Intimately connected with humanitarian pursuits, particularly when they are adopted with frenzied resolution, is however another and less inviting psychological factor. The theory that males and females contain in their constitution certain elements, more or less accentuated, of the other sex, is now so widely accepted that it has become a commonplace in all speculations upon the sex question. Now among the characteristics which most frequently manifest themselves in women of marked male tendencies is a proneness to sadistic expressions of the sex instinct. The habit of teasing among hysterical girls, and even among female children not yet pubescent, is a sign of this.[111] In the normal life of the married female these sadistic impulses become sublimated either by the action of the stronger male upon her psyche and physique (which draws the masochistic elements in her to the fore) or by the natural expression of her power over her baby or babies. In the unmarried female, or the female without offspring, these sadistic impulses have to be repressed or curbed. The peaceful and orderly expression of them in modern society is hardly possible. But we are told by psychologists that an overpowered instinct asserts itself in an obverse character.[112] In spinsters, therefore, we should expect the sadistic elements _in the happiest circumstances_ to become inverted into intense humanitarianism.[113] This explains why we so frequently encounter middle-aged spinsters whose hard metallic faces and cruel cold eyes seem so utterly out of keeping with their ardent participation in humanitarian movements of all kinds. I remember one occasion when I happened to call on a lady of this kind. I was appalled by the terrifying hardness of her features, and yet, I must say, I was not in the least surprised when, in the course of the conversation, she asked me (I ought to mention the district where she lived was a very hilly one) whether I did not suffer at the sight of the _poor_ horses in the neighbourhood. These women, who frequently have hearts of stone, nevertheless find compensation for the repression of their sadistic impulses in the exercise of the most ungovernable and most obsessional humanitarianism and sentimentality, but while their neighbours and the local clergy applaud their lives to the echo, no one has the smallest inkling of the true nature of the phenomenon. A child would tell at a glance that these humanitarian and sentimental ladies were not radically kind by nature, and those who live with them every day would probably confirm the child’s first impression; but such is the distrust in England of what the eye can read, and so great and instantaneous is the respect for humanitarian zeal, particularly when it is backed by a heavy banking account, that these women frequently die leaving a big reputation for warm-heartedness behind them.