calling. This makes them endeavor to lay stress upon differences of
rank.

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulses
that could give the name of _the fair sex_ to that under-sized,
narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race; for the whole
beauty of the sex is bound up with this impulse. Instead of calling
them beautiful, there would be more warrant for describing women as
the un-aesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for fine
art, have they really and truly any sense or susceptibility; it is a
mere mockery if they make a pretence of it in order to assist their
endeavor to please. Hence, as a result of this, they are incapable of
taking a _purely objective interest_ in anything; and the reason of it
seems to me to be as follows. A man tries to acquire _direct_ mastery
over things, either by understanding them, or by forcing them to do
his will. But a woman is always and everywhere reduced to obtaining
this mastery _indirectly_, namely, through a man; and whatever direct
mastery she may have is entirely confined to him. And so it lies in
woman's nature to look upon everything only as a means for conquering
man; and if she takes an interest in anything else, it is simulated--a
mere roundabout way of gaining her ends by coquetry, and feigning what
she does not feel. Hence, even Rousseau declared: _Women have, in
general, no love for any art; they have no proper knowledge of any;
and they have no genius_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Lettre à d'Alembert, Note xx.]

No one who sees at all below the surface can have failed to remark the
same thing. You need only observe the kind of attention women bestow
upon a concert, an opera, or a play--the childish simplicity, for