being; they call for the
best thought that the man confronted by them can muster; the perils
hidden in a wrong decision overcome even the clamors of vanity. It is
in such situations that the superior mental grasp of women is of obvious
utility, and has to be admitted. It is here that they rise above the
insignificant sentimentalities, superstitions and formulae of men,
and apply to the business their singular talent for separating the
appearance from the substance, and so exercise what is called their
intuition.

Intuition? With all respect, bosh! Then it was intuition that led Darwin
to work out the hypothesis of natural selection. Then it was intuition
that fabricated the gigantically complex score of "Die Walkure." Then
it was intuition that convinced Columbus of the existence of land to the
west of the Azores. All this intuition of which so much
transcendental rubbish is merchanted is no more and no less than
intelligence--intelligence so keen that it can penetrate to the hidden
truth through the most formidable wrappings of false semblance and
demeanour, and so little corrupted by sentimental prudery that it is
equal to the even more difficult task of hauling that truth out into the
light, in all its naked hideousness. Women decide the larger questions
of life correctly and quickly, not because they are lucky guessers, not
because they are divinely inspired, not because they practise a magic
inherited from savagery, but simply and solely because they have sense.
They see at a glance what most men could not see with searchlights and
telescopes; they are at grips with the essentials of a problem before
men have finished debating its mere externals. They are the supreme
realists of the race. Apparently illogical, they are the possessors of
a rare and subtle super-logic. Apparently whimsical, they hang to the
truth with a tenacity which carries them through every phase of its
incessant, jellylike shifting of form. Apparently unobservant and easily
deceived, they see with bright and horrible eyes. In men, too, the same
merciless perspicacity sometimes shows itself--men recognized to be more
aloof and uninflammable than the general--men of special talent for the
logical--sardonic men, cynics. Men, too, sometimes have brains. But
that is a rare, rare man, I venture, who is as steadily intelligent, as
constantly sound in judgment, as little put off by appearances, as the
average women of forty-eight.

II. The W