AUGUST 417 



If for one single moment, once alone, 

 And in no more than one thing only, this 



Moreover only the most trivial one, 



You could but understand me Ah, the bliss ! 



One of the ideas I find most common in women, and 

 not only young ones, is that in starting a Platonic affection 

 with a man, sometimes at a certain sacrifice to themselves, 

 they believe they do it for his sake, and that they are raising 

 his moral nature. I am very doubtful whether the 

 influence that comes through that kind of love between 

 men and women, which in these days is called ' friendship,' 

 ever works very much for good, as the influence savours 

 of that old-fashioned education I have already condemned, 

 which tries to make persons what we wish them to be, 

 in contradistinction to making them understand that 

 their only possible growth or improvement must come 

 through their own self-development. Self-deception 

 comes in when the woman persuades herself that she is 

 helping the man to do that which he could not do alone. 

 This means that at best she is only a temporary prop, 

 which never yet strengthened anybody. The man who 

 sees the position, and wishes to continue the 'friendship,' 

 always uses the argument that the matter rests with the 

 woman, but that if she gives him up things will be worse 

 with him than they ever were before. In a publication 

 I have already mentioned, called ' The London Year- 

 Book,' there is a long poem on social life with the title 

 ' Flagellum Stultorum ' (The Flogging of Fools). In it I 

 find a passage which once more lays bare the absurdity 

 and false sentiment of such a position : 



. . . Woman's saddest mental dower 

 Is not to know the limits of her power. 

 And thus 'tis chief of woman's wild intents 

 To know men's motives and their sentiments. 

 Believe me, gentle sex, there's not a man, 

 However mean his intellectual scan, 



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