Nature; if there are still reasons for feeling that it is not woman as I have described her in these pages, but man himself—man as we know him in this post-war Europe of 1922—who is really in direst need of transformation; then, it seems to me, that it is above all important to pause and carefully to take our bearings before we make this daring plunge; for we cannot now with any pretence of honesty or good faith claim that it is a plunge into the unknown. THE END FOOTNOTES: [232] Op. cit., pp. 210, 211. [233] For a detailed discussion of the relationship of the painter, sculptor, poet, architect and musician to the great social builder and artist, see my Introduction to _Van Gogh’s Letters_ (Constable & Co., London). [234] See Lecky (Op. cit., vol. II, p. 360). Speaking of women he says: “They are little capable of impartiality or of doubt; their thinking is chiefly a mode of feeling.” See also Buckle (_The Influence of Women on the_ _Progress of Knowledge_), the whole argument of which is to the effect that woman’s thinking is emotional. Weininger also says (Op. cit., p. 100): “With the woman, thinking and feeling are identical,” but this testimony is not nearly as valuable as that of the two former writers, who can in no way be suspected of misogyny. [235] On this whole question cp. Sir Almroth E. Wright (Op. cit., p. 35): “Woman’s mind attends in appraising a statement primarily to the mental images which it evokes, and only secondarily—and sometimes not at all—to what is predicated in the statement ... accepts the congenial as true, and rejects the uncongenial as false; takes the imaginary which is desired for reality, and treats the undesired reality which is out of sight as non-existent.” [236] With the softening of men in an effeminate civilization, women are, of course, not alone in holding this attitude to truth. Many men, even among the most cultivated, are unable to-day to separate pleasantness from truth; for to do so implies a control of emotion by reason which is not the forte of modern mankind. Not only men writers during the war, but also politicians, proved beyond doubt their own and their male audiences’ inability to regard truth rationally; and at the present time you are quite as likely to be flatly contradicted by a man as by a woman, if you enunciate an unpleasant truth before an ordinary crowd. [237] _Vide_ Press reports of the William Harkness case, particularly the comments published, after Harkness’s execution, in _The News of the World_ for February 26, 1922. [238] Arabella Kenealy was tending towards this conclusion when she wrote (Op. cit., p. 155): “The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards of the man of average brain at cost of her health, of her emotions, or of her morale.” I would suggest “and” instead of “or” in the latter part of the sentence.