Sometimes, but not always, that release took the form of celibacy;
but besides that there have been a hundred institutional variations
of the common life to meet the need of the special man, the man who
must go deep and the man who must go far. A vowed celibacy ceased
to be a tolerable rule for an aristocracy directly the eugenic idea
entered the mind of man, because a celibate aristocracy means the
abandonment of the racial future to a proletariat of base unleaderly
men. That was plain to Plato. It was plain to Campanelea. It was
plain to the Protestant reformers. But the world has never yet gone
on to the next step beyond that recognition, to the recognition of
feminine aristocrats, rulers and the mates of rulers, as
untrammelled by domestic servitudes and family relationships as the
men of their kind. That I see has always been my idea since in my
undergraduate days I came under the spell of Plato. It was a matter
of course that my first gift to Amanda should be his REPUBLIC. I
loved Amanda transfigured in that dream. . . .
"There are no such women.
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