This tendency is, I believe, entirely due to woman having always been
divorced from business and politics, to her having been until recently
encouraged to delight in small material possessions, while discouraged
from focusing on anything non-material except religion, and from
considering general ideas. Particularly as regards general ideas woman
has lived in a bad atmosphere. The French king who said to his queen,
"Madam, we have taken you to give us children and not to give us
advice," was blowing a chill breath upon the tender shoot of woman's
intelligence. Neither he nor other men wished women to conceive general
ideas: women became incapable of conceiving or understanding them.
Thence sprang generalization, the tendency in woman to make sweeping
statements, such as "All men are deceivers," or "Men can do what they
like in the world," or "Men cannot feel as women do." It is not that
they dislike general questions, but that they have been thrust back from
general questions, so that they cannot hold them. Here is a case:
_Case 2_
With the object of entertaining an elderly lady, who is an invalid, I
explain, _in response to her own request_, the case that Germany makes
for having declared war. She asks one or two questions, and then
suddenly interrupts me to ask what I have been doing with myself lately
in the evenings.
This is a case of interest in the particular as opposed to the general.
It is an instance of what I want to show,--that woman drifts toward the
particular because she has been driven away from the general. To
concentrate too long upon the general is to her merely fatiguing.
Doubtless because of this, many middle-aged women become exceedingly
dull to men. So long as they are young all is well, for few men care
what folly issues from rosy lips. But once the lips are no longer rosy,
then man fails to find the companion he needs, because companionship, as
differentiated from love, can rest only on mental sympathy. Middle-aged
man is often dull too; while the middle-aged woman may concern herself
overmuch with the indigestion of her pet dog, the middle-aged man is
often unduly moved by his own indigestion. But, broadly speaking, a
greater percentage of middle-aged and elderly men than of such women
are interested in political and philosophical questions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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