le of fulfilling her first and last function, that of
bearing robust children. They wish to "cultivate" her in general still
more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" STRONG by
culture: as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that
the "cultivating" of mankind and his weakening--that is to say, the
weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his FORCE OF WILL--have
always kept pace with one another, and that the most powerful and
influential women in the world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon)
had just to thank their force of will--and not their schoolmasters--for
their power and ascendancy over men. That which inspires respect
in woman, and often enough fear also, is her NATURE, which is more
"natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning
flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her NAIVETE in egoism,
her untrainableness and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness,
extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues. That which, in spite
of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat,
"woman," is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more
necessitous of love, and more condemned to disillusionment than any
other creature. Fear and sympathy it is with these feelings that man has
hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with one foot already in
tragedy, which rends while it delights--What? And all that is now to
be at an end? And the DISENCHANTMENT of woman is in progress? The
tediousness of woman is slowly evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know
the horned animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which
danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might once more
become "history"--an immense stupidity might once again overmaster
thee and carry thee away! And no God concealed beneath it--no! only an
"idea," a "modern idea"!

CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES

240. I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard Wagner's overture
to the Mastersinger: it is a piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy,
latter-day art, which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of music
as still living, in order that it may be understood:--it is an honour
to Germans that such a pride did not miscalculate! What flavours
and forces, what seasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! It
impresses us at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter,
and too modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional,