n men do, in consequence of the one-sided nature of their
calling. This makes them endeavor to lay stress upon differences of
rank.

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulses
that could give the name of _the fair sex_ to that under-sized,
narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race; for the whole
beauty of the sex is bound up with this impulse. Instead of calling
them beautiful, there would be more warrant for describing women as
the un-aesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for fine
art, have they really and truly any sense or susceptibility; it is a
mere mockery if they make a pretence of it in order to assist their
endeavor to please. Hence, as a result of this, they are incapable of
taking a _purely objective interest_ in anything; and the reason of it
seems to me to be as follows. A man tries to acquire _direct_ mastery
over things, either by understanding them, or by forcing them to do
his will. But a woman is always and everywhere reduced to obtaining
this mastery _indirectly_, namely, through a man; and whatever direct
mastery she may have is entirely confined to him. And so it lies in
woman's nature to look upon everything only as a means for conquering
man; and if she takes an interest in anything else, it is simulated--a
mere roundabout way of gaining her ends by coquetry, and feigning what
she does not feel. Hence, even Rousseau declared: _Women have, in
general, no love for any art; they have no proper knowledge of any;
and they have no genius_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Lettre a d'Alembert, Note xx.]

No one who sees at all below the surface can have failed to remark the
same thing. You need only observe the kind of attention women bestow
upon a concert, an opera, or a play--the childish simplicity, for
example, with which they keep on chattering during the finest passages
in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks excluded
women from their theatres they were quite right in what they did;
at any rate you would have been able to hear what was said upon the
stage. In our day, besides, or in lieu of saying, _Let a woman keep
silence in the church_, it would be much to the point to say _Let a
woman keep silence in the theatre_. This might, perhaps, be put up in
big letters on the curtain.

And you cannot expect anything else of women if you consider that the
most distinguished intellects among the whole sex have never managed
to produce a single