But this lack of genuine beauty in women lays on them no practical
disadvantage in the primary business of their sex, for its effects are
more than overborne by the emotional suggestibility, the herculean
capacity for illusion, the almost total absence of critical sense of
men. Men do not demand genuine beauty, even in the most
modest doses; they are quite content with the mere appearance of
beauty. That is to say, they show no talent whatever for
differentiating between the artificial and the real. A film of face
powder, skilfully applied, is as satisfying to them as an epidermis of
damask. The hair of a dead Chinaman, artfully dressed and dyed,
gives them as much delight as the authentic tresses of Venus. A
false hip intrigues them as effectively as the soundest one of living
fascia. A pretty frock fetches them quite as surely and securely as
lovely legs, shoulders, hands or eyes. In brief, they estimate
women, and hence acquire their wives, by reckoning up purely
superficial aspects, which is just as intelligent as estimating an egg
by purely superficial aspects. They never go behind the returns; it
never occurs to them to analyze the impressions they receive. The
result is that many a man, deceived by such paltry sophistications,
never really sees his wife--that if, as God is supposed to see, her,
and as the embalmer will see her--until they have been married for
years. All the tricks may be infantile and obvious, but in the face of
so naive a spectator the temptation to continue practising them
is irresistible. A trained nurse tells me that even when undergoing
the extreme discomforts of parturition the great majority of women
continue to modify their complexions with pulverized talcs, and to
give thought to the arrangement of their hair. Such transparent
devices, to be sure, reduce the psychologist to a sour sort of mirth,
and yet it must be plain that they suffice to entrap and make fools of