the animal, live
merely in the present, but casts an eye over and considers the past and
the future, whence arises his foresight, his care, and his frequent
depression. The woman, in consequence of her weaker intellect,
participates less in the advantages, as in the disadvantages, which this
brings with it. She is rather an intellectual myope whose intuitive
understanding sees distinctly what is near, but has a narrow range of
vision, which does not embrace the distant. Hence all that is absent,
past and future, affects women much more feebly than ourselves, whence
arises the tendency to extravagance so much more frequent with them, and
sometimes approaching insanity. Women think in their hearts the destiny
of men to be to earn money, while their own is to get through it, if
possible during the lifetime of the man, at all events after his death.
That the man gives over to them his earnings for housekeeping,
strengthens them in this belief. Notwithstanding the many disadvantages
which it brings with it, it has nevertheless the good side, that the
woman is more absorbed in the present than ourselves, and therefore
enjoys it better, if it is at all endurable, from which circumstance the
special cheerfulness of woman proceeds, and makes her suited to the
recreation, and, in case of need, consolation, of the man burdened with
care.
In difficult crises, to take women into counsel, in the manner of the
ancient Germans, is by no means unadvisable; for their way of
apprehending t
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