“Frailty, thy name is woman,” says Shakespeare, and Corvin explains this
in teasing fashion: “Women pray every day, ‘Lead us not into temptation,
for see, dear God, if you do so I can’t resist it.’” Even Kant[280]
takes feminine weakness as a distinguishing criterion: “In order to
understand the whole of mankind we need only to turn our attention to
the feminine sex, for where the force is weaker the tool is so much the
more artistic.” Experienced criminalists explain the well-known fact
that women are the chief sources of anonymous letters by their weakness.
From the physical inferiority of woman her mental inferiority may be
deduced, and though we learn a hundred times that small, weak men can be
mentally stronger than great and strong ones, it is, of course, natural,
that as a rule the outcome of a powerful body is also a powerful mind.
The difficulty is to discover in _what_ feminine weakness expresses
itself. The frequently joked-about hen-pecking of men has been explained
by Voltaire as the fulfilment of the divine purpose of taming men
through the medium of the specially created instrument--woman. Victor
Hugo calls men only woman’s toys. “Oh, this lofty providence which gives
each one its toy, the doll to the child, the child to the man, the man
to the woman, the woman to the devil.” The popular proverb also seems to
assign them considerable strength, at least to aged women. For we hear
in all kinds of variations the expression, “An old woman will venture
where the devil does not dare to tread.” Nor must we underestimate the
daily experience of feminine capacity to bear pain. Midwives of
experience unanimously assure us that no man would bear what a woman
regularly has to, every time she gives birth to a child; and surgeons
and dentists assure us similarly. Indeed the great surgeon, Billroth, is
said to have asserted that he attempted new methods of operation on
women first because they are less subject to pain, for like savages they
are beings of a lower status and hence better able to resist than men.
In the light of such expressions we have to doubt the assertion that
women are distinguished by weakness, and yet that assertion is correct.
The weakness must, however, not be sought where we expect to find it,
but in the quite different feminine intelligence. Wherever intelligence
is not taken into consideration, woman is likely to show herself
stronger than man. She is better able to stand misfortune, to nurse
patients, to bear pain, to bring up children, to carry out a plan, to
persevere in a plan. It would be wrong to say that feminine weakness is
a weakness of will, for most examples show that women’s wills are
strong. It is in matters of intelligence that they fail. When somebody
has to be persuaded, we find that a normally-organized man may agree
when he is shown a logically-combined series of reasons. But the
feminine intelligence is incapable of logic; indeed, we should make a
mistake in paying honor to the actual feminine in woman if she were
capable of logic. She is rather to be persuaded with apparent reasons,
with transitory and sparkling matters that have only the semblance of
truth. We find her too ready to agree, and blame her will when it is
only her different form of intelligence. She persuades herself in the
same way. An epithet, a sparkling epigram, a pacifying reflection is
enough for her; she does not need a whole construction of reason, and
thus she proceeds to do things that we again call “weak.” Take so
thoroughly a feminine reflection as this: “The heart seems to beat--why
shouldn’t it beat for somebody?” and the woman throws herself on the
breast of some adventurer. The world that hears of this fact weeps over
feminine “weakness,” while it ought really to weep over defective
intelligence and bad logic. That the physiological throb of the heart
need not become significant of love, that the owner of a beating heart
need not be interested in some man, and certainly not in that particular
adventurer, she does not even consider possible. She is satisfied with
this clean-cut, sparkling syllogism, and her understanding is calm. The
judge in the criminal court must always first consider the weakness of
the feminine intelligence, not of the feminine will.
It is supposed to be weakness of will which makes woman gossipy, unable
to keep a secret. But here again it is her understanding that is at
fault. This is shown by the fact, already thoroughly discussed by Kant,
that women are good keepers of their own secrets, but never of the
secrets of others. If this were not a defect of intelligence they would
have been able to estimate the damage they do. Now, every one of us
criminalists knows that the crime committed, and even the plan for it,
has in most cases been betrayed by women. We can learn most about this
matter from detectives, who always go to women for the discovery of
facts, and rarely without success. Of course, the judge must not act
like a detective, but he must know, when something is already a matter
of discussion and its source is sought, where to look. He is to look for
the woman in the case.
Another consideration of importance is the fact that women who have told
secrets have also altered them. This is due to the fact that because
they are secrets the whole is not told them and they have had to infer
much, or they have not properly understood what was told. Now, if we
perceive that only a part of the revealed secret can be correct, the
situation may be inferred with complete safety, but only by remembering
this curious trait of feminine intelligence. We have only to ask what
illogical elements does the matter contain? When these are discovered we
have to ask, what is their logical form? If the process is followed
properly we get at the truth that what happens happens logically, but
what is thought, is thought illogically even by women.
When we summarise all we know about woman we may say briefly: Woman is
neither better nor worse, neither more nor less valuable than man, but
she is different from him and inasmuch as nature has created every
object correctly for its purpose, woman has also been so created. The
reason of her existence is different from that of man’s and hence, her
nature is different.