by standing her whole structure of reasoning on its head--in fact, by 

knocking it over and repudiating it. On the one hand, she argues that 

splendour of attire is merely a bait to overcome the reluctance of 

the opposite sex, and on the other hand she argues, at least by fair 

inference, that it is not. This grotesque switching of horses, however, 

need not detain us. The facts are too plain to be disposed of by a lady 

anthropologist's theorizings. Those facts are supported, in the field 

of animal behaviour, by the almost unanimous evidence of zoologists, 

including that of Dr. Gamble herself. They are supported, in the field 

of human behaviour, by a body of observation and experience so colossal 

that it would be quite out of the question to dispose of it. Women, as 

I have shown, have a more delicate aesthetic sense than men; in a world 

wholly rid of men they would probably still array themselves with vastly 

more care and thought of beauty than men would ever show in like case. 

But with the world what it is, it must be obvious that their display of 

finery--to say nothing of their display of epidermis--has the conscious 

purpose of attracting the masculine eye. A normal woman, indeed, never 

so much as buys a pair of shoes or has her teeth plugged without 

considering, in the back of her mind, the effect upon some unsuspecting 

candidate for her "reluctant" affections.