talent; all I mean to say is that this complex is impossible without the
feminine contribution that it is a product of the interplay of the two
elements. In women of genius we see the opposite picture. They
are commonly distinctly mannish, and shave as well as shine. Think
of George Sand, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth of England, Rosa
Bonheur, Teresa Carreo or Cosima Wagner. The truth is that
neither sex, without some fertilization by the complementary
characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human
endeavour. Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too
doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to
sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a
theologian or a bank director. And woman, without some trace of
that divine innocence which is masculine, is too harshly the realist
for those vast projections of the fancy which lie at the heart of what
we call genius. Here, as elsewhere in the universe, the best effects
are obtained by a mingling of elements. The wholly manly man
lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and
secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too
cynical a creature to dream at all.




3.


The Masculine Bag of Tricks