ng, celibacy affects a woman more than a
man: men, on the whole, suffer less from being unmarried. It is a more
serious deprivation for the woman than for the man, in general, to be
debarred from parenthood. This is a proposition which we need not labour
here, for no reader will dispute its importance and its relevance.

No less important is the economic question. Specially consecrated as she
is to the future, woman as distinctive woman is necessarily handicapped
in relation to the present. She is at an economic disadvantage. One's
blood boils at the cruel effrontery of men who protest against women's
efforts to gain an honest living, but who have never a word or a deed
against prostitution or against the causes which produce the numerical
preponderance of women. But here again our proposition, though
unfamiliar, and indeed so far as I know never yet stated, needs no
labouring--that owing to the economic opportunities of the sexes, it is,
at any rate, on that ground, of no significance that men shall be in
excess in a community, but it is of very grave significance that women
shall be in excess. It is pitiable, and indeed revolting, in this
country where the excess of women is so marked, to hear from year to
year the comments of men upon the supposed degeneration of women, upon
their unnatural selfishness, their desire to invade spheres which do not
belong to them, and so forth and so forth _ad nauseam_; whilst these
commentators are themselves hand in hand with drink, with war and with
Mammon, destroying male children of all ages in disproportionate excess,
sending our manhood to be slain in war, and sending it also in the cause
of industry--that is to say, in the cause of gold--to our colonies, as
if the culture of the racial life were not the vital industry of any
people.

A third very important reason why a numerical preponderance of women is
more injurious to a country than a numerical preponderance of men is
that, though the duty and responsibility of selection for parenthood
devolves upon both sexes, it is normally discharged with greater
efficiency by women than by men; and a numerical preponderance of women
gravely interferes with their performance of this great function. It may
obviously be argued that such a preponderance leaves a greater choice
to the men. But I believe that men do not exercise their choice so well.
In a word, women are more fastidious; the racial instinct is weaker in
them, less rampant an