THE NATURAL 



for believing in the legitimacy of such a sharing of 

 useful work between the two members of the couple, 

 it is that masculine work diminishes its femininity, while 

 feminine work feminizes the males. In order that the 

 necessary and moderate dimorphism persist it would be 

 necessary if the woman is to take up male exercises that 

 the male should assume all the accessory labours of 

 maternity. This would not be contrary to supple nat- 

 ural logic; there are examples of it among batrachians 

 and among birds. But one does not see clearly either 

 the utility or the possibility of such a reversal of roles 

 in the human species. The duty of a being is to perse- 

 vere in its being and even to augment the character- 

 istics which specialize it. The duty of woman is to 

 keep and to accentuate her aesthetic and her psychologic 

 dimorphism. The aesthetic viewpoint obliges one for the 

 thousandth time to put, but, happily, not to resolve the 

 agreeable question of woman's beauty. One may judge 

 when it is a matter of shape, of muscular energy, of 

 respiratory amplitude: these can be measured and set 

 down in figures. When it comes to beauty, it is a 

 matter of feeling, that is to say of what is at once deep- 

 est and most personal in each one of us, and which is 

 most variable between one man and another. However, 

 the sexual element which enters into the idea of bfeauty, 

 being here at its very root, since it is the question of 

 woman, the opinion of men is nearly unanimous: in the 

 human couple, it is woman who represents beauty. 

 All contrary opinion will be for ever considered as a 

 paradox or as the most boring of sexual aberrations. A 

 feeling does not adduce its reasons, it has none. It 



