can settle on
her before consenting to his acceptance, the fact remains, that, under
existing conditions, not the amount of sex affection, passion, and
attraction, but the extraneous question of the material possessions of
the male, determines to a large extent the relation of the sexes. The
parasitic, helpless youth who has failed in his studies, who possesses
neither virility, nor charm of person, nor strength of mind, but who
possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing unlimited sexual
indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest maid, than her
brother's tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and physical grace
and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of nothing but
material good, has, especially among the so-called upper classes of our
societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex companionship of
any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, than the most
physically attractive and mentally developed male, who may have nothing
to offer to the dependent female but affection and sexual companionship.

To the male, whenever and wherever he exists in our societies, who
depends mainly for his power for procuring the sex relation he desires,
not on his power of winning and retaining personal affection, but, on
the purchasing power of his possessions as compared to the poverty of
the females of his society, the personal loss would be seriously and
at once felt, of any social change which gave to the woman a larger
economic independence and therefore greater freedom of sexual choice. It
is not an imaginary danger which the young dude, of a certain type which
sits often in the front row of the stalls in a theatre, with sloping
forehead and feeble jaw, watching the unhappy women who dance for
gold--sees looming before him, as he lisps out his deep disapproval
of increased knowledge and the freedom of obtaining the means of
subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and expresses his vast
preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all types of cultured and
productive labouring womenhood in the universe. A subtle and profound
instinct warns him, that with the increased intelligence and economic
freedom of woman, he, and such as he, might ultimately be left sexually
companionless; the undesirable, the residuary, male old-maids of the
human race.

On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a certain body of females who
would lose, or imagine they would lose, heavily by the a