Intuition? With all respect, bosh! Then it was intuition that led
Darwin to work out the hypothesis of natural selection. Then it was
intuition that fabricated the gigantically complex score of "Die
Walkure." Then it was intuition that convinced Columbus of the
existence of land to the west of the Azores. All this intuition of
which so much transcendental rubbish is merchanted is no more and
no less than intelligence--intelligence so keen that it can penetrate to
the hidden truth through the most formidable wrappings of false
semblance and demeanour, and so little corrupted by sentimental
prudery that it is equal to the even more difficult task of hauling that
truth out into the light, in all its naked hideousness. Women decide
the larger questions of life correctly and quickly, not because they
are lucky guessers, not because they are divinely inspired, not
because they practise a magic inherited from savagery, but simply
and solely because they have sense. They see at a glance what most
men could not see with searchlights and telescopes; they are at grips
with the essentials of a problem before men have finished debating
its mere externals. They are the supreme realists of the race.
Apparently illogical, they are the possessors of a rare and subtle
super-logic. Apparently whimsical, they hang to the truth with a
tenacity which carries them through every phase of its incessant,
jellylike shifting of form. Apparently unobservant and easily
deceived, they see with bright and horrible eyes. In men, too, the
same merciless perspicacity sometimes shows itself--men recognized
to be more aloof and uninflammable than the general--men of
special talent for the logical--sardonic men, cynics. Men, too,
sometimes have brains. But that is a rare, rare man, I venture, who
is as steadily intelligent, as constantly sound in judgment, as little put
off by appearances, as the average women of forty-eight.