[201] Speaking of little girls Henri Marion says: “De même les observateurs n’hésitent pas à déclarer les petites filles moins parfaitement droites que les garçons, en général, plus compliquées, plus diplomates, plus fertiles en petites roueries, plus inclinées à biaiser, à broder, à inventer, tout au moins à aranger et amplifier.... Surtout quand elles veulent mentir, elles sont plus habiles que les petits garçons, se troublent moins, ont plus de présence d’esprit pour soutenir un premier mensonge.” Op. cit., p. 86. Monsieur Marion adduces Mgr Dupanloup and Mlle Lauriol as his authorities for this view.
[202] Finally among the great thinkers of Europe who have held the view that women are indifferent to truth, and incapable of rectitude, I would further mention Rousseau, Diderot, La Bruyère, and that great genius Kant, who, in his Ueber Pädagogik coldly conjures fathers to enforce truthfulness in their children because “mothers have a tendency to attach but little importance to it.” His exact words are (p. 108 of the Königsberg 1813 Edition), speaking of children’s habit of lying, “Des Vaters Sache ist es, darauf zu sehen, dass sich die Kinder dessen entwöhnen; denn die Mütter achten es gemeiniglich für eine Sache von keiner, oder doch nur geringer Bedeutung.”
[203] See Chapter VIII of that work.
[204] See White’s Natural History of Selborne. Letters LXXVI and “Observations on Quadrupeds.”
[205] The researches of ornithologists during recent years sufficiently prove that the female cuckoo lays her egg upon the ground, and then deposits it in the nest of a bird whose egg resembles the one she has just laid.
[206] See chap. IX, verse 14.
[207] Op. cit., p. 121. See also Weininger, Op. cit., p. 250.
[208] Letter to d’Alembert.
[209] Among other reasons accounting for woman’s dependence on man for art-forms is her lack of originality.
[210] See my Man’s Descent from the Gods, chap. VIII.