[227] Nature evidently intended it to be pleasant in all its stages: for all bodily functions, when healthy, are pleasant; their very pleasantness seems to be part of the design of preserving life on earth. He who has watched a female cat, as I have often done, from the moment of fertilization to the day when the kittens are weaned, can no longer entertain any doubt that the enormous amount of unpleasantness that civilized women have to undergo, in the process of child-bearing, is all the result of degeneration and disease. A female cat purrs even while the kittens are being born.
[228] For a description of how our ancestors deliberately created a majority of negative women, see Chapter V of my Defence of Aristocracy.
[229] This method of going to work, which is the method of amputation, is always the first adopted by weak and stupid people. It is easier to amputate and suppress than it is to master and to organize. Hence there is an element of impotence and dull-wittedness in the counsel, “And if thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee” (Matthew v. 29, 30); “And if thy right hand offend thee” do ditto.
[230] Book of Laws, IX, 2.
[231] Rousseau was groping towards this truth when in Emile, Book V, he said: “Vous dites sans cesse, les femmes out un tel et tel défaut que nous n’avons pas. Votre orgueil vous trompe; ce seroint des défauts pour vous, ce sont des qualités pour elles; tout iroit moins bien si elles ne les avoient pas. Empêchez ces prétendus défauts de dégénerer, mais gardez-vous de les détruire.”
CHAPTER XI
Women in Art, Philosophy and Science.
The Outlook. Conclusion
From what has been laid down in the previous chapter, it will have been seen that, in the economy of Nature, the female of the species has been endowed with very special qualities which, while they are indispensable to the survival of life, also give her a very definite character, different from that of the male and susceptible of alteration only at the peril of the species.
Woman, at her best, has been revealed as a creature, who, without exaggeration or fulsomeness, may be called the Custodian and Promoter of Life. If this is the rôle in which she is at her best, it therefore follows that, in any other rôle she undertakes, she will display her second best, or her subordinate, side. A creature cannot wantonly do violence to her nature and proceed along lines foreign to the strongest forces that have been evolved in her, and yet hope to achieve the same virtuosity as when she had nature and the tradition of her line both on her side. To repeat the simile already used in this work, as well might you expect a fly to walk with the same facility on its antennæ as on its legs.
A priori, without examining the evidence for or against our contention, we should expect to find that in Art, Philosophy and Science, which are pursuits exacting qualities frequently antagonistic to the natural pre-requisites of woman’s rôle as a Custodian and Promoter of Life, woman can at best only make an inferior display, even if she make any display at all.
This, as the reader will agree, is surely not a matter of opinion, it is one of facts, and the facts can be verified. What would the logic of the most carefully argued thesis signify, if all about us we possessed the evidences of women’s unquestioned mastery in Arts, in Philosophy, and in Science?