318 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
life is paid not by what she does, but by what she 
suffers.” ‘Sorrow and joy and action are not for her 
gentle, peaceful, and trivial life.” As 
nurse or teacher woman often excels, be- 
cause by nature she is childish, frivolous, 
and short-sighted. For these reasons she comes near to 
the hearts of children and invalids. 
When women are young, according to Schopenhauer, 
they attract men strongly but without reason. “ With 
young girls Nature seems to have had 
in view what in the language of the 
drama is called a striking effect, as for 
a few years she dowers them with a wealth of beauty 
and is lavish in her gifts of charm at the expense of all 
the rest of their life, so that during those years they 
may capture the fancy of some man to such a degree 
that he is hurried away into undertaking the honour- 
able care of them in some form or other as long as they 
live—a step for which there would not appear to be any 
sufficient warrant if reason only directed his thoughts. 
“Accordingly, Nature has equipped woman, as she 
does all her creatures, with the weapons and implements 
requisite for the safeguarding of her 
existence, and for just as long as it is 
necessary for her to have them. Here, 
as elsewhere, Nature proceeds with her usual economy, 
for just as the female ant after fecundation loses her 
wings, which are then superfluous, nay, actually a dan- 
ger to the business of breeding, so, after giving birth to 
one or two children, a woman generally loses her beauty, 
probably, indeed, for similar reasons. 
“And so we find that young girls in 
their hearts look upon domestic affairs 
or work of any kind as of secondary 
importance, if not actually as a mere jest. The only 
Inefficiency of 
woman. 
Beauty of 
young girls. 
Beauty asa 
weapon. 
Triviality of 
women, 
