their order, the first taboo of their freemasonry, is firmly against
making a sentimental debauch of the serious business of marriage.


This disdain of the pretty fellow is often accounted for by amateur
psychologists on the ground that women are anesthetic to
beauty--that they lack the quick and delicate responsiveness of man.
Nothing could be more absurd. Women, in point of fact,
commonly have a far keener aesthetic sense than men. Beauty
is more important to them; they give more thought to it; they crave
more of it in their immediate surroundings. The average man, at
least in England and America, takes a sort of bovine pride in his
anaesthesia to the arts; he can think of them only as sources of
tawdry and somewhat discreditable amusement; one seldom hears of
him showing half the enthusiasm for any beautiful thing that his wife
displays in the presence, of a fine fabric, an effective colour, or a
graceful form, say in millinery. The, truth is that women are
resistant to so-called beauty in men for the simple and sufficient
reason that such beauty is chiefly imaginary. A truly beautiful man,
indeed, is as rare as a truly beautiful piece of jewelry. What men
mistake for beauty in themselves is usually nothing save a certain
hollow gaudiness, a revolting flashiness, the superficial splendour of
a prancing animal. The most lovely moving picture actor,
considered in the light of genuine aesthetic values, is no more than a
piece of vulgarity; his like is to be found, not in the Uffizi gallery or
among the harmonies of Brahms, but among the plush sofas, rococo
clocks and hand-painted oil-paintings of a third-rate auction
room. All women, save the least intelligent, penetrate this imposture
with sharp eyes. They know that the human body, except for a
brief time in infancy, is not a beautiful thing, buta hideous thing.