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Matplotlib for Python Developers
Second Edition

Effective techniques for data visualization with Python

Aldrin Yim
Claire Chung
Allen Yu

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Matplotlib for Python
Developers Second Edition
Copyright © 2018 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher,
except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information
presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express
or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held
liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and
products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing
cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Commissioning Editor: Amey Varangaonkar

Acquisition Editor: Varsha Shetty
Content Development Editor: Mayur Pawanikar
Technical Editor: Prasad Ramesh
Copy Editor: Vikrant Phadke
Project Coordinator: Nidhi Joshi
Proofreader: Safis Editing
Indexer: Mariammal Chettiyar
Graphics: Tania Dutta
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First published: November 2009

Second edition: April 2018

Production reference: 1200418

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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Birmingham
B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78862-517-3

www.packtpub.com
 Cancer has taken away my grandfather, my aunt, and my friend, I hate cancer. This book is
dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, ChiuKhan Chan, who thought I shouldn’t study that
much. May he rest in peace.
– Aldrin Yim
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Contributors
About the authors
Aldrin Yim is a PhD candidate and Markey Scholar in the
Computation and System Biology program at Washington
University, School of Medicine. His research focuses on
applying big data analytics and machine learning approaches in
studying neurological diseases and cancer. He is also the
founding CEO of Codex Genetics Limited, which provides
precision medicine solutions to patients and hospitals in Asia.

Great pleasure to work with Allen and Claire. Also special thanks to Mayur and his team for
making the writing process comfortable to us.

Claire Chung is pursuing her PhD degree as a

Bioinformatician at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She
enjoys using Python daily for work and lifehack. While
passionate in science, her challenge-loving character motivates
her to go beyond data analytics. She has participated in web
development projects, as well as developed skills in graphic
design and multilingual translation. She led the Campus
Network Support Team in college, and shared her experience in
data visualization in PyCon HK 2017.
Allen Yu, PhD, is a Chevening Scholar, 2017-18, and an MSC
student in computer science at the University of Oxford. He
holds a PhD degree in Biochemistry from the Chinese
University of Hong Kong, and he has used Python and
Matplotlib extensively during his 10 years of bioinformatics
experience.

Apart from academic research, Allen is the co-founder of Codex

Genetics Limited, which aims to provide a personalized
medicine service in Asia through the use of the latest genomics
technology.

I feel honored to take part in this fantastic project. Special thanks to Mayur and Aldrin for leading
the production process. Besides, I wish to thank my fiancée for her love and support. I am also
grateful to be sponsored by the Chevening Scholarship, which is funded by the UK Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO) and partner organizations.
What this book covers
Chapter 1 , Introduction to Matplotlib, gets you familiar with the
capabilities and functionalities of Matplotlib.

Chapter 2 , Getting Started with Matplotlib, gets you started with

basic plotting techniques using Matplotlib syntax.

Chapter 3 , Decorating Graphs with Plot Styles and Types, shows

how to beautify your plots and select the right kind of plot that
communicates your data effectively.

Chapter 4 , Advanced Matplotlib, teaches you how to group

multiple relevant plots into subplots in one figure using
nonlinear scales, axis scales, plotting images, and advanced
plots with the help of some popular third-party packages.

Chapter 5 , Embedding Matplotlib in GTK+3, shows examples of

embeding Matplotlib in applications using GTK+3.

Chapter 6 , Embedding Matplotlib in Qt 5, explains how to embed

a figure in a QWidget, use layout manager to pack a figure in a
QWidget, create a timer, react to events, and update a
Matplotlib graph accordingly. We use QT Designer to draw a
simple GUI for Matplotlib embedding.
Chapter 7 , Embedding Matplotlib in wxWidgets Using
wxPython, shows how you can use Matplotlib in the wxWidgets
framework, particularly using wxPython bindings.

Chapter 8 , Integrating Matplotlib with Web Applications,

teaches you how to develop a simple site that displays the price
of Bitcoin.

Chapter 9 , Matplotlib in the Real World, begins our journey of

understanding more advanced Matplotlib usage through real-
world examples.

Chapter 10 , Integrating Data Visualization into the

Workflow, covers a mini-project combining the skills of data
analytics with the visualization techniques you have learned.
About the reviewer
Nikhil Borkar has also worked as a contributing author. He
holds the CQF designation and a PG degree in Quantitative
Finance from the University of Mumbai. He works as an
independent fintech and legal consultant. Prior to this, he was
with Morgan Stanley Capital International as a Global RFP
Project Manager. He has worked on Quantitative Finance and
Economic Research projects using R, Python, and Excel VBA.
He loves to approach problems in a multidisciplinary, holistic
way. He is actively working on Machine Learning, AI, and Deep
Learning projects.
Packt is searching for
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idea.
Table of Contents
Title Page

Copyright and Credits

Matplotlib for Python Developers Second Edition

Dedication

Packt Upsell

Why subscribe?

PacktPub.com

Contributors

About the authors

About the reviewer

Packt is searching for authors like you

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

 Download the example code files

Download the color images

Conventions used

Get in touch

Reviews

1. Introduction to Matplotlib

What is Matplotlib?

Merits of Matplotlib

Easy to use

Diverse plot types

Hackable to the core (only when you want)

Open source and community support

What's new in Matplotlib 2.x?

Improved functionality and performance

Improved color conversion API

and RGBA support

Improved image support

Faster text rendering

Change in the default animation

codec
 Changes in default styles

Matplotlib website and online documentation

Output formats and backends 

Static output formats

Raster images

Vector images

Setting up Matplotlib

Installing Python

Python installation for Windows 

Python installation for macOS

Python installation for Linux

Installing Matplotlib

About the dependencies

Installing the pip Python package

manager

Installing Matplotlib with pip

Setting up Jupyter Notebook

Starting a Jupyter Notebook session

Running Jupyter Notebook on a remote

server
 Editing and running code

Manipulating notebook kernel and cells

Embed your Matplotlib plots

Documenting in Markdown

Save your hard work!

Summary

2. Getting Started with Matplotlib

Loading data

List

NumPy array

pandas DataFrame

Our first plots with Matplotlib

Importing the pyplot

Line plot

Scatter plot

Overlaying multiple data series in a plot

Multiline plots

Scatter plot to show clusters

Adding a trendline over a scatter plot

Adjusting axes, grids, labels, titles, and legends

Adjusting axis limits

 Adding axis labels

Adding a grid

Titles and legends

Adding a title

Adding a legend

A complete example

Saving plots to a file

Setting the output format

Setting the figure resolution

Jupyter support

Interactive navigation toolbar

Configuring Matplotlib

Configuring within Python code

Reverting to default settings

Global setting via configuration rc file

Finding the rc configuration file

Editing the rc configuration file

Summary
3. Decorating Graphs with Plot Styles and Types

Controlling the colors

Default color cycle

Single-lettered abbreviations for basic colors

Standard HTML color names

RGB or RGBA color code

Hexadecimal color code

Depth of grayscale

Colormaps

Creating custom colormaps

Line and marker styles

Marker styles

Choosing the shape of markers

Using custom characters as markers

Adjusting marker sizes and colors

Fine-tuning marker styles with keyword

arguments

Line styles

Color

Line thickness

Dash patterns
 Designing a custom dash style

Cap styles

Spines

More native Matplotlib plot types

Choosing the right plot

Histogram

Bar plot

Setting bar plot properties

Drawing bar plots with error bars using

multivariate data

Mean-and-error plots

Pie chart

Polar chart

Controlling radial and angular grids

Text and annotations

Adding text annotations

Font

Mathematical notations

Mathtext

LaTeX support
 External text renderer

Arrows

Using style sheets

Applying a style sheet

Creating own style sheet

Resetting to default styles

Aesthetics and readability considerations in styling

Suitable font styles

Effective use of colors

Keeping it simple

Summary

4. Advanced Matplotlib

Drawing Subplots

Initiating a figure with plt.figure()

Initiating subplots as axes

with plt.subplot()

Adding subplots with plt.figure.add_subplot()

Initiating an array of subplots

with plt.subplots()

Shared axes
 Setting the margin with plt.tight_layout()

Aligning subplots of different dimensions with

plt.subplot2grid()

Drawing inset plots with fig.add_axes()

Adjusting subplot dimensions post hoc with

plt.subplots_adjust

Adjusting axes and ticks

Customizing tick spacing with locators

Removing ticks with NullLocator

Locating ticks in multiples

with MultipleLocator

Locators to display date and time

Customizing tick formats with formatters

Using a non-linear axis scale

More on Pandas-Matplotlib integration

Showing distribution with the KDE plot

Showing the density of bivariate data with hexbin

plots

Expanding plot types with Seaborn 

Visualizing multivariate data with a heatmap

 Showing hierarchy in multivariate data with

clustermap

Image plotting

Financial plotting

3D plots with Axes3D

Geographical plotting

Basemap

GeoPandas

Summary

5. Embedding Matplotlib in GTK+3

Installing and setting up GTK+3

A brief introduction to GTK+3

Introduction to the GTK+3 signal system

Installing Glade

Designing the GUI using Glade

Summary

6. Embedding Matplotlib in Qt 5

A brief introduction to Qt 5 and PyQt 5

Differences between Qt 4 and PyQt 4

 Introducing QT Creator / QT Designer

Summary

7. Embedding Matplotlib in wxWidgets Using wxPython

A brief introduction to wxWidgets and wxPython

Embedding Matplotlib in a GUI from wxGlade

Summary

8. Integrating Matplotlib with Web Applications

Installing Docker

Docker for Windows users

Docker for Mac users

More about Django

Django development in Docker containers

Starting a new Django site

Installation of Django dependencies

Django environment setup

Running the development server

Showing Bitcoin prices using Django and Matplotlib

 Creating a Django app

Creating a simple Django view

Creating a Bitcoin candlestick view

Integrating more pricing indicators

Integrating the image into a Django template

Summary

9. Matplotlib in the Real World

Typical API data formats

CSV

JSON

Importing and visualizing data from a JSON API

Using Seaborn to simplify visualization tasks

Scraping information from websites

Matplotlib graphical backends

Non-interactive backends

Interactive backends

Creating animated plot

Summary

10. Integrating Data Visualization into the Workflow

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
“The word State, as implying a homogeneous and isolated power, is
philosophically meaningless. The State is not a separate entity from
the Home. It is only, in the administrative sense, a name for the
common executive which the homes of the nation have created to
conduct their external affairs individually as between themselves,
and collectively as between other common governments or
executives.
“When the Advanced Socialist talks of the welfare of the State he is
talking of the welfare of the majority of individuals. When he talks of
the State seizing the common wealth, he means that the majority of
individuals will seize it and distribute it among themselves and the
minority. He has absolutely forgotten those separate hives of sex life,
industry, ambition, antagonism to other hives, and energy, which are
the real units of the nation, the Families, which are by their
constituent vices and virtues the breeding-grounds of all social
energy and virtues.
“And he would advance the world on its progress by seizing with the
brute force of individuals dominion over the homes of the nation. He
would allow an executive created by force to dictate to each home
its foreign and domestic policy; he would limit its imports and
exports, destroy its ambitions, plunder its hoard, and make slaves of
its individuals.
“That is Socialism pure and simple. Arsenic could not be simpler or
purer as a poison to the common good and the vitality of any social
community.”

“A ND you?” Building, Not

Breaking
“I would push the world on, as I said before,
by building from below and by purely material means. Instead of
hitting the family a blow in its vital part, I would foster its wellbeing.
I would give it drains and ventilation; I would, from the common
fund that all the families have pooled in the taxes, make better the
houses; I would even call upon the more prosperous families to help
the poorer, but my one aim and object would be the protection of
the family in all that makes for its vitality.
“I would foster family ambition and the saving and hoarding instinct,
and cooking and household management and everything that would
keep heads of families by the hearth instead of talking Syndicalism in
pot-houses and scandal in clubs. I can not say all I would do, but
broadly I would do everything possible for material betterment and
everything possible for the betterment of Family Life.
“And that is what will happen, Socialism or no Socialism. We began
by talking of the world as a globe of fire; we went on to hills and
seas, saurians, animals, men, civilised men, Man with a universal
mind.
“We have reached the world as it is—a collection of families or
molecules, constituting Man with a universal mind.
“That mind, new-born, is filled with dreams and The Danger of
illusions: Anarchism, Socialism, Syndicalism, and so Dreams
forth.
“Let Man remember this: He was built out of facts, not theories;
matter, not fancies; families, not individuals; and that to grow in the
fashion that these new theorists would have him grow, he would
have to destroy the molecules that constitute him and resolve
himself into his original atoms.”
“What is a molecule?”
“A molecule is a family of atoms.”

“Y OU are, then, opposed to any fixed plan for

the betterment of the world. You would simply
The Human
Equation
work by bettering material conditions?”
“I am not opposed to any fixed plan. I only say this, that all the fixed
plans I have seen are unworkable, and from one cause.”
“What is that?”
“The framers of them have forgotten that any plan for betterment of
the world is absolutely unworkable that leaves out the Human
Equation.
“That is not a saying of mine. It is a Law. And, what is more, it is
part of a universal law. You cannot improve the condition of
vegetation unless you allow for the weakness as well as the virtues
and strength of vegetable life, nor can you improve the condition of
mankind unless you allow for its weaknesses and sins and follies as
well as for its virtues and its strength.
“What I have said to you about Socialism is not an ex-parte
statement by a man opposed to Socialism. I am opposed to nothing
but error, and when I see Laws as fixed and as immutable as Bode’s
Law or the law of gravity disregarded by men who are proposing to
reform the world, and when I point out these fatal flaws in their
reasoning, that does not mean that I am opposed to all plans for
reforming the world, but it does mean that I would test by everyday
logic any plan for everyday use.
“Will it work? Will it perform the work for which it was invented as a
kinetic engine?
“Those are the two questions on which the capitalist satisfies himself
first before he invests his money in any invention in mechanics.
“Then he asks, will it wear without undue destruction of parts?
“Then he satisfies himself as to its economics. Any plan of world
reform which leaves out the Human Equation is equivalent to an
engineering plan which leaves out of consideration details like the
Law of the Dead Centre or the Law of Expansion and contraction of
metals.
“If you will examine any great engineering plan, whether it be the
plan for a bridge or a marine engine, you will find that it is a simple
bouquet of natural laws, all brought together by the engineer for a
definite purpose, and every law is stamped with the + or - stamp of
nature. They are the laws of weakness and the laws of strength, and
these wonderful laws that preside over matter so interpenetrate one
another that you cannot divorce them one from the other. They may
be said to form alloys. Thus the law that rules over the breaking
strain is at once the law of strength and weakness. The giant that
lives in water springs into steam under the conditions of the + law
that gives him strength, but never for a moment does he escape
from the - law of condensation which is ever ready to reduce him to
water again in a twinkling. And so on.
“Now, the task of the engineer is not to eliminate the - laws from
nature, but to account for them, and, if possible, to make them, by a
trick of genius, work for him. The engineer does not attempt to
destroy Inertia, the weakness that lives in the dead centre of things;
he counteracts the idleness of inertia by means of the fly-wheel.
“The weakness of Steam under the law of condensation becomes in
the hands of the engineer the strength of the steam-engine. The
bursting power of steam, which is ever at war with the weakness of
the boiler metal, he counteracts by the safety-valve. He must allow
for everything, or his machine either will not work or bursts into a
thousand fragments.
“And do you imagine for a moment that human passions and energy,
strength and weakness, are less potent than the forces and
weaknesses which the engineer has to account for in his plan? Do
you fancy that Inertia is confined to metals, and friction to working
parts of machinery? Do you fancy that the social engineer, dealing
with powerful and explosive forces, can plot out a social machine
without taking into consideration the weaknesses which are
complementary to the forces with which he has to deal?
“Yet, in all the plans I have examined, from Socialism to Syndicalism,
not one engineer has submitted to me a plan in which human
passions and energy, strength and weakness, are allowed for.
“That is a fact.
“I shall give you just one little instance, taken from Syndicalism.
“We shall destroy all businesses, says the Syndicalist, by vexatious
strikes. The capitalist, having vanished (struck out), the hands will
work the business.
“Just so. But he forgets that all businesses, like all Syndicalism
men, die in time. Suppose all businesses were
converted into Syndicalist businesses worked by all the hands, in a
world of Syndicalist businesses—they would not escape from the law
of decay and death which hangs over everything material.
Businesses would die, and new businesses would have to be born
under Syndicalism, just as in our world. The competition would be
just as keen and the factors of death just as potent. But the factors
of life would not be as potent. How would a new business be born to
live under Syndicalism?
“Let us suppose that six men, by energy, hard work, a little money,
and self-denial (all necessary), found a small business. It grows and
prospers, and in a year’s time they find that they must introduce
new labour to cope with the work. But the new hands are all
Syndicalists. They don’t want wages, they must have their share in
the business. They are taken on, six of them.
“We now have twelve men working a growing and prospering
concern. Unless they are absolute fools, they must recognize that
expansion to them means simply more danger and worry, for
expansion is impossible without more labour, and all the new labour
introduced only sops up the profits like a sponge, and even were the
profits to increase out of proportion to the total labour employed,
that increase of individual profit would in the majority of businesses
be small—in numerous businesses it would be non-existent. Why
should they expand and risk what they have got—for all expansion in
business means risk—simply to benefit potential labourers?
“The law of Inertia comes at once into play, without any flywheel to
counterbalance it. The business ceases to grow, and, a hundred to
one, dies.
“That is only one of the flaws in the Syndicalist’s design. His machine
has not been constructed with a view to this and other human
weakness. In a world of automata it might work; in a world of flesh
and blood it wouldn’t. In short, Syndicalism could destroy all the
businesses of the world quite easily, but it could not build them
again.
“Syndicalism, Socialism, Anarchism cannot stand for The Theories
a moment under the eye of analysis without
tumbling to pieces as practical inventions.
“They seem daring and ingenious, but they are dishonouring to virile
thought.
“Let us change for a moment and ask ourselves, not what we would
say to the engineer who disregarded natural laws, but what would
we say of a playwright who proposed to present life to us in a play
constructed without a proper view to human passions, weaknesses,
and fallibility, as well as to human virtue, altruism, etc.?
“We would say at once: It is not possible. He may write such a play,
but it would have this fault: it would represent no society that ever
lived in the world, and in a thousand years hence it would be as
valueless as it is to-day.
“And that is, in fact, what you might say of all the Theorists in
Humanity I know. They have written plays for men to act in that are
quite valueless to-day, would have been quite valueless a thousand
years ago, and will be quite valueless a thousand years hence.
“They have left out Human Nature.”

“T HE Statesman who would leave the world

better than he found it must take Human
The Laws of
Nature
Nature as it is, and, instead of attempting to make it grow in
direct violation of the laws that rule it, he must assist it to grow in
accordance with those laws.
“Those laws are in the main good.
“As I have pointed out to you, they are the laws that cultivated
crocodiles so that at last they became men, that cultivated a hell of
fire until it became a habitable world, and that will cultivate men
until they become better than present-day men.
“The Reformer must study those laws. He must look at the world
generously and widely, and from the very beginning of things. He
must have communion with the great earth spirit which has brought
all of us to where we are, and, humbling himself to the dust, study
the working of that spirit through the ages.
“He will, unless he is blind, inevitably see one truth: that this great
spirit has never meddled with the growth of life and thought, but
has laboured Titanically to prepare the conditions favourable to that
growth.
“It led life by the fin and claw till life developed hands and a mind
wherewith to develop its own conditions favourable to growth. And
all the improvements of the world since then have followed that law,
the Law of Improvement of Conditions, not any vague Law for the
Improvement of Life.
“When Life left the trees and found or dug caves to live in, it left
behind it, as a record of its first shelter and home and improved
condition, the first vague scratchings of Art. You may be sure that
could it have found a record we would discover also in those caves
some sign of the first glimmer of Love.
“The cave was the first home of the germ of civilisation, and the
man who built the first hut laid the foundations of all the palaces
and cathedrals of earth.
“The man who improved the condition of the first square yard of
land laid the foundation of all worldly prosperity, and the man who
made the first hinge of hide for the first door destroyed a barricade
and laid down the first condition for hospitality.
“Whenever man has fallen away from the teaching of this law, he
has always fallen.
“Athens rose to the heights of the Acropolis, but she Athens, Egypt,
failed in the furtherance of those conditions Rome
necessary for the development of the world—witness her streets.
Rome rose to splendour and fell in ruins simply because of her
failure in the development of material conditions to feed and foster
Progress—witness her roads—made for armies to march on. Egypt
destroyed herself with dreams of mysticism and power useless to the
development of life—witness the Pyramids and the Sphinx.
“All these so-called civilizations failed because they The Work of the
were inhuman in the path of progress. Barbarians

“They were not developments, but essays in development. Their

civilizations had no relation to the broad Human Family, and gave no
platform for that family to develop on. Athens, Rome, Egypt carried
Arts, Power, Mysticism to the heights, while down on the plains the
tillers of the soil, the serfs, and the barbarians carried on Human
Nature.
“Athens, Rome, and Egypt, like some modern philosophers, took no
account of human weaknesses. Examine their laws and codes, their
policy, and their view-points, and you will at once see that their
platform was so narrow that only a class could stand on it, and that
their atmosphere was stifling to Man. Human nature could not
develop in it. There was no liberty for growth. Human nature had
reached a certain point; it made blind attempts to rise higher. It rose
to heights of Egyptian power and mysticism, and fell; to heights of
Athenian art and philosophy, and fell; to heights of Roman
splendour, and fell. It was like an animal trying to leave a sea, and
falling back at each attempt by reason of the crumbling of the shore
under its weight.
“It had not found the resting-place of solid rock. The hard rock of
Liberty and material good and material Reason and material
development.
“At last it found the rock by the man’s hand that Bacon
could only find and cling to that rock. That hand
was Bacon’s. It was so essentially material and human that it could
distinguish rock from friable sand, and so powerful that, having
found a hold, it never let go.
“Bacon was the first modern man to seize the earth spirit’s law that
development is only possible when conditions for development have
been already prepared.
“His ‘Fruit’ was another word for conditions.
“His genius recognized intuitively that the only way to develop Man
is to let Man develop, and the only way to let him develop is to give
him liberty, mentally and physically, and a safe and sheltered
platform.
“Better his material conditions.”
* * * *
“You asked me, was I opposed to any ‘plan’ for the Development of
Humanity, and I replied, and reply, in effect, that I am not, always
providing that it allowed for human development along human lines.
“That is the sum total of the matter, and the first essential of Man in
his relation to the world.”
 PART III

WOMAN IN RELATION TO MAN

“A ND what
world?”
about woman’s relationship to the No Such Thing as
Woman

“There is no such thing as woman.”

“Oh! Oh!”
“There are only women. To talk of Woman as a being apart from
man is absurd. When I used the word Man in talking of the universal
mind, I included women. The word Man as used to represent men is
a falsity in that it excludes women. The word Woman is absurd,
however you take it.
“Men and women are cut out of the same piece of stuff—Human
Nature. The woman is cut a bit smaller, and her outline is a bit
different, that is all.
“Mentally it is just the same as physically. She is cut, as a rule, a bit
smaller, and the outline of her mind is a bit different. But it is only a
difference in size and outline. The stuff is the same. And the outline
of the one is complementary to the outline of the other; where the
woman’s outline sinks in the man’s sticks out, and vice versa.
Mentally and physically it is the same; they are, in fact, the two
parts of that great jig-saw puzzle, Humanity.
“The Male and Female are not a necessity of Life. They are only a
necessity of higher vegetable and animal life. A large number of
lower organisms propagate unsexually—the monera, the am[oe]bæ,
foraminifera, radiolara, etc. These increase either by splitting in two
or putting out buds. The Male and Female are not, then, a radical
necessity of life, but they are a radical necessity in development and
in progress from a lower to a higher form of life. The Male and
Female are not, as I will try to point out, of the essence of life, but
of the essence of the forms of life.
“We must imagine that the first germ of life was sexless, a cellular
structure that multiplied by splitting in two. We must imagine that
because the rigid law of advance from the simple to the complex
imposes on us the assumption that the first form of life must have
been the simplest, and the simplest is the organism that develops by
fission.
“There was a tremendous moment, then, when all earthly life lived
and moved without sign of sex; cellular forms all alike, all developing
alike, and by the same method.
“Had all these forms continued unchanged, the world would now be
just as then. But a change came, due, we must suppose (from
analogy), not to a change in the radical nature of these organisms,
but to a change in the external conditions affecting some of them.
The food environment, or the temperature environment, or the
electrical environment surrounding some of these organisms, or
some other unknown but always external influence, wrought a
change in some of these lowly forms of life. The mother of Form—
Differentiation—was the result.
“The organisms affected by Differentiation had to reproduce
themselves by producing other organisms in a slightly different form,
either lower than themselves, or on the same plane as themselves,
or higher than themselves.
“Had they taken the first course, Differentiation would have meant
destruction and death to all the organisms it touched. The second
course was absolutely impossible. A simple organism cannot alter
itself without ascending or descending; if it becomes the least
degree more complex, it ascends; if it becomes the least degree less
complex, it descends. It cannot alter its nature or its form in a
horizontal direction. It is absolutely condemned to the vertical, and
must go up or down.
“These basic simple organisms, then, that formed the foundation for
all life, must have responded to their change in environment by
ascending, that is, by becoming more complex. They must have
done this, or else have descended to death. They were making for
the great goal, Sex.
“How they reached that goal may be a story yet to be read by
Science, but reach it they did on the day that two of these simple-
minded organisms reproduced themselves, not by individual fission,
but by mutual union.
“It was not a radical change in the life of the organisms; it was only
a radical change in the method by which that life was reproduced.
“It was a change in business methods. It was co-operation, pure and
simple, between two organisms in the production of other
organisms. Before that day, the whole business had to be done by
one individual; after that day it was done by partners, one called
Male, the other Female.
“Now, what is the essence of partnership? Mutual Sex a Partnership
assistance. In a labour partnership where the
business is in the least complex, two men would be of very little
assistance to each other who insisted always on doing the same job,
or the same part of a job. There must always be a top sawyer and a
bottom sawyer, a man who does what the other cannot do, or gives
what the other has not got.
“It is exactly the same in the business of life-production, and the
instant that Form could demonstrate them, the two partners
appeared, and the instant that the new business of Life originated by
this partnership became acute and competitive, the partners found
themselves leagued together not only for the production of life, but
for the defence of that life.
“But that carries us beyond my immediate point, which is that the
terms Male and Female do not connote separate origins for the
objects they apply to, nor essential differences between those
objects. The two partners are essentially the same, only that one
has got his hands horny from doing the rough jobs of the
partnership and the other has kept her hands soft; one has
developed mammary glands by doing her business in the
partnership, the other has developed his biceps in doing his. One
has developed certain attributes of mind in fighting the world, the
other certain other attributes in keeping the home. One has
developed certain organs for reproduction, the other—others.”
“Yet you deny the existence of Woman.”
“Absolutely. But I do not deny the existence of Sex, always holding
that, though Sex is the most powerful factor in development, it has
nothing to do with the essence of life. If it had, you would find men
and women different from one another in essentials. They are not.
“As human beings they are exactly the same, only that you find
some passions and attributes more developed in men, others more
developed in women. But there is not a passion or attribute
belonging to men that is not shared in by women, and vice versa.”
“But there is a vast difference between women and men.”
“Of course there is, but it is only a difference, not a division;
moreover, it is only a surface difference, for the deeper you go into
their natures, the less apparent is that difference. Use the
touchstone of the profound emotions. Who has not seen a strong
man weep like a woman, or a weak woman show the heroism of a
man? Does sorrow affect men less than women? Does great joy
affect women more than men?
“Is love a thing apart from man, and is it woman’s whole existence?
It is not. That claptrap was born of Fancy, and the passion for saying
a catchy thing. The love of men for women is just as powerful and
as intimately connected with their existence as the love of women
for men. Fidelity, the only true sign of real love, is exhibited by men
in just the same proportion (allowing for the greater temptations of
men) as it is by women.
“No; men and women are absolutely the same as human beings in
all things essential, and the man who denies that is the man who
sees the world with only one eye, and only uses the surface of his
brain.
“Men and women are partners. Partners in a difficult business. They
have been partners for millions of years, and the differences
between them are caused by the exigencies of the partnership.
“Even in those surface mental differences that mark Men—Women,
sex a man will often approximate to a woman in and Women—Men
some particulars, and a woman to a man. These surface differences
are not unalterable.
“Take the love of gossip. Listen to the talk of army men and navy
men and club men.
“Take Vanity, and look at the nuts and the dudes and the macaronis.
“Take curiosity, and remember Coventry. Take love of dress—”
“And remember Mr. ——,” said she, laughing.
“Exactly. And let any one who would controvert me consider his
friends and relations critically, and tell me, with his hand on his
heart, are the males destitute of female attributes and the females
of male?
“They are not. They are all human beings, and to class them
philosophically under the two divisions, Woman and Man, is a
profound error and a commonplace error.
“It has led men to look on women as mysterious beings with
essential motive springs and essential mental clockwork quite
different from that of men.
“It has led to frightful volumes of gas being generated in certain
skulls, like the skull, for instance, of X——, and some of the leaders
of the Feminist movement, and the escape of this gas is making an
alarming noise.
“When Ellen Key, for instance, says that ‘Human souls can be divided
into organic and inorganic,’ and that ‘Ibsen makes the masculine soul
inorganic, definitive, finished, determined; the feminine soul, on the
other hand, he more often makes organic, growing in evolution,’
what does she mean?
“All this loose talk about souls being organic and inorganic I would
not exchange for one small concrete fact—such as that Mrs. Jones is
a better man than her husband, or that John Smith ‘ought to have
been born a girl,’ facts that help to prove that not only are men’s and
women’s bodies and ‘souls’ made of the same stuff, but that the sex
difference is so unfixed a quality that we find women who are to all
intents and purposes men, and men women.
“I will be bold enough to lay down a law based on experience,
History, and Common-sense.
“There is not a womanly attribute of either body or soul that has not
been born of the stuff that men are made of, and there is not an
attribute of women that has not been developed to its womanly
pitch not by virtue of any mysterious energy rising from the source
of ‘woman,’ but by purely external conditions. And the same with
regard to men.
“There you have the old ‘conditions’ coming up Conditions, Again
again. Let us get at facts.
“The æsthetic sense is pre-eminently womanly. You will say, at once,
‘This is not so. Women are rarely as good artists as men.’ I was not
talking of art, but of the æsthetic sense.
“Every male artist inherits this sense from his mother. I am speaking
from long observation and experience. It is the woman in the artist
that paints; the woman in the poet that feels; the woman in the
novelist that colours the work. Every man has the æsthetic sense
more or less developed, but women have it, as a mass, more
developed than men. Who, for instance, puts the flowers in the
cottager’s window?
“I do not believe that the æsthetic sense in the greatest artist is
more developed than it is in hundreds of thousands of women who
never touch art. His power of craftsmanship, purely material and
mechanical, and his power of constructive imagination raise him to
the heights, and these powers only come from the superior
conditions favourable to them under which men have dwelt.
“Go into any house, and you can tell if a woman lives there. Some
delightful trace or touch betrays the fact. It may be a few flowers—it
may be this or that, but the æsthetic touch is there; and in the
home it is chiefly the woman who brings it. Now, why has woman
developed this delightful attribute? It is a property of the mind; but
men have it, too. Why has she developed it out of proportion to the
man’s development in this particular?
“Since she shares it with the man, it is a common attribute, and it is
the purest common-sense to believe that she developed it simply
because the conditions affecting her life were more favourable to its
growth than the conditions affecting the life of the man.
“Though the first scratchings of art in the cave-men’s dwellings
were, most likely, the work of a man, who gave him the æsthetic
basis of his artistic sense? Arguing from what we know—his mother.
“And why did his mother cultivate this sense more than his father?
“If you had seen his father tearing through forests after, and
sometimes in front of, infuriated wild beasts, while his mother kept
cave and looked after the children, you would have a complete and
pictorial answer to that question.
“Even the weariness of the chase is disastrous to the æsthetic sense.
Look at all the hunting men and women you know, if you doubt
what I say.
“So, then, without any transcendental talk about ‘souls’ being
organic or inorganic, we may say, arguing common-sensically, that
women have developed one of the most distinguishing ‘womanly’
attributes, not because she is a woman, but because she is a human
being, and the conditions under which she has always lived have
tended toward that development.
“Again—the love of a mother for her offspring, the one attribute of
all attributes most distinctly and profoundly ‘womanly’: is it different
in kind or essence from the love of a father for his offspring? Surely
not, but it is more complex, more intimate, and more tender and
more lovable, simply because the conditions under which it has
grown have been more favourable to the development of this
complexity, intimacy, and tenderness.
“It is the same beautiful thing, but more peculiarly cultivated, and it
has grown in complexity while the man has been hunting, or trading,
or fighting the world in some other way.
“Go through the whole category of those attributes whose superior
development makes woman the flower of the earth. You will find not
one which has developed on its own account owing to some
mysterious chemistry of being peculiar to Woman,—all have
developed from the common soil of humanity, owing to the superior
conditions for their development in women.
“And the chief of those conditions has been Protection. The old
conditions come up again. The man when he was hunting and killing
beasts for his wife and children, and fighting for their existence,
never imagined that he was by his labours founding Art and Poetry.
He was. He was giving their germs conditions to grow in. Love,
tenderness, gentleness, affection, morality: all were there in the
cave with the woman. She suckled them with her children; she
trained them in their growth with kisses—and slaps. They were the
man’s no less than the woman’s, common to both their natures, but
he left them in the cave with her to take care of, while he went
hunting.
“Conditions have made woman what she is: the best and most
beautiful thing in the world. And now Feminists want to change
those conditions, just as Socialists want to change the conditions
affecting man.
“Both strike at the Home.”

“‘W OMAN must have a freer life.’ Feminism

“‘To evolve her genius, woman has but one need—Freedom.’

“‘She must be free to form her own ideas and morals.’
“‘Woman must reorganize the mind and soul of humanity, for man
has disintegrated it.’
“Those are some of the teachings of the Apostles of Feminism. I
take them from the work of a clever American woman, and they are
a fair statement of the case for Feminism.
“To the first I give an unqualified assent.
“Freedom, within limits, is the basic condition of growth.
“But what does the Feminist mean by Freedom?
“The third dictum answers that.
“‘She must be free to form her own ideas and morals.’
“One would fancy from that that ‘woman’ was an animal capable of
evolving ideas and a moral code different from man. Since woman is
just the same human animal, we may put this aside, and ask again
what the Feminist means.
“She asks, in fact, that women may be free to change their morals
(we shall leave the talk about ideas aside for the present) in any way
they please.
“Now, morals cannot be changed in a horizontal direction. It’s up, or
down, or stationary. Any change in morals is for the better or for the
worse.
“Does the Feminist ask for freedom to change her morals for the
better? She has perfect freedom to do that; most men will applaud
her, and most women, too.
“Does she ask for freedom to change her morals for the worse?
“If she is making that demand, let her frankly avow that what she
wants is license, not freedom.
“There is a lot of difference between the two.
“I am not arguing to get the Feminist in a hole, but simply to clear
the ground of brambles.
“She does want license, as a matter of fact; one would be blind who
looked at her programme and did not see that.
“And the license she wants is not the license to steal, or lie, or
murder, or commit arson. When she talks of forming her own
morals, she has one morality entirely and solely in view—the
morality that presides over Love; and when she asks for license, it is
license in Love.
“Men have more license in this matter than women. That is
undoubtedly so.
“Men, since the beginning of the world, have had more license than
women; but that license is a relic of barbarism. It was useful once,
but it is becoming less useful every day, and pari passu men are
becoming more moral.”
“Useful once?”
“In this way. Men in the past were the fertilisers of the world. Who
brought Roman blood to England, Norman blood, Norse blood? Men.
Roman, Norman, and Norse women had nothing to do with the
matter. Their duty was to stay at home and be moral. Armed and
roaming men fertilised the world, just as bees fertilise a field of
clover, crossed the races, and made the vitality of them.
“Roman, Norse, and Norman virtues that make England great were
born of Roman, Norse, and Norman license. The same fact applies to
all Europe. But the day of the free-lance in love is gone. He who was
once a world-maker is now a world-curse. He is not now a world-
maker, but a Home-wrecker and a woman-wrecker.
“Nations no longer require him for a fertiliser. Men no longer travel in
masses, armed with spears; they go in railway carriages,
accompanied by their families, and the world can get all the
fertilisation it wants by immigration.
“License still lives among men, but it lives as a reptile; among men it
is dying, yet Feminists, when they ask for license, would give this
dying thing a new birth among women. They forget that what was
once a bad necessity is now a hideous and dying superfluity.

“I HAVE heard it stated by Feminists

motherhood is the right of every woman.
that The Right of
Motherhood

“So is fatherhood the right of every man, and on that plea a man
might base a very wide scheme of immorality.
“As a matter of fact, there is something else: the right of the child.
“A woman has no right to motherhood unless she can provide a
home for her child. A father has no right to fatherhood who cannot
do likewise. And by a home I do not mean shelter and food; I mean
everything sacred that lies in that word Home. Love, affection, self-
restraint, mutual respect, and family respect.
“Of course, if the Feminist says, Destroy the home, one has nothing
more to say. She is logical.
“But to say, I shall increase license among women without injuring
or destroying the home, at once reduces her to a person who is not
logical.
“As a matter of fact, the Feminist movement, as far as its moral side
goes, is confined to a certain number of men who desire the
extension of license; to a certain number of women who do likewise;
and to a certain number of women who feel acutely that women are
put upon by men in the matter of morals. That men have set up a
rule of conduct for women which they don’t obey themselves.
“This is not so. The sternest moralists are women, and the morality
of these moralists is not an abstract quality; it arises from a
profound and intuitive motherhood instinct that tells them that
license is death to the welfare of the child, whether it develops and
is shown in the mother or the child.
“The child must restrain itself and not steal the jam; the woman
must restrain herself and not let her honour be stolen.”
“And, you will say, the man must restrain himself and not steal her
honour?”
“Certainly.
“And every man, who is a man and not a cur, obeys that law as far
as in him lies.
“Man, you must remember, has a lot to fight against, and nothing so
much as the old rules of license under which he has lived for ages.
“They used to be a royal robe; they are now a beggar’s tatters. He is
ashamed to be seen in them nowadays; he only puts them on in
private; yet they are always crying to him to put them on, just as
filth is always crying to a dog, Roll in me.
“That is all I have to say about the moral side of the Feminist
people. Their claim for equal freedom with man in other respects is
far more pleasant to notice. And it comes to this:
“Since the mass of women is just the same as the mass of men, in
the name of Humanity, why should not the woman mass have the
same freedom in affairs as the man, politically and socially?
“Why should the women of the nation not be free to Social and Political
expand their mental and bodily energy in every
social and political path in which the men expand it?
“Certainly they ought. But they can’t.
“They could, in a nation whose units were individuals; they can’t, in
a nation whose units are homes.
“Every woman is a potential or actual queen-bee. Her duty is to
found a hive, not to make honey. Like a man, she has only a limited
quantity of energy.
“The little nation of the hive or home, which is, in very fact, the
nation itself writ small, makes vast calls upon the man’s energy and
the woman’s. Here alone is the national life as distinct from the
national affairs.
“It is the germinal spot and centre of all national activity; it is the
primary school of all morality; and it is the supreme province of the
woman. Here she is a world Builder.
“This is her kingdom. Her duties here are not only family, but
national. There are no humble duties in a home: they are all great
and national duties, directly determining the advancement of the
world. Like all great duties, they imply great outputs of energy, self-
denial, and restraint, and it is impossible for her to use her energies
effectively in two directions. She cannot be at the hub of the wheel
and the tire both at the same time. In other words, she cannot be at
home and in parliament or the law courts, or the council chambers
of the nation, or the studios or dentists’ parlours at one and the
same time.
“‘Woman must be free to create her own conduct and to seek her
own experiences for self-development,’ runs another dictum of our
Feminist sage.
“In the home she is only free to create her own conduct in a manner
conducive to the well-being of the home. If she swerves from this
law, she is a defaulter and an enemy to good. The same may be said
of her freedom in self-development.
“Certainly she must be free to develop herself, and so must the man
be free to develop himself.
“But the man who develops his muscles in golf at the expense of his
business time and energy is a slacker and a defaulter and a home-
injurer. And the woman who develops her political instincts or her
mind power at the expense of her home time and energy is the
same.”

“I Tlookseems to me,” said my audience, “that you

on women as though they were all married
The World-
Builders
and with household duties to perform.”
“I look on women as though they were all married women, or
women preparing to enter that state. No other women are of any
account at all as world-builders.
“They may be delightful, charming, pleasant, true women in every
way, but if they are not married they are not true women-factors in
the progress of the world. Simply because they have no hand in the
physical building of the future.
“The child is the future made visible and concrete. When you lay
your finger on a child you are touching not flesh only, but future
ages.
“The unmarried woman-genius may influence the art or the thought
of her time; the labourer’s wife who produces a bouncing boy that
lives has produced the future. More than that, she has sent forth her
own attributes to dwell in the future. More than that, by her care
and education of that child she is laying the foundation for vast
world effects.
“That is the woman’s triumphant position in the scheme of things.
She is a partner in world-building, and the duties lying on her share
of the partnership are patent and obvious to the meanest
intelligence.
“They are both moral and material, and they imply in their
performance one supreme virtue: self-sacrifice. Not freedom to
develop according to inclination; not freedom to alter her morals;
not freedom to imitate the worst faults of men; but slavery in the
interests of her children, her husband, and her home.
“And what happy people these slaves are! Just as happy as the men-
slaves who, under the dominion of good conduct, love, and the hive
instinct, often work themselves to death, like the bees, that others
may live and prosper.
“But, as you say, all women cannot be mothers. Yet it is essential
that the mothers of the nation should be protected at all costs from
the disease which lurks under the specious word ‘Feminism.’”

“T HEY have come a long journey together, the Man and the
Woman, and all through that long journey across the ages they
have been leading the child by the hand.
“And if the wicked and blasphemous people who talk of sex-hate had
but the scientific and poetic perception enabling them to see those
three grand and mysterious figures as they are on the shores of
Time, we would be spared, perhaps, from the poisonous blight of
sexisms.”

“Y OU are so positive,” said she, “that I often haven’t dared to

interrupt you, and you talk so quickly that all you have said,
though I understood it at the time, is now a jumble in my
mind.”
“I am positive, because there is no use at all in being negative.
People who believe in what they say are usually positive—even
though they may be wrong.
“If I have talked too quickly, I shall write out what I have said and
send it to you; then you can pick it to pieces as much as you
please.”

The End
 NOTE TO PART I OF THE BOOK

In my experience, judging from the men I have met in life and the
men whose lives I have read about, the really strong men of the
world have been men of strong belief—and mostly men with a
strong belief in a personal God.
Faith is a very wonderful thing, call it what you please. There is in
Faith an enormous dynamic energy the origin of which, analyse it as
much as I will, leaves me utterly baffled and bewildered.
One might say that it is an orientation of the mind, a pointing of all
the thoughts in one definite direction by which the mind, as a
machine, gains harmony which is expressed in power of action, and
I believe the co-ordination of the functions of the mind under a
common governing belief does, in part, explain the miraculous
power conferred on men by Faith.
Also one might say that the mind capable of great faith is essentially
a positive mind, a direct mind, and a constructive mind.
Also one might say a great many things, and yet leave the
foundation of the question as deeply involved in darkness as ever,
and the mind of a Newman, a Gladstone, or a Cromwell the same
towering mystery.
But the fact remains clear that the man without belief in something
above and beyond this world, or in something in this world, some
tide, or core, or essence of which his own little life is a part, loses
the alliance of that power which we indicate in the word Faith.
There is no doubt at all that the western world has lost power, and
that England is losing power daily by the steady loss of Faith.
The crude, hard faith in a personal God which is vanishing from
among us is a dynamic force that is passing away, and it is being
replaced by what?
It is being replaced by a good many excellent things: by an increase
of tolerance and sympathy; an increased consideration for the
oppressed, and a re-valuation of all the considerations that come
under the title Justice; but all these and many more good things that
have sprung to growth in the universal mind leave the individual
mind still lacking Faith.
Darwinism it was that struck the first real blow at a personal God,
and men, in their minds at least, have nearly extinguished the
chemical hell.
And Darwinism, destroying the old rigid, childlike faith, handed the
world not Atheism, but a new Faith, which the world never seems to
have grasped.
The Faith in a world ever progressing toward the good.
Once you have grasped the great truth that your life is a part of this
miracle of growth, as long as you conform as far as in you lies to the
growth of good in yourself, you will have a Faith that will fill you with
new force.
And it is a faith that no one can refuse, for its teaching is written
across the rocks and the stars, and so plainly that a child can read it,
once it is pointed out to him.
Appendices
 APPENDIX A

I HAVE said very little about Anarchism—merely mentioned it by

name; yet the inquiries I have made into this subject reveal an
organisation and a literature astonishing to the everyday mind. To
use the words of that ardent bibliophile, H. Bourdin:
“To most people the word Anarchy is evil-sounding, but it is not the
same to learned men and to collectors and lovers who acquire the
desire of accumulating documents for history’s sake.
“The Anarchist literature has not a determined origin, being not the
expression of a system invented and progressively elaborated, but
the negation of all systems, produced by the desire to batter down
the despotic in all its forms, the rules and duty imposed by prejudice
or by force, and to give impulse to the free development of
humanity. All acts which have been accomplished and all words
which have been pronounced in hatred of this constraint and in
favour of this freedom are consciously or unconsciously the
production of Anarchy.
“It is astonishing when one glances at the huge quantity of literature
of all kinds which has been printed in the space of the last half-
century for the exposition of their ideal thought; no other party or
sect, for whatever cause they had to defend, can be compared to
this, except Christianity, which has taken about 2,000 years over it.
Consider the difficulty which they have met in publishing
clandestinely their periodicals, broadsides, etc., hunted by society as
wild beasts; domiciliary perquisitions destroyed their works, which
were merely their thoughts.”
M. Bourdin has courteously allowed me to inspect the huge library of
Anarchistical literature which he has collected, consisting of journals,
broadsides, pamphlets, volumes, songs, theatrical plays, etc.
To give you an idea of the extent and nature of the Anarchistical
press, I enumerate a few of the journals:
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