show the connexion between woman’s fundamental bad taste, or lack of
taste, with the vital principle within her, and this I shall proceed to
do now. This, however, will not prove difficult, for it amounts simply
to emphasizing woman’s profound likeness to Nature, in blindly pursuing
Life and its multiplication, at all costs.
If we think of the immensely precarious situation of the new-born
infant or animal, its lack of all means of protection, of mobility,
and of procuring nourishment independently, its lack of warmth, and
frequently of the very equipment for preserving warmth (clothing in
the human infant, and fur and feathers in the young animal and bird
respectively), we realize at once the immense importance to the species
of an instinct in the mother which makes the provision of all these
deficiencies a joy, a passionate need, in fact a delight worth fighting
for. If the new-born creature is to be preserved, and the species
is to survive, there must be no possible loophole, no conceivable
crevice or chink, in the armour of the natural instinct, through which
any doubt, any hesitation whatever, may enter, as to the immediate
urgency and desirability of succouring it. The moment in the life of
the young creature is too critical, the situation is too precarious.
Here you have pitiable helplessness, pathetic dependence, extreme
vulnerability. The future of the species depends upon these unreliable
qualities being turned into reliable ones by the only creature in the
young one’s neighbourhood who, while being necessarily present at its
birth, is in a position to offer first aid. If then there were any
excuse or pretext for indecision, any humming and ha-ing over the
question of desirability, the “best of the brood,” the “most promising
of the litter,” etc., life’s very future would be in the balance, the
precious instinct which secures the safety and the survival of the
young creature would be undermined, or at least no longer impelled
unreflectingly to do the right thing in the right way. There must be
an uncritical unreasoning impulse to succour, to warm, to protect, and
to feed, otherwise the speed, the precision and the earnestness with
which these functions have to be performed would be fatally impaired,
disastrously hampered. Let the struggle for existence be ever so
severe subsequently, one thing must remain assured and inviolable, and
that is that the mother’s instinct must not have any excuse to fail,
it must not even be able to pause to question, to pick or to choose.
Discernment, at this moment, would make survival doubtful; but there
cannot be, there must not be, any doubt.
Besides, if organic evolution be true, it depends upon the operation
of three factors: (1) The survival of the fittest through the action
of (2) Natural Selection, with (3) occasional appearance of variations
from type.
Now, if the female of the species is to exercise discernment before
she succours her young, if her action is to be deliberative and not
impulsive, what becomes of those variations which, when happy, lead
to a new development of the species, or actually to a new variety
of species? Happy variations are just as odd—_qua_ type—as unhappy
variations. But if the female’s instinct is to preserve life, it will
preserve one just as passionately as the other. Discrimination would
prove fatal to both. The very process of organic evolution, if it be a
fact, therefore depends upon the lack of discrimination in the motherly
instinct, and the hypothesis of organic evolution certainly assumes it.
This instinct in the female to succour young life of any kind,
therefore, is useful to Nature’s scheme. It is an indispensable factor
in Nature’s plan. In the lower animals it is demonstrated by the ease
with which a female of one species can be made to act as foster-mother
to the young of another. Books on natural history mention many such
cases: cats that have reared leverets and young squirrels,[204] hens
that rear ducklings, and the classical natural instance of birds
like the Pipit, the Water Wagtail, etc., rearing the young of the
cuckoo.[205] The latter, of course, is a parasitic abuse in Nature,
of the female’s undiscriminating instinct to succour; but it is
nevertheless, an excellent example of the fact I have been trying to
establish.
It is true that in the human species this lack of discrimination in
the female operates as a preserver both of desirable and undesirable
varieties; but, as in all modern civilizations, the father is no longer
allowed, as he was by ancient Sparta or Rome, to override the female’s
lack of taste in this matter, and unsuccessful variations from type are
more common than geniuses, it follows that the female’s point of view,
now that it is supported by the State and public opinion, must lead to
the survival of a vast number of undesirable human beings in our midst.
Thus, although the human female’s instinct is seen to be a vital
one, and though her lack of taste must be regarded as part of the
general scheme of life, it must tend nowadays to an enormous amount of
degeneration.
This, however, is not precisely our point. The facts we wish to
establish are, in the first place, that in woman’s rôle of mother, the
blind instinct to succour, to protect, and to preserve the helpless
creature that she bears is of vital importance to the race; and,
secondly, that this blind instinct necessarily involves a deep-seated
and incorrigible lack of taste. The fact that subsequently—that is to
say, when the undesirable offspring, be it cripple, cretin or idiot,
grows up—it is frequently cherished by the mother more than her whole
and hearty children, is but a confirmation of the point I am attempting
to make; for it shows that what appeals to the true mother, and what
according to our whole argument must and ought to appeal, is not the
particular excellence of a given child, not its claim to any particular
form of desirability, but simply its _helplessness_. And, since in
the cripple, the cretin and the idiot helplessness is prolonged to a
much later age than in the healthy child, it is the former to which
unsophisticated and simple-minded motherhood naturally inclines.
The consequences of this fundamental and vital lack of taste in women
are, of course, considerable.
When we read in Manu’s _Book of Laws_ that “women do not care for
beauty,”[206] when Lombroso and Ferrero, in discussing woman’s taste
state that “_en général, la beauté et l’intelligence la laissent
indifférente_,”[207] and when we find Rousseau saying “_les femmes en
général n’aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent à aucun_,”[208] we feel
inclined to object, because we know of individual instances of women
who have shown a marked feeling for beauty. Neither Lombroso, Manu nor
Rousseau tells us, however, that their respective statements only refer
to a specific and superficial manifestation of a deep and unalterable
law. When once we realize that law, we see that these men must be
right—not, however, because individual women have shown an indifference
to beauty, but because the sex as a whole has no taste, and that,
wherever discernment for beauty is pronounced in a woman, she either
diverges from type or has undergone some special educating influence.
We are better able to understand now why the forms of art have all
been man’s invention, although they have sometimes been successfully
imitated by women (in the novel),[209] and why clothes, even those
that fill the wardrobes of women, are all derived from an original
masculine designing centre in London or Paris. We can also see why
women are so prone to select and to associate with the worst and most
unpromising type of men,[210] why they have no _flair_ (except on the
sexual side, and even that is by no means infallible) where men are
concerned, and why even their palates and their stomachs have never
assisted them in the development of the culinary art, when they had it
entirely in their own hands. But let us remember again that we cannot
have it both ways, and that if we educated tastelessness away in women,
we should be undermining one of the most valuable and fundamental of
female instincts, the consequences of which alone can we safely hope to
correct, without attempting to eliminate their cause.
No. 3. Woman’s _Vulgarity_ might be supposed to arise from her natural
absence of taste. But, truth to tell, it is the outcome of a different
basic principle in her. Many men have been conscious of it, but none,
as far as I have been able to discover, has shown how essential it is,
and how necessarily it derives from the vital functions of the female
nature. Besides, there is a substantial difference between a lack of
taste and vulgarity. The former is a defect, a _minus_. The latter is a
definite quality which operates as a determined bias in an unrefined,
rude and low direction. A person lacking taste may by a fluke select a
tasteful thing. A vulgar person can in no circumstances be refined. It
is not necessarily low, or rude, or unrefined in the mother to prefer
the crippled or cretin child before the healthy one—that is simply
tasteless. We could not call the mother vulgar because she prefers her
child in long clothes before her grown-up child in knickerbockers. The
grown-up child makes a stronger appeal to taste, owing to the greater
harmony of his proportions, his articulateness, his intelligence,
and his greater command over his body and its movements; but as the
mother is chiefly attracted by helplessness, it is the child in long
clothes that she prefers. The appeals to taste do not affect her. It
is tastelessness, therefore, and not vulgarity, that elects the child
in long clothes. Thus we see there is a distinct difference between
the two, and the one cannot derive from the other. It can aggravate
the other, add to its seriousness as a social evil, complicate and
multiply its errors, but it cannot spring from it. We call that person
vulgar who constantly and consciously avoids those things that bear the
hall-mark of cultivation, or refinement, or careful selection, in order
deliberately to pursue, select, value, and cherish those that bear the
stamp of coarseness, brutality and baseness.
Now woman constantly overlooks and avoids the former and as constantly
pursues the latter, and we hope to show that she cannot help acting in
this way—in fact, that in so doing she is obeying a vital instinct.
The records of the lives of artists reveal one singular fact most
impressively, and that is the frequency with which they have had to
associate with immoral women, or women of the working classes: Heine,
Gœthe, Rodin, Van Gogh, Wagner, etc.; they are all alike in this; so
much so, indeed, that Weininger, with his customary superficiality,
thought fit to assert that “great men have always preferred women of
the prostitute type.”[211] Weininger is wrong—great men have not always
preferred women of this type. The point is, however, that women of the
prostitute type, or women of the proletariat, are the only women who
will, as a rule, have anything to do with great men when, as in the
case of Wagner, Heine, Van Gogh, and Rodin, their beginnings are poor,
inconspicuous, and uncertain. These artists at the outset, like many
hundreds of other great men, were _unsuccessful_. That is the important
fact as far as the sexual side of their life is concerned. Unsuccessful
men find it quite difficult enough to prevail upon women of their own
station in life to associate with them, but to get them as wives is
out of the question. This accounts for the fact that great men are so
frequently thrown upon the company of courtesans and women of lower
rank.[212]
Woman has no primary interest in a great or artistic man, she does not
prefer him to a successful and rich soap-boiler, and what is more, she
never knows he is great until the world acknowledges him as such. In
fact she is not in the least concerned with refinement of interests or
with cultivation of mind in her mate. She is only deeply fascinated
by the great man and the artist when he is a material success.
Otherwise, not only does his extra refinement and cultivation leave her
indifferent, but his very poverty repels her.
Woman, by her very nature, is bound to take this attitude. She is
compelled, therefore, to be vulgar. What is the rationale of her
conduct?
It is obviously as follows: Woman, like the female butterfly, the
female house-fly, or the female horse-fly, has the very vital and
useful instinct to deposit her eggs only there where there is a sound
promise of food, and ample quantities of it, for the support of the
larvæ that are to be reared from them. To consider other matters here
would obviously imperil not so much the mother herself as her future
offspring. Æsthetic considerations must therefore be barred. It is not
the best-looking repository, or the most refined, or the most learned,
or the most artistic, that is sought, but that repository which
promises the richest food-supply for the coming brood. In the insect it
is the leafy tree,[213] the towering dung-heap; in the human female it
is the man who shows some substantial promise of being able to support
the family that will come, and support it, moreover, in circumstances
similar to those in which the wife herself has been reared. Thus the
struggling artist, the struggling scientist, and the ambitious but
penniless politician—though each may be a genius in his way—repels the
true and normal woman of his own class. Their spiritual gifts count as
nothing, and since woman has no _flair_ for greatness, and cannot with
certainty pick out the great man before the world has applauded him to
the echo, it is only when they have become a material success that the
female of their own or a superior station in life will look at them.
Now this is obviously a very useful and a very vital instinct in woman.
From the standpoint of the species nothing could be more laudable
than this anxious preoccupation with the future of the offspring. But
it amounts to this, that by their nature women can have no primary
concern about those things that bear the hallmarks of cultivation, of
refinement and of greatness, and that, therefore, they are essentially
_vulgar_.[214]
If in the Europe of to-day, and in all countries like Europe, it is
material success alone that is regarded as of the highest value, and
if money is the principal hall-mark of power and prestige, it is due
to the ascendancy of women in our midst. Women cannot take any other
point of view, and where their influence tends to prevail, as it does
particularly in England and America, there you will find the worship
of cash the principal religion of the community. It is true that women
fall at the feet of great men and artists when they become famous. When
I was private secretary to Auguste Rodin, the great sculptor, at a time
when he was making anything from fifteen to twenty thousand pounds a
year, women were his principal visitors. They flocked to his studio
and to his private house at Meudon as to an Oxford Street drapery
sale. But, as he used to say, they left him in peace in his dirty
little studio in La Rue des Fourneaux at the time when he was poor and
struggling.
It is indeed one of the most pernicious results of woman’s ascendancy
in any society, that this vulgar pursuit of mere material success
(because it provides the surest provision for the offspring) tends to
become general,[215] and it is a sign of woman’s subordination in the
Hindu community, for instance, that there the most respected caste is
the poorest caste.
To-day this vulgarity can be detected in every aspect of our lives.
Everything, every consideration of refinement, is overlooked, provided
that money be present. And the man who kills most female hearts is
he who can throw a rich fur round his capture and whirl her off in
a sumptuous Rolls-Royce. This to the normal decent woman is simply
irresistible. She will abandon any mere artist for this experience. And
though in later years, when the latter has become great in a worldly
sense, she may deplore her error of judgment, she has no gifts that
enable her immediately to gauge his worth, and thus to foretell his
ultimate position.
It is interesting to note that neither Heine, Nietzsche nor Van Gogh
ever became a material success until long after his death. But Heine,
Nietzsche and Van Gogh were singularly free from the sort of female
persecution that harassed Rodin and Wagner in later life, and certainly
not one of them ever had a successful association with a woman of his
own station or class.
Indeed, so deeply rooted is this love of material success in women that
it manifests itself in those who have long ceased to be able to bear
children. Thus wives who have passionately loved their husbands will
learn to dislike and despise them intensely if owing to some unhappy
turn in their fortunes they become material failures. Daughters will
also manifest a pronounced dislike towards fathers who, for their
station in life, have been inadequate material successes. I once heard
a daughter of a peer talk most bitterly about her father, because he
was a failure from the financial point of view. A woman will forgive
anything in her man—adultery, cruelty, obesity, and stupidity,—but she
cannot and will not forgive material failure.
The ramifications of this fundamental and vital vulgarity in woman
are, of course, manifold. We have only to think of the ostentation of
wealth, of the insistence upon the insignia of wealth and material
success by women (diamonds, pearls, furs, fine external domestic
appointments, etc.), and of the stampede for wealth and success in
modern, women-ridden society. We have only to think of the commercial,
industrial and financial immorality of modern societies, all of which
are the direct outcome of the maniacal struggle for that hall-mark
which alone means power and prestige in an effeminate community.
Individually this vulgarity ramifies in woman as an inability to pursue
refinement, unassisted or undirected; as a readiness to sacrifice
refinement or else the fruits of cultivation, to any other sordid end,
and as an inaccessibility to the finer nuances of thought. That is why
the notion “Lady” is such absurd nonsense. It is the grossest and most
palpable fiction. No “lady” has ever existed or will ever exist. As
Napoleon said, “Women have no rank”;—we have seen why this must be
so.[216]
No. 4. Woman’s _love of petty power_ is obvious and hardly requires
demonstrating. It arises from the species’ urgent need of some adult
animal which, when the offspring is born, will take an instinctive
delight in looking after it. Apart from the pleasant sensations that
the healthy female—whether animal or human—derives from suckling,[217]
there must also be an instinct which makes it a pleasure to nurse, to
fondle, and to tend the infant of the species. This instinct can be
examined under its two aspects, either as a love of petty power or as
a love of dealing with something pathetically helpless. And, indeed,
if some of the deepest chords in the female’s being were not moved by
helplessness, where on earth should we be? What would become of our
babies and our children?
As far as her relation to the child is concerned, therefore, there can
be no doubt whatsoever concerning the utility to the species of woman’s
love of petty power, and away from the child it is revealed in a
hundred different ways: woman’s pronounced preference for lap-dogs, her
fondness for teaching (when children play at school it is invariably
a little girl of the party who plays the part of teacher),[218] her
_conscious_ preference for the grown-up schoolboy as a husband (that
is to say, the man who is easily led by the nose), her tendency to
desire to give advice to relatives and friends, in everything, so
that virtually she directs their lives (this is admirably depicted by
George Eliot in her descriptions of Maggie’s aunts in the _Mill on the
Floss_), and finally her tendency to excessive self-assertion and to
interference with other people’s concerns.
It is only in its ramifications that this vital instinct in woman has
a deleterious influence if it is not kept in check; for her desire
for petty power is always out of all proportion to her capacity for
wielding any power whatsoever. For instance, in its tendency to make
her favour the grown-up schoolboy type of man as a husband, it acts as
a distinct drawback to the race. Because, although he proves an easy
man to rule, he is by no means a desirable type from the standpoint of
virile virtue. He is the type called “Promethean” in my _Man’s Descent
from the Gods_—that is to say, a man who has no mastery of life, very
little depth or understanding, and who is gifted with the qualities
of the lackey rather than of the leader. The prevalence of this type
of man to-day, together with the paucity of men of the masculine and
leader type, is another sign of the extent to which women are having
their own way. He is a man who knows nothing about women, but he is
usually athletic, breezy and fond of games—i.e. he is harmless. The
fact that he now stands as the pattern of the “manly” man reveals the
influence of the female standpoint in our modern communities, as does
also the fact that the other type of man (the masculine and manly type
who understands woman, and who shows that he does) is now vilified
everywhere as the “prig.”
Truth to tell, woman is less happy with the grown-up schoolboy type
than with the latter type, but this she only finds out later. Her
conscious choice, supported by the values of the age, inclines her
to the type over which she can exercise petty power, and this man,
who believes in “chivalry,” who believes in playing “cricket” (or
“playing the game”) with his womenfolk, and who accepts the whole of
the tinsel of false sentiment that women have succeeded in drawing
over the natural relations of the sexes, has become the beau ideal of
Anglo-Saxon society.
Ultimately, of course, woman suffers excruciatingly, not only as
an individual, but also as a whole sex, when this type of man
becomes supreme; because, since he has no mastery over life, and no
understanding of life’s problems (the sex problem is only one of the
many he actually creates), the societies in which he prevails gradually
get into such an appalling muddle, and reveal in all their aspects such
a tragic absence of the master mind, that life in all its departments
becomes ever more and more difficult. A century in England of the
prevalence of this type of man has brought us to our present hopeless
plight, and yet there are very few men, and no women, who seem to be
aware of the fact that it is the prevalence of this alleged “manly” man
that is to blame.
A moment’s thought, of course, reveals at once how ridiculous even the
terminology of this womanly ideal of man really is; for truly “manly”
men are not ruled by their women. And yet, in the most successful
novels of the day, in the most exalted circles of the land, and in the
hearts of all unsuspecting virgins, he continues to be upheld as the
paragon for all times and climes.
This is what we have had to pay for woman’s point of view becoming
paramount.
Do not let it be thought, however, that the cure would consist in
curbing, uprooting or correcting woman’s love of petty power. This
should not be attempted for one instant, even if it were possible.
Woman’s love of petty power is much too valuable to the species to be
tampered with. The only practical cure would be the breeding of a type
of masculine men over whom woman’s love of petty power could not avail.
Thus woman’s lack of taste on the one hand, her vulgarity and her
love of petty power on the other,[219] are all seen to be exercising
a deleterious and dangerous influence on modern society. They are
harmful because they exert a continuous pull downwards against the
aspiring efforts of the age; they are dangerous because they may
lead to a degree of degeneration from which it may prove impossible
ultimately to recover, and they are difficult and delicate to handle
because, while they are persistent and incorrigible, they are, as we
have seen, too vital to be tampered with without jeopardizing the
survival of the species.
What in the circumstances is the solution?
The only advisable solution lies in the direction, not of changing
woman—that would be suicidal to the species—but in limiting her power,
in controlling her influence. Feminism, therefore, which aims at the
opposite ideal, is wrong—wrong to the root. There must be a revulsion
of feeling, or we perish. Woman must be re-defined. Her sphere must
once again be delimited and circumscribed, if her vital and precious
instincts are not, in their effort to extend “out of bounds,” to drag
us steadily down into the abyss.
If woman were happier as she is, than with her influence controlled,
if Feminism had brought bliss instead of anguish to millions of women,
there might be at least one remaining argument—a purely hedonistic
one—in favour of this nineteenth-century madness. But seeing that
this is not so; in view of what every one now knows and can see and
feel with his own unassisted senses, that woman has grown every day
more wretched, more neurotic, and more sick, with every advance that
Feminism has made, the last and only possible word remaining in its
favour, the plea even of hedonism, is shown to be as inadmissible as
the rest.
When, therefore, we read in the old canon of the Brahmins, “He who
carefully guards his wife, preserves the purity of his offspring,
virtuous conduct, his family, himself, and his means of acquiring
merit”[220]; when we read “Day and night women must be kept in
dependence by the males of their families ... her father protects
her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth, and her sons
protect her in old age, a woman is never fit for independence”;[221]
we shall surely be taking a very heavy onus of responsibility upon our
shoulders if we declare this policy madness and our own wisdom. Is
there anything beyond our own prejudice to show that we are more wise
than the Brahmins were? Is there anything in the organization of our
society to show that it is more successful than that of the Brahmins?
If we choose to interpret these texts merely as the unjust doctrines
of a race “hostile” to women, it should be incumbent upon us to prove
that, in point of fact, our women are happier in their anarchy than
those women are or were in their Brahministic order. But, truth to
tell, the Brahmins were a very wise race, a race that meant to last
longer than we mean to last, and which, in fact, has achieved a degree
of permanence far exceeding that which any European race has achieved,
or can hope to achieve, unless it make a rapid _volte-face_ in almost
all its most cherished beliefs.
No. 5. Woman’s _Vanity_, I take it, is not open to question. If no
other proof of its pre-eminence in her were available, we should find
one in her universally reported modesty; for, who says modest, says
also vain.[222] Since, therefore, no one has yet contested the modesty
of women, I may take it that her vanity is by implication generally
accepted too.
The ramifications of this vice in her are to be found in her tendency
to inordinate jealousy (which arises from her incessant desire to be
the centre of attraction and her intolerance of rivals in this desire);
in her love of honours, titles, badges, etc. (hence her incessant
spurring on of her mate to obtain them, and her impatience with him
if he fails); in her tendency to adopt only showy or conspicuous
callings in which tangible and visible results, and speedy applause,
are sure to be obtained. (Thus Havelock Ellis says: “It is difficult
to recall examples of women who have patiently and slowly fought
their way at once to perfection and to fame in the face of complete
indifference, like, for instance, Balzac.... It is still more difficult
to recall a woman who for any abstract and intellectual end has fought
her way to success through obloquy and contempt, or without reaching
success, like a Roger Bacon, or a Galileo, a Wagner or an Ibsen”);[223]
finally, in her constant and deep concern about her appearance, her
clothes, her hair, and her neighbour’s clothes and hair, and her love
of flattery. This latter derivative of her basic vanity is perhaps
the worst of all, because it means that women, as a rule, are always
governed in their likes and dislikes, and in their appreciation of
their fellow-creatures, not by a recognition of the latter’s intrinsic
worth, which they sum up once and for all, but by the manner in which
their fellow-creatures treat them. A woman does not ask herself, what
is the precise character of So-and-so, and value him accordingly. Her
instinctive question is, how did So-and-so treat me? He may be an
inferior man who dances attendance upon her and treats her well, he may
be a knave; she will always prefer him before the worthy man who treats
her with indifference. Madame de Staël’s adverse opinion of Napoleon
was not formed until Napoleon had systematically and thoroughly snubbed
her. But Madame de Staël’s adverse opinion of Napoleon is not valuable
as an index to Napoleon’s true character; it is only valuable as an
index to the way Napoleon treated her. Likewise with our “good Queen
Bess,” it was not Leicester’s desirable qualities that so much endeared
him to her; for he was a bigamist, a murderer, an incompetent and
cowardly general, and a bad governor of men, as his experiences in the
Netherlands proved; but the fact that he was an arch-flatterer. Even
the ingenuity he displayed in designing his presents to his sovereign
and lady love, reveal an unusual knowledge of woman’s weaknesses.
Elizabeth’s treatment of Admiral Lord Seymour, whom she made a Privy
Councillor, was also not based upon an estimate of his true worth,
but upon the way in which he treated her; for the man was a convicted
defaulter. See also her ridiculous behaviour with Sir James Melville
in 1564 (recorded by himself) and her humiliating victimization by Dr.
Dee, the alchemist.
The most cursory study of any woman’s opinion about her
fellow-creatures will always reveal the same fact, that they are not
based at all upon the intrinsic value of people, but on the way people
treat her. This is a comparatively harmless trait so long as woman
has no power; the moment, however, that she is placed in a position
of wielding power, her errors of judgment affect public life, and she
only accepts those men as her ministers, advisers or directors who
can prostrate themselves with the best grace at her feet, and appeal
most irresistibly to her vanity. Her choice of a fellow-creature may
of course be right by a fluke, as for instance when he combines with
general ability the power for fulsome flattery (Benjamin Disraeli); but
otherwise it is almost sure to be wrong.[224]
These ramifications of the fundamental vice of vanity in woman are, I
presume, disputed by no one. It only remains, therefore, to show that
here again we are concerned with a vital instinct which, while it may
require curbing by man, is too precious to be uprooted or suppressed.
For what, after all, is this vanity in woman but the outcome of her
natural impulse to attract the notice of the male—to speed up, that is
to say, or to make certain of, the act of fertilization, which can only
be consummated when a male has been captivated? If the female played
the aggressive and prehensile rôle in the sexual act, she would only
need to pursue and to overpower as the male does. Since, however, she
plays the passive, receptive and submissive rôle, her only means of
securing and expediting fertilization is to draw the male to her; and
this instinct in the human female naturally manifests itself as a deep
concern about her own personal appearance and its powers of provoking
flattering attention. If intellectual brightness can add to the power
she is thus able to exercise, and she has the gift for developing
intellectual power, she will do so in order to add to the glamour
of her person. That is why it is never safe to argue from a woman’s
intellectual pursuits that she is truly interested in the subjects
she is studying. It is far wiser to wait until she has given some
unmistakable proof of the purity of her motives. This, however, rarely,
if ever, happens.[225]
Since, however, in a contest between attractions, native beauty and
native endowments generally play a greater part than dress or acquired
intellectual smartness, it will generally be found that women are more
bitterly jealous of each other’s bodily gifts than of each other’s
wardrobes, wealth or wisdom. But woman does not consciously consider
the benefit of the species, although she is constantly working for it.
Thus when she is vying with other women in the business of attraction,
she realizes the enormous advantage enjoyed by the rival who has the
best physical endowments, and since it is her own fertilization that
is alone important to her, her jealousy of the other woman or women
may quite easily drive her to homicide, if she can hope to achieve a
speedier triumph by this means.
Apart from sexual matters, this characteristic in the female manifests
itself generally as a desire to shine, or to outshine, and to be the
centre of an admiring or, at least, attentive group. Tiresome as this
propensity is, particularly when a wife shows it to a marked degree,
it should never be forgotten that it has a vital origin, and therefore
that it should be treated with patience and toleration. A little kindly
and timely explanation to a woman of one’s own circle will generally
enable her to realize how foolish she has been making herself appear;
and the moment she realizes this, and begins, with the aid of your
explanation, to notice the self-assertiveness of other women, and its
reasons, she will be on the high road to understanding the wisdom of
your rebuke.
As a general rule it is best to teach women through the example of
other women; because their natural loathing and contempt of other women
is such, that if you can once convince your wife, or your daughter,
that she is behaving, or has behaved, like a certain other woman, whom
she has had opportunities of observing with disapproval, the chances
are that you will have cured her spontaneously of the objectionable
trait which it was your desire to suppress.
This fact, however, should be carefully noted in regard to female
vanity, and that is that _normally_ it is only a means of luring the
male. When once the male has been lured, and the woman is passionate
and positive, vanity is flung to the four winds, and passion will
induce the woman to accept even insults from the man she loves without
ceasing from loving him. The negative woman, on the other hand,
whose vanity is never smothered by passion, cannot accept an insult
from anyone. She hates the lover who does not keep up to the mark
in worshipping her. Since she is never carried away by passion, she
never forgets to ask herself the constant question—what sort of figure
_she_ is cutting in the affair; and this makes her very sensitive to
adulation, neglect and insults.
No. 6. Woman’s _Sensuality_ will be stoutly denied, not only by women
themselves, but by all sentimental and women-ridden men. Owing to
the lies told by the writers of the J. S. Mill type, most modern
Anglo-Saxons have got it into their heads that woman has acted as a
moralizing influence on man, and has thus led to a curbing and taming
of the sensual impulses of humanity; in fact that civilization is
largely her work.[226] With such false doctrines in their minds, it is
naturally difficult to convince such people that woman is sensual; for,
with cerulean-eyed innocence they exclaim: “How can sensuality moralize
mankind?” True enough, it cannot; but the mistake is to suppose
anything so fatuous and absurd as that women ever advanced morality
by a hair’s breadth. I think I have shown sufficiently cogently that
when they do exercise any influence “out of their proper bounds” it is
only in order to spread their bad taste and their vulgarity. How then
could their effect on humanity’s civilization and cultivation have
been anything but a retarding one? The truth is that woman’s direct
influence in most civilizations has been but small, and where this
direct influence has been felt, whether acutely or insignificantly, it
is always unfavourable.
But let us not suppose that on that account sensuality is an evil.—On
the contrary, it is one of the greatest mainstays of life. Without
sensuality we could not advance from one generation to another; without
a love of the flesh and its joys human nature and the animal creation
would come to an end in half a century. In this sense, seeing that
to-day we are all Puritans—if not in deed, at least in thought—I have
the best possible proof of how little woman has influenced civilization
for the good. For woman is chiefly sensual. If then she had influenced
civilization for the good, she must have checked Puritanism. Because
even if we admit, as we must, that her sensuality must be kept within
proper bounds by man, we are forced to inquire how it is that the
whole of Western Europe, and all countries like it, are Puritan to-day,
if woman has exercised any influence on the evolution of society, and
that influence has been a good influence.
The reader may reply that this proves that woman is _not_ sensual.
But I invite him to consider the process of bearing and rearing
children. Surely it is from start to finish—from the coitus to the
weaning—a sensuous process; and in that sense woman’s sensuality is
entirely laudable. When once this sensuous process ceases from being
pleasant in all its stages, disease is present, and the species is in
danger of extermination.[227] This danger may be remote, but it must
be recognized. Now, how can we expect a creature to find pleasure in
a sensuous process lasting over such a long period of time unless
sensuality plays a great part in her constitution?
The only point we have to settle here (since we have placed sensuality
among woman’s vices) is at what point does her sensuality become
vicious. Now let it be thoroughly understood that two-thirds of our
middle-class and certainly three-quarters of our wealthiest classes can
hardly produce a positive woman among them, and, therefore, that there
can be no question of sensuality in the women of these sections of the
community. To be sensual a woman must at least be positive; she must at
least have healthy and tonic organs, both of alimentation, etc., and
of sex; hence, we shall not be thinking of the bulk of British women
when we proceed to show how the natural and laudable sensuality of the
positive woman becomes a vice.
Like all the other vital qualities of woman—her tastelessness, her
vulgarity, her love of petty power, and her vanity—sensuality only
becomes a vice when it is out of hand. It is, therefore, in greatest
danger of becoming a vice when men have conceded overmuch liberty to
their womenfolk, and where woman, by having her own way, can indulge
her proclivities without limitation. But this is the state in which we
find ourselves in England to-day, and if it were not for the fact that
three-quarters of our women are negative (that is to say, too unhealthy
and too atonic in their alimentary, sexual and other organs to derive
any pleasure from their functions), sensuality would be one of the
worst vices of the times.
How does it operate harmfully when once it has become a vice through
positive women having their own way? It operates as a vice by breaking
up the family unit, by unduly exhausting the menfolk of the nation,
by leading to promiscuity and thence to disease, by making woman the
only subject whether of agreement or disagreement among men, and by
elevating to the first place among the virtues a caprine degree of
masculine potency.
The way of arresting this vice, however, is not, as our ancestors
of the seventeenth century thought (and did), to eradicate woman’s
sensuality and to make her negative; for that is tantamount to
destroying a portion of her vitality, and of her valuable vital
impulses. The only remedy, here again, is to circumscribe woman’s
powers, and to place each woman under the tutelage of some responsible
man. But in order to do this successfully you must have the men who
can undertake the charge. Besides, is it not too late to speak of this
now? Has not the wrong remedy, the rearing of negative and non-sexual
women, gone too far? I doubt whether, in view of humanity’s infinite
possibilities, anything could have gone too far. But the revulsion
of feeling that would be required to alter our present condition in
suchwise as (1) to rear a majority of positive women once more, and
(2) to rear the men who could take charge of them and account for
their actions appears, as things are, to be so remote that, although
everything is possible, it is doubtful whether precisely this thing is
probable.
Certainly the choice taken by our ancestors cannot have been the
right one.[228] It cannot be right to suppress a vice by eradicating
or detoning the vital principle that causes it[229]; and now that we
have the fruits of this method about us, in our millions of negative
women, it may reasonably be asked whether we do not see the necessity
of starting a counter movement which, while it will increase the
proportion of positive women in our midst, will also and concurrently
rear the men who can take charge of them.
“Day and night woman must be kept in dependence by the males of their
families,” says Manu, “and if they attach themselves to sensual
enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control.”[230]
* * * * *
Thus we have seen that both in her virtues and her vices woman is
entirely the creature of _vital_ impulses. Her virtues, like her vices,
arise from principles within her that are valuable—nay indispensable,
to the species. Furthermore, we have seen that her vices are not vices
in their origin, but only become so when certain vital principles
within her get out of hand, or find expression in a way they were not
intended to adopt. To attempt to correct these vices by extirpation
is dangerous, seeing that to do so is to ruin instincts upon which
the race depends for its survival.[231] If therefore society is to
be protected from women’s vices, and the future of mankind guaranteed
against the deteriorating effect of woman’s spiritual influence, the
only practical remedy that does not menace the species is to emulate
the great wisdom of the Orient, and to place woman once more under
man’s charge. To attempt any other method, such as the one advocated by
the Feminists for instance, is, as we have seen, to involve one of two
difficulties: either the need of eradicating some of woman’s most vital
principles in order to make her liberty innocuous to society (this we
have already partially done with regard to her sensuality), or else
the necessity of suffering the gradual deterioration of life through
her influence, if she remain uncontrolled. Either alternative is bad;
because in either event the ruin of civilization is a mathematical
certainty. You cannot eradicate woman’s most vital principles
without destroying her usefulness, and yet you cannot tolerate her
deteriorating influence if her vital principles are allowed to get out
of hand. There remains, therefore, but the alternative of restoring
women to the charge of men—an alternative which involves the denial,
the overthrow, and the rout of Feminism.
The only difficulty we can see in the way of this desirable reform, is
the absence of the men who would be capable of carrying it out. For
women themselves are already half-convinced that Feminism is wrong, and
that J. S. Mill is actually the pernicious liar I have shown him to be.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] See _Man’s Descent from the Gods_, chapter VIII.
[143] Book IX, verses 15, 16, 17.
[144] Op. cit. p. 135. “_Mais si le mensonge est un vice très répandu
dans toute l’humanité, c’est surtout chez les femmes qu’il atteint
son maximum d’intensité. Demontrer que le mensonge est habituel,
physiologique chez la femme, serait inutile: cela est consacré par la
croyance populaire._”
[145] “There are three things that cannot be trusted: a king, a
horse, and a woman; the king tyrannizes, a horse escapes, a woman is
perfidious.”
[146] See _Life of John Stuart Mill_, p. 162.
[147] See _The Subjection of Women_, chap. I, section 7.
[148] The observation occurs in Congreve’s _Mourning Bride_, at the
end of the 3rd Act, and is put in the mouth of Queen Zara. The precise
words are:—
“Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”
[149] W. L. Courtney (Op. cit.) tells us that portions of the
_Subjection of Women_ were written by Miss Helen Taylor (Mill’s
step-daughter).
[150] Op. cit., section 18.
[151] See Sir Almroth E. Wright (Op. cit., p. 32), footnote: “This is
a question on which Mill has endeavoured to confuse the issue for his
reader, first, by representing that by no possibility can man know
anything of the ‘nature,’ i.e. of the ‘secondary sexual characters’
of woman; and secondly, by distracting attention from the fact that
‘acquired characteristics’ may produce unfitness for the suffrage.”
[152] J. S. Mill, section 20.
[153] Cp. Sir Almroth E. Wright, who, in speaking of Mill’s
hypothetical natural woman, says (Op. cit., p. 5): “Instead of dealing
with woman as she is, and with woman placed in a setting of actually
subsisting conditions, Mill takes as his theme a woman who is a
creature of his imagination. This woman is, _by assumption_, in mental
endowment a replica of man. She lives in a world which is, _by tacit
assumption_, free from the complications of sex.... It is in connexion
with this fictitious woman that Mill sets himself to work out the
benefit which women would derive from co-partnership with men in the
government of the State, and those which such co-partnership would
confer on the community.”
[154] The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D., calls Mill’s _Subjection of
Women_ “admirable.”
[155] A certain French writer, despite a wholly mistaken admiration
for J. S. Mill, is nevertheless bound to admit, in reference to
Mill’s _Subjection of Women_ and his strangely wild and unreasoning
infatuation for Mrs. Taylor, that: “_Il n’en est pas moins curieux et
remarquable que, sous l’aiguillon de ce sentiment, cet esprit froid, si
fort, si durement logique, ait pris sans hésiter cette attitude._” See
_Psychologie de la Femme_, by Henri Marion, (Paris, 1903, p. 257). In
his _Criticisms on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers_ the Rev. R. H.
Hutton, M.A., writes as follows on Mill’s relation to Mrs. Taylor; “His
passionate reverence for his wife’s memory and genius—in his own words
‘a religion’—was one which, as he must have been perfectly sensible, he
could not possibly make to appear otherwise than extravagant, not to
say an hallucination, in the eyes of the rest of mankind.” (See Vol. I,
p. 173.) See the same work for some sharp and well-deserved criticism
of Mill’s _Utilitarianism_.
[156] _Germania_, chap. IX.
[157] _Ibid._, chap. XLV.
[158] See _Decline and Fall_, chap. IX.
[159] _The Importance of Women in Anglo-Saxon Times_, by the Rt. Rev.
G. F. Browne, D.D., p. 12.
[160] Browne (Op. cit.), p. 12. The women of the ruling class in
Britain at the time of the Roman subjugation of the island, were
also distinguished for their cultivation; such women, I mean, as
Cartismandua, the earliest British queen to be mentioned in history,
Boadicea, and Martia, surnamed Proba, whose laws were ultimately
confirmed, and partly adopted, by King Alfred and Edward the Confessor.
[161] The only reason why these last two did not share the honours of
royalty with their husbands was because of the crimes of the Queen
Edburga who had poisoned her husband.
[162] Browne (Op. cit.), p. 23.
[163] _Ibid._, p. 23.
[164] _Ibid._, p. 23.
[165] See _Lives of the Queens of England_, by Agnes Strickland. Vol.
I. Introduction.
[166] We have only to think of the enormous amount of faith and intense
inward conviction that the successful survival of such an ordeal must
mean, in order to realize that Emma of Normandy must have possessed
qualities that are extremely rare even among the women of to-day.
[167] _Subjection of Women_, chap. I, section 9. Henry III’s wife and
mother of Edward I, although perhaps extravagant and reckless, enjoyed
an excellent education.
[168] _Histoire de la Civilisation en France_ (Paris 1846), Vol. III,
pp. 332-333.
[169] See Lacroix, _Science et Lettres au Moyen Age et à l’époque
de la Renaissance_ (2nd Ed.), p. 169, where the author, speaking of
the beginning of the fourteenth century, says: “_Bien des femmes ne
donnaient confiance qu’à des personnes de leur sexe pour des opérations
d’une nature délicate._”
[170] See Mary Bateson, _Mediæval England_, p. 286.
[171] See G. S. Coulson, M.A., _A Mediæval Garner_, p. 58.
[172] See Emile Faguet, _Le Féminisme_, p. 173: “_Quand on songe que
la coûtume de Bretagne et que l’Ordonnance de Blois de 1579 (executive
dans tout le Royaume) condamnaient à la peine de mort, les hommes
coupables de rapt!_” As to the spiritual side of the seventeenth
century, on the other hand, we have only to think of Molière’s
_Précieuses Ridicules_ and _Les Femmes Savantes_, each of which plays
caricatures the then existing phenomenon of the learned woman.
[173] Faguet, Op. cit.
[174] See _Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century_, p. 41.
[175] Alice Clark, Op. cit., pp. 14-18.
[176] _Ibid._, Op. cit., p. 25.
[177] Alice Clark, pp. 28-31.
[178] Weininger agrees that it is wholly erroneous to suggest that
hitherto women have had no opportunity for the undisturbed development
of their mental powers (see Op. cit., p. 72), but, as usual, the
support of his contention is feeble and unconvincing.
[179] Miss Clark is of the opinion that even in these domestic duties
she was not altogether unassisted by men in former times, as the
following passage shows: “On the other hand it may be urged that,
if women were on the whole more actively engaged in industrial work
during the seventeenth century than they were in the first decade
of the twentieth century, men were much more occupied with domestic
affairs than they are now. Men in all classes gave time and care to the
education of their children, and the young unmarried men, who generally
occupied positions as apprentices and servants, were partly employed
over domestic work. Therefore, though it is now taken for granted that
domestic work will be done by women, a considerable proportion of it in
former days fell to the share of the men.” (Op. cit., p. 5.)
[180] If she does so, it only means disaster. As late as a generation
ago, if she happened to be in India, she was put to no trouble
whatsoever; for the custom there, in such circumstances, was for the
European mother to seek out a native mother who could act as wet-nurse.
The fact that this almost invariably meant—as every Anglo-Indian will
tell you—the death of the native woman’s own child, was cynically
overlooked by the British occupiers of India.
[181] Paul Lecroix, Op. cit., pp. 370-371.
[182] Weininger comes to the same conclusion. See Op. cit., pp. 150-151
and 196. But he does not give the same reasons as I do. His conclusion
is much more of a guess than mine is, and therefore makes one suspect
that he was actuated by strong prejudice.
[183] Weininger (Op. cit., p. 346), who maintained that “it cannot be a
moral duty to provide for the continuance of the race,” was an avowed
pessimist, and, being unable therefore to find a higher sanction for
woman’s immorality, perforce condemned it. We who believe that there
is no duty more sacred than to provide for the continuance of the
race, naturally take the other view, and though recognizing woman’s
unscrupulousness in furthering the survival of the race, recognize the
high sanction which her immorality thus acquires.
[184] Cp. Sir Almroth E. Wright (Op. cit., p. 46): “It would be
difficult to find anyone who would trust a woman to be just to the
rights of others in the case where the material interests of her
children, or of a devoted husband, were involved. And even to consider
the question of being in such a case intellectually just to anyone who
came into competition with personal belongings like husband and child
would, of course, lie quite beyond the moral horizon of ordinary woman.”
[185] Schopenhauer in one of his Essays (see the _Parerga und
Paralipomena_, Vol. II, Chap. XXVII) also speaks of women’s
“instinctive cunning” and “her ineradicable tendency to falsehood,”
as the outcome of her weakness, but never hints at any deeper, or
more positive cause. Speaking of woman’s character as being given to
injustice, he says: “_Er entsteht zunächst aus dem dargelegten Mangel
an Vernünftigkeit und Ueberlegung, wird zudem aber noch dardurch
unterstützt, dass sie, als die schwächeren, von der Natur nicht auf die
Kraft, sondern auf die List angewiesen sind: daher ihre instinktartige
Verschlagenheit und ihr unvertilgbarer Hang zum Lügen._”
[186] Not a little even of our “Good” Queen Bess’s success as a
ruler was due to her unlimited capacity for lies. Speaking of Queen
Elizabeth, J. R. Green in his _Short History of the English People_,
says: “Ignoble, inexpressibly wearisome as the Queen’s diplomacy
seems to us now, tracing it as we do through a thousand despatches,
it succeeded in its main end. It gained time, and every year that
was gained doubled Elizabeth’s strength. Nothing is more revolting
in the Queen, but nothing is more characteristic, than her shameless
mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion
and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in
Christendom.” (Chap. VII. Section III.) And later on in the same
chapter he says: “As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes
of lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost lost in
a sense of contempt.” Even her most distinguished minister, William
Cecil, Lord Burleigh, was a most incorrigible liar and rascal.
[187] It is true that Havelock Ellis, when discussing woman’s tendency
to ruse and deception, is careful to say that “to regard the caution
and indirectness of women as due to innate wickedness, it need hardly
be said, would be utterly irrational. It is inevitable, and results
from the constitution of women, acting in conditions under which they
are generally placed.” (Op. cit., p. 196.) But this is a very long
way from my position, according to which woman’s tendency to ruse and
deception is a constant, positive and life-promoting instinct.
[188] As I have shown in Chap. VIII, this constancy supersedes, and
frequently defeats, her constancy to man.
[189] See Lecky, _The History of European Morals_; Buckle, _The
Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge_; Herbert Spencer,
_Sociology_; etc. Emerson asks, “What is civilization?” and replies,
“It is the influence of good women.”
[190] See Arabella Kenealy (Op. cit., p. 105): “No matter to what
degree she may acquire masculine characteristics and aptitudes, she
remains, at core, a creature of instinct; not of reason. As a creature
of instinct she is invaluable to life—because Life is moulded upon
instinct.”
[191] This occurred on the 4th of June, and Miss Davison died, as the
result of her action, on the 8th of June at 4.50 p.m. at Epsom.
[192] This is not generally understood. The cruel stepmother is
universally reviled in fable, in fiction, and in real life; but truth
to tell, the very fact that she is a bad stepmother shows how deep her
mother’s instincts must be. I have known one or two such stepmothers,
and have always found them the most excellent mothers. In fact a good
stepmother may always be taken to mean a bad or indifferent mother.
This is so little realized by most people, that I believe I am the
first person in history who has ventured to defend the bad stepmother
on these lines. On the contrary, the whole tendency of the modern world
is to deprecate the bad stepmother and to honour the good stepmother.
In this way are woman’s best virtues being undermined.
[193] This is in addition to the derivatives already given in the first
mention of this virtue.
[194] See Baudouin’s confirmation of this in his interesting work
_Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion_. (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.)
[195] See Henri Marion (Op cit., p. 79). “_Les filles sont aussi plus
imitatrices que les garçons, quoique l’instinct d’imitation soit
remarquable chez tous également. Selon Mlle Lauriol ‘les filles imitent
et singent mieux que les garçons.’ Il semble qu’elles remarquent
mieux ce qu’on dit et fait devant elles et qu’elles y prennent plus
d’intérêt; le répéter et l’imiter est un de leurs plaisirs les plus
vifs. Elles y excellent d’autant plus qu’elles créent, inventent et
innovent moins._”
[196] Op. cit., p. 234. See also p. 177: “The sex-instinct in woman
having had its origin in surrender, retains much still of this primal
element.”
[197] It is naturally impossible to discuss or enumerate the many vices
that may or may not fall to the share of the negative woman; for they
would consist of all the positive woman’s vices, _plus_ those vices
that come with subnormal health, and _minus_, of course, sensuality.
Negative women can at least pride themselves on this _minus_.
[198] No reference will be made to those vices that result from a
thwarting of her natural instincts—such vices as cruelty, gluttony, and
drunkenness; for most of these were discussed in the Chapter on the Old
Maid.
[199] Byron has already been mentioned in this volume as one who also
detected women as the creators of this tinsel of false sentiment.
Michelet and Alphonse Daudet were among the Frenchmen who saw eye to
eye with Byron on this point. Daudet said: “_La femme deteste l’ironie
qui la déconcerte et qu’elle sent être l’antagoniste des enthusiasmes
et des rêveries de l’amour._”
[200] See Havelock Ellis, Op. cit., p. 196: “Whenever a man or a woman
are found under compromising circumstances, it is nearly always the
woman who with ready wit audaciously retrieves the situation. Every
one is acquainted with instances from life or from history of women
whose quick and cunning ruses have saved lover or husband or child. It
is unnecessary to insist on this quality, which in its finest forms is
called tactfulness.” See also Lecky, _History of European Morals_, Vol.
II., p. 358. See as a magnificent poetic representation of this power
in women Byron’s _Don Juan_, Canto I, stanzas CXLII to CLXXVIII. The
latter stanza is worth quoting in full. It is as follows:—
“A hint, in tender cases is enough;
Silence is best; besides, there is a _tact_—
(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,
But it will serve to keep my verse compact)—
Which keeps, when push’d by questions rather rough,
A lady always distant from the fact:
The charming creatures lie with such a grace,
There’s nothing so becoming to the face.”
[201] Speaking of little girls Henri Marion says: “_De même les
observateurs n’hésitent pas à déclarer les petites filles moins
parfaitement droites que les garçons, en général, plus compliquées,
plus diplomates, plus fertiles en petites roueries, plus inclinées à
biaiser, à broder, à inventer, tout au moins à aranger et amplifier....
Surtout quand elles veulent mentir, elles sont plus habiles que les
petits garçons, se troublent moins, ont plus de présence d’esprit
pour soutenir un premier mensonge._” Op. cit., p. 86. Monsieur Marion
adduces Mgr Dupanloup and Mlle Lauriol as his authorities for this view.
[202] Finally among the great thinkers of Europe who have held the
view that women are indifferent to truth, and incapable of rectitude,
I would further mention Rousseau, Diderot, La Bruyère, and that great
genius Kant, who, in his _Ueber Pädagogik_ coldly conjures fathers to
enforce truthfulness in their children because “mothers have a tendency
to attach but little importance to it.” His exact words are (p. 108 of
the Königsberg 1813 Edition), speaking of children’s habit of lying,
“_Des Vaters Sache ist es, darauf zu sehen, dass sich die Kinder dessen
entwöhnen; denn die Mütter achten es gemeiniglich für eine Sache von
keiner, oder doch nur geringer Bedeutung._”
[203] See Chapter VIII of that work.
[204] See White’s _Natural History of Selborne_. Letters LXXVI and
“Observations on Quadrupeds.”
[205] The researches of ornithologists during recent years sufficiently
prove that the female cuckoo lays her egg upon the ground, and then
deposits it in the nest of a bird whose egg resembles the one she has
just laid.
[206] See chap. IX, verse 14.
[207] Op. cit., p. 121. See also Weininger, Op. cit., p. 250.
[208] Letter to d’Alembert.
[209] Among other reasons accounting for woman’s dependence on man for
art-forms is her lack of originality.
[210] See my _Man’s Descent from the Gods_, chap. VIII.
[211] Op. cit., p. 226.
[212] One or two exceptions will occur to the reader’s mind, such as
Mahommed and Benjamin Disraeli; but these are not really exceptions,
because in each case the woman was rich enough to compensate for her
husband’s impecunious and unsuccessful condition.
[213] See W. S. Coleman, M.E.S., _British Butterflies_, p. 4: “Prompted
by a most remarkable instinct, and one that could not have originated
in any experience of personal advantage, the female butterfly, when
seeking a depository for her eggs, selects with unerring certainty the
very plant which, of all others, is best fitted for the support of her
offspring, who, when hatched, find themselves surrounded by an abundant
store of their proper food.”
[214] The reader is probably aware that celibacy was not always the
rule among the clergy of the Holy Catholic Church. It was only enforced
by law during the fourth century A.D. Now, it is my theory that it
was this instinctive vulgar predilection of the female in favour
of material success that was partly responsible for compelling the
authorities of the Church ultimately to make celibacy a duty among
the clergy. Because as the bulk of them were, by virtue of their
profession, poor, it was impossible for them to find women of their
own station to marry them, and in consequence they were thrown on the
lowest women, or the prostitutes, of the time. To avoid the abasement
of the ecclesiastical body by this inevitable law, the authorities
therefore prescribed celibacy. H. H. Milman, D.D., in his _History of
Latin Christianity_, admits that celibacy was enforced among the clergy
to save the Church from degeneration, but he gives as a reason that
ecclesiastical matrimony would have led to the holy office passing from
father to son, and thus to grandson and great-grandson. Why this should
necessarily have led to degeneration is not clear, unless he assumes,
as I do, that the clergy would have had to marry beneath them. See Vol.
IV (Ed. London, 1864), pp. 17-18.
[215] That acute thinker, Schopenhauer, realized this, and spoke of the
harm that women do to modern society by stimulating the most sordid and
ignoble ambitions of men. See Essay, _Ueber die Weiber_, in the 2nd
Vol. of the _Parerga und Paralipomena_, chap. XXVII, para. 369.
[216] An intelligent working man once said in my presence, “Almighty
God made woman, and money made ladies.” I have wondered ever since
whether the deep wisdom in this remark was original, or whether there
is any national saw embodying this sentiment.
[217] In White’s _Natural History of Selborne_ there are some
interesting and illuminating remarks on this point. See Edward Jesse’s
edition (London, 1898), pp. 223 (Footnote) and 333.
[218] See the Chapter on the Old Maid.
[219] This, by the by, was recognized by Pope. See his _Moral Essays_
(Epistle II, To a Lady):—
“In men, we various passions find;
In women, two almost divide the kind;
Those, only fixed, they first and last obey,
The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.”
[220] _The Book of Manu_, chap. IX, verse 7.
[221] _The Book of Manu_, verses 2 and 3.
[222] For the necessary relationship of vanity and modesty, see Chapter
on Divorce, pp. 223-225 _ante_.
[223] Op. cit., p. 211.
[224] A vain man is just as dangerous when he has power; because he too
judges his fellows only according to how they treat him.
[225] This tendency to add to personal attractions by cultivating
intellectual interests is more particularly suspicious in the mature
virgin, and in the young married woman who is either childless or has
ceased to bear children. In both the waxing unconscious desire for
fertilization calls forth the instinct to use every possible weapon to
draw attention.
[226] See, for instance, Lecky, _History of European Morals_, Vol. II,
p. 379: “Morally the general superiority of women over men is, I think,
unquestionable ... they are more chaste both in thought and act” [!!!].
See also Vol. I, p. 145: “Sensuality is the vice of young men.” There
is scarcely an English book on this subject that does not reiterate
this insane legend. See also footnote on p. 308 _ante_.
[227] Nature evidently intended it to be pleasant in all its stages:
for all bodily functions, when healthy, are pleasant; their very
pleasantness seems to be part of the design of preserving life on
earth. He who has watched a female cat, as I have often done, from the
moment of fertilization to the day when the kittens are weaned, can no
longer entertain any doubt that the enormous amount of unpleasantness
that civilized women have to undergo, in the process of child-bearing,
is all the result of degeneration and disease. A female cat purrs even
while the kittens are being born.
[228] For a description of how our ancestors deliberately created
a majority of negative women, see Chapter V of my _Defence of
Aristocracy_.
[229] This method of going to work, which is the method of amputation,
is always the first adopted by weak and stupid people. It is easier to
amputate and suppress than it is to master and to organize. Hence there
is an element of impotence and dull-wittedness in the counsel, “And if
thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee” (Matthew
v. 29, 30); “And if thy right hand offend thee” do ditto.
[230] _Book of Laws_, IX, 2.
[231] Rousseau was groping towards this truth when in _Emile_, Book V,
he said: “_Vous dites sans cesse, les femmes out un tel et tel défaut
que nous n’avons pas. Votre orgueil vous trompe; ce seroint des défauts
pour vous, ce sont des qualités pour elles; tout iroit moins bien si
elles ne les avoient pas. Empêchez ces prétendus défauts de dégénerer,
mais gardez-vous de les détruire._”