“And what happy people these slaves are! Just as happy as the men-slaves who, under the dominion of good conduct, love, and the hive instinct, often work themselves to death, like the bees, that others may live and prosper. “But, as you say, all women cannot be mothers. Yet it is essential that the mothers of the nation should be protected at all costs from the disease which lurks under the specious word ‘Feminism.’” “They have come a long journey together, the Man and the Woman, and all through that long journey across the ages they have been leading the child by the hand. “And if the wicked and blasphemous people who talk of sex-hate had but the scientific and poetic perception enabling them to see those three grand and mysterious figures as they are on the shores of Time, we would be spared, perhaps, from the poisonous blight of sexisms.” “You are so positive,” said she, “that I often haven’t dared to interrupt you, and you talk so quickly that all you have said, though I understood it at the time, is now a jumble in my mind.” “I am positive, because there is no use at all in being negative. People who believe in what they say are usually positive—even though they may be wrong. “If I have talked too quickly, I shall write out what I have said and send it to you; then you can pick it to pieces as much as you please.” THE END NOTE TO PART I OF THE BOOK In my experience, judging from the men I have met in life and the men whose lives I have read about, the really strong men of the world have been men of strong belief—and mostly men with a strong belief in a personal God. Faith is a very wonderful thing, call it what you please. There is in Faith an enormous dynamic energy the origin of which, analyse it as much as I will, leaves me utterly baffled and bewildered. One might say that it is an orientation of the mind, a pointing of all the thoughts in one definite direction by which the mind, as a machine, gains harmony which is expressed in power of action, and I believe the co-ordination of the functions of the mind under a common governing belief does, in part, explain the miraculous power conferred on men by Faith. Also one might say that the mind capable of great faith is essentially a positive mind, a direct mind, and a constructive mind. Also one might say a great many things, and yet leave the foundation of the question as deeply involved in darkness as ever, and the mind of a Newman, a Gladstone, or a Cromwell the same towering mystery. But the fact remains clear that the man without belief in something above and beyond this world, or in something _in_ this world, some tide, or core, or essence of which his own little life is a part, loses the alliance of that power which we indicate in the word Faith. There is no doubt at all that the western world has lost power, and that England is losing power daily by the steady loss of Faith.