Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/136

 dragon.” Dr Mispath says this is a passage containing more occult wonders than those you have found in Genesis. He sees in it an esoteric doctrine to the effect that the male sex of mankind is to be superseded by the female, not only in all the higher functions common to both, but virtually also in those physiological ones which hitherto have been his separate province. He finds also other parts of Hebrew Scripture, such as the song of Deborah and Barak, where this monster out of the deep is obscurely alluded to. Well, that will not happen in our time, Lesbie, or only very exceptionally; so I will confine my attention to more practical relations.

‘And this leads me to say that, mythology apart, I have strong misgivings upon the whole subject, I mean upon the manner in which your philosophy handles the other sex. As I gather your drift, the love of woman for son or husband is a delusion and a snare, or at least it is love for an object essentially temporal—one which has not and cannot have the afflatus of eternal life. I understand you to say that as man rises in the spiritual world, he must put off from his soul all its masculine accoutrements, and incorporate the graces and virtues which are distinctively feminine. In doing so, he perforce discards his old identity altogether, he becomes—not the same person developed and improved, but a different person—a woman. No doubt the new and beautiful butterfly will retain some traces of its former self; still it will be no longer the dear ugly old grub upon whom so much tenderness used to be lavished. To argue home, I guess I have a good daughter’s affection for my own father, although I do not meet in him that intellectual affinity you are fortunate enough to find in your Uncle Bristley. Again, as I told you before, I look to marrying some day, when I get an offer from a man whose mental calibre I need not despise. In that event, I