,” which appeared in the Contemporary Review, and received the strong commendation of Dr. Lightfoot, then Bishop of Durham. Many of the thoughts I owe to my friend, James Hinton, to whom my obligations on this subject are absolute.]
[Footnote 41: We must be careful, however, in urging this difficulty, to remember Dr. Martineau’s teaching, which I have given in the third chapter, and bear in mind that the evil here is due to man’s disorder, and not to Nature’s order. In the animal world the reproductive instincts work out as orderly results as all other natural instincts, and are no stronger than is necessary for the preservation of the race.]
CONCLUSION
And it is this great upward movement, lifting man to a higher level, which is given into the hands of us women, touching, as it does, all the great trusts of our womanhood. What are we women going to do in the face of such vast issues for good or evil?
Undoubtedly we stand at the parting of the ways. In England undoubtedly the old high traditions of English society have, at least in what is called the “Upper Ten,” been lowered and vulgarized. Our literature is no longer as clean and wholesome as it was. The greater freedom that women enjoy has not always been put to high uses. And all around us in both countries the old order is changing, and the new order is not yet born. Old positions are becoming untenable, with the higher position and culture of women. It is becoming an impossibility for intelligent women with a knowledge of physiology and an added sense of their own dignity to accept the lower moral standard for men, which exposes them to the risk of exchanging monogamy for a peculiarly vile polygamy—polygamy with its sensuality, but without its duties—bringing physical risks to their children and the terrible likelihood of an inherited moral taint to their sons. It is an impossibility, now that mothers know, that they should remain indifferent as to what sort of manhood