SOCIAL AFFINITIES.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 5 July 1880, Page 2

SOCIAL AFFINITIES.

SOME NICE BEADING FOB OTTB NICE PEOPLE. The belief is so widely held (says the orthodox New York Times) that all men like all women that it has come to be regarded as a self-evident troth. But a little observation shows that the belief may be erroneous ; that it cannot by any means be accepted in its universality. Indeed, there is reason to doubt whether, in high civilisation, the reverse of this may not be sustained. In a state of nature the sexes are indisputably drawn together; they are mutually dependent; eich gives what the other lacks ; their co» relation is a need no less than an affinity. '$|W are forced by instinct as well as meagreness of environment to like one another ; a certain affection is begotten qf requirement, T.hey quarrel violently ; the men are irrepressibiy brutal ; they beat their women ; and from such savagery emotional reaction is eneyitable, and goes by the name of love. In enlightenment, amid the epircurean« ism and artificiality of great cities, the sexes are more separated; their spheres

are distinct ; their, duties and their pleasures do not clash. Men have their daily round ; women have theirs ; the two need have nothing in common, unless they be so inclined, and many men cvi* dently are not so inc'ined. What a host of men there are i,, every commercial centre who seem to have no association with women! They are very justly called mens men, as others are called women's - h e cause these are forever dangling after petticoats, and appear to c bound by fluttering ribbons. The men's men are not batchelorsor widowers only r as might be surmised. Many are husbands and fathers, in the sense at least that they have been married and have children ; but they are never seen with their wives ; their marriage rest* not on proof, but on tradition. They are not misogynists— misogyny j s usually a tiansient condition, tending to the op» posite extreme ; they do not even His. approve of women as a body or in the aUtract; they simply feel no interest ii them personally, and keep out of their company. They fail to like women. I* they were obliged to be much in their society they would dislike them heartily and would in time become their bitter foes. Women tire and annoy them, and these men preserve mental peace by letting women severely alone. The fault is with Hie men ; but the absence of ai partiality for the other sex is undeoied and undeniable. It may be said that this dislike of women on the part of men is the result of the artificiality of modern society ; that if men did not cultivate false tastes, were not corrupted by dissipation and unwholesome pleasures, they would not have such feelings. Unhappily for thi» argument, their indisposition to the other sex is unmistakably mani f ested in childhood, when nature reigns supreme. Smnll boys of a hea'thful normal kind hardly ever like girls of their own or any age. In truth, they detest them, so far as eagerness to get away from they can rxpress detestation. They cannot, be induced to remain any time in their com* pany on any terms. Their presence is an annoyance, and to be forced into if would be chastisement. In many rural schools, in fact, boys are ma le to sit with the girls as a punishment, which usually proves effective in preventing the recurrence of the offence of which they have been guilty. 'You are a regular girl,' is one of the severest things a boy can say to another; so severe that it is taken, as it is intended, as a gross insult, and usually brings on active hostilities. Girls are commonly spoken of with supreme contempt, with a sarcasm de» signed to be withering, by nearly all boys from sis to sixteen. Boys do not reach the spooney sfsge generally until they are out of their teens, and then a little feminine society goes a great way with them. They cherish in a very awkward manner a stupid sort of sentimental attachment, but they retain their appetite for rough sports, and often, on the eve of twenty, would prefer hanging cats, breaking streetslamps, and fighting with ot her striplings, to kissing the rosiest lips that sixteen summers had ever sweetened, or holding undisputed possession of a score of school-girls' hearts. The period when men are fondest of, or least averse to, women, is commonly between twenty.«five and thirty-five, and even then they can seldom be long absorbed by one passion, or by many passions. At forty, haying at that age usually escaped the perils of matrimony, they are firmlj fixed in the routine and habits of bachelorhood. Men are frequently yery foolish, and make thems selves ridiculous enough, about the other sex ; but they rarely have the folly and take on the' ridiculous aspect more than once in an ordinary lifetime. Their grand passion is apt lo be short, and they are subsequently so sensible of what has been its effect upon them, are so consci ous of the ludticous part they then played, that they do not repeat it. Marriage cures them of any tendancy to relapse ; or, if not marriage, fbe observation of the conduct of others in similar circumstances. To h«ve been once in love and to have climbed out by dint of reflation, and with unassisted effort, is prone to keep a man for ever after, as he would probably put it, in the paths of common sense. The fact that he has made an ass of himself and is conscious thereof, renders him merciless to otlv r asses from the same cause. That the great majority of men have continually recurring spasms of tender-* ness, of affection, of ardent love for women, it would be idle and absurd to contradict; but this is very different from liking them generally or uniformly, from wanting to be with them, from experiencing pleasure or happiness in their labitual presence. Even the men who admit their delight in feminine society are easily satisfied, not to say surfited with it. Their highest raptures do not hinder them from hankering after masculine friends and masculine modes of killing time. Club-houses, whence women are rigor* ously excluded, never lose their allurements for men ; few homes can compete with those successfully ; the joys of the club-house seem to the average man to be perennial. Incontrovertibly, all this is due to the ineradicable barbarism of our sex, to their inferior moral nature, to their animal instincts and selfish natures. Men are as well aware of thi 8

as women are. But their undeveloped morality, their lack of complete civilisa« tion, is not at issue. The question, •Do men. as a rule, like women ?' is certainly an open one.