WOMAN THE PSYCHIC CENTRE 215 



It is one of the strongest and most fundamental 

 traits of woman's nature closely associated with 

 this quality that in a conflict between present interest 

 and principle she instinctively and instantly tends to 

 take the side of principle rather than that of interest. 

 It is in the possession of this characteristic that 

 woman is in high degree actually and literally what 

 Schopenhauer described her to be, namely, the 

 being to whom the race is more than the individual 

 and the future greater than the present. It is 

 in such circumstances that Schopenhauer correctly 

 estimated her as the enemy to be dreaded by the 

 strong man acknowledging no authority but his 

 own will and no morality but his own advantage ; 

 because, to use his words, " always with woman the 

 spring of her secret, unexpressed, and indeed un- 

 conscious and inborn morality, is the belief that 

 the welfare of the species is placed in her hands." 1 

 Woman is, in short, by nature the custodian of ends 

 distant in the future to which she subdues the 

 present : so that, again to use Schopenhauer's words, 

 " in the recesses of her heart she lives always and 

 altogether more in the race than in the individual." * 



These facts possess a significance of a high order 

 when their relationship to the science of Power 

 as directed through the cultural inheritance of 



1 Schopenhauer's Essay on Woman, op. cit. 



