s when necessary, may occasionally
bring his club gently and effectively on to the head of his wife, even, it
may be, with grateful appreciation on her part.[293] But the modern man,
who for the most part spends his days tamely at a desk, who has been
trained to endure silently the insults and humiliations which superior
officials or patronizing clients may inflict upon him, this typical modern
man is no longer able to assume effectually the part of the "noble savage"
when he returns to his home. He is indeed so unfitted for the part that
his wife resents his attempts to play it. He is gradually recognizing
this, even apart from any consciousness of the general trend of
civilization. The modern man of ideas recognizes that, as a matter of
principle, his wife is entitled to equality with himself; the modern man
of the world feels that it would be both ridiculous and inconvenient not
to accord his wife much the same kind of freedom which he himself
possesses. And, moreover, while the modern man has to some extent acquired
feminine qualities, the modern woman has to a corresponding extent
acquired masculine qualities.

Brief and summary as the preceding discussion has necessarily been, it
will have served to bring us face to face with the central fact in the
sexual morality which the growth of civilization has at the present day
rendered inevitable: personal responsibility. "The responsible human
being, man or woman, is the centre of modern ethics as of modern law;"
that is the conclusion reached by Hobhouse in his discussion of the
evolution of human morality.[294] The movement which is taking place among
us to liberate sexual relationships from an excessive bondage to fixed and
arbitrary regulations would have been impossible and mischievous but for
the concomitant growth of a sense of personal responsibility in the
members of the community. It could not indeed have subsisted for a single
year without degenerating into license and disorder. Freedom in sexual
relations involves mutual trust and that can only rest on a basis of
personal responsibility. Where there can be no reliance on personal
responsibility there can be no freedom. In most fields of moral action
this sense of personal responsibility is acquired at a fairly early stage
of social progress. Sexual morality is the last field of morality to be
brought within the sphere of personal responsibility. The community
imposes the most varied, complicated, and artifici