ckoned in the same category
with a man's "ox" and his "ass," which any other male was forbidden
"to covet." The wife was the husband's--her owner's private
property--and the curse of this dependence and the old ferocious
_potestas_ and _manus_, from which the Roman wife freed herself, are
upon women to-day. With the regaining of their economic freedom by
women--by whatever means this is to be accomplished--a truer marriage
will be brought within reach of every one, and the sexual relationship
will be freed from the jealous chains of ownership that cause such
bitter mistrusts in the wreckage of our loves.

Mating will be a much more complex affair, and yet one much more
directly in harmony with the welfare of the race. A recognition of the
pre-natal claims of the child is the new Ethic that is slowly but
surely dawning on womankind and on man. He who destroys human life,
however unfit that life may be, is remorselessly punished by society,
but the woman and man who beget diseased and imbecile children--the
necessarily unfit--are not only exonerated from sin, but applauded by
both Church and State. Could moral inconstancy go further than this?
It is only in the begetting of men that breeding from the worst stocks
may be said to be the rule. As long as in our ideas on these questions
superstition remains the guide there is nothing to hope for and much
to fear. The new ideal is only beginning, and beginning with a
tardiness that is a reproach to human foresight. But herein lies the
glad hope of the future. I place my trust in the enlightened
conscience of the economically emancipated mothers, and in the
awakened fathers, to work out some scheme of sexual salvation as will
ensure a race of sounder limb and saner intelligence than any that has
yet appeared in our civilisation.

It is woman, not man, who must fix the standard in sex. The problems
of love are linked on to the needs of the race. Nature has, as we have
seen, made various experiments as to which of the sexes was to be the
predominant partner in this relation. But the decision has been made
in the favour of the mother. She it is who has to play the chief part
in the racial life. There is no getting away from this, in spite of
the many absurdities that man has set up, as, for instance, St. Paul's
grandmotherly old Tory dogma, making "man the head of the woman."

The differences between woman and man are deep and fundamental. And,
lest there be any who fear the gi