low
apparently, a bent acquired in connection with the maternal instinct,
and become true and devoted and grand to a degree hardly known by man.
Others, following a bent gotten along with coquetry in connection
with the wooing instinct, and having no activity through which their
behavior is standardized, become difficile, unreal, inefficient,
exacting, unsatisfied, absurd. And we have also the paradox that
the same woman can be the two things at different times. There is
therefore a basis of truth in Pope's hard saying that "Women have no
characters at all." Because their problem is not to accommodate to the
solid realities of the world of experience and sense, but to adjust
themselves to the personality of men, it is not surprising that they
should assume protean shapes.

Moreover, man is so affected by the charms of woman, and offers so
easy a mark for her machinations, as to invite exploitation. Having
been evolved largely through the stimulus of the female presence, he
continues to be more profoundly affected by her presence and behavior
than by any other stimulus whatever, unless it be the various forms of
combat. From Samson and Odysseus down, history and story recognize
the ease and frequency with which a woman makes a fool of a man. The
male protective and sentimental attitude is indeed incompatible with
resistance. To charm, pursue, court, and possess the female, involve a
train of memories which color all after-relations with the whole sex.
In both animals and men there is an instinctive disposition to take a
great deal off the female. The male animal takes the assaults of the
female complacently and shamefacedly, "just like folks." Peasants
laugh at the hysterical outbreaks of their women, and the "bold, bad
man" is as likely to be henpecked as any other. Woman is a disturbing
element in business and in school to a degree not usually apprehended.
In her presence a man instinctively assumes a different attitude.
He is, in fact, so susceptible as seemingly, almost, to want to be
victimized, and, as Locke expressed the matter, "It is in vain to find
fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be
deceived."

This disposition of man and the detached condition of woman have much
to do with the emergence of the adventuress and the sporting-woman.
Human nature was made for action; and perhaps the most distressing
and disconcerting situation which confronts it is to be played on by
stimulations