UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
pauses at no obstacles. It sends races of men and 
animals to seek new lands; it fills nations with the 
desire for expansion, kindles in them the earth- 
hunger, and is often the chief factor in devastating 
wars. 
In man the sexual passion is stronger than all 
others; it rules his life, it has made his history. 
Consciously or unconsciously, he lives for his pos- 
terity. He wages wars to plant colonies or to con- 
quer territory from his enemies, in which his race 
may expand and increase. His eye is ever on the 
future; he is looking out for his children and his chil- 
dren’s children. Nine tenths of the life of woman 
centres around the idea of making herself attractive 
to the opposite sex. This is the meaning of all the 
modes and fashions — of the monstrous hats, the 
hobble-skirts, the preposterous shoes, the paint, the 
jewelry, the feathers, the frippery and the furbelows, 
the immodest exposures, the exaggerations and ac- 
centuations, and all the bewildering arts and devices 
by which woman seeks to enhance her feminine 
charms. 
The social dances, old and new, though the par- 
ticipants may be all unconscious of it, are as literally 
sexual, and have as direct reference to the old com- 
mand to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the 
earth, as do the dances and aerial evolutions of the 
birds and the wild fowl. Fine clothes, like fine 
feathers, all point in the same direction. Male pride 
72 
