moralists, let us turn to the problem of to-day. Here are nearly 2,000,000 women who, if the austere demands of faithful monogamy are to be obeyed, will never know the satisfaction of a certain physical need. Now it is the desire of every normal human being to satisfy all his instincts. And this is as true of women as of men. What I have to say applies indeed to many men to-day, for many men are unable to marry because they have been so broken by war—or otherwise—so shattered or maimed or impoverished that they do not feel justified in marrying. But I want to emphasize with all my power that the hardness of enforced celibacy presses as cruelly on women as on men. Women, difficult as some people find it to believe, are human beings; and because women are so, they want work, and interest, and love—both given and received—and children, and, in short, the satisfaction of every human need. The idea that existence is enough for them—that they need not work, and do not suffer if their sex instincts are repressed or starved—is a convenient but most cruel illusion. People often tell me, and nearly always unconsciously assume, that women have no sex hunger—no sex needs at all until they marry, and that even then their need is not at all so imperious as men's, or so hard to repress. Such people are nearly always either men, or women who have married young and happily and borne many children, and had a very full and interesting outside life as well! Such women will assure me with the utmost complacency that the sex-instincts of a woman are very easily controllable, and that it is preposterous to speak as if their repression really cost very much. I think with bitterness of that age-long repression, of its unmeasured cost; of the gibe contained in the phrase "old maid," with all its implication of a narrowed life, a prudish mind, an acrid tongue, an embittered disposition. I think of the imbecilities in which the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of the adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional "religion," the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough to sharpen his wit. And all these cramped and stultified lives have not availed to make the world understand that women have had to pay for their celibacy!

  "The toad beneath the harrow knows
    Exactly where each tooth-point goes.
  The butterfly beside the road
    Preaches contentment to that toad."

Modern psychology is lifting the veil to-day from the suffering which repression causes. It is a pity that its most brilliant exponents should ascribe to a single instinct—however potent—all the ills that afflict mankind, for such one-sidedness defeats its own object; but, at least, the modern psychologist is trying to show us "exactly where each tooth-point goes" in the repression of the sex-instinct among women as among men. Nor does the fact that the tabu of society has actually in many cases enabled a woman to inhibit the development of her own nature, obviate the fact that she does so at great cost, even when she least understands what she does.

I affirm this, and with insistence, that the normal—the average—woman sacrifices a great deal if she accepts life-long celibacy. She sacrifices quite as much as a man. In those cases—too frequent even now—where she is not educated or expected to earn her own living or to have a career, I maintain that she loses more than a man who is expected to work. I do not say, and I do not believe, that passion in a woman is the same as in a man, or that they suffer in precisely the same way. I believe indeed that if men and women understood each other a little better they would hurt each other a good deal less. But I am persuaded that we shall not even begin to reach a wise morality so long as we persist in basing our demands on the imbecile assumption that women suffer nothing or little by the unsatisfaction of the sex side of their nature.

I emphasize this point here, because it is involved in the present state of affairs. I have reminded you that there are nearly 2,000,000 women whose lives are to be considered. If the number were quite small, it might comfortably be assumed that the women who remained unmarried were those who, in any case, had no vocation for marriage. For it is, of course, true that there are such women, as there are such men. The normal man and woman desire marriage and parenthood, and are fitted for it; but there are always exceptions who either do not desire it, or, desiring it, feel bound to put it aside at the call of some other vocation, which they feel to be supremely theirs, and which is not compatible with marriage. They sacrifice; but they do so joyfully, not for repression, but for a different life, another vocation. And where the number of the unmarried is small, it may without essential injustice be supposed that these are the natural celibates.

But you cannot suppose that of 2,000,000! Among the number how many are young widows, girls engaged to marry men now dead, and how many whose natural vocation was marriage, motherhood, home-making, and all that is meant by such things as these? If this be the normal vocation of the normal woman how many of these have been deprived of all that seemed to them to make life worth living? Is it astonishing if they rebel? If they determine to snatch at anything that yet lies in their grasp? If they affirm "the right to motherhood" when they want children, or the satisfaction of the sex-instinct when that need becomes imperious?

If we are to say to such women—"The normal life is denied to you, not by your fault, or because you do not need it, but because we have unfortunately been obliged to sacrifice in war the men who should have been your mates: and we now invite you in the interests of morality to accept as your lot perpetual virginity"—it is not difficult to imagine their reply: "What is this morality in whose interests you ask so huge a sacrifice? Is it worth such a price? Is the whole community willing to pay it, or is it exacted from us alone? And on what, in the end, is it based?"

The answer to this question is often given to the young, even before the question arises; and it is given in the lives of men and women. The lives of those who are nobly celibate, or nobly married, are in themselves so moving a plea, that few who have been closely in contact with them are left untouched. It is the ideal realized that is the best defence of the ideal. But let us admit that, too often, the actual marriage is a very pitiful comment on our morality, and celibacy either a mere pretence or a very mean and pinched reality. What answer then shall we give to the rising generation which questions us—"On what do you base your moral standards?"

I do not doubt that I am voicing the experience of many if I say that when I first began to ask such questions I met first of all with extreme horror at such a question being put at all; and that, when I persisted, I found that it was almost entirely by women that the cost was to be borne. Women were to conform strictly to the moral standard (whose basis I was not questioning), but men need not and, generally speaking, did not. I reasoned that if men need not be chaste there must exist at least a certain number of women who could not be so, and that this reduced "morality" to a farce. I soon found that it was not a farce but a tragedy. These women were admittedly necessary but outcast. They were the safeguards of the rest. I wish that men would try for a moment to put themselves in the place of a young girl who learns for the first time that prostitution is the safeguard of the virtuous! I think that they would never again wonder at the rejection of such "moral standards" by the rising generation of women. You would only wonder why women had tolerated such a combination of folly and cruelty so long. You would not ask them to accept