But has woman no meaning at all? Has she no general purpose in the scheme of the world? Has she not a destiny; and, in spite of all her senselessness and emptiness, a significance in the universe? Has she a mission, or is her existence an accident and an absurdity? In order to understand her meaning, it is necessary to start from a phenomenon which, although old and well recognised, has never received its proper meed of consideration. It is from nothing more nor less than the phenomenon of _match-making_ from which we may be able to infer most correctly the real nature of woman. Its analysis shows it to be the force which brings together and helps forward two people in their knowledge of one another, which helps them to a sexual union, whether in the form of marriage or not. This desire to bring about an understanding between two people is possessed by all women from their earliest childhood; the very youngest girls are always ready to act as messengers for their sisters’ lovers. And if the instinct of match-making can be indulged in only after the particular woman in question has brought about her own consummation in marriage, it is none the less present before that time, and the only things which are at work against it are her jealousy of her contemporaries, and her anxiety about their chances with regard to her lover, until she has finally secured him by reason of her money, her social position, and so forth. As soon as women have got rid of their own case by their own marriage, they hasten to help the sons and daughters of their acquaintances to marry. The fact that older women, in whom the desire for sexual satisfaction has died out, are such match-makers is so fully recognised that the idea has wrongly spread that they are the only real match-makers. They urge not only women but men to marry, a man’s own mother often being the most active and persistent advocate of his marriage. It is the desire and purpose of every mother to see her son married, without any thought of his individual taste; a wish which some have been blind enough to regard as another charm in maternal love, of which such a poor account was given in an earlier chapter. It is possible that many mothers may hope that their sons should obtain permanent happiness through marriage, however unfit they may be for it; but undoubtedly this hope is absent with the majority, and in any case it is the match-making instinct, the sheer objection to bachelordom, which is the strongest motive of all. It is clear that women obey a purely instinctive, inherent impulse, when they try to get their daughters married.