The women of the present day learn everything and arrive at much, even at the finest ideas of love. But, full of insight as they are into the _ars amandi_, have modern women indeed learned how with all their soul, all their strength, and all their mind to love? Their mothers and grandmothers—on a much lower plane of conscious erotic idealism—knew of only one object: that of making their husbands happy. This then meant that the wife ought to submit to everything and ask for nothing; to serve her husband’s ends untiringly, even when she did not understand them, and to receive with gratitude any crumbs of his personality that might fall to her from the table to which his friends were bidden to feast. But what watchful tenderness, what dignified desire to please, what fair gladness could not the finest of these spiritually ignored women develop! The new man lives in a dream of the new woman, and she, in a dream of the new man. But when they actually find one another it frequently results that two highly developed brains together analyse love, or that two worn-out nervous systems fight out a disintegrating battle over love. The whole thing usually ends in each of them seeking peace with some surviving incarnation of the old Adam and the eternal Eve. But not with a clear conscience; for they are continually aware that they were intended for the new experience, although their powers of loving were small while their ideas of love were great. Not until the spring rain of the new ideas has fallen sufficiently to penetrate the roots and rise as sap in the tree of life, will a greater happiness grow from the new love, which is not to be blamed because men have dreamed it greater than they themselves are at present.