Although, strictly speaking, this question should come in the chapter on Marriage, its discussion here, in view of what has gone before, seems so opportune and necessary, that I have decided to include it here, and thus leave myself all the more room for other considerations in Chapter VII. I have mentioned before that the deterioration of men from the standpoint of Life—i.e. their gradual approximation to a purely, or relatively, negative type—has been a process that, in England at least, has been going on for almost 270 years. In this time a good deal can be accomplished in the matter of altering a type, and there can be no doubt that a good deal has indeed been accomplished. Fortunately, however, apart from the actual deterioration through bad food and unhealthy living and work (which, as I have shown elsewhere, are the indirect results of Puritanical values), Puritanism has not done much to affect the positiveness of the poorest classes in England. Where it has proved most formidable is in (1) the plutocracy, (2) the middle classes, and (3) the lower middle classes. In these the ravages of Puritanical tradition on the constitutions and outlook of the men is everywhere noticeable; and that which makes the incidence of this evil all the harder to bear is the fact that the women of all these classes have not suffered nearly to the same extent from this tradition. Whereas, therefore, it is a more or less common experience to find a positive girl in all these classes, the appearance of a truly positive man is excessively rare. I may have occasion to refer to this state of affairs again in Part II; but, for the present, let us examine its immediate effects on the positive girl who has just married. The positive girl extends her hand confidently, bravely and hopefully to Life. She does not expect to draw it back empty; she does not desire to draw it back full of bliss. She is brave enough, rational enough, and above all exuberant enough, to expect to draw it back with its full quantum of pleasure and pain. She wants _Life_, and what though Life means some pain, willy-nilly she will have it notwithstanding, and her heart whispers “damn the consequences.”