recurs, now
in a more rational and then in a more irrational form; constituting
sometimes an objection in even moderately intelligent minds, to the
entrance of woman into the new fields of labour.

It must be at once frankly admitted that, were there the smallest
possible danger in this direction, the sooner woman laid aside all
endeavour in the direction of increased knowledge and the attainment of
new fields of activity, the better for herself and for the race.

When one considers the part which sexual attraction plays in the order
of sentient life on the globe, from the almost unconscious attractions
which draw amoeboid globule to amoeboid globule, on through the endless
progressive forms of life; till in monogamous birds it expresses itself
in song and complex courtship and sometimes in the life-long conjugal
affection of mates; and which in the human race itself, passing through
various forms, from the imperative but almost purely physical attraction
of savage male and female for each other, till in the highly developed
male and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual but not less
imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes
deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we
find it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is
based sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitely varied
in its external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human
world, from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and
entertainments of modern Courts and palaces, the attraction of man and
woman for each other has played an unending part; and, that the most
fierce ascetic religious enthusiasm through the ages, the flagellations
and starvations in endless nunneries and monasteries, have never been
able to extirpate nor seriously to weaken for one moment the master
dominance of this emotion; that the lowest and most brutal ignorance,
and the highest intellectual culture leave mankind, equally, though in
different forms, amenable to its mastery; that, whether in the brutal
guffaw of sex laughter which rings across the drinking bars of our
modern cities, and rises from the comfortable armchairs in fashionable
clubs; or in the poet's dreams, and the noblest conjugal relations of
men and women linked together for life, it plays still today on earth
the vast part it played when hoary monsters ploughed after each other
through Silurian