THE WOMAN OF EVOLUTION AND PESSIMISM. 



323 



"The case," says Schopenhauer, " is not altered by 

 particular and partial exceptions; taken as a whole, 



women are, and remain, thoroughgoing 



Philistinism of t^ui- .-- j ■<. ui tt 



Philistmes, and quite incurable. Hence, 



with that absurd arrangement which al- 

 lows them to share the rank and title of their husbands, 

 they are a constant stimulus to his ignoble ambitions. 

 And, further, it is just because they are Philistines that 

 modern society, where they take the lead and set the 

 tone, is in such a bad way. Napoleon's saying, that 

 women have no rank, should be adopted as the right 

 standpoint in determining their position in society ; and 

 as regards their other qualities, Chamfort makes the 

 very true remark, ' They are made to trade with our own 

 weaknesses and our follies, but not with our reason.' 

 The sympathies that exist between them and men are 

 skin-deep only, and do not touch the mind, or the feel- 

 ings, or the character. They form the sexus sequior — the 

 second sex, inferior in every respect to the first ; their 

 infirmities should be treated with consideration ; but to 

 show them great reverence is extremely ridiculous and 



lowers us in their eyes. When Na- 

 The sexes 



, ture made two divisions of the human 



unequal. 



race, she did not draw the line exactly 

 through the middle. These divisions are polar and op- 

 posed to each other, it is true, but the difference be- 

 tween them is not qualitative merely, it is also quanti- 

 tative. 



"This is just the view which the ancients took of 

 woman, and the view which the people in the East take 

 now; and their judgment as to her proper position is 

 much more correct than ours, with our old French no- 

 tions of gallantry and our preposterous system of rev- 

 erence — that highest product of Teutonico-Christian 

 stupidity. These notions have served only to make 



