It necessarily follows from this, that clean-mindedness in abstinent young men, as it is generally understood, is a pure myth, a complete misunderstanding; and that if it is desirable that eligible young men should be clean-minded (and I am of opinion that it is most desirable), then the road thereto does not lie through the dark spook-haunted swamps of sexual abstinence, but through the open sunny highways of healthy sex gratification, secured from the dangers of commercial prostitution. (G2) This objection can only be met by the Herculean undertaking of rearing a type of manhood richer in masculine traits of mind and character, and possessed of more exuberant virility—a type, that is to say, by the side of which virile women would immediately feel the inadequacy of their male elements and would not be tempted to use them as weapons. By this means alone can the male elements in the finest women be made recessive. At present the idea of the “manly” man is foolishly limited to one who loves sports of all kinds, who believes in open-air life, and who, while having a sense of humour, also wears about him an air of breezy modesty. By this modesty is meant a disinclination to make any special claims for himself. But all women quickly discover the ease with which they become mistress of the fate of such a man, and it is curious that, in spite of the thousands of cases of such subjection on the part of this type of man in English marriages, he still continues to pass as the “manly” man. The man of will, the man of character, the man who wishes to administer his own life and the lives of those dependent upon him, because he is conscious of being fit for the responsibility, and repeatedly proves this fitness,[68] is being born in ever smaller numbers every year. It is the system of education in England that is at fault. It produces a womanly will-less creature, with heavier muscles than the average woman, but with less grit and less bite in him, with less pride and less jealous love of responsible action and mastery than the average girl has who is his partner at golf. If this seems like calumny or exaggeration, let the reader watch the career of any one of these alleged “manly” men of England, from his school years to his tenth or eleventh year of marriage, and if in _every case_ they do not behold a creature who has long abandoned all self-direction, not to speak of direction of dependents, I invite him to close this book at this point as the most unspeakable nonsense. With such a man, woman’s male elements cannot possibly be made recessive. But it should not be imagined that she is any happier on that account. On the contrary, both wisdom and compassion would seem to unite in advocating the return in ever larger numbers of exuberantly virile men, if only for the sake of securing happier and fuller lives to the bulk of modern women.