Man, however, is rather differently situated. Being conscious, he is much weaker in the stand he takes. For _conscious_ opinions, _conscious_ views, can be modified by persuasion, by precept, by example, by a consensus of contemporary opinion. When the man faces the girl, therefore, he is often and almost universally swayed by the prejudices in regard to what constitutes an attractive girl that are current in his Age, country or class. And thus we arrive at this important conclusion: _That provided his Age, his country and class entertain positive views and values in regard to Life, his choice will be correct and perfectly desirable as far as the highest purposes of Life are concerned; but that provided his Age, his country and class entertain the wrong or negative views or values in regard to Life, his choice will be incorrect and entirely undesirable as far as the highest purposes of Life are concerned_, and this despite the fact that he himself may be a healthy, exuberant and positive specimen of humanity. If, for instance, the ethereal, languishing, angelic and slightly delicate type of female beauty be the type exalted by the current values of his environment, he runs considerable danger of regarding her as the attractive type; and in selecting her he will deliberately overlook her narrow frame, her lack of fire, her lack of exuberance, her lack of positiveness.[42] Where Puritan values prevail, the sexually exuberant female with the ardent and fierce brow and eye will be regarded even as distinctly ugly. It will not surprise some people to hear, therefore, that in France the angelic, passive, and meek expression of most Englishmen’s wives is regarded as strangely incompatible with the frequently robust, self-assertive, exuberant appearance of the Englishmen themselves. Purity is indeed exhaled by such women: but not the purity that all positive people understand as purity. _To them the only purity worth having is that which is the outcome of fire._ Everything else is impure. A tepid passion, a non-exuberant passion, is impure: it can wait, it can temporize, it can play with Life; it can even thwart the highest purposes of Life: therefore it is impure.