of the life in which we all began. When your father told you,
walking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet,
you did not talk of taking the best out of his philosophy. When the
bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence.
When the rose smelt sweet you did not say "My father is a rude,
barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep
delicate truths that flowers smell." No: you believed your father,
because you had found him to be a living fountain of facts, a thing
that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth
to-morrow, as well as to-day. And if this was true of your father,
it was even truer of your mother; at least it was true of mine,
to whom this book is dedicated. Now, when society is in a rather
futile fuss about the subjection of women, will no one say how much
every man owes to the tyranny and privilege of women, to the fact
that they alone rule education until education becomes futile:
for a boy is only sent to be taught at school when it is too late
to teach him anything. The real thing has been done already,
and thank God it is nearly always done by women. Every man
is womanised, merely by being born. They talk of the masculine woman;
but every man is a feminised man. And if ever men walk to Westminster
to protest against this female privilege, I shall not join
their procession.

For I remember with certainty this fixed psychological fact;
that the very time when I was most under a woman's authority,
I was most full of flame and adventure. Exactly because when my
mother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did
come in winter (as she said); therefore the whole world was to me
a fairyland of wonderful fulfilments, and it was like living in
some Hebraic age, when prophecy after prophecy came true. I went