322 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



nor for fine art, have they really and truly any sense or 

 perceptibility ; it is mere mockery if they make a pre- 

 tence of it in order to assist their endeavour to please. 

 Hence as a result of this they are incapable of taking a 

 purely objective interest in anything, and the reason of it 

 seems to me to be as follows: A man tries to acquire 

 direct mastery over things, either by understanding them 

 or by forcing them to do his will. But a woman is al- 

 ways and everywhere reduced to obtaining this mastery 

 indirectly — namely, through a man — and whatever direct 

 mastery she may have is entirely confined to him. And 

 so it lies in a woman's nature to look upon everything 

 only as a means for conquering man ; and if she takes an 

 interest in anything else it is simulated — a mere round- 

 about way of gaining her ends by coquetry and feigning 

 what she does not feel. Hence even Rousseau declared : 

 ^IVome/i have in general no love for any art ; they have 

 no proper knowledge of any, and they have no genius.' 

 " No one," Schopenhauer continues, "who sees at all 

 below the surface can have failed to remark the same 

 thing. You need only observe the kind of attention 

 women bestow upon a concert, an opera, or a play — the 

 childish simplicity, for example, with which they keep 

 on chattering during the finest passages in the greatest 

 masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks excluded 

 women from their theatres, they were quite right in what 

 they did ; at any rate, you would have been able to hear 

 what they said upon the stage. In our day, besides, or 

 in lieu of saying, ' Let a woman keep silence in the 

 church,' it would be much to the point to say, ' Let a 

 woman keep silence in a theatre.' This might, perhaps, 

 be put up in big letters on the curtain." 

 No mastery j^^ ^^^ ^^ letters women have not pro- 



duced a single great work. Many women 

 show a mastery of technique in art, but never of art. 



