n anything but
pleasant to women. There is a poem by the talented Provencal Countess
Beatrix de Die, which betrays genuine sorrow at the infidelity of her
friend, and at the same time leaves no doubt that she--and probably a
great many others--took the eulogies showered upon them by the
enraptured poets, literally. Once again woman accepts the position
thrust upon her by man, not this time the position of a drudge, but that
of a perfect and godlike being. Countess Beatrix credits herself with
all the qualities with which the imagination of her worshipper had
endowed her, as if they were unquestionable facts.

Hence all my songs will be with sadness fraught.
My lover fills my soul with bitter woe,
And yet is all the happiness I know.
My grace and favour all avail me naught.
My sparkling wit, my loveliness supreme,
They cannot hold his love and tender thought,
Of all my lofty worth bereft I seem.

But far more interesting than this psychological misunderstanding on the
part of the much-lauded sex, is the question as to whether the emotional
life of woman matured anything that can be called a worship of man? The
answer to this is a decided "no." At no time in the history of woman do
we find even the smallest indication of a parallel phenomenon; the
profound and tragic dualism of the Middle Ages--one result of which was
the spiritual love of woman--passed her by without touching her. In the
feminine soul conflict apparently results not in tragedy and
productivity, but in morbidness and hysteria.

It may be argued that the love of Jesus, which inspired both the nuns of
the Middle Ages and those of a later period, represents a type of
man-worship; but in examining all these more or less famous nuns and
ascetics we find, instead of genuine spirituality, a concealed and often
morbid condition, which in some cases degenerated into hysteria. The
dualistic period, the age of metaphysical love, made no impression upon
the female soul. There can be no doubt that the emotional life of woman,
in strict contrast to the emotional life of man, has had no evolution,
and can therefore have no history. It is unadulterated nature and, in
its way, it is perfect.

In studying the female mystics, we find an imitation of metaphysical
eroticism sufficiently transparent to be easily recognised, even by the
layman, as belonging to the domain of pathology. These ecstatics were
animated not by a pure, but by a