WOMAN THE PSYCHIC CENTRE 209 



tellectual hostility. His description of her in such 

 remarkable circumstances reads almost like a hymn 

 of hate. 



Schopenhauer forthwith describes woman as 

 inherently a creature of evil. Her relations to life 

 have made of her, he said, an inborn liar. He 

 declares her to be an intellectual myope. He 

 describes her fundamental failings to be injustice, 

 treachery, and deception. He asserts her to be 

 wanting in all objectivity of mind. He will not 

 allow her the conditions of originality. She is, he 

 said, below the male standard in intellect. He 

 even denies woman's sex beauty. It was only, he 

 said, the male intellect of humanity when befogged 

 through the sexual impulse which could consider 

 the female sex fair. 



Moved by his emotions thus to curse woman alto- 

 gether, Schopenhauer advances immediately to one 

 of the most remarkable positions in the history of 

 thought. Driven by the true instinct of genius, 

 Schopenhauer in the same essay proceeds to write 

 woman's charter of authority for all ages in the future 

 of civilization. For the cause of all the qualities, 

 which he has thus enumerated as making of woman 

 a creature to be dreaded, Schopenhauer puts down 

 the one significant cause. The root quality of evil 

 in woman Schopenhauer declares to be this. The 

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