Essays of Schopenhauer
under our nose; it then becomes necessary for us to be brought back to
the thing in order to obtain a near and simple view. This is why women
are more sober in their judgment than we, and why they see nothing more
in things than is really there; while we, if our passions are roused,
slightly exaggerate or add to our imagination.
It is because women's reasoning powers are weaker that they show more
sympathy for the unfortunate than men, and consequently take a kindlier
interest in them. On the other hand, women are inferior to men in
matters of justice, honesty, and conscientiousness. Again, because their
reasoning faculty is weak, things clearly visible and real, and
belonging to the present, exercise a power over them which is rarely
counteracted by abstract thoughts, fixed maxims, or firm resolutions, in
general, by regard for the past and future or by consideration for what
is absent and remote. Accordingly they have the first and principal
qualities of virtue, but they lack the secondary qualities which are
often a necessary instrument in developing it. Women may be compared in
this respect to an organism that has a liver but no gall-bladder.[9] So
that it will be found that the fundamental fault in the character of
women is that they have no "_sense of justice_." This arises from their
deficiency in the power of reasoning already referred to, and
reflection, but is also partly due to the fact that Nature has not
destined them, as the weaker sex, to be dependent on strength but on
cunning; this is why they are instinctively crafty, and have an
ineradicable tendency to lie. For as lions are furnished with claws and
teeth, elephants with tusks, boars with fangs, bulls with horns, and the
cuttlefish with its dark, inky fluid, so Nature has provided woman for
her protection and defence with the faculty of dissimulation, and all
the power which Nature has given to man in the form of bodily strength
and reason has been conferred on woman in this form. Hence,
dissimulation is innate in woman and almost as characteristic of the
very stupid as of the clever. Accordingly, it is as natural for women to
dissemble at every opportunity as it is for those animals to turn to
their weapons when they are attacked; and they feel in doing so that in
a certain measure they are only making use of their rights. Therefore a
woman who is perfectly truthful and does not dissemble is perhaps an
impossibility. This is why they see through dissimulation in others so
easily; therefore it is not advisable to attempt it with them. From the
fundamental defect that has been stated, and all that it involves,
spring falseness, faithlessness, treachery, ungratefulness, and so on.
In a court of justice women are more often found guilty of perjury than
men. It is indeed to be generally questioned whether they should be
allowed to take an oath at all. From time to time there are repeated
cases everywhere of ladies, who want for nothing, secretly pocketing and
taking away things from shop counters.
* * * * *
Nature has made it the calling of the young, strong, and handsome men to
look after the propagation of the human race; so that the species may
not degenerate. This is the firm will of Nature, and it finds its
expression in the passions of women. This law surpasses all others in
both age and power. Woe then to the man who sets up rights and interests
in such a way as to make them stand in the way of it; for whatever he
may do or say, they will, at the first significant onset, be
unmercifully annihilated. For the secret, unformulated, nay, unconscious
but innate moral of woman is: _We are justified in deceiving those who,
because they care a little for us_,--_that is to say for the
individual_,--_imagine they have obtained rights over the species. The
constitution, and consequently the welfare of the species, have been put
into our hands and entrusted to our care through the medium of the next
generation which proceeds from us; let us fulfil our duties
conscientiously_.
But women are by no means conscious of this leading principle _in
abstracto_, they are only conscious of it _in concreto_, and have no
other way of expressing it than in the manner in which they act when the
opportunity arrives. So that their conscience does not trouble them so
much as we imagine, for in the darkest depths of their hearts they are
conscious that in violating their duty towards the individual they have
all the better fulfilled it towards the species, whose claim upon them
is infinitely greater. (A fuller explanation of this matter may be found
in vol. ii., ch. 44, in my chief work, _Die Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung_.)
Because women in truth exist entirely for the propagation of the race,
and their destiny ends here, they live 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 to their whole being
and character a certain frivolousness, and altogether a certain tendency
which is fundamentally different from that of man; and this it is which
develops that discord in married life which is so prevalent and almost
the normal state.
It is natural for a feeling of mere indifference to exist between men,
but between women it is actual enmity. This is due perhaps to the fact
that _odium figulinum_ in the case of men, is limited to their everyday
affairs, but with women embraces the whole sex; since they have only one
kind of business. Even when they meet in the street, they look at each
other like Guelphs and Ghibellines. And it is quite evident when two
women first make each other's acquaintance that they exhibit more
constraint and dissimulation than two men placed in similar
circumstances. This is why an exchange of compliments between two women
is much more ridiculous than between two men. Further, while a man will,
as a rule, address others, even those inferior to himself, with a
certain feeling of consideration and humanity, it is unbearable to see
how proudly and disdainfully a lady of rank will, for the most part,
behave towards one who is in a lower rank (not employed in her service)
when she speaks to her. This may be because differences of rank are much
more precarious with women than with us, and consequently more quickly
change their line of conduct and elevate them, or because while a
hundred things must be weighed in our case, there is only one to be
weighed in theirs, namely, with which man they have found favour; and
again, because of the one-sided nature of their vocation they stand in
closer relationship to each other than men do; and so it is they try to
render prominent the differences of rank.
* * * * *
It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual instinct
that could give that stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and
short-legged race the name of _the fair sex_; for the entire beauty of
the sex is based on this instinct. One would be more justified in
calling them the _unaesthetic sex_ than the beautiful. Neither for
music, nor for poetry, nor for fine art have they any real or true sense
and susceptibility, and it is mere mockery on their part, in their
desire to please, if they affect any such thing.
This makes them incapable of taking a purely objective interest in
anything, and the reason for it is, I fancy, as follows. A man strives
to get _direct_ mastery over things either by understanding them or by
compulsion. But a woman is always and everywhere driven to _indirect_
mastery, namely through a man; all her _direct_ mastery being limited to
him alone. Therefore it lies in woman's nature to look upon everything
only as a means for winning man, and her interest in anything else is
always a simulated one, a mere roundabout way to gain her ends,
consisting of coquetry and pretence. Hence Rousseau said, _Les femmes,
en général, n'aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent à aucun et n'ont aucun
génie_ (Lettre à d'Alembert, note xx.). Every one who can see through a
sham must have found this to be the case. One need only watch the way
they behave at a concert, the opera, or the play; the childish
simplicity, for instance, with which they keep on chattering during the
finest passages in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the
Greeks forbade women to go to the play, they acted in a right way; for
they would at any rate be able to hear something. In our day it would be
more appropriate to substitute _taceat mulier in theatro_ for _taceat
mulier in ecclesia_; and this might perhaps be put up in big letters on
the curtain.
Nothing different can be expected of women if it is borne in mind that
the most eminent of the whole sex have never accomplished anything in
the fine arts that is really great, genuine, and original, or given to
the world any kind of work of permanent value. This is most striking in
regard to painting, the technique of which is as much within their reach
as within ours; this is why they pursue it so industriously. Still, they
have not a single great painting to show, for the simple reason that
they lack that objectivity of mind which is precisely what is so
directly necessary in painting. They always stick to what is subjective.
For this reason, ordinary women have no susceptibility for painting at
all: for _natura non facet saltum_. And Huarte, in his book which has
been famous for three hundred years, _Examen de ingenios para las
scienzias_, contends that women do not possess the higher capacities.
Individual and partial exceptions do not alter the matter; women are and
remain, taken altogether, the most thorough and incurable philistines;
and because of the extremely absurd arrangement which allows them to
share the position and title of their husbands they are a constant
stimulus to his _ignoble_ ambitions. And further, it is because they are
philistines that modern society, to which they give the tone and where
they have sway, has become corrupted. As regards their position, one
should be guided by Napoleon's maxim, _Les femmes n'ont pas de rang_;
and regarding them in other things, Chamfort says very truly: _Elles
sont faites pour commercer avec nos faiblesses avec notre folie, mais
non avec notre raison. Il existe entre elles et les hommes des
sympathies d'épiderme et très-peu de sympathies d'esprit d'âme et de
caractère_. They are the _sexus sequior_, the second sex in every
respect, therefore their weaknesses should be spared, but to treat women
with extreme reverence is ridiculous, and lowers us in their own eyes.
When nature divided the human race into two parts, she did not cut it
exactly through the middle! The difference between the positive and
negative poles, according to polarity, is not merely qualitative but
also quantitative. And it was in this light that the ancients and people
of the East regarded woman; they recognised her true position better
than we, with our old French ideas of gallantry and absurd veneration,
that highest product of Christian-Teutonic stupidity. These ideas have
only served to make them arrogant and imperious, to such an extent as to
remind one at times of the holy apes in Benares, who, in the
consciousness of their holiness and inviolability, think they can do
anything and everything they please.
In the West, the woman, that is to say the "lady," finds herself in a
_fausse position_; for woman, rightly named by the ancients _sexus
sequior_, is by no means fit to be the object of our honour and
veneration, or to hold her head higher than man and to have the same
rights as he. The consequences of this _fausse position_ are
sufficiently clear. Accordingly, it would be a very desirable thing if
this Number Two of the human race in Europe were assigned her natural