Now the attitude of Feminism towards our vast army of spinsters and disgruntled wives is that of Socialist organizations all over the world towards discontented labour elements. It is one in which the latent discontent is turned to every possible advantage for the Cause. Feminism offers no bodily solution of the problem presented by our unmated women and our disillusioned wives, and it escapes from the responsibility of so doing by consistently regarding the whole crowd as nothing more than disembodied spirits. It does not even recognize that the muddle in which we now find ourselves is chiefly due to physical degeneration: for that it is too Puritanical. All it does is to promote and intensify the very tendencies which have brought us to our present pass, and to use the power obtained from its supporters to express in every possible way, legislatively and otherwise, its general hostility to man and its radical hatred of the bodily side of life. Meanwhile, it misses no opportunity of appealing to the vanity and mistaken ambition of its potential victims, in order to lure even the normal and desirable among modern young women in ever greater numbers into neutral pursuits and interests only fit for neuters. And it sets to work with a conscience so clean, with such a profound conviction of its rectitude, and above all with such a great display of moral indignation, that the more guileless sections of the modern world, always taken in by moral indignation, are almost led to believe that Feminism is a natural and desirable evolutionary development, on which all hope for the future depends. Why does Feminism act with a conscience so clean and a conviction so profound of its rectitude?—Because, behind it, it feels the support of the body-despising values, which tell it that Puritanism is right, that sex-equality is at last a fact owing to the marked degeneration of man, and that man, as the traditional enemy of female “virtue,” is _the_ enemy _par excellence_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN (II) THE MARRIED WE shall now examine a little more closely the lot of the 9,000,000 odd women in England and Wales who are or who have been married, and endeavour to find out whether similar tendencies to those already discovered in the previous chapter are making their influence felt in the matrimonial life of the country. Attention has already been called to the fact that, almost as fast as bodily parts or functions are lost, science comes forward with aids that enable us to carry on notwithstanding; and also that these substitutes, combined with the third-rate bodily experiences secured by our impaired physique, make us question the value of both life and love.