"'But if your men write against me, irrespective of what they really feel about me, I am sure your women take a much more lenient view of the case.'
"(Discreet applause.)
"'They feel that ambition did not eat up all the forces of my soul, and that in worshipping Ares (Mars), I never forgot the cult of Aphrodite (Venus) either. We Hellenes ventured to be humans, and that is why now we have become demi-gods. You, my friends, do not even venture to be humans, and that is why you remain the little ones.
"'I notice in the northern countries of Europe men do not, or to a very small degree care for women. Perhaps that is the reason why the Roman Catholic idea of the Holy Virgin has had no lasting hold on these nations.
"'I have seen,' continued Alcibiades, 'too many faces, masks, and pretences to be much impressed by the apparent indifference of the northerner to the charms of women. It never meant more than either an unavowed inclination towards his own sex, or sheer boorishness. Even we Hellenes had very much to suffer from our political and social neglect of women outside emancipated ones. The Romans acted much more wisely in that respect; while the nation of our hostess has practically become what we called a gynæcocracy or women's rule, where man is socially what our Greek women used to be: relegated to the background. I hear, this is the privilege of Englishmen. I understand. When I was young I learnt but too much about that privilege.
"'But if I should be asked for advice I would tell your men to take your women much more seriously. I know that Englishmen are much more grave than serious; yet with regard to women they ought to be much more intent on considering them in everything their mates, and in several things their superiors. Of course, this is an unmilitary nation; and such nations will always remain boors in Sunday dress.
"'One of your great writers who, being outside the academic clique, has always been maligned by the officials, has written a beautiful essay on the influence of women. Poor Buckle—he treated the problem as a schoolroom paper. He came to the result that women encourage the deductive mode of thinking. However, women are more seductive than deductive, and their real influence is to charm the young, to warm the mature, and not to alarm the old.
"'I, being now above the changes of time, I only, contemplate their charm. And what greater potentialities of charm could one wish for than those that your women possess? If those magnificently cut and superbly coloured eyes learned to be expressive; if the muscles of those fine cheeks knew how to move with speedier grace; if that purely outlined mouth were more animated—what possibilities of fascination, like so many fairies, might rise over the dispassionate surface of those silent lakes! As they are, their several organs are positively hostile, or coldly indifferent to one another. The forehead, instead of being the ever-changing capital of the human column, setting off their beautiful hair, as ivory sets off gold; the shoulders, the seat of human grace, instead of giving to the head the pedestal of the Charites; and the arms and hands, instead of giving by their movements the proper lilt and cadence to everything said or done;—all these hate one another respectively. The arms do not converse with the face; theirs is like other conversations: after a few remarks on the weather all communication stops. So sullen is the antipathy of the arms, that as a rule they hide on the back, as if begrudging the face or the bust their company. It is in that way that English women who might be as beautiful and charming as the maidens of Thebes or of Tanagra, have made themselves into walking Caryatides, whom we invariably represented as doing a slavish labour, with their arms on their backs, and with a heavy load on their heads.
"'Remove the arms, O women of England, from your badly swung back and bring them into play in front of your well-shaped bust and your beautiful faces! Let the consciousness of your power electrify your looks, your dimples, and your gait; and when from musing Graces you will have changed into graceful Muses, your men too will be much superior to what they used to be.
"'See how little your influence is, as your language clearly indicates. Is not your language the only idiom in Europe that has completely dropped that fine shade of sweet intimacy which the use of thou and thy is giving to the other languages? Is not a new world of tenderest internal joy permeating the French, German or Italian woman who for the first time dares to tutoyer her lover? You women of England, the natural priestesses of all warmth and intimacy, you have suffered all that to decay.