But the word struck him, and his inquisitiveness awoke as to its meaning, which he during the lapse of years had forgotten, although he had a faint memory about it from the mythology. He took his dictionary from the table, opened it and read:
"Pandora, the Eve of the ancients, the earth's first woman. Sent by the gods for revenge on account of Prometheus having stolen the fire, and given it to human beings, with all its misfortunes, after which they inhabitated the earth. Represented in poesy under the form of something good, which is an evil illusion, a creation, intended for deceit and surprise."
This was mythology like the tale of Eve, who debarred human beings from Paradise. But when the tale was confirmed from century to century and he had learned himself, how the presence of a woman on this little piece of earth out in the sea had already made dusk, where he would spread light, then there must have lain an idea in the Hellenic and Jewish poet's figurative style.
That she hated him, that he felt and knew, as she took sides with the low crowd down there, but, nevertheless he would not doubt her love, even if this love only consisted of the dandelion's attraction to the sun to borrow beams of light for a poor imitation of the yellow disk. But there existed besides something low as in that which is base, something evil with the desire to injure, a battle for power, which was out of place, as his aim was a victory over the irrational. To tell her this, yes, that would be to break the relation when this depended on his submission or at least his acknowledging her superiority, and this would be to build a life on a white lie, which would grow, wax and perhaps smother all possibility of an honest cohabitation. Just in this lay the deepest reason of all the relative misfortunes of marriage, that the man goes into the union sometimes with a willful lie, often the prey of an hallucination, when he fancies his ego into the being whom he would assimulate. Of this illusion; second sight, Mill had become infatuated to such a degree, that he believed he got all his sharp thoughts from the simple woman whom he had lifted up to himself.
It was love's prize from time immemorial, that the man should conceal what the woman was, and on this secrecy centuries had built a chaos of lies, which science did not dare to disturb, which the bravest statesmen did not dare to touch and which cause the theologian to deny his Paul, when it comes to "women in the churches."
But his love had just begun and taken fire, when he saw her look up to him with beseeching glances; and that love had fled, when she came with the vanquishing smile of stupidity after having trampled down what he would have formed for her happiness and that of many others.
"Ended!" said he to himself, arose and locked the door.
Ended with his youthful hopes of finding the woman he sought. "That woman, who was born with the sense to see her sex's inferiority to the other sex."
He had certainly now and then met one or another, who admitted the fact, but who finally and always reserved themselves as to the reason of the fact, laying the blame on a non-existing oppression, and promising themselves that with greater liberty they would soon surpass the men; and then the battle was in full sway.
He would not wear out his intelligence in an uneven fight with mosquitoes, whom he could not hit with a cane, because they were too small and too many, therefore there must now be an end forever to this fruitless searching after the non-existing. He would let all his power go out in labor, lay aside kin, family, home and sexual impulses and leave the multiplying to other "reproductive animals."