2.


Women's Intelligence


That is should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of
the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent
intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation,
incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and
masters. One finds very few professors of the subject, even among
admitted feminists, approaching the fact as obvious; practically all
of them think it necessary to bring up a vast mass of evidence to
establish what should be an axiom. Even the Franco Englishman,
W. L. George, one of the most sharp-witted of the faculty, wastes a
whole book up on the demonstration, and then, with a great air of
uttering something new, gives it the humourless title of " The
Intelligence of Women. " The intelligence of women, forsooth! As
well devote a laborious time to the sagacity of serpents, pickpockets,
or Holy Church!


Women, in truth, are not only intelligent; they have almost a
monopoly of certain of the subtler and more utile forms of
intelligence. The thing itself, indeed, might be reasonably described
as a special feminine character; there is in it, in more than one of its
manifestations, a femaleness as palpable as the femaleness of
cruelty, masochism or rouge. Men are strong. Men are brave in