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 general, n’aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent a aucun et n’ont aucun genie (Lettre a 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.