THE NATURAL 



the feminine sex would atrophy, a single female would 

 be elevated to the dignity of queen and mother, the rest 

 of the population would work stupidly for an ideal ex- 

 terior to its own sensibility. Even more radical trans- 

 formations would not be anti-natural. Virgin-birth 

 might establish itself: certain males could be bora in 

 each century, as happens in the intellectual order, and 

 they could fecundate the generation of loins, as genius 

 fecundates the generation of minds. But humanity, by 

 the richness of its intelligence, is less than other animal 

 species submitted to causal necessity; by constant 

 squirming in its nets, it has managed to displace a cord 

 here and there, and makes now and again the un- 

 expected movement. The coming of males once hi a 

 century would be unnecessary if some mechanical device 

 were found for exciting the life of woman's eggs, as 

 one excites those of the sea-anemone. If a few males 

 were born from time to time, by an atavistic quirk of 

 nature, they could be exhibited as curiosities, as we now 

 exhibit hermaphrodites. 



The feminist ideal leads us to these pipe-dreams. But 

 if it comes to destroying the couple and not to re-forming 

 it, if it comes to establishing a vast social promiscuity, 

 if feminism resolves itself into the formula: free- woman 

 in free-love, it is even more chimerical than all the 

 chimaera which have at least their analogy in the divers- 

 ity of animal habits. Human parthenogenesis is less ab- 

 surd: it offers an order, and promiscuity is a disorder. 

 But social promiscuity is impossible by the further reason 

 that woman, the more feeble, would be crushed by it. 

 She struggles against man only, thanks to the privileges 

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