232

Woman wants to become independent - and for that reason she is beginning to enlighten men about "woman as such" - that is among the most deleterious developments in the general process of making Europe ugly. For what must these crude attempts of female scholarship and self-exposure bring to light! Woman has so many reasons for shame; hidden in women is so much pedantry, superficiality, so many characteristics of the school teacher, petty arrogance, petty indulgence, and immodesty - just look at the way she interacts with children! - Up to now basically these qualities have best been kept repressed and controlled by fear of man. Woe when the "eternally boring in woman" - she is rich in that! - is first allowed to venture out, when she begins thoroughly and fundamentally to forget her shrewdness and art, her qualities of grace, of play, of driving cares away, of mitigating troubles and taking things lightly, and her delicate skill with agreeable pleasures! Nowadays we can already hear women's voices which - by holy Aristophanes! - are frightening. They threaten with medical clarity what woman wants from man, from start to finish. Isn't it in the very worst taste for woman to prepare like this to become scientific? So far, enlightening has fortunately been a man's business, a man's talent - in the process we remained "among ourselves." In dealing with everything which women write about concerning "woman," we may finally retain a healthy mistrust whether woman really wants enlightenment about herself - or is capable of wanting it. . . . Unless a woman by doing this is seeking some new finery for herself - so I do think that dressing herself up belongs to the eternally feminine? - well, by doing this she does want to arouse fear of herself: - in that way perhaps she wants power. But she does not want the truth. What does a woman have to do with truth! From the very beginning nothing is stranger, more unfavourable, or more hostile to women than truth - her great art is the lie, her highest concern appearance and beauty. We men should admit it - we honour and love precisely this art and this instinct in woman, we who have a hard time of it and are happy to get our relief by associating with beings under whose hands, looks, and tender foolishness our seriousness, our gravity and profundity seem almost silly. Finally I put the question: has a woman ever herself conceded that a woman's head is profound, that a woman's heart is just? And isn't it true that, speaking generally, "woman" up to this point has been held in contempt mostly by woman herself - and not at all by us? We men want a woman not to continue to compromise herself by enlightenment, just as it was masculine care and consideration for woman that made the church decree mulier taceat in ecclesia [let a woman be silent in church]! It was an advantage for woman, when Napoleon let the all-too-loquacious Madame de Staël understand: mulier taceat in politicis [let women be silent in politics] ! - And I think that a true friend of women is the man who nowadays shouts out to them: mulier taceat de muliere [let woman be silent about women]!

233

It reveals a corruption of instincts - quite apart from revealing bad taste - when a woman makes a direct reference to Madame Roland or Madame de Staël or Mr. George Sand, as if by doing so they had something to prove in favour of the "woman as such."⁸ Among men those names are the three comical woman as such - nothing more! - and the very best unintentional counter-arguments against emancipation and female self-importance.

234

Stupidity in the kitchen, woman as cook, the ghastly absence of intelligent thought in taking care of the nourishment of the family and the man of the house! Woman understands nothing about what food means, and she wants to be cook! If woman were a thinking creature, then, as cook for thousands of years, she'd surely have found out the most important physiological facts, while at the same time she'd have had to take ownership of the art of healing! Because of bad female cooks and the complete lack of reason in the kitchen, the development of human beings has been held up for the longest time and suffered the worst damage. Even today things are little better. A speech for fashionable young ladies.

235

There are expressions and successful projections of the spirit; there are aphorisms, a small handful of words, in which an entire culture, an entire society, suddenly crystallizes. Among these belongs that remark Madame de Lambert made at some point to her son: "Mon ami, ne vous permettez jamais que de folies, qui vous feront grand plaisir" [My dear, never allow yourself anything but those follies which will bring you great pleasure] - which is, by the way, the most motherly and cleverest remark that has ever been directed to a son.

236

What Dante and Goethe believed about women - the former when he sang "ella guardava suso, ed io in lei" [she looked upward and I at her] and the latter when he translated this passage as "the Eternally Feminine draws us upwards" - I have no doubt that every more aristocratic woman will resist this faith, for she believes the very same about the Eternally Masculine. . . .