s on a just balance of Red-bloods and
Mollycoddles. Without the Red-blood there would be no life at all, no
stuff, so to speak, for the Mollycoddle to work upon; without the
Mollycoddle, the stuff would remain shapeless and chaotic. The Red-blood
is the matter, the Mollycoddle the form; the Red-blood the dough, the
Mollycoddle the yeast. On these two poles turns the orb of human
society. And if, at this point, you choose to say that poles are points
and have no dimensions, that strictly neither the Mollycoddle nor the
Red-blood exist, and that real men contain elements of both mixed in
different proportions, I have no quarrel with you except such as one has
with the man who states the obvious. I am satisfied to have
distinguished the ideal extremes between which the Actual vibrates. The
detailed application of the conception I must leave to more patient
researchers.

One point more before I close. This Dichotomy, so far as I can see,
applies only to man. Woman appears to be a kind of hybrid. Regarded as a
creature of instinct, she resembles the Red-blood, and it is to him that
she is first attracted. The hero of her youth is the athlete, the
soldier, the successful man of business; and this predilection of hers
accounts for much of human history, and in particular for the
maintenance of the military spirit. On the other hand, as a creature
capable of and craving sympathy, she has affinities with the
Mollycoddle. This dual nature is the tragedy of her life. The Red-blood
awakens her passion, but cannot satisfy it. He wins her by his virility,
but cannot retain her by his perception. Hence the fact, noted by a
cynic, that it is the Mollycoddle who cuckolds the Red-blood. For the
woman, married to the Red-blood, discovers too late that she is to him
only a trophy, a scalp. He hangs her up in the hall, and goes about his
business. Then comes the Mollycoddle, divining all, possessing and
offering all. And if the Red-blood is an American, and the Mollycoddle
an European, then the situation is tense indeed. For the American
Red-blood despises woman in his heart as profoundly as he respects her
in outer observance. He despises her because of the Mollycoddle he
divines in her. Therefore he never understands her; and that is why
European Mollycoddles carry off American women before the very eyes of
the exasperated Red-blood. "Am I not clean?" he cries. "Am I not
healthy? Am I not athletic and efficient?" He is, but it does not he