Translated by T. Bailey Saunders
SCHILLER'S poem in honor of women, Wurde der Frauen,
is the result of much careful thought, and it appeals to the reader by
its antithetic style and use
of contrast; but as an expression of the true praise which should be
accorded to them, it is, I think, inferior to these few words of Jouy's:
Without
women, the beginning of our life would be helpless; the middle, devoid
of pleasure; and the end, of consolation. The same thing is more feelingly
expressed by Byron in Sardanapalus:
The very first
Of human life must spring from woman's breast,
Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hour of him who led them.
(Act I. Scene 2.)
These two passages indicate the right standpoint for the
appreciation of women.
You need only look at the way in which she is formed,
to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor, whether of the mind
or of the body. She pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by
what she suffers; by the pains of childbearing and care for the child,
and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and cheering
companion. The keenest sorrows and joys are not for her, nor is she called
upon to display a great deal of strength. The current of her life should
be more gentle, peaceful and trivial than man's, without being essentially
happier or unhappier.
Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and
teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish,
frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their
life long--a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown
man, who is man in the strict sense of the word. See how a girl will fondle
a child for days together, dance with it and sing to it; and then think
what a man, with the best will in the world, could do if he were put in
her place.
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
gift of charm, at the expense of all the rest of their life; so that during
those years they may capture the fantasy of some man to such a degree that
he is hurried away into undertaking the honorable 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 warranty 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 danger 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 business that really claims their
earnest attention is love, making conquests, and everything connected with
this--dress, dancing, and so on.
The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and
slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his
reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight;
a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason
of a sort--very niggard in its dimensions. That is why women remain children
their whole life long; never seeing anything but what is quite close to
them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and
preferring trifles to matters of the first importance. For it is by virtue
of his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only, like
the brute, but looks about him and considers the past and the future; and
this is the origin of prudence, as well as of that care and anxiety which
so many people exhibit. Both the advantages and the disadvantages which
this involves, are shared in by the woman to a smaller extent because of
her weaker power of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually
short-sighted, because, while she has an intuitive understanding of what
lies quite close to her, her field of vision is narrow and does not reach
to what is remote; so that things which are absent, or past, or to come,
have much less effect upon women than upon men. This is the reason why
women are more often inclined to be extravagant, and sometimes carry their
inclination to a length that borders upon madness. In their hearts, women
think that it is men's business to earn money and theirs to spend it--if
possible during their husband's life, but, at any rate, after his death.
The very fact that their husband hands them over his earnings for purposes
of housekeeping, strengthens them in this belief..
However many disadvantages all this may involve, there
is at least this to be said in its favor; that the woman lives more in
the present than the man, and that, if the present is at all tolerable,
she enjoys it more eagerly. This is the source of that cheerfulness which
is peculiar to women, fitting her to amuse man in his hours of recreation,
and, in case of need, to console him when he is borne down by the weight
of his cares.
It is by no means a had plan to consult women in matters
of difficulty, as the Germans used to do in ancient times; for their way
of looking at things is quite different from ours, chiefly in the fact
that like to take the shortest way to their goal, and, in general, manage
to fix their eyes upon what lies before them; while we, as a rule, see
far beyond it, just because it is in front of our noses. In cases like
this, we need to be brought back to the right standpoint, so as to recover
the near and simple view.
Then, again, women are decidedly more sober in their judgment
than we are, so that they do not see more in things than is really there;
whilst, if our passions are aroused, we are apt to see things in an exaggerated
way, or imagine what does not exist.
The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains
why it is that women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men do,
and so treat them with more kindness and interest; and why it is that,
on the contrary, they are inferior to men in point of justice, and less
honorable and conscientious. For it is just because their reasoning power
is weak that present circumstances have such a hold over them, and those
concrete things, which lie directly before their eyes, exercise a power
which is seldom counteracted to any extent by abstract principles of thought,
by fixed rules of conduct, firm resolutions, or, in general, by consideration
for the past and the future, or regard for what is absent and remote. Accordingly,
they possess the first and main elements that go to make a virtuous character,
but they are deficient in those secondary qualities which are often a necessary
instrument in the formation of it.1
1 In this respect they may be compared to an animal organism which contains a liver but no gall-bladder. Here let me refer to what I have said in my treatise on The Foundation of Morals [section] 17.
Hence, it will be found that the fundamental fault of the
female character is that it has no sense of justice. This is mainly
due to the fact, already mentioned, that women are defective in the powers
of reasoning and deliberation; but it is also traceable to the position
which Nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are dependent,
not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence their instinctive capacity
for cunning, and their ineradicable tendency to say what is not true. For
as lions are provided with claws and teeth, and elephants and boars with
tusks, bulls with horns, and cuttle fish with its clouds of inky fluid,
so Nature has equipped woman, for her defence and protection, with the
arts of dissimulation; and all the power which Nature has conferred upon
man in the shape of physical strength and reason, has been bestowed upon
women in this form. Hence, dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost
as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever. It is as natural for
them to make use of it on every occasion as it is for those animals to
employ their means of defence when they are attacked; they have a feeling
that in doing so they are only within their rights. Therefore a woman who
is perfectly truthful and not given to dissimlulation is perhaps an impossibility,
and for this very reason they are so quick at seeing through dissimulation
in others that it is not a wise thing to attempt it with them. But this
fundamental defect which I have stated, with all that it entails, gives
rise to falsity, faithlessness, treachery, ingratitude, and so on. Perjury
in a court of justice is more often committed by women than by men. It
may, indeed, be generally questioned whether women ought to be sworn in
at all. From time to time one finds repeated cases everywhere of ladies,
who want for nothing, taking things from shop-counters when no one is looking,
and making off with them.
Nature has appointed that the propagation of the species
shall be the business of men who are young, strong and handsome; so that
the race may not degenerate. This is the firm will and purpose of Nature
in regard to the species, and it finds its expression in the passions of
women. There is no law that is older or more powerful than this. Woe, then,
to the man who sets up claims and interests that will conflict with it;
whatever he may say and do, they will be unmercifully crushed at the first
serious encounter. For the innate rule that governs women's conduct, though
it is secret and unformulated, nay, unconscious in its working, is this:
We
are justified in deceiving those who think they have acquired rights over
the species by paying little attention to the individual, that is, to us.
The constitution and, therefore, the welfare of the species have been placed
in our hands and committed to our care, through the control we obtain over
the next generation, which proceeds from us; let us discharge our duties
conscientiously. But women have no abstract knowledge of this leading
principle; they are conscious of it only as a concrete fact; and they have
no other method of giving expression to it than the way in which they act
when the opportunity arrives. And then their conscience does not trouble
them so much as we fancy; for in the darkest recesses of their heart, they
are aware that in committing a breach of their duty towards the individual,
they have all the better fulfilled their duty towards the species, which
is infinitely greater.1
1 A more detailed discussion of the matter in question may be found in my chief work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. ii, ch. 44.
And since women exist in the main solely for the propagation
of the species, and are not destined for anything else, they live, as a
rule, more for the species than for the individual, and in their hearts
take the affairs of the species more seriously than those of the individual.
This gives their whole life and being a certain levity; the general bent
of their character is in a direction fundamentally different from that
of man; and it is this to which produces that discord in married life which
is so frequent, and almost the normal state.
The natural feeling between men is mere indifference,
but between women it is actual enmity. The reason of this is that trade-jealousy-odium
figulium--which, in the case of men does not go beyond the confines of
their own particular pursuit; but, with women, embraces the whole sex;
since they have only one kind of business. Even when they meet in the street,
women look at one another like Guelphs and Ghibellines. And it is a patent
fact that when two women make first acquaintance with each other, they
behave with more constraint and dissimulation than two men would show in
a like case; and hence it is that an exchange of compliments between two
women is a much more ridiculous proceeding than between two men. Further,
whilst a man will, as a general rule, always preserve a certain amount
of consideration and humanity in speaking to others, even to those who
are in a very inferior position, it is intolerable to see how proudly and
disdainfully a fine lady will generally behave towards one who is in a
lower social rank (I do not mean a woman who is in her service), whenever
she speaks to her. The reason of this may be that, with women, differences
of rank are much more precarious than with us: because, while a hundred
considerations carry weight in our case, in theirs there is only one, namely,
with which man they have found favor; as also that they stand in much nearer
relations with one another than 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 unaesthetic 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 a 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
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 achievement in the fine arts that is really great,
genuine, and original; or given to the world any work of permanent value
in any sphere. This is most strikingly shown in regard to painting, where
mastery of technique is at least as much within their power as within ours--and
hence they are diligent in cultivating it; but still, they have not a single
great painting to boast of, just because they are deficient in that objectivity
of mind which is so directly indispensable in painting. They never get
beyond a subjective point of view. It is quite in keeping with this that
ordinary women have no real susceptibility for art at all; for Nature proceeds
in strict sequence--non facit saltum. And Huarte1 in
his Examen de ingenios para las scienzias--a book which has been
famous for three hundred years--denies women the possession of all the
higher faculties. The case is not altered by particular and partial exceptions;
taken as a whole, women are, and remain, thorough-going Philistines, and
quite incurable. Hence, with that absurd arrangement which allows them
to share the rank and title of their husbands they are a constant stimulus
to his ignoble ambitions.
And, further, it is just because they are Philistines that modern society,
where they take the lead and set the tone, is in such a bad way.
1 Translator's Note.-- Juan Huarte (1520?-1590) practised as a physician at Madrid. The work cited by Schopenhauer is well known, and has been translated into many languages.
Napoleon's saying--that women have no rank--should be adopted as the right standpoint in determining their position in society; and as regards their other qualities Chamfortl makes the very true remark: They are made to trade with our own weaknesses and our follies, but not with our reason. The sympathies that exist between them and men are skin-deep only, and do not touch the mind or the feelings or the character. They form the sexus sequior-- the second sex, inferior in every respect to the first; their infirmities should be treated with consideration; but to show them great reverence is extremely ridiculous, and lowers us in their eyes. When Nature made two divisions of the human race, she did not draw the line exactly through the middle. These divisions are polar and opposed to each other, it is true; but the difference between them is not qualitative merely, it is also quantitative.
1 Translator's Note.-- See Counsels and Maxims, p.12, Note.
This is just the view which the ancients took of woman,
and the view which people in the East take now; and their judgment as to
her proper position is much more correct than ours, with our old French
notions of gallantry and our preposterous system of reverence--that highest
product of Teutonico-Christian stupidity. These notions have served only
to make women more arrogant and overbearing; so that one is occasionally
reminded of the holy apes in Benares, who in the consciousness of their
sanctity and inviolable position, think they can do exactly as they please.
But in the West, the woman, and especially the lady,
finds herself in a false position; for woman, rightly called by the ancients,
sexus
sequior, is by no means fit to be the object of our honor and veneration,
or to hold her head higher than man and be on equal terms with him. The
consequences of this false position are sufficiently obvious. Accordingly,
it would be a very desirable thing if this Number-Two of the human race
were in Europe also relegated to her natural place, and an end put to that
lady nuisance, which not only moves all Asia to laughter, but would have
been ridiculed by Greece and Rome as well. It is impossible to calculate
the good effects which such a change would bring about in our social, civil
and political arrangements. There would be no necessity for the Salic law:
it would be a superfluous truism. In Europe the lady, strictly so-called,
is a being who should not exist at all; she should be either a housewife
or a girl who hopes to become one;
and she should be brought up, not to be arrogant, but to be thrifty
and submissive. It is just because there are such people as ladies
in Europe that the women of the lower classes, that is to say, the great
majority of the sex, are much more unhappy than they are in the East. And
even Lord Byron says: Thought of the state of women under the ancient
Greeks--convenient enough. Present state, a remnant of the barbarism of
the chivalric and the feudal ages--artificial and unnatural. They ought
to mind home--and be well fed and clothed--but not mixed in society. Well
educated, too, in religion --but to read neither poetry nor politics--nothing
but books of piety and cookery. Music--drawing--dancing--also a little
gardening and ploughing now and then. I have seen them mending the roads
in Epirus with good success. Why not, as well as hay-making and milking?
The laws of marriage prevailing in Europe consider the
woman as the equivalent of the man--start, that is to say, from a wrong
position. In our part of the world where monogamy is the rule, to marry
means to halve one's rights and double one's duties. Now, when the laws
gave women equal rights with man, they ought to have also endowed her with
a. masculine intellect. But the fact is, that just in proportion as the
honors and privileges which the laws accord to women, exceed the amount
which nature gives, is there a diminution in the number of women who really
participate in these privileges; and all the remainder are deprived of
their natural rights by just so much as is given to the others over and
above their share. For the institution of monogamy, and the laws of marriage
which it entails, bestow upon the woman an unnatural position of privilege,
by considering her throughout as the full equivalent of the man, which
is by no means the case; and seeing this, men who are shrewd and prudent
very often scruple to make so great a sacrifice and to acquiesce in so
unfair an arrangement.
Consequently, whilst among polygamous nations every woman
is provided for, where monogamy prevails the number of married women is
limited; and there remains over a large number of women without stay or
support, who, in the upper classes, vegetate as useless old maids, and
in the lower succumb to hard work for which they are not suited; or else
become filles de joie, whose life is as destitute of joy as it is
of honor. But under the circumstances they become a necessity; and their
position is openly recognized as serving the special end of warding off
temptation from those women favored by fate, who have found, or may hope
to find,
husbands. In London alone there are 80,000 prostitutes. What are they
but the women, who, under the institution of monogamy have come off? Theirs
is a dreadful fate: they are human sacrifices offered up on the altar of
monogamy. The women whose wretched position is here described are the inevitable
set-off to the European lady with her arrogance and pretension. Polygamy
is therefore a real benefit to the female sex if it is taken as a whole.
And, from another point of view, there is no true reason why a man whose
wife suffers from chronic illness, or remains barren, or has gradually
become too old for him, should not take a second. The motives which induce
so many people to become converts to Mormonism1 appear to be
just those which militate against the unnatural institution of monogamy.
1 Translator's Note.--The Mormons have recently given up polygamy, and received the American franchise in its stead.
Moreover, the bestowal of unnatural rights upon women has
imposed upon them unnatural duties, and, nevertheless, breach of these
duties makes them unhappy. Let me explain. A man may often think that his
social or financial position will suffer if he marries, unless he makes
some brilliant alliance. His desire will then be to win a woman of his
own choice under conditions other than those of marriage, such as will
secure her position and that of the children. However fair, reasonable,
fit and proper these conditions may be, and the woman consents by foregoing
that undue amount of privilege which marriage alone can bestow, she to
some extent loses her honor, because marriage is the basis of civic society;
and she will lead an unhappy life, since human nature is so constituted
that we pay an attention to the opinion of other people which is out of
all proportion to its value. On the other hand, if she does not consent,
she runs the risk either of having to be given in marriage to a man whom
she does not like, or of being landed high and dry as an old maid; for
the period during which she has a chance of being settled for life is very
short. And in view of this aspect of the institution of monogamy, Thomasius'
profoundly learned treatise, de Concubinatu, is well worth reading;
for it shows that, amongst all nations and in all ages, down to the Lutheran
Reformation, concubinage was permitted; nay, that it as an institution
which was to a certain extent actually recognized by law, and attended
with no dishonor. It was only the Lutheran Reformation that degraded it
from this position. It was seen to be a further justification for the marriage
of the clergy; and then, after that, the Catholic Church did not dare to
remain behind-hand in the matter.
There is no use arguing about polygamy; it must be taken
as de facto existing everywhere, and the only question is as to
how it shall be regulated. Where are there, then, any real monogamists?
We all live, at any rate, for a time, and most of us, always, in polygamy.
And so, since every man needs many women, there is nothing fairer than
to allow him, nay, to make it incumbent upon him, to provide for many women.
This will reduce woman to her true and natural position as a subordinate
being; and the lady--that monster of European civilization and Teutonico-Christian
stupidity--will disappear from the world, leaving only women, but
no more unhappy women, of whom Europe is now full.
In India, no woman is ever independent, but in accordance
with
the law of Manu,1 she stands under the control of her father,
her husband, her brother or her son. It is, to be sure, a, revolting thing
that a widow should immolate herself upon her husband's funeral pyre; but
it is also revolting that she should spend her husband's money with her
paramours--the money for which he toiled his whole life long, in the consoling
belief that he was providing for his children. Happy are those who have
kept the middle course--medium tenuere beati.
1 Ch. V., v. 148.
The first love of a mother for her child is, with the lower
animals as with men, of a purely instinctive character, and so it
ceases when the child is no longer in a physically helpless condition.
After that, the first love should give way to one that is based on habit
and reason; but this often fails to make its appearance, especially where
the mother did not love the father. The love of a father for his child
is of a different order, and more likely to last; because it has its foundation
in the fact that in the child he recognizes his own inner self; that is
to say, his love for it is metaphysical in its origin.
In almost all nations, whether of the ancient or the modern
world, even amongst the Hottentots,2 property is inherited by
the male descendants alone; it is only in Europe that a departure has taken
place; but not amongst the nobility, however.
2 Leroy, Lettres philosophiques sur l'intelligence et la perfectibilite des animaux, acec quelques lettres sur l'homme, p. 298, Paris, 1802.
That the property which has cost men long years of toil and effort, and been won with so much difficulty, should afterwards come into the hands of women, who then, in their lack of reason, squander it in a short time, or otherwise fool it away, is a grievance and a wrong as serious as it is common, which should be prevented by limiting the right of women to inherit. In my opinion, the best arrangement would be that by which women, whether widows or daughters, should never receive anything beyond the interest for life on property secured by mortgage, and in no case the property itself, or the capital, except where all male descendants fail [to exist]. The people who make money are men, not women; and it follows from this that women are neither justified in having unconditional possession of it, nor fit persons to be entrusted with its administration. When wealth, in any true sense of the word, that is to say, funds, houses or land, is to go to them as an inheritance they should never be allowed the free disposition of it. In their case a guardian should always be appointed; and hence they should never be given the free control of their own children, wherever it can be avoided. The vanity of women, even though it should not prove to be greater than that of men, has this much danger in it, that it takes an entirely material direction. They are vain, I mean, of their personal beauty, and then of finery, show and magnificence. That is just why they are so much in their element in society. It is this, too, which makes them so inclined to be extravagant, all the more as their reasoning power is low. Accordingly we find an ancient writer describing woman as in general of an extravagant nature--[Greek writing].1 But with men vanity often takes the direction of non-material advantages, such as intellect, learning, courage.
1 Brunck's Gnomici poetae graeci, v. 115.
In the Politics2 Aristotle explains the great disadvantage which accrued to the Spartans from the fact that they conceded too much to their women, by giving them the right of inheritance and dower, and a great amount of independence; and he shows how much this contributed to Sparta's fall. May it not be the case in France that the influence of women, which went on increasing steadily from the time of Louis XIII., was to blame for that gradual corruption of the Court and the Government, which brought about the Revolution of 1789, of which all subsequent disturbances have been the fruit? However that may be, the false position which women occupy, demonstrated as it is, in the most glaring way, by the institution of the lady, is a fundamental defect in our social scheme, and this defect, proceeding from the very heart of it, must spread its baneful influence in all directions.
2 Bk. I., ch.9.
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That woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of complete independence; immediately attaches herself to some man, by whom she allows herself to be guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord and master. If she is young, it will be a lover; if she is old, a priest.