[87] Women are particularly prone to endeavour to rule in the home by means of this trick of giving their spouse a guilty conscience, and they do not mind much what words they use or abuse to achieve that end. The word “selfish,” however, is a very convenient word for this purpose, particularly if they happen to be dealing with a man who believes, as they do, that it has a meaning and that this meaning is offensive. [88] All this time she may have been protesting _consciously_ that _she does not want children_ and that she is quite happy without them. It is her blind instinct and the impelling force of her dissatisfied reproductive organs that have been driving her (despite her conscious disinclination or indifference to motherhood) into situations in which she can be fertilized. [89] To this anthropologists may object: What about the Australian Bushmen who did not associate the coitus with reproduction? True; but they knew that children came with marriage, although they did not know that the coitus had anything to do with their appearance. And the fact of being a married man would thus become inextricably mingled with the condition of paternity. [90] Among the reasons given for the wife’s unfaithfulness there are of course a few that apply also to the husband. These the reader will readily pick out, and they do not require to be re-stated here. To give one example of these common reasons, however, I would remind the reader of the effect of the continued use of contraceptives on happy sexual relations. [91] “H” signifies husband’s petition: “W” signifies wife’s. [92] Unfortunately these figures were unobtainable, as for the previous years, distinct for husband and wife. [93] Figures for the years 1913 and 1914 unobtainable. [94] Priests of the Holy Catholic Church not included. [95] As they include unmarried men, they are somewhat in excess of the correct figures for families, but the proportions between them would not be so very much affected by the omission of the unmarried. [96] It is this omission to draw a sharp distinction between the proclivities of flourishing health and those of lack of health or of sub-normal health, that vitiates the arguments and conclusions in such books as Otto Weininger’s _Sex and Character_, and essays like Schopenhauer’s on _Woman_ and _The Metaphysics of Love_. This omission is more particularly fatal to-day when negative people are becoming very much more numerous than positive people. [97] The reason why women live in such dread of the man who can see through them, and endeavour to heap every kind of ignominy upon him, is that in their alleged “mystery” lies their power over the average man, and that their sentiments and insistence on a sentimental view of their sex, all help to furnish their arsenal with the weapons they can wield most effectively against man in general. The wonder is that they have been able to impose _their_ view of the penetrating man upon the mass of British mankind.