we, as a rule, see far beyond it, just because it is in front of our
noses. In cases like this, we need to be brought back to the right
standpoint, so as to recover the near and simple view.

Then, again, women are decidedly more sober in their judgment than
we are, so that they do not see more in things than is really there;
whilst, if our passions are aroused, we are apt to see things in an
exaggerated way, or imagine what does not exist.

The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why it is that
women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men do, and so treat
them with more kindness and interest; and why it is that, on the
contrary, they are inferior to men in point of justice, and less
honorable and conscientious. For it is just because their reasoning
power is weak that present circumstances have such a hold over them,
and those concrete things, which lie directly before their eyes,
exercise a power which is seldom counteracted to any extent by
abstract principles of thought, by fixed rules of conduct, firm
resolutions, or, in general, by consideration for the past and the
future, or regard for what is absent and remote. Accordingly, they
possess the first and main elements that go to make a virtuous
character, but they are deficient in those secondary qualities which
are often a necessary instrument in the formation of it.[1]

[Footnote 1: In this respect they may be compared to an animal
organism which contains a liver but no gall-bladder. Here let me refer
to what I have said in my treatise on _The Foundation of Morals_, §
17.]

Hence, it will be found that the fundamental fault of the female