Boys suffer most from a negative discipline. Men are suffering most physically and mentally from our negative age. Women only suffer from the indirect results of the age—that is to say, from the deterioration it causes in their men. FOOTNOTES: [1] See St. Matthew, chap. xxii. verse 30: “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” [2] It should always be remembered that the promise of Christianity is “the resurrection of the body.” [3] For an explanation of what I mean by this much-abused phrase, see pp. 70, 90-94. [4] See my _Defence of Aristocracy_ (Constable), chap. V. [5] See _Sex and Character_ (Heinemann, 1906), p. 299. [6] _Ibid._, p. 299. [7] _Ibid._, p. 329. [8] _Ibid._, p. 336. [9] _Ibid._, p. 343. [10] _Ibid._, p. 345. [11] _Ibid._, p. 345. [12] Op. cit., p. 346. [13] Of course, I mean this intellectual positiveness only as a rational confirmation of bodily and constitutional positiveness; for frequently when I shall use the expression “positive” it will also mean the unconscious, spontaneous positiveness of a healthy body. From the context there will be no mistaking which I mean. The same remark applies naturally to the expression intellectual negativeness. For instance, St. Paul and Calvin were both intellectually as well as spontaneously negative. An unhealthy child, or an unhealthy adult, may be only unconsciously or spontaneously so. [14] In this connexion, see pp. 98-103. CHAPTER II The Subject Treated Generally In my Introduction I have said enough to show that I can be neither a so-called Woman-hater nor a Woman-despiser. And if I have departed somewhat from the common rules laid down by precedent for the writing of a book of this nature, it was because I felt compelled to safeguard some of my hardest and most unacceptable views and conclusions from the withering suspicion of having been dictated by bitterness or resentment. Other men have written about Woman, and have said hard things about her too: Knox, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Weininger are among them. Neither Knox, Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche, however, started life with such a large fund of prepossession in her favour. Neither Knox, Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche can be said to have been free, as I am, from those bitter experiences and shocks that distort one’s vision and destroy one’s focus. If I appear to say things that are hard, therefore let it be plainly understood at this stage in my work, that I do so only because I wish to speak frankly and clearly about my subject; and that in view of the muddled and maudlin misunderstandings that now hang like a stifling mist over the female sex, it is impossible to dissipate errors or to take up a clear and definite stand at all, without occasionally seeming hard, unrelenting, metallic. Any flash may be taken for a flash of steel, particularly when one is in a fog.