otection, 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 dissimulation 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 t