after copulation loses the henceforth superfluous
and, indeed, as regards breeding, dangerous wings, so after one or two
childbeds does the woman generally lose her beauty, and probably for the
same reason.
In accordance with the above, young girls regard their domestic or
business avocations in their hearts as a subordinate matter, or even as
a mere joke. They deem love, its conquests, and what stands in
connection with them, such as toilette, dance, etc, to be their only
serious calling.
The nobler and the more perfect a thing is, by so much the later and
more slowly does it attain to maturity. The man hardly reaches the
maturity of his reason and intellectual powers before his
eight-and-twentieth year, the woman with her eighteenth. But she has a
reason in accordance, a very circumscribed one. Hence women remain their
whole life long, children, never see more than what is nearest them,
cling to the present time, take the appearance of things for the
reality, and prefer trivialities to the most important subjects. Reason
is that, namely, by virtue of which man does not, like the animal, live
merely in the present, but casts an eye over and considers the past and
the
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