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haunts, I believe obscurely, the inward mind of many, both men and women, who object to "women's rights"; they shrink from formulating this consciousness, and confuse it with the argument from superior strength. It is better, I think, that, if true, it be plainly faced and stated. To my mind, one of the most difficult problems that men and women have to work out together is how to reconcile this subjection of sex with that equality and comradeship which is the true and only basis of even married friendship.
Our analysis of egotism into positive and negative has important bearings on the subject of "devotion" and its supposed "hallowing" influences. Sex-devotion is not altruism. This truth women, perhaps, more than men, need to lay to heart. I do not think women can fairly be blamed for their confusion of thought in this matter, because the sanctity of devotion has been so constantly impressed upon them. Their charity is always to begin, and often end, at home. What purpose in evolution this tendency to self-devotion in women serves, remains, as before said, obscure. It is the cause of intense rapture to women, and, so far, is a good. It occurs in strong natures as much, and perhaps more, than in weak. When unduly fostered, and when not balanced by sympathy and comradeship, and by a wide intellectual and social outlook, it acts in married life as an obscure canker, peculiarly irritating and poisonous, because masquerading as a virtue. The egotism of self-assertion atrophies life by over-focus, but the egotism of self-abasement adds to this morbid over-focus a slackening and enfeebling of the whole personality, which defeats its own end and repels where
