"
After some musing he crossed out "sex" and wrote above it "sexual love."
"That is practically what he claims," Dr. Martineau said. "In which
case we want the completest revision of all our standards of sexual
obligation. We want a new system of restrictions and imperatives
altogether."
It was a fixed idea of the doctor's that women were quite incapable of
producing ideas in the same way that men do, but he believed that with
suitable encouragement they could be induced to respond quite generously
to such ideas. Suppose therefore we really educated the imaginations of
women; suppose we turned their indubitable capacity for service towards
social and political creativeness, not in order to make them the rivals
of men in these fields, but their moral and actual helpers. "A man of
this sort wants a mistress-mother," said the doctor. "He wants a sort of
woman who cares more for him and his work and honour than she does for
child or home or clothes or personal pride."
"But are there such women? Can there be such a woman?"
"His work needs to be very fine to deserve her help. But admitting its
fineness?...
"The alternative seems to be to teach the sexes to get along without
each other."
"A neutralized world. A separated world. How we should jostle in the
streets! But the early Christians have tried it already.
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