Had they ever dreamt, or had they ever been told, that the best women, the most desirable women, must be unfaithful to their husbands when, through what cause soever, the latter are forcing them to be unfaithful to Life itself, they might have shown less righteous indignation and more understanding when the women of the country in their legions turned adulteresses in war-time. As it was, the phenomenon was quite unexpected, and proved a most terrible blow to the national conscience. For it was realized only too shrewdly that if thousands of these women were ultimately found out, many more thousands must have escaped the discovery; and thus the character of the nation seemed to have suffered very severe deterioration. Truth to tell, the parties to blame were not the women at all, but the hopelessly vain men who were the co-respondents in the actions, and who understood so little of female psychology that they interpreted these adulteresses’ fidelity to Life and its multiplication, as a preference, if you please, for themselves before their legal spouses. Not knowing of the positive woman’s inveterate fidelity to Life, they arrogantly imagined that their personal and irresistible attractions were the cause of these adulteresses’ infidelity to their husbands. They—these men—were the people against whom the world ought to have inveighed; for the man who is capable of so misunderstanding the human female as to flatter himself that it is his personal attractions that are seducing her, when all the time it is the Will of the Species, neglected by her absent husband, that is impelling her to go in search of fertilization elsewhere, is not worth the rope with which he ought to be hanged. The mistake, as a mistake, is all the more monstrous, seeing that it is the outcome of maniacal vanity. For no man who was not too much elated by a woman’s attention to retain calm reflection, could ever be such a fool as to imagine that his triumph over her husband was due to his own personal charm. There is no need, however, to labour the question any longer, if once the true nature of woman be properly grasped; for then it is seen immediately that, in the best and most vital women, fidelity to Life must take precedence of fidelity to the mate, to a pledge, to an oath, to a vow, to a custom, or to anything else.[81]