The Greeks, with their intuitive apprehension, pourtrayed both Athene, goddess of Intellect, and Artemis, goddess of Sports, as sexless, passionless, unwedded and childless; scorners of men, devoid of all womanly impulse and sentiment. (Strangely enough, as though anticipating the argument of this book, Athene is described as having sprung, in full life, from her father's brain. While Scripture tells of Eve derived from Adam's side.) In _The New System of Gynæcology_, the latest and most authoritative treatise by eminent specialists in women's diseases, the following passage occurs, under heading, "Derangement of the Sex-Characteristics": "It is our belief that the more truly feminine a woman is, psychically and physically, in instinct and in performance, so much the more complete and normal will be the functions of her mind and body. We have already alluded to inverted instincts. And in the perversion of functions and characteristics (physical phenomena) we may observe all grades from almost complete masculinity in appearance, _with the disappearance of the feminine functions_, to the lesser degrees of disordered function and characteristics." II Nature is so complex, yet so subtly consistent in her workings, that the neuter-state shows in the faces of many of our women as the typical look of the mule--cross between horse and ass, a creature incapable of reproduction. In the eyes of young women of strenuous pursuits--academic, industrial, or athletic, this characteristic sterile glint, part boldness, part antagonism, is common. The normal condition of woman is attended by the normal expression of woman. The womanly biology entails the womanly psychology. And modesty is one of the natural female secondary Sex-characteristics, attendant upon healthy structural development and function. The hard, bold glance--the "mule"-look--of some masculine girls and women by no means necessarily implies conscious immodesty. It is mainly biological and subconscious; sign of an attribute missing, as result of deterioration of the function in which the attribute is normally rooted. With reduced values of that Reproductive function it is modesty's province to defend, the attribute of modesty declines. The girls and women of old Sparta, as ignorant of biology as women are to-day, made a cult of athletics--good and zealous, but mistaken patriots!--for the express purpose of mothering a fine, athletic race. These high and praiseworthy aims failed signally. For Sparta, with all her zeal of racial improvement (so drastic in its methods that she killed her weakly girl-infants) fell upon decline and degeneracy. Noble civilisation that she had been, she died in decadent corruption.