e is weak, as all the sages know,
and all languages prove, though "democracy" ignores it; it is her
strength, and half her charm, that she cannot stand alone, like a
creeper. But that is why you cannot depend on her, good or bad.
Irresolution is her essence: she will "determine" one way, and act in
another, according to the pressure. Instinct, inclination or aversion,
vanity, emotion, pity or fear, or even mere chance: these are her
motives, the forces that move her: reason counts with her for
absolutely nothing, a thing like arithmetic, useful, even
indispensable, but only for adding up a grocer's bill, or catching a
train. It has literally nothing to do with her heart. There is no
folly like the folly of supposing that it has: yet on this folly rest
most of the accusations against her. Reduce her to a rational being,
and you degrade her to the level of an inferior man. But she is not
his inferior: she is his dream, his magnet, his force, his
inspiration, and his fate. Take her away, and you annihilate him:
Othello's occupation's gone. Nine-tenths of the great things done in
the world have been done for a woman. Why? Exactly because she would
burn down a street to boil her baby's milk. No rational being would do
that: but we all owe our lives to it.

And hence, misogyny is only a pique. To fall foul of the sea, like
Xerxes, when it wrecks your ambitions, is to behave as he did, like a
spoiled child, without the child's excuse. "If you burn your fingers,
is the flame to blame?" You should have known better. When Aristotle
was reproved, by some early political economist, for giving alms to a
beggar, he replied: I gave not to the man, but humanity. Admirable
retort! which is exactly in point here. When she requited your homage
with such encouraging smiles, it was not _you_ but the man in you,
that appealed to her. And because you are _a_ man, are you necessarily
_the_ man? Not at all. And argument is mere waste of time: reason is
not the court of appeal. _If of herself she will not love, nothing
can make her._ Yet why draw the poet's ungallant conclusion? Why
should _the devil take her_? Because she was weak (were _you_ not
weak?) is she therefore to be damned beyond redemption? Because
flattery was sweet, must she give herself away to every male animal
that confesses the spell? Surely that is not only harsh, but
preposterous, even outrageous. Are you sure that your merit is worthy
of such generosity?

And yet, here is