“Sex not only A renewal of life in the species,” noted the doctor’s silver pencil; “Sex may be also A renewal of energy in the individual.”

After some musing he crossed out “sex” and wrote above it “sexual love.”

“That is practically what he claims,” Dr. Martineau said.  “In which case we want the completest revision of all our standards of sexual obligation.  We want a new system of restrictions and imperatives altogether.”

It was a fixed idea of the doctor’s that women were quite incapable of producing ideas in the same way that men do, but he believed that with suitable encouragement they could be induced to respond quite generously to such ideas.  Suppose therefore we really educated the imaginations of women; suppose we turned their indubitable capacity for service towards social and political creativeness, not in order to make them the rivals of men in these fields, but their moral and actual helpers.  “A man of this sort wants a mistress-mother,” said the doctor.  “He wants a sort of woman who cares more for him and his work and honour than she does for child or home or clothes or personal pride.”

“But are there such women?  Can there be such a woman?”

“His work needs to be very fine to deserve her help.  But admitting its fineness?...

“The alternative seems to be to teach the sexes to get along without each other.”

“A neutralized world.  A separated world.  How we should jostle in the streets!  But the early Christians have tried it already.  The thing is impossible.”

“Very well, then, we have to make women more responsible again.  In a new capacity.  We have to educate them far more seriously as sources of energy—­as guardians and helpers of men.  And we have to suppress them far more rigorously as tempters and dissipaters.  Instead of mothering babies they have to mother the race....”

A vision of women made responsible floated before his eyes.

“Is that man working better since you got hold of him?  If not, why not?”

“Or again,—­Jane Smith was charged with neglecting her lover to the common danger....  The inspector said the man was in a pitiful state, morally quite uncombed and infested with vulgar, showy ideas....”

The doctor laughed, telescoped his pencil and stood up.

Section 7

It became evident after dinner that Sir Richmond also had been thinking over the afternoon’s conversation.