does, they will be mercilessly crushed
on the first important occasion. For the secret, unexpressed, and indeed
unconscious but inborn morality of women is: "We are justified in
deceiving those who, because they barely provide for us, the individual,
think that they have acquired a right over the species. The structure
and consequently the welfare of the species is placed in our hands by
means of generation, which immediately proceeds from us, and is
entrusted to our care; we will conscientiously manage it." Women however
are by no means conscious of this first principle in abstracto, but
merely in concreto, and have no other expression for it than their mode
of action when the opportunity comes, in which their conscience allows
them generally more rest than we might suppose, since they feel, in the
darkest recesses of their heart, that by the breach of their duty to the
individual, they have so much the better fulfilled that toward the
species, whose right is infinitely greater.
Because in the last resort, women exist solely for the propagation of
the race, in which their destiny is exhausted, they live altogether more
in the species than in individuals; in their heart they regard the
affairs of the species as more serious than those of the individual.
This gives to their whole being and action a certain frivolity, and
altogether a fundamentally different direction from that of the man,
from which cause arises the so frequent and almost normal want of
agreement in marriage.
Between men there is by nature merely indifference, but between women
there is enmity even by nature. It comes from the fact that the odium
figulinum, which with men is limited to their particular guild, with
women embraces the whole sex, since they have all only one trade.
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