to come. But at all
times the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at explanation.
Acting upon their theories as to the nature and function of sex, men
have, ever since the passing of the primeval matriarchates, segregated
women, equalized them, worshipped them, or enslaved them. Opinions
have varied from ancient national aphorisms to the effect that
women have no souls to the most ultramodern utterances of
biologist-publicists that the differences between men and women are
the differences between two species. There are other epigrams, vast
sweeping generalities, extant concerning the nature of sex, and women
particularly. All partake of the complexity of truth and therefore own
a certain validity. Still, since as a matter of fact, these items have
been based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition and
verbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human documents, as
material for the psychologist, than as scientifically obtained data,
able to stand unblinking before the rays of the critical searchlights.

SCIENCE VS. ART

Not that all the vast accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell,
higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet, the
magic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with their
marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us with
important information. They are the facts of the sex life, as much as
the song of the nightingale, or the mocking laughter of the cuckoo
pursued by its mate. So Sappho and Elizabeth Browning, to take only
two samples, have contributed some of the feminine reaction. The
erotic motive in literature has but paralleled the erotic motive in
life, with all of its vagaries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies and
suffering.

We have had concerning sex not knowledge, but a series of attitudes,
the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the attitude of
good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the attitude of
the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied not
an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of sex,
biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined that
immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. And in a matriarchate we
should undoubtedly hear of the Eternal Masculine. Each leaves one as
unenlightened as the other. A rough and ready code of life attributes
certain grossly characteristic qualities of mind and body to each
sex. This is supposed to be eno