[179] Miss Clark is of the opinion that even in these domestic duties she was not altogether unassisted by men in former times, as the following passage shows: “On the other hand it may be urged that, if women were on the whole more actively engaged in industrial work during the seventeenth century than they were in the first decade of the twentieth century, men were much more occupied with domestic affairs than they are now. Men in all classes gave time and care to the education of their children, and the young unmarried men, who generally occupied positions as apprentices and servants, were partly employed over domestic work. Therefore, though it is now taken for granted that domestic work will be done by women, a considerable proportion of it in former days fell to the share of the men.” (Op. cit., p. 5.)
[180] If she does so, it only means disaster. As late as a generation ago, if she happened to be in India, she was put to no trouble whatsoever; for the custom there, in such circumstances, was for the European mother to seek out a native mother who could act as wet-nurse. The fact that this almost invariably meant—as every Anglo-Indian will tell you—the death of the native woman’s own child, was cynically overlooked by the British occupiers of India.
[181] Paul Lecroix, Op. cit., pp. 370-371.
[182] Weininger comes to the same conclusion. See Op. cit., pp. 150-151 and 196. But he does not give the same reasons as I do. His conclusion is much more of a guess than mine is, and therefore makes one suspect that he was actuated by strong prejudice.
[183] Weininger (Op. cit., p. 346), who maintained that “it cannot be a moral duty to provide for the continuance of the race,” was an avowed pessimist, and, being unable therefore to find a higher sanction for woman’s immorality, perforce condemned it. We who believe that there is no duty more sacred than to provide for the continuance of the race, naturally take the other view, and though recognizing woman’s unscrupulousness in furthering the survival of the race, recognize the high sanction which her immorality thus acquires.
[184] Cp. Sir Almroth E. Wright (Op. cit., p. 46): “It would be difficult to find anyone who would trust a woman to be just to the rights of others in the case where the material interests of her children, or of a devoted husband, were involved. And even to consider the question of being in such a case intellectually just to anyone who came into competition with personal belongings like husband and child would, of course, lie quite beyond the moral horizon of ordinary woman.”
[185] Schopenhauer in one of his Essays (see the Parerga und Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chap. XXVII) also speaks of women’s “instinctive cunning” and “her ineradicable tendency to falsehood,” as the outcome of her weakness, but never hints at any deeper, or more positive cause. Speaking of woman’s character as being given to injustice, he says: “Er entsteht zunächst aus dem dargelegten Mangel an Vernünftigkeit und Ueberlegung, wird zudem aber noch dardurch unterstützt, dass sie, als die schwächeren, von der Natur nicht auf die Kraft, sondern auf die List angewiesen sind: daher ihre instinktartige Verschlagenheit und ihr unvertilgbarer Hang zum Lügen.”
[186] Not a little even of our “Good” Queen Bess’s success as a ruler was due to her unlimited capacity for lies. Speaking of Queen Elizabeth, J. R. Green in his Short History of the English People, says: “Ignoble, inexpressibly wearisome as the Queen’s diplomacy seems to us now, tracing it as we do through a thousand despatches, it succeeded in its main end. It gained time, and every year that was gained doubled Elizabeth’s strength. Nothing is more revolting in the Queen, but nothing is more characteristic, than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom.” (Chap. VII. Section III.) And later on in the same chapter he says: “As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes of lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of contempt.” Even her most distinguished minister, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, was a most incorrigible liar and rascal.
[187] It is true that Havelock Ellis, when discussing woman’s tendency to ruse and deception, is careful to say that “to regard the caution and indirectness of women as due to innate wickedness, it need hardly be said, would be utterly irrational. It is inevitable, and results from the constitution of women, acting in conditions under which they are generally placed.” (Op. cit., p. 196.) But this is a very long way from my position, according to which woman’s tendency to ruse and deception is a constant, positive and life-promoting instinct.
[188] As I have shown in Chap. VIII, this constancy supersedes, and frequently defeats, her constancy to man.