business that really claims their earnest attention is love, making conquests, and everything connected with this dress, dancing, etc.

Early maturity of women.

"The more noble and perfect an animal," he continues, "the later is its maturity. The development of woman's reason ceases at eighteen, while that of man is imperfect before the age of twenty-eight. Woman's reason is accurate only as to objects which are quite near. In other regards she mistakes appearance for reality and trifles for truth." Man looks "before and after" and considers the ultimate result of lines of conduct. From this forethought he acquires prudence, and this makes care and anxiety possible. Woman is short-sighted and extravagant; her vision is clear a short way only. Hence women are more cheerful than men, because they live in the present, not in the past; nor are they distressed by the future. But with all this it is well for a man to heed a woman's advice, for she will show him the shortest road to the goal. Men see far in front of their noses and miss that which is close and obvious. Hence women are more sober in judgment, having no imagination.

Kindness of

women.

Women are kind to the unfortunate because they have no sense of justice. Most misfortune is criminal negligence, Schopenhauer argues, and excludes pity, which would be treachery to justice. Fixed rules of conduct are unknown to women. Being weaker in body and mind, they are stronger in craft. The art of dissimulation is possessed by all women, stupid as well as clever. "Small secrecy verging on deceit," says Charles Reade, "thou art bred in woman's bones."

Deceit of women.

"For," says Schopenhauer, "as lions are provided

with claws and teeth, and elephants and boars with tusks, bulls with horns, and the cuttle-fish with its cloud of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman for her defence and protection with the arts of dissimulation. Hence dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever. It is natural for them to make use of it on every occasion, as it is for those animals to employ their means of defence they are when attacked; they have a feeling that in doing so they are only within their rights. Therefore a woman who is perfectly truthful and not given to dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, and for this very reason they are so quick at seeing through dissimulation in others that it is not a wise thing to attempt it with them."

Women, moreover, live for the species, not for the individual. If a woman be faithless to an old or unromantic or inattentive man she will feel no remorse. It is her instinct to consider the interest of the species, not of the person who may represent the species for the time being.

Woman lives for the species.

"And since women exist in the main solely for the propagation of the species and are not destined for anything else, they live, as a rule, more for the species than for the individual, and in their hearts take the affairs of the species more seriously than those of the individual. This gives their whole life and being a certain levity; the general bent of their character is in a direction fundamentally different from that of the man; and it is this which produces that discord in married life which is so frequent and almost the normal

state.

"The natural feeling between men is mere indifference, but between women it is actual enmity. The reason of this is trade jealousy, which, in the case of

Trade jealousy among women.

men, does not go beyond the confines of their own particular pursuits, but with women embraces the whole sex, since they have only one kind of business. Even when they meet in the streets women look at one another like Guelphs and Ghibellines; and it is a patent fact that when two of them make first acquaintance with each other, they behave with more constraint and dissimulation than two men would show in a like case; and hence it is that an exchange of compliments between two women is a much more ridiculous proceeding than between two men. Further, while a man will, as a general rule, always preserve a certain amount of consideration and humanity in speaking to others, even to those who are in a very inferior position, it is intolerable to see how proudly and disdainfully a fine lady will generally behave toward one who is in a lower social rank (I do not mean a woman who is in her service) whenever she speaks to her. The reason of this may be that with women differences of rank are much more precarious than with us, because, while a hundred considerations carry weight in our case, in theirs there is only one-namely, with which man they have found favour, as also that they stand in much nearer relations with one another than men do, in consequence of the onesided nature of their calling. This makes them endeavour to lay stress upon differences of rank.

The unæsthetic sex.

"It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his impulses that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race, for the whole beauty of the sex is bound up with the sex-impulse. Instead of calling them beautiful, there would be more warrant for describing women as the unæsthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry,

nor for fine art, have they really and truly any sense or perceptibility; it is mere mockery if they make a pretence of it in order to assist their endeavour to please. Hence as a result of this they are incapable of taking a purely objective interest in anything, and the reason of it seems to me to be as follows: A man tries to acquire direct mastery over things, either by understanding them or by forcing them to do his will. But a woman is always and everywhere reduced to obtaining this mastery indirectly-namely, through a man-and whatever direct mastery she may have is entirely confined to him. And so it lies in a woman's nature to look upon everything only as a means for conquering man; and if she takes an interest in anything else it is simulated—a mere roundabout way of gaining her ends by coquetry and feigning what she does not feel. Hence even Rousseau declared: 'Women have in general no love for any art; they have no proper knowledge of any, and they have no genius.'

"No one," Schopenhauer continues, "who sees at all below the surface can have failed to remark the same thing. You need only observe the kind of attention women bestow upon a concert, an opera, or a play—the childish simplicity, for example, with which they keep on chattering during the finest passages in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks excluded women from their theatres, they were quite right in what they did; at any rate, you would have been able to hear what they said upon the stage. In our day, besides, or in lieu of saying, 'Let a woman keep silence in the church,' it would be much to the point to say, 'Let a woman keep silence in a theatre.' This might, perhaps, be put up in big letters on the curtain." In art or letters women have not produced a single great work. Many women show a mastery of technique in art, but never of art.

No mastery

of art.

Philistinism of

women.

"The case," says Schopenhauer, "is not altered by particular and partial exceptions; taken as a whole, women are, and remain, thoroughgoing Philistines, and quite incurable. Hence, with that absurd arrangement which allows them to share the rank and title of their husbands, they are a constant stimulus to his ignoble ambitions. And, further, it is just because they are Philistines that modern society, where they take the lead and set the tone, is in such a bad way. Napoleon's saying, that women have no rank, should be adopted as the right standpoint in determining their position in society; and as regards their other qualities, Chamfort makes the very true remark, 'They are made to trade with our own weaknesses and our follies, but not with our reason.' The sympathies that exist between them and men are skin-deep only, and do not touch the mind, or the feelings, or the character. They form the sexus sequior-the second sex, inferior in every respect to the first; their infirmities should be treated with consideration; but to show them great reverence is extremely ridiculous and

The sexes unequal.

lowers us in their eyes. When Na

ture made two divisions of the human race, she did not draw the line exactly through the middle. These divisions are polar and opposed to each other, it is true, but the difference between them is not qualitative merely, it is also quantitative.

"This is just the view which the ancients took of woman, and the view which the people in the East take now; and their judgment as to her proper position is much more correct than ours, with our old French notions of gallantry and our preposterous system of reverence that highest product of Teutonico-Christian stupidity. These notions have served only to make