ose, or a wife and children to leave. He must carry
forward the banner of life, though seven worlds perish, with all the
wives and mothers and children in them. Hence Jesus, "Woman, what have
I to do with thee?" Every man that lives has to say it again to his
wife or mother, once he has any work or mission in hand, that comes
from his soul.

But again, no man is a blooming marvel for twenty-four hours a day.
Jesus or Napoleon or any other of them ought to have been man enough
to be able to come home at tea-time and put his slippers on and sit
under the spell of his wife. For there you are, the woman has her
world, her positivity: the world of love, of emotion, of sympathy. And
it behooves every man in his hour to take off his shoes and relax and
give himself up to his woman and her world. Not to give up his
purpose. But to give up himself for a time to her who is his
mate.--And so it is one detests the clock-work Kant, and the
petit-bourgeois Napoleon divorcing his Josephine for a Hapsburg--or
even Jesus, with his "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"--He might
have added "just now."--They were all failures.

CHAPTER IX

THE BIRTH OF SEX

The last chapter was a chapter of semi-digression. We now return to
the straight course. Is the straightness none too evident? Ah well,
it's a matter of relativity. A child is born with one sex only, and
remains always single in his sex. There is no intermingling, only a
great change of roles is possible. But man in the female role is still
male.

Sex--that is to say, maleness and femaleness--is present from the
moment of birth, and in every act or deed of every child. But sex in
the real sense of dynamic sexual relationship, this does not exist in
a child, and cannot exist until puberty and after. True, children have
a sort of sex consciousness. Little boys and little girls may even
commit indecencies together. And still it is nothing vital. It is a
sort of shadow activity, a sort of dream-activity. It has no very
profound effect.

But still, boys and girls should be kept apart as much as possible,
that they may have some sort of respect and fear for the gulf that
lies between them in nature, and for the great strangeness which each
has to offer the other, finally. We are all wrong when we say there is
no vital difference between the sexes. There is every difference.
Every bit, every cell in a boy is male, every cell is female in a
woman, and must remain so. Women can