A REJOINDER 171 



was outside of it, for the moment. By some mutation 

 of chance he had come into possession of half-a-crown. 

 He proceeded to the workhouse and asked if the girl 

 could come out of it. When asked why he desired 

 her to come out, he replied " because he had half-a- 

 crown, and as he did not know when he should earn 

 another, he would like to marry her now ! " Perhaps 

 from the heights of metaphysics we may be informed 

 whether this is instinct or aspiration, and whether 

 it is fallible or infallible ?* In another London 

 workhouse there is a woman inmate with numerous 

 illegitimate children by several different paramours. 

 Such events are quite common. Is this too an 

 " infallible aspiration " of man's ? The sentiment 

 which at the cost of thrifty and respectable people 

 maintains such persons, may also be regarded, I 

 presume, as another human infallible instinct, or 

 may it be an aspiration ! I will not multiply these 

 instances, though I have records of hundreds of 

 them. Truly " no profit can be found " in such 

 metaphysical language as the " infallible instincts 

 and aspirations of Man," but, as Huxley would 

 have said, only in the " veracious facing of the ugly 

 facts of life." 



We will come finally to section three of Miss 

 Wodeho use's criticism. She calls this the most 

 serious of all her objections to my plea for the opera- 

 tion of a more virile sentiment in human affairs. 



* While this article is passing through the Press, the Eveninq News of 

 July 9th, 1910, publishes the application of a pauper who had an income 

 of sixpence weekly, to the Gravesend Guardians, to help him pay the cost 

 of a marriage certiticate. His "young Indy'' was in the workhouse. Is 

 this, too, one of the infallible instincts of Man which are so superior to 

 those of that Nature which ^Fiss Wodehouse impliedly condemns ' 



