[One of Our Conquerors by George Meredith]@TWC D-Link bookOne of Our Conquerors CHAPTER X 8/19
Neither for their own sakes nor for the sakes of Posterity will they hold from excess, when they are not pledged to shun it. The reason is, that their minds cannot conceive the abstract, as men do. But there are grounds for supposing that the example before them of a sex exercising self-control in freedom, would induce women to pledge themselves to a similar abnegation, until they gain some sense of touch upon the impalpable duty to the generations coming after us thanks to the voluntary example we set them. The stupendous task, which had hitherto baffled Skepsey in the course of conversational remonstrances with his wife;--that of getting the Idea of Posterity into the understanding of its principal agent, might then be mastered. Therefore clearly men have to begin the salutary movement: it manifestly devolves upon them.
Let them at once take to rigorous physical training.
Women under compulsion, as vessels: men in their magnanimity, patriotically, voluntarily. Miss Graves must have had an intimation for him; he guessed it; and it plunged him into a conflict with her, that did not suffer him to escape without ruefully feeling the feebleness of his vocabulary: and consequently he made a reluctant appeal to figures, and it hung upon the bolder exhibition of lists and tables as to whether he was beaten; and if beaten, he was morally her captive; and this being the case, nothing could be more repulsive to Skepsey; seeing that he, unable of his nature passively or partially to undertake a line of conduct, beheld himself wearing a detestable 'ribbon,' for sign of an oath quite needlessly sworn (simply to satisfy the lady overcoming him with nimbler tongue), and blocking the streets, marching in bands beneath banners, howling hymns. Statistics, upon which his master and friends, after exchanging opinions in argument, always fell back, frightened him.
As long as they had no opponents of their own kind, they swept the field, they were intelligible, as the word 'principle' had become.
But the appearance of one body of Statistics invariably brought up another; and the strokes and counterstrokes were like a play of quarter-staff on the sconce, to knock all comprehension out of Skepsey.
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