activity? Let us realize that every extraneous idea effectually
introduced into a man's mind is a direct obstruction of his dynamic
activity. Every idea which is introduced from outside into a man's
mind, and which does not correspond to his own dynamic nature, is a
fatal stumbling-block for that man: is a cause of arrest for his true
individual activity, and a derangement to his psychic being.

For instance, if I teach a man the idea that all men are equal. Now
this idea has no foundation in experience, but is logically deduced
from certain ethical or philosophic principles. But there is a disease
of idealism in the world, and we all are born with it. Particularly
teachers are born with it. So they seize on the idea of equality, and
proceed to instil it. With what result? Your man is no longer a man,
living his own life from his own spontaneous centers. He is a
theoretic imbecile trying to frustrate and dislocate all life.

It is the death of all life to force a pure _idea_ into practice. Life
must be lived from the deep, self-responsible spontaneous centers of
every individual, in a vital, _non-ideal_ circuit of dynamic relation
between individuals. The passions or desires which are thought-born
are deadly. Any particular mode of passion or desire which receives an
exclusive ideal sanction at once becomes poisonous.

If this is true for men, it is much more true for women. Teach a woman
to act from an idea, and you destroy her womanhood for ever. Make a
woman self-conscious, and her soul is barren as a sandbag. Why were we
driven out of Paradise? Why did we fall into this gnawing disease of
unappeasable dissatisfaction? Not because we sinned. Ah, no. All the
animals in Paradise enjoyed the sensual passion of coition. Not
because we sinned. But because we got our sex into our head.

When Eve ate that particular apple, she became aware of her own
womanhood, mentally. And mentally she began to experiment with it. She
has been experimenting ever since. So has man. To the rage and horror
of both of them.

These sexual experiments are really anathema. But once a woman is
sexually self-conscious, what is she to do? There it is, she is born
with the disease of her own self-consciousness, as was her mother
before her. She is bound to experiment and try one idea after another,
in the long run always to her own misery. She is bound to have fixed
one, and then another idea of herself, herself as woman. First she is
the nobl