Shelley, the mystic, who looked for a miraculous change in nature coincident with a miraculous change in man, seems to have seen, almost as little as the average socialist of the present day, who believes in the spiritual efficacy of a purely material revolution, that the ideals and interests of the two sexes are widely apart, more so now than ever before probably. He, like the socialist, in his impatience to arrive at a practical solution of the life-problem, did not take the trouble to understand the true bearing of the doctrine of Malthus. He did not see that whether Malthus's figures be right or wrong, it is a fact that the population of any given district (be it an English barony, or the world itself) tends to increase up to the limits of its food-supply, taking the word _food_ in its very widest sense to signify all the means of well-being; and that this tendency is a fundamental element in all social problems, just as friction is in all mechanical problems. He did not see that, other things being the same, a higher standard of comfort, while, finally tending to diminish the rate of increase of population, first increases its pressure. He did not contemplate that strike against child-bearing on the part of women, which is induced, not merely by the desire for personal comfort, but is largely due to the vague influence of those new ideals of which he was himself the prophet. He, like the socialist, thought that we might go on increasing and multiplying _ad libitum_, till we reached the ultimate limit of standing-room on the earth, and of miraculous chemical food out of the air, and began, as astral bodies, to emigrate to Mars. Women know better than this; and feel the pinch of population, when what they just now consider their higher life is hampered by children. The woman who has one child more than she wants is an over-populated woman; and the advanced woman of the present day, having her own higher culture, and the culture of humanity, on the brain, possibly with a high ideal of the duties of maternity, and frequently a sickly and weary creature, morbid in body and mind, is very easily over-populated. Hence much social discomfort. Shelley does not seem to have contemplated this, nor seen that the good-natured acceptance of the feminine ideal by man might lead him, like poor St. Peter in his old age, "whither he would not." How all this is going to end I confess I don't know. I trust in more delicate adjustments, a higher and more wholesome life all round; but the ascent of man is always a painful process. Meanwhile it is quite time for this bald, disjointed chat of mine to come to an end. _London: Printed by Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, Bread Street Hill. September, 1889._ * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.