Now in such cases marriage is not only possible, but can be quite successful—or at least as successful as any marriage can be from the standpoint of the individual—provided that the female elements in the woman find complete and happy adaptation, and the male elements in her are prevented from guiding her conduct and her judgment at the cost of the female elements. If the male elements in her are not prevented from guiding her conduct and her judgment, the evil result will be twofold: (1) she will develop her masculine proclivities at the cost of her female or maternal side; and (2) she will come into early and bitter conflict with her husband. Either one of these evil results is sufficient to upset the balance of the unit known as the family. What kind of man, then, is likely to be the best mate of the woman with pronounced masculine elements in her constitution? _The problem is to make her masculine elements recessive in favour of her female elements._ It amounts to this, then—in what circumstances is a woman likely to abandon her masculine elements as a weapon in the struggle of life? In what circumstances is she likely to realize their uselessness to her? —Only, it may be said, when she has found them utterly useless; only when she has learned to despise them. But when does this occur?—It always occurs where the masculine elements belonging to the woman have in a sharp conflict, or by gradual experience covering innumerable small incidents, discovered superior, overwhelmingly superior, masculine elements in the mate. It may never come to a conflict. The superiority of the male elements in the husband may become impressed upon her by repeated lessons, by small daily occurrences, that teach her in spite of herself to trust his masculinity more than hers. When this point is achieved, her masculine elements rapidly become recessive, and thenceforward give no further trouble—nay, they may cease to manifest themselves altogether. For this end to be attained, however, the male—the husband—must be a creature of overwhelming masculinity, against whom no masculine elements belonging to any female could possibly measure themselves without the certainty of absolute rout.[64] In the same way it might be pointed out that the womanly man finds his happiest and best adaptation with the female—the wife—of overwhelming femininity; for then his female elements finding it impossible to measure themselves against those of his spouse, quickly become recessive and cease to give any further trouble. But what actually happens to-day? Our great past as a virile race has certainly left us an inheritance of thousands of virile women, some of whom excel anything that any other European country can produce; but alas! owing to the degeneracy of man, caused by his bad health, his Puritanism, his bemeaning occupations, and his absurd obsessions about chivalry, there are not the males to hand with whom to mate these women.