It was for all the world as if being self-supporting and useful in industry or the professions were the sole and unique object of human life, and nobody seemed to see that, in this case, there was no conceivable reason why human beings should have been created or become male and female. Of course the howl of indignation that arose at the word “surplus” was greatest among those women who are frankly hostile to men, and who are keenest about making the bodily destiny of their sex a matter of no consequence. Nevertheless, the cruelty of the attitude adopted by all was never actually felt as cruelty by anyone, because the very people responsible for those articles and letters would have been the last to suspect themselves, or to be suspected by others, of any trace of inhumanity. All they wanted to imply, and wished everybody else to believe, was that a human life can be full and can be lived adequately _without that_! And yet to anyone who reveres the body, and who knows how the spirit is tortured by a body unsatisfied and neglected, how thoroughly unfounded does this claim appear! A thwarted instinct does not meekly subside. It seeks compensation and damages for its rebuff. True sublimation, except through whole-hearted and unremitting religious practices, is rare. What then is the fate of these 2,000,000 women? Can we reckon with certainty on their all being so much below even the common standard of their married sisters that they will have no instincts to thwart? There is an inclination abroad to adopt this comforting view. So accustomed have we become to the spectacle of our omnibuses, trams, and trains being filled each morning with unmarried female workers, that we are easily led to the erroneous conclusion that, as time goes on, these female workers will grow as used to filling their lives by means of self-support as we have grown accustomed to seeing them.