There are, of course, men who, like Faust, devote their lives to intellectual pursuits and expend all their energy in forcing nature to yield up her secrets. But such men are not only exceptions—they may be looked upon as degenerates. This is what Faust at last discovered. He recognised that life was essentially emotional, and that by having crushed out his emotional nature he had failed to live his life. Whether Goethe intended to impart the lesson his _Faust_ teaches us may be doubtful, but we can thus read it: we may suppress our emotional nature for a long time, but it will one day claim its rights, and, in its explosive escape from unnatural bondage, avenge itself on the suppressor, and hurl him to perdition. The emotions, Faust regrets, are all those inspired by women. But the great majority of men do not suppress the emotions inspired by women, but, on the contrary, allow their whole lives to be influenced by them. To find confirmation of this fact in countries like France and Germany might not be so easy as in the English-speaking countries. Wherever the sexes are separated in youth, and where conventional marriages are the rule, the erotic impulses become over-stimulated and lead to the excitement of animal passion. The love of the beautiful, all the æsthetic aspirations, the yearning for the society of women, the love of excitement, the chivalrous leanings, and the craving for pure love—all these are thrown as so much fuel into the furnace of sexual love. It is then that the struggle arises between the terrible demoniac love and pure love—a struggle so frequently depicted in Wagner’s operas and which determines the lives of so many men on the continent. Part of the struggle of the continental man is to avoid the influence of women altogether, or else to look upon them after the manner of the Mahommedans. In countries therefore where pure love is left but little or no scope, the influence of women is not very marked, and certainly not acknowledged, because for a man to acknowledge it would be to avow himself an “erotic madman.” To understand the immense influence which a woman exercises over man’s destiny and how closely men’s minds “revolve about women,” we must study the English-speaking countries where pure love has, if not free scope, freer scope than anywhere else, and where few healthy-minded men are ashamed to avow the value they place upon woman, her love, and her influence.