And yet our Herminia was a woman after all. Some three years

later, when Harvey Kynaston came to visit her one day, and told her

he was really going to be married,--what sudden thrill was this

that passed through and through her. Her heart stood still. She

was aware that she regretted the comparative loss of a very near

and dear acquaintance.

She knew she was quite wrong. It was the leaven of slavery. But

these monopolist instincts, which have wrought more harm in the

world we live in than fire or sword or pestilence or tempest,

hardly die at all as yet in a few good men, and die, fighting hard

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for life, even in the noblest women.

She reasoned with herself against so hateful a feeling. Though she

knew the truth, she found it hard to follow. No man indeed is

truly civilized till he can say in all sincerity to every woman of

all the women he loves, to every woman of all the women who love

him, "Give me what you can of your love and of yourself; but never

strive for my sake to deny any love, to strangle any impulse that

pants for breath within you. Give me what you can, while you can,

without grudging, but the moment you feel you love me no more,

don't pollute your own body by yielding it up to a man you have

ceased to desire; don't do injustice to your own prospective

children by giving them a father whom you no longer respect, or

admire, or yearn for. Guard your chastity well. Be mine as much

as you will, as long as you will, to such extent as you will, but

before all things be your own; embrace and follow every instinct of

pure love that nature, our mother, has imparted within you." No

woman, in turn, is truly civilized till she can say to every man of

all the men she loves, of all the men who love her, "Give me what

you can of your love, and of yourself; but don't think I am so

vile, and so selfish, and so poor as to desire to monopolize you.

Respect me enough never to give me your body without giving me your

heart; never to make me the mother of children whom you desire not

and love not." When men and women can say that alike, the world

will be civilized. Until they can say it truly, the world will be

as now a jarring battlefield for the monopolist instincts.

Those jealous and odious instincts have been the bane of humanity.

They have given us the stiletto, the Morgue, the bowie-knife. Our

race must inevitably in the end outlive them. The test of man's

plane in the scale of being is how far he has outlived them. They

are surviving relics of the ape and tiger. But we must let the ape

and tiger die. We must cease to be Calibans. We must begin to be

human.




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