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 they act when the opportunity arrives. And then their
conscience does not trouble them so much as we fancy; for in the
darkest recesses of their heart, they are aware that in committing a
breach of their duty towards the individual, they have all the
better fulfilled their duty towards the species, which is infinitely
greater.[1]

[Footnote 1: A more detailed discussion of the matter in question may
be found in my chief work, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol.
ii, ch. 44.]

And since women exist in the main solely for the propagation of the
species, and are not destined for anything else, they live, as a rule,