a lower rank (not employed in her service)
when she speaks to her. This may be because differences of rank are much
more precarious with women than with us, and consequently more quickly
change their line of conduct and elevate them, or because while a
hundred things must be weighed in our case, there is only one to be
weighed in theirs, namely, with which man they have found favour; and
again, because of the one-sided nature of their vocation they stand in
closer relationship to each other than men do; and so it is they try to
render prominent the differences of rank.

* * * * *

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual instinct
that could give that stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and
short-legged race the name of _the fair sex_; for the entire beauty of
the sex is based on this instinct. One would be more justified in
calling them the _unaesthetic sex_ than the beautiful. Neither for
music, nor for poetry, nor for fine art have they any real or true sense
and susceptibility, and it is mere mockery on their part, in their
desire to please, if they affect any such thing.

This makes them incapable of taking a purely objective interest in
anything, and the reason for it is, I fancy, as follows. A man strives
to get _direct_ mastery over things either by understanding them or by
compulsion. But a woman is always and everywhere driven to _indirect_
mastery, namely through a man; all her _direct_ mastery being limited to
him alone. Therefore it lies in woman's nature to look upon everything
only as a means for winning man, and her interest in anything else is
always a simulated one, a mere roundabout way to gain her ends,
consisting of coquetry and pretence. Hence Rousseau said, _Les femmes,
en general, n'aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent a aucun et n'ont aucun
genie_ (Lettre a d'Alembert, note xx.). Every one who can see through a
sham must have found this to be the case. One need only watch the way
they behave at a concert, the opera, or the play; the childish
simplicity, for instance, with which they keep on chattering during the
finest passages in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the
Greeks forbade women to go to the play, they acted in a right way; for
they would at any rate be able to hear something. In our day it would be
more appropriate to substitute _taceat mulier in theatro_ for _taceat
mulier in ecclesia_; and this might perhaps be put