It is doubtless wrong for any except the very young to make generalizations, because nobody else believes in them--least of all in the ones he himself makes. But it is great fun, and, paradoxically, the fun increases in direct proportion to the maker’s disbelief, I suppose because his generalizations thus tend more and more to become light-hearted taunts flung, dustwise, in the face of a chaotic universe. Byron enjoyed defying God, which indicated that he had a God to defy; your modern sceptic thumbs his nose at emptiness, which is at least as brave of him. And of all generalizations that such a man can make those about women are the most entertaining to him. For, having by his time of life discovered that, save for a small matter of physical formation, women are almost precisely like men, it becomes for him the more amusing to unearth or invent differences explaining that ‘almost,’ and to magnify them and build them up into something artistic that would be a beautiful explanation of life--if life were only like that. Thus, I do not believe in any of the generalizations that follow, but I think it would be quite pleasant if they were true. _Why do Men generalize especially about Women?_ But that is so simple. Because of their overweening vanity that will not allow them to admit that a subject on which they spend ninetenths of their thoughts can in itself be other than a rich subject full of mystery and significance. Having briefly settled this, I now go on to my own instructive considerations on women, which begin with an inquiry into _Their Untruthfulness._ Men are to be found who frequently tell the truth on principle, and those are quite common who habitually tell the truth because, though they would prefer to lie when lying would be advantageous, something prevents them from doing so, they stammer, grow red, and are forced back on truth in spite of themselves. Women only tell the truth when lying is unprofitable, and never on principle. This is because women have not got principles. Men, not they, are idealists; they only pretend to be idealists in eras when that is what men want them to be. They live among facts, and are bored or amused by abstractions, the making of which they tolerantly consider only one more of the childish games, like curling or pinochle, men delight to play at; which, indeed, it is. Men generalize incessantly about women, but women do not generalize about men. They take men individually as they come--if they do. Also they never experience any difficulty in telling a lie; on the contrary, they look more candid then than at other times. This is, again, because they do not see why truth should be any more important than falsehood, because almost their chief preoccupation is to keep men quiet and happy, and because they believe in doing everything as well as it can be done. _Their Courage._