commanding
produces uncertainty in obedience"; or Luther's: "Nothing is
forgotten more slowly than an insult, and nothing more quickly than a
benefaction." It is Fichte who first said: "Education is based on the
self-activity of the mind." Napoleon coins the good metaphor: "A mind
without memory is a fortress without garrison." Buffon said what
professional psychologists have repeated after him: "Genius is nothing
but an especial talent for patience." Schumann claims: "The talent
works, the genius creates." We may quote from Jean Paul: "Nobody in
the world, not even women and princes, is so easily deceived as our
own conscience"; or from Pascal: "Habit is a second nature which
destroys the original one." Nietzsche says: "Many do not find their
heart until they have lost their head"; Voltaire: "The secret of ennui
is to have said everything"; Jean Paul: "Sorrows are like the clouds
in a thunderstorm; they look black in the distance, but over us hardly
gray." Once more I quote Nietzsche: "The same emotions are different
in their rhythm for man and woman: therefore men and women never cease
to misunderstand each other."

This leads us to the one topic to which perhaps more naive psychology
has been devoted than to any other psychological problem, the mental
difference between men and women. Volumes could be filled, and I
think volumes have been filled, with quotations about this eternal
source of happiness and grief. But if we look into those hundreds of
thousands of crisp sayings and wise maxims, we find in the material of
modern times just what we recognized in the wisdom of India. Almost
all is metaphor and comparison, or is practical advice and warning, or
is enthusiastic praise, or is maliciousness, but among a hundred
hardly one contains psychology. And if we really bring together such
psychologizing observations, we should hardly dare to acknowledge that
they deserve that right of generality by merit of which they might be
welcomed to our psychological system. Bruyere insists: "Women are
extreme; they are better or worse than men"; and the same idea is
formulated by Kotzebue: "When women are good they stand between men
and angels; when they are bad, they stand between men and devils."
Rousseau remarks: "Woman has more esprit, and man more genius; the
woman observes, and the man reasons." Jean Paul expresses the contrast
in this way: "No woman can love her child and the four quarters of the
globe at the same time, b