It is only to be expected that the philosophers who most strongly argued in favour of parallelism, such as Spinoza and Fechner, were also determinists. In the case of the male, the free intelligible agent who by his own will can distinguish between good and evil, the existence of parallelism between mind and body must be rejected. The question, then, as to the proper view of the psychology of the sexes may be taken as settled. There has to be faced, however, an extraordinarily difficult problem that, so far as I know, has not even been stated yet, but the answer to which, none the less, strongly supports my view of the soullessness of women. In the earlier pages of my volume I contrasted the clarity of male thinking processes with their vagueness in woman, and later on showed that the power of orderly speech, in which logical judgments are expressed, acts on women as a male sexual character. Whatever is sexually attractive to the female must be characteristic of the male. Firmness in a man’s character makes a sexual impression on a woman, whilst she is repelled by the pliant man. People often speak of the moral influence exerted on men by women, when no more is meant than that women are striving to attain their sexual complements. Women demand manliness from men, and feel deeply disappointed and full of contempt if men fail them in this respect. However untruthful or great a flirt a woman may be, she is bitterly indignant if she discover traces of coquetry or untruthfulness in a man. She may be as cowardly as she likes, but the man must be brave. It has been almost completely overlooked that this is only a sexual egotism seeking to secure the most satisfactory sexual complement. From the side of empirical observation, no stronger proof of the soullessness of woman could be drawn than that she demands a soul in man, that she who is not good in herself demands goodness from him. The soul is a masculine character, pleasing to women in the same way and for the same purpose as a masculine body or a well-trimmed moustache. I may be accused of stating the case coarsely, but it is none the less true. It is the man’s will that in the last resort influences a woman most powerfully, and she has a strong faculty for perceiving whether a man’s “I will” means mere bombast or actual decision. In the latter case the effect on her is prodigious. How is it that woman, who is soulless herself, can discern the soul in man? How can she judge about his morality who is herself non-moral? How can she grasp his character when she has no character herself? How appreciate his will when she is herself without will? These difficult problems lie before us, and their solutions must be placed on strong foundations, for there will be many attempts to destroy them. CHAPTER X MOTHERHOOD AND PROSTITUTION