world. I match this situation against any that you ran think of. It is
not only enchanting; it is also, in a very true sense, ennobling. In
the end, when the girl grows prettily miffed and throws me out, I
return to my sorrows somehow purged and glorified. I am a better
man in my own sight. I have grazed upon the fields of asphodel. I
have been genuinely, completely and unregrettably happy.




47.


Apologia in Conclusion


At the end I crave the indulgence of the cultured reader for the
imperfections necessarily visible in all that I have here set
down--imperfections not only due to incomplete information and
fallible logic, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to certain
fundamental weaknesses of the sex to which I have the honour to
belong. A man is inseparable from his congenital vanities and
stupidities, as a dog is inseparable from its fleas. They reveal
themselves in everything he says and does, but they reveal
themselves most of all when he discusses the majestic mystery
of woman. Just as he smirks and rolls his eyes in her actual
presence, so he puts on apathetic and unescapable clownishness
when he essays to dissect her in the privacy of the laboratory.
There is no book on woman by a man that is not a stupendous
compendium of posturings and imbecilities. There are but two