Schiller's poem in honor of women, _Würde der Frauen_, is the
result of much careful thought, and it appeals to the reader by its
antithetic style and its use of contrast; but as an expression of the
true praise which should be accorded to them, it is, I think, inferior
to these few words of Jouy's: _Without women, the beginning of our
life would be helpless; the middle, devoid of pleasure; and the end,
of consolation_. The same thing is more feelingly expressed by Byron
in _Sardanapalus_:
_The very first
Of human life must spring from woman's breast,
Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hour of him who led them_.
(Act I Scene 2.)
These two passages indicate the right standpoint for the appreciation
of women.
You need only look at the way in which she is formed, to see that
woman is not meant to undergo great labor, whether of the mind or of
the body. She pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by what
she suffers; by the pains of child-bearing and care for the child,
and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and
cheering companion. The keenest sorrows and joys are not for her, nor
is she called upon to display a great deal of strength. The current
of her life should be more gentle, peaceful and trivial than man's,
without being essentially happier or unhappier.
Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of
our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish,
frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all
their life long--a kind of intermediate stage between the child and
the full-grown man, who is man in the strict sense of the word. See
how a girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it and
sing to it; and then think what a man, with the best will in the
world, could do if he were put in her place.
With young girls Nature seems to have had in view what, in the
language of the drama, is called _a striking effect_; as for a few
years she dowers them with a wealth of beauty and is lavish in her
gift of charm, at the expense of all the rest of their life; so that
during those years they may capture the fantasy of some man to such a
degree that he is hurried away into undertaking the honorable care of
them, in some form or other, as long as they live--a step for which
there would not appear to be any sufficient warranty if reason only
directed his thoughts. Accordingly, Nature has equipped woman, as she
does all her creatures, with the weapons and implements requisite
for the safeguarding of her existence, and for just as long as it is
necessary for her to have them. Here, as elsewhere, Nature proceeds
with her usual economy; for just as the female ant, after fecundation,
loses her wings, which are then superfluous, nay, actually a danger
to the business of breeding; so, after giving birth to one or two
children, a woman generally loses her beauty; probably, indeed, for
similar reasons.
And so we find that young girls, in their hearts, look upon domestic
affairs or work of any kind as of secondary importance, if not
actually as a mere jest. The only business that really claims their
earnest attention is love, making conquests, and everything connected
with this--dress, dancing, and so on.
The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is
in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning
powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a
woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only
reason of a sort--very niggard in its dimensions. That is why women
remain children their whole life long; never seeing anything but
what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking
appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of the first
importance. For it is by virtue of his reasoning faculty that man does
not live in the present only, like the brute, but looks about him and
considers the past and the future; and this is the origin of prudence,
as well as of that care and anxiety which so many people exhibit. Both
the advantages and the disadvantages which this involves, are shared
in by the woman to a smaller extent because of her weaker power
of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually
short-sighted, because, while she has an intuitive understanding of
what lies quite close to her, her field of vision is narrow and does
not reach to what is remote; so that things which are absent, or past,
or to come, have much less effect upon women than upon men. This is
the reason why women are more often inclined to be extravagant, and
sometimes carry their inclination to a length that borders upon
madness. In their hearts, women think that it is men's business
to earn money and theirs to spend it--- if possible during their
husband's life, but, at any rate, after his death. The very fact
that their husband hands them over his earnings for purposes of
housekeeping, strengthens them in this belief.
However many disadvantages all this may involve, there is at least
this to be said in its favor; that the woman lives more in the present
than the man, and that, if the present is at all tolerable, she enjoys
it more eagerly. This is the source of that cheerfulness which
is peculiar to women, fitting her to amuse man in his hours of
recreation, and, in case of need, to console him when he is borne down
by the weight of his cares.
It is by no means a bad plan to consult women in matters of
difficulty, as the Germans used to do in ancient times; for their way
of looking at things is quite different from ours, chiefly in the
fact that they like to take the shortest way to their goal, and, in
general, manage to fix their eyes upon what lies before them; while
we, as a rule, see far beyond it, just because it is in front of our
noses. In cases like this, we need to be brought back to the right
standpoint, so as to recover the near and simple view.
Then, again, women are decidedly more sober in their judgment than
we are, so that they do not see more in things than is really there;
whilst, if our passions are aroused, we are apt to see things in an
exaggerated way, or imagine what does not exist.
The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why it is that
women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men do, and so treat
them with more kindness and interest; and why it is that, on the
contrary, they are inferior to men in point of justice, and less
honorable and conscientious. For it is just because their reasoning
power is weak that present circumstances have such a hold over them,
and those concrete things, which lie directly before their eyes,
exercise a power which is seldom counteracted to any extent by
abstract principles of thought, by fixed rules of conduct, firm
resolutions, or, in general, by consideration for the past and the
future, or regard for what is absent and remote. Accordingly, they
possess the first and main elements that go to make a virtuous
character, but they are deficient in those secondary qualities which
are often a necessary instrument in the formation of it.[1]
[Footnote 1: In this respect they may be compared to an animal
organism which contains a liver but no gall-bladder. Here let me refer
to what I have said in my treatise on _The Foundation of Morals_, §
17.]
Hence, it will be found that the fundamental fault of the female
character is that it has _no sense of justice_. This is mainly due to
the fact, already mentioned, that women are defective in the powers of
reasoning and deliberation; but it is also traceable to the position
which Nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are
dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence their
instinctive capacity for cunning, and their ineradicable tendency to
say what is not true. For as lions are provided with claws and teeth,
and elephants and boars with tusks, bulls with horns, and cuttle fish
with its clouds of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman, for her
defence and protection, with the arts of dissimulation; and all the
power which Nature has conferred upon man in the shape of physical
strength and reason, has been bestowed upon women in this form. Hence,
dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the
stupid as of the clever. It is as natural for them to make use of it
on every occasion as it is for those animals to employ their means of
defence when they are 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. But this fundamental defect which I have stated, with all
that it entails, gives rise to falsity, faithlessness, treachery,
ingratitude, and so on. Perjury in a court of justice is more
often committed by women than by men. It may, indeed, be generally
questioned whether women ought to be sworn in at all. From time to
time one finds repeated cases everywhere of ladies, who want for
nothing, taking things from shop-counters when no one is looking, and
making off with them.
Nature has appointed that the propagation of the species shall be the
business of men who are young, strong and handsome; so that the race
may not degenerate. This is the firm will and purpose of Nature in
regard to the species, and it finds its expression in the passions of
women. There is no law that is older or more powerful than this. Woe,
then, to the man who sets up claims and interests that will conflict
with it; whatever he may say and do, they will be unmercifully crushed
at the first serious encounter. For the innate rule that governs
women's conduct, though it is secret and unformulated, nay,
unconscious in its working, is this: _We are justified in deceiving
those who think they have acquired rights over the species by paying
little attention to the individual, that is, to us. The constitution
and, therefore, the welfare of the species have been placed in our
hands and committed to our care, through the control we obtain over
the next generation, which proceeds from us; let us discharge our
duties conscientiously_. But women have no abstract knowledge of this
leading principle; they are conscious of it only as a concrete fact;
and they have no other method of giving expression to it than the
way in which they act when the opportunity arrives. And then their
conscience does not trouble them so much as we fancy; for in the
darkest recesses of their heart, they are aware that in committing a
breach of their duty towards the individual, they have all the
better fulfilled their duty towards the species, which is infinitely
greater.[1]
[Footnote 1: A more detailed discussion of the matter in question may
be found in my chief work, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol.
ii, ch. 44.]
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 man; and it is this to 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 that
trade-jealousy--_odium figulinum_--which, in the case of men does not
go beyond the confines of their own particular pursuit; but, with
women, embraces the whole sex; since they have only one kind of
business. Even when they meet in the street, women look at one another
like Guelphs and Ghibellines. And it is a patent fact that when two
women 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, whilst
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 towards 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
favor; as also that they stand in much nearer relations with one
another than men do, in consequence of the one-sided nature of their
calling. This makes them endeavor to lay stress upon differences of
rank.
It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulses
that could give the name of _the fair sex_ to that under-sized,
narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race; for the whole
beauty of the sex is bound up with this impulse. Instead of calling
them beautiful, there would be more warrant for describing women as
the un-aesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for fine
art, have they really and truly any sense or susceptibility; it is a
mere mockery if they make a pretence of it in order to assist their
endeavor 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
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_.[1]
[Footnote 1: Lettre à d'Alembert, Note xx.]
No one 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 was 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 the theatre_. This might, perhaps, be put up in
big letters on the curtain.
And you cannot expect anything else of women if you consider that the
most distinguished intellects among the whole sex have never managed
to produce a single achievement in the fine arts that is really great,
genuine, and original; or given to the world any work of permanent
value in any sphere. This is most strikingly shown in regard to
painting, where mastery of technique is at least as much within their
power as within ours--and hence they are diligent in cultivating it;
but still, they have not a single great painting to boast of, just
because they are deficient in that objectivity of mind which is so
directly indispensable in painting. They never get beyond a subjective
point of view. It is quite in keeping with this that ordinary women
have no real susceptibility for art at all; for Nature proceeds in
strict sequence--_non facit saltum_. And Huarte[1] in his _Examen de
ingenios para las scienzias_--a book which has been famous for
three hundred years--denies women the possession of all the higher
faculties. The case is not altered by particular and partial
exceptions; taken as a whole, women are, and remain, thorough-going
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[2] 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 lowers us in their eyes. When Nature 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.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--- Juan Huarte (1520?-1590)
practised as a physician at Madrid. The work cited by Schopenhauer is
known, and has been translated into many languages.]
[Footnote 2: _Translator's Note_.--See _Counsels and Maxims_, p. 12,
Note.]
This is just the view which the ancients took of woman, and the view
which 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 women more arrogant and overbearing; so that one is
occasionally reminded of the holy apes in Benares, who in the
consciousness of their sanctity and inviolable position, think they
can do exactly as they please.
But in the West, the woman, and especially the _lady_, finds herself
in a false position; for woman, rightly called by the ancients,
_sexus sequior_, is by no means fit to be the object of our honor and
veneration, or to hold her head higher than man and be on equal terms
with him. The consequences of this false position are sufficiently
obvious. Accordingly, it would be a very desirable thing if this
Number-Two of the human race were in Europe also relegated to her
natural place, and an end put to that lady nuisance, which not only
moves all Asia to laughter, but would have been ridiculed by Greece
and Rome as well. It is impossible to calculate the good effects which
such a change would bring about in our social, civil and political
arrangements. There would be no necessity for the Salic law: it would
be a superfluous truism. In Europe the _lady_, strictly so-called, is
a being who should not exist at all; she should be either a housewife
or a girl who hopes to become one; and she should be brought up, not
to be arrogant, but to be thrifty and submissive. It is just because
there are such people as _ladies_ in Europe that the women of the
lower classes, that is to say, the great majority of the sex, are much
more unhappy than they are in the East. And even Lord Byron says:
_Thought of the state of women under the ancient Greeks--convenient
enough. Present state, a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalric
and the feudal ages--artificial and unnatural. They ought to mind
home--and be well fed and clothed--but not mixed in society. Well
educated, too, in religion--but to read neither poetry nor politics--
nothing but books of piety and cookery. Music--drawing--dancing--also
a little gardening and ploughing now and then. I have seen them
mending the roads in Epirus with good success. Why not, as well as
hay-making and milking_?
The laws of marriage prevailing in Europe consider the woman as the
equivalent of the man--start, that is to say, from a wrong position.
In our part of the world where monogamy is the rule, to marry means to
halve one's rights and double one's duties. Now, when the laws gave
women equal rights with man, they ought to have also endowed her with
a masculine intellect. But the fact is, that just in proportion as
the honors and privileges which the laws accord to women, exceed the
amount which nature gives, is there a diminution in the number
of women who really participate in these privileges; and all the
remainder are deprived of their natural rights by just so much as is
given to the others over and above their share. For the institution of
monogamy, and the laws of marriage which it entails, bestow upon
the woman an unnatural position of privilege, by considering her
throughout as the full equivalent of the man, which is by no means
the case; and seeing this, men who are shrewd and prudent very often
scruple to make so great a sacrifice and to acquiesce in so unfair an
arrangement.
Consequently, whilst among polygamous nations every woman is provided
for, where monogamy prevails the number of married women is limited;
and there remains over a large number of women without stay or
support, who, in the upper classes, vegetate as useless old maids, and
in the lower succumb to hard work for which they are not suited; or
else become _filles de joie_, whose life is as destitute of joy as it
is of honor. But under the circumstances they become a necessity; and
their position is openly recognized as serving the special end of
warding off temptation from those women favored by fate, who have
found, or may hope to find, husbands. In London alone there are 80,000
prostitutes. What are they but the women, who, under the institution
of monogamy have come off worse? Theirs is a dreadful fate: they are
human sacrifices offered up on the altar of monogamy. The women whose
wretched position is here described are the inevitable set-off to the
European lady with her arrogance and pretension. Polygamy is therefore
a real benefit to the female sex if it is taken as a whole. And, from
another point of view, there is no true reason why a man whose wife
suffers from chronic illness, or remains barren, or has gradually
become too old for him, should not take a second. The motives which
induce so many people to become converts to Mormonism[1] appear to
be just those which militate against the unnatural institution of
monogamy.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--The Mormons have recently given up
polygamy, and received the American franchise in its stead.]
Moreover, the bestowal of unnatural rights upon women has imposed upon
them unnatural duties, and, nevertheless, a breach of these duties
makes them unhappy. Let me explain. A man may often think that his
social or financial position will suffer if he marries, unless he
makes some brilliant alliance. His desire will then be to win a woman
of his own choice under conditions other than those of marriage, such
as will secure her position and that of the children. However fair,
reasonable, fit and proper these conditions may be, and the woman
consents by foregoing that undue amount of privilege which marriage
alone can bestow, she to some extent loses her honor, because marriage
is the basis of civic society; and she will lead an unhappy life,
since human nature is so constituted that we pay an attention to the
opinion of other people which is out of all proportion to its value.
On the other hand, if she does not consent, she runs the risk either
of having to be given in marriage to a man whom she does not like, or
of being landed high and dry as an old maid; for the period during
which she has a chance of being settled for life is very short. And
in view of this aspect of the institution of monogamy, Thomasius'
profoundly learned treatise, _de Concubinatu_, is well worth reading;
for it shows that, amongst all nations and in all ages, down to the
Lutheran Reformation, concubinage was permitted; nay, that it was an
institution which was to a certain extent actually recognized by law,
and attended with no dishonor. It was only the Lutheran Reformation
that degraded it from this position. It was seen to be a further
justification for the marriage of the clergy; and then, after that,
the Catholic Church did not dare to remain behind-hand in the matter.
There is no use arguing about polygamy; it must be taken as _de facto_
existing everywhere, and the only question is as to how it shall be
regulated. Where are there, then, any real monogamists? We all live,
at any rate, for a time, and most of us, always, in polygamy. And so,
since every man needs many women, there is nothing fairer than to
allow him, nay, to make it incumbent upon him, to provide for many
women. This will reduce woman to her true and natural position as
a subordinate being; and the _lady_--that monster of European
civilization and Teutonico-Christian stupidity--will disappear from
the world, leaving only _women_, but no more _unhappy women_, of whom
Europe is now full.
In India, no woman is ever independent, but in accordance with the law
of Mamu,[1] she stands under the control of her father, her husband,
her brother or her son. It is, to be sure, a revolting thing that a
widow should immolate herself upon her husband's funeral pyre; but it
is also revolting that she should spend her husband's money with her
paramours--the money for which he toiled his whole life long, in the
consoling belief that he was providing for his children. Happy are
those who have kept the middle course--_medium tenuere beati_.
[Footnote 1: Ch. V., v. 148.]
The first love of a mother for her child is, with the lower animals as
with men, of a purely _instinctive_ character, and so it ceases when
the child is no longer in a physically helpless condition. After that,
the first love should give way to one that is based on habit and
reason; but this often fails to make its appearance, especially where
the mother did not love the father. The love of a father for his child
is of a different order, and more likely to last; because it has its
foundation in the fact that in the child he recognizes his own inner
self; that is to say, his love for it is metaphysical in its origin.
In almost all nations, whether of the ancient or the modern world,
even amongst the Hottentots,[1] property is inherited by the male
descendants alone; it is only in Europe that a departure has taken
place; but not amongst the nobility, however. That the property which
has cost men long years of toil and effort, and been won with so much
difficulty, should afterwards come into the hands of women, who then,
in their lack of reason, squander it in a short time, or otherwise
fool it away, is a grievance and a wrong as serious as it is common,
which should be prevented by limiting the right of women to inherit.
In my opinion, the best arrangement would be that by which women,
whether widows or daughters, should never receive anything beyond the
interest for life on property secured by mortgage, and in no case the
property itself, or the capital, except where all male descendants
fail. The people who make money are men, not women; and it follows
from this that women are neither justified in having unconditional
possession of it, nor fit persons to be entrusted with its
administration. When wealth, in any true sense of the word, that is to
say, funds, houses or land, is to go to them as an inheritance they
should never be allowed the free disposition of it. In their case a
guardian should always be appointed; and hence they should never be
given the free control of their own children, wherever it can be
avoided. The vanity of women, even though it should not prove to be
greater than that of men, has this much danger in it, that it takes an
entirely material direction. They are vain, I mean, of their personal
beauty, and then of finery, show and magnificence. That is just why
they are so much in their element in society. It is this, too, which
makes them so inclined to be extravagant, all the more as their
reasoning power is low. Accordingly we find an ancient writer
describing woman as in general of an extravagant nature--[Greek: Gynae
to synolon esti dapanaeron Physei][2] But with men vanity often takes
the direction of non-material advantages, such as intellect, learning,
courage.
[Footnote 1: Leroy, _Lettres philosophiques sur l'intelligence et la
perfectibilité des animaux, avec quelques lettres sur l'homme_, p.
298, Paris, 1802.]
[Footnote 2: Brunck's _Gnomici poetae graeci_, v. 115.]
In the _Politics_[1] Aristotle explains the great disadvantage which
accrued to the Spartans from the fact that they conceded too much to
their women, by giving them the right of inheritance and dower, and a
great amount of independence; and he shows how much this contributed
to Sparta's fall. May it not be the case in France that the influence
of women, which went on increasing steadily from the time of Louis
XIII., was to blame for that gradual corruption of the Court and the
Government, which brought about the Revolution of 1789, of which all
subsequent disturbances have been the fruit? However that may be, the
false position which women occupy, demonstrated as it is, in the most
glaring way, by the institution of the _lady_, is a fundamental defect
in our social scheme, and this defect, proceeding from the very heart
of it, must spread its baneful influence in all directions.
[Footnote 1: Bk. I, ch. 9.]
* * * * *
That woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by the fact that
every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of complete
independence, immediately attaches herself to some man, by whom she
allows herself to be guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord
and master. If she is young, it will be a lover; if she is old, a
priest.