320 



FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION, 



with claws and teeth, and elephants and boars with 

 tusks, bulls with horns, and the cuttle-fish with its cloud 

 of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman for her 

 defence and protection with the arts of dissimulation. 

 Hence dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as 

 much a quality of the stupid as of the clever. It is 

 natural for them to make use of it on every occasion, as 

 it is for those animals to employ their means of defence 

 they are when 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." 



Women, moreover, live for the species, not for the 

 individual. If a woman be faithless to an old or unro- 



mantic or inattentive man she will feel 

 Woman lives for ^^ remorse. It is her instinct to con- 

 the species. . , , . , , . ^ , 



sider the mterest of the species, not ot 



the person who may represent the species for the time 

 being. 



" And since women exist in the main solely for the 

 propagation of the species and are not destined for any- 

 thing else, they live, as a rule, more for the species than 

 for the individual, and in their hearts take the af- 

 fairs 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 the 

 man ; and it is this which produces that discord in mar- 

 ried life which is so frequent and almost the normal 

 state. 



" The natural feeling between men is mere indiffer- 

 ence, but between women it is actual enmity. The 

 reason of this is trade jealousy, which, in the case of 



