Lacking both a woman's morals and a man's ethics, they are freaks of Nature; or are Frankensteins of abnormal culture. When they are not Empresses, to indulge in shameful licence--their male abilities exaggerating their woman-instincts to the dimensions of megalomanias--their inordinate ambitions make them mistresses of crowned heads, or of others whose rank or wealth supplies their mistresses with means and scope for their unbridled prodigalities. Privileged by their sex and by masculine favour, their lawlessness protected from its merited penalties by the law-abiding of their fellows, they become intoxicated--frequently insane--as result of their successes and excesses. The famous courtesans have been (and are still) for the most part women of this ilk; persons of steel brain and will, without a woman's aspirations or emotions to soften their self-centredness; nor a man's code to discipline their wantonness. They make men the instruments and the victims of their feminine defects, which are all--or nearly all--of woman they possess; self-consciousness distorted to a monstrous vanity, emotions dwarfed to greeds and lusts. One after another, they exploit their victims, by exercise, precisely, of the same masculine business-abilities and ruthlessness which make men fraudulent company-promoters, profiteers, or sweaters of the poor. When one has served their purpose, they cast him off for another. Cold-blooded, clever, and emotionless, although sometimes sensual in a fashion purely male (in keeping with their other male proclivities) they are adventuresses, spies, poisoners, adultresses, monsters; abiding reproach to a noble sex; terrible example of the fate awaiting that sex, as penalty for abnormal development of masculine characteristics beyond the capacity of its Woman-traits to counterpoise and guide. Power, which strengthens and steadies all but weak men, only too often drives women to destruction. A factor in this is that those privileges of their sex which have become, more or less, their civilised prerogative, preserve them from the salutary harsh and stern rebuffs which men in like circumstance inevitably encounter. If women are to have scope and authority identical with men's, then they must forgo all privileges; must come out from their fence behind strong arms and chivalry to meet masculine blows in the face, economic and ethical--if not actual, indeed, as Prévost has predicted. And then, Heaven help them--and men--and the Race! CHAPTER II THE EVOLUTION OF SEX IN ADOLESCENCE "I am for you and you are for me, Not only for your own sake, but for others' sakes, Envelop'd in you, sleep great heroes and bards, They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me." _Walt Whitman._ I A French biologist has discovered that when a female oyster is starved, and its constitution thus deteriorated, it becomes transformed into a male.