Except as regards women! There, it lingers still. The Man says even now to himself:--"This woman is mine. If she ventures to have a heart or a will of her own, woe betide her! I have tabooed her for life; let any other man touch her, let her look at any other man--and--knife, revolver, or law court, they shall both of them answer for it!" There you have in all its natural ugliness another Monopolist Instinct--the deepest-seated of all, the vilest, the most barbaric. She is not yours: she is her own: unhand her! The Turk takes his offending slave, sews her up in a sack, and flings her into the Bosphorus. The Christian Englishman drags her shame before an open court, and divorces her with contumely. Her shame, I say, in the common phrase, because though to me it is no shame that any human being should follow the dictates of his or her own heart, it is a shame to the woman in the eyes of the world, and a life of disgrace she must live thenceforward. All this is Monopoly and essentially slavery. As man lives down the Ape and Tiger stage, he will learn to say, rather: "Be mine while you can; but the day you cease to feel you can be mine willingly, don't disgrace your own body by yielding it up where your soul feels loathing; don't consent to be the mother of children by a father you despise or dislike or are tired of. Let us kiss and part. Go where you will; and my good will go with you!" Till the man can say that with a sincere heart, why, to borrow a phrase from George Meredith, he may have passed Seraglio Point, but he hasn't rounded Cape Turk yet. You find that a hard saying, do you? You kick against freedom for wife or daughter? Well, yes, no doubt; you are still a Monopolist. But, believe me, the earnest and solemn expression of a profound belief never yet did harm to any one. I look forward to the time when women shall be as free in every way as men, not by levelling down, but by levelling up; not, as some would have us think, by enslaving the men, but by elevating, emancipating, unshackling the women. There is a charming little ditty in Louis Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verse," which always seems to me to sum up admirably the Monopolist attitude. Here it is. Look well at it:-- "When I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great, And tell the other girls and boys, Not to meddle with _my_ toys." That is the way of the Monopolist. It catches him in the very act. He says to all the world: "Hands off! My property! Don't walk on my grass! Don't trespass in my park! Beware of my gunboats! No trifling with my women! I am the king of the castle. You meddle with me at your peril." "Ours!" not "Mine!" is the watchword of the future. XI. "_MERE AMATEURS._" "He was a mere amateur; but still, he did some good work in science."