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Nothing different can be expected of women if it is borne in mind that the most eminent of
the whole sex have never accomplished anything in the fine arts that is really great,
genuine, and original, or given to the world any kind of work of permanent value. This is
most striking in regard to painting, the technique of which is as much within their reach as
within ours; this is why they pursue it so industriously. Still, they have not a single great
painting to show, for the simple reason that they lack that objectivity of mind which is
precisely what is so directly necessary in painting. They always stick to what is subjective.
For this reason, ordinary women have no susceptibility for painting at all: for natura non
facet saltum. And Huarte, in his book which has been famous for three hundred years,
Examen de ingenios para las scienzias, contends that women do not possess the higher
capacities. Individual and partial exceptions do not alter the matter; women are and
remain, taken altogether, the most thorough and incurable philistines; and because of the
extremely absurd arrangement which allows them to share the position and title of their
husbands they are a constant stimulus to his ignoble ambitions. And further, it is because
they are philistines that modern society, to which they give the tone and where they have
sway, has become corrupted. As regards their position, one should be guided by
Napoleon’s maxim, Les femmes n’ont pas de rang; and regarding them in other things,
Chamfort says very truly: Elles sont faites pour commercer avec nos faiblesses avec notre
folie, mais non avec notre raison. Il existe entre elles et les hommes des sympathies
d’épiderme et très-peu de sympathies d’esprit d’âme et de caractère. They are the sexus
sequior, the second sex in every respect, therefore their weaknesses should be spared, but
to treat women with extreme reverence is ridiculous, and lowers us in their own eyes.
When nature divided the human race into two parts, she did not cut it exactly through the
middle! The difference between the positive and negative poles, according to polarity, is
not merely qualitative but also quantitative. And it was in this light that the ancients and
people of the East regarded woman; they recognised her true position better than we, with
our old French ideas of gallantry and absurd veneration, that highest product of Christian Teutonic
stupidity. These ideas have only served to make them arrogant and imperious, to
such an extent as to remind one at times of the holy apes in Benares, who, in the
consciousness of their holiness and inviolability, think they can do anything and everything they please.
In the West, the woman, that is to say the “lady,” finds herself in a fausse position; for
woman, rightly named by the ancients sexus sequior, is by no means fit to be the object of
our honour and veneration, or to hold her head higher than man and to have the same
rights as he. The consequences of this fausse position are sufficiently clear. Accordingly, it
would be a very desirable thing if this Number Two of the human race in Europe were
assigned her natural position, and the lady-grievance got rid of, which is not only ridiculed
by the whole of Asia, but would have been equally ridiculed by Greece and Rome. The
result of this would be that the condition of our social, civil, and political affairs would be
incalculably improved. The Salic law would be unnecessary; it would be a superfluous
truism. The European lady, strictly speaking, is a creature who should not exist at all; but
there ought to be housekeepers, and young girls who hope to become such; and they
should be brought up not to be arrogant, but to be domesticated and submissive. It is
exactly because there are ladies in Europe that women of a lower standing, that is to say,
the greater majority of the sex, are much more unhappy than they are in the East. Even
Lord Byron says (Letters and Papers, by Thomas Moore, vol. ii. p. 399), Thought of the
state of women under the ancient Greeks — convenient enough. Present state, a remnant
of the barbarism of the chivalric and feudal ages — artificial and unnatural. They ought to
mind home — and be well fed and clothed — but not mixed in society. Well educated, too,
in religion — but to read neither poetry nor politics — nothing but books of piety and
cookery. Music — drawing — dancing — also a little gardening and ploughing now and
then. I have seen them mending the roads in Epirus with good success. Why not, as well
as hay-making and milking?
In our part of the world, where monogamy is in force, to marry means to halve one’s rights
and to double one’s duties. When the laws granted woman the same rights as man, they
should also have given her a masculine power of reason. On the contrary, just as the
privileges and honours which the laws decree to women surpass what Nature has meted
out to them, so is there a proportional decrease in the number of women who really share
these privileges; therefore the remainder are deprived of their natural rights in so far as the
others have been given more than Nature accords.
For the unnatural position of privilege which the institution of monogamy, and the laws of
marriage which accompany it, assign to the woman, whereby she is regarded throughout
as a full equivalent of the man, which she is not by any means, cause intelligent and
prudent men to reflect a great deal before they make so great a sacrifice and consent to so
unfair an arrangement. Therefore, whilst among polygamous nations every woman finds
maintenance, where monogamy exists the number of married women is limited, and a
countless number of women who are without support remain over; those in the upper
classes vegetate as useless old maids, those in the lower are reduced to very hard work of
a distasteful nature, or become prostitutes, and lead a life which is as joyless as it is void
of honour. But under such circumstances they become a necessity to the masculine sex; so
that their position is openly recognised as a special means for protecting from seduction
those other women favoured by fate either to have found husbands, or who hope to find
them. In London alone there are 80,000 prostitutes. Then what are these women who have
come too quickly to this most terrible end but human sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?
The women here referred to and who are placed in this wretched position are the
inevitable counterbalance to the European lady, with her pretensions and arrogance. Hence
polygamy is a real benefit to the female sex, taking it as a whole. And, on the other hand,
there is no reason why a man whose wife suffers from chronic illness, or remains barren,
or has gradually become too old for him, should not take a second. Many people become
converts to Mormonism for the precise reasons that they condemn the unnatural institution
of monogamy. The conferring of unnatural rights upon women has imposed unnatural
duties upon them, the violation of which, however, makes them unhappy. For example,
many a man thinks marriage unadvisable as far as his social standing and monetary
position are concerned, unless he contracts a brilliant match. He will then wish to win a
woman of his own choice under different conditions, namely, under those which will
render safe her future and that of her children. Be the conditions ever so just, reasonable,
and adequate, and she consents by giving up those undue privileges which marriage, as the
basis of civil society, alone can bestow, she must to a certain extent lose her honour and
lead a life of loneliness; since human nature makes us dependent on the opinion of others
in a way that is completely out of proportion to its value. While, if the woman does not
consent, she runs the risk of being compelled to marry a man she dislikes, or of shrivelling
up into an old maid; for the time allotted to her to find a home is very short. In view of this
side of the institution of monogamy, Thomasius’s profoundly learned treatise, de
Concubinatu, is well worth reading, for it shows that, among all nations, and in all ages,
down to the Lutheran Reformation, concubinage was allowed, nay, that it was an
institution, in a certain measure even recognised by law and associated with no dishonour.
And it held this position until the Lutheran Reformation, when it was recognised as
another means for justifying the marriage of the clergy; whereupon the Catholic party did
not dare to remain behindhand in the matter.
It is useless to argue about polygamy, it must be taken as a fact existing everywhere, the
mere regulation of which is the problem to be solved. Where are there, then, any real
monogamists? We all live, at any rate for a time, and the majority of us always, in
polygamy. Consequently, as each man needs many women, nothing is more just than to let
him, nay, make it incumbent upon him to provide for many women. By this means woman
will be brought back to her proper and natural place as a subordinate being, and the lady,
that monster of European civilisation and Christian-Teutonic stupidity, with her ridiculous
claim to respect and veneration, will no longer exist; there will still be women, but no
unhappy women, of whom Europe is at present full. The Mormons’standpoint is right.
In India no woman is ever independent, but each one stands under the control of her father
or her husband, or brother or son, in accordance with the law of Manu.
It is certainly a revolting idea that widows should sacrifice themselves on their husband’s
dead body; but it is also revolting that the money which the husband has earned by
working diligently for all his life, in the hope that he was working for his children, should
be wasted on her paramours. Medium tenuere beati. The first love of a mother, as that of
animals and men, is purely instinctive, and consequently ceases when the child is no
longer physically helpless. After that, the first love should be reinstated by a love based on
habit and reason; but this often does not appear, especially where the mother has not loved
the father. The love of a father for his children is of a different nature and more sincere; it
is founded on a recognition of his own inner self in the child, and is therefore
metaphysical in its origin.
In almost every nation, both of the new and old world, and even among the Hottentots,
property is inherited by the male descendants alone; it is only in Europe that one has
departed from this. That the property which men have with difficulty acquired by long
continued struggling and hard work should afterwards come into the hands of women,
who, in their want of reason, either squander it within a short time or otherwise waste it, is
an injustice as great as it is common, and it should be prevented by limiting the right of
women to inherit. It seems to me that it would be a better arrangement if women, be they
widows or daughters, only inherited the money for life secured by mortgage, but not the
property itself or the capital, unless there lacked male descendants. It is men who make the
money, and not women; therefore women are neither justified in having unconditional
possession of it nor capable of administrating it. Women should never have the free
disposition of wealth, strictly so-called, which they may inherit, such as capital, houses,
and estates. They need a guardian always; therefore they should not have the guardianship
of their children under any circumstances whatever. The vanity of women, even if it
should not be greater than that of men, has this evil in it, that it is directed on material
things — that is to say, on their personal beauty and then on tinsel, pomp, and show. This
is why they are in their right element in society. This it is which makes them inclined to be
extravagant, especially since they possess little reasoning power. Accordingly, an ancient
writer says, [Greek: Gunae to synolon esti dapanaeron physei].(2) Men’s vanity, on the
other hand, is often directed on non-material advantages, such as intellect, learning,
courage, and the like. Aristotle explains in the Politics (3) the great disadvantages which
the Spartans brought upon themselves by granting too much to their women, by allowing
them the right of inheritance and dowry, and a great amount of freedom; and how this
contributed greatly to the fall of Sparta. May it not be that the influence of women in
France, which has been increasing since Louis XIII.‘s time, was to blame for that gradual
corruption of the court and government which led to the first Revolution, of which all
subsequent disturbances have been the result? In any case, the false position of the female
sex, so conspicuously exposed by the existence of the “lady,” is a fundamental defect in
our social condition, and this defect, proceeding from the very heart of it, must extend its
harmful influence in every direction. That woman is by nature intended to obey is shown
by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of absolute
independence at once attaches herself to some kind of man, by whom she is controlled and
governed; this is because she requires a master. If she, is young, the man is a lover; if she
is old, a priest.
Notes
(1) Let me refer to what I have said in my treatise on The Foundation of Morals, §71.
(2) Brunck’s Gnomici poetae graeci v. 115.
(3) Bk. I., ch. 9.