Is woman kind or cruel? Can we reconcile these two series of facts, so contradictory in themselves? That is the question which now comes before us. Let us seek, first of all, the origin and the genesis of feminine cruelty. We have seen women exhibiting great ingenuity in torturing; she does not wish to destroy her enemies, but to torment and torture them; she seeks to protract their pain as long as possible, and to lengthen out her enjoyment of vengeance. On this point woman goes much further than man: for among savages men do not amuse themselves by prolonging the miseries of their enemies; they rather wreak their vengeance by killing them at one stroke. Savages often make a wholesale carnage, massacring whole tribes and nations. But it is always the woman who practices the art of killing a man by inches, over a slow fire, as it were. Thus we find that the redskins give their prisoners of war over to their women. Notice, even at the present day, the difference between the quarrels of men and women. Women scratch each other, tear out the hair, fly at the eyes of their adversaries, trying to inflict some painful wound: men give blows and stabs; they strive to disable or stun their enemy, or to destroy him. There is the same difference but on a smaller scale. This aptitude in inflicting pain is an outgrowth of weakness. We know from the Darwinian theory of natural selection, and from the struggle for life, that every living being must be provided with a certain number of means of defense and offense, and amongst these means must be classed many instincts and sentiments which spring from natural selection, adaptation, and heredity. The cruelty of woman is one of these instincts and sentiments. Woman not being powerful enough to destroy her enemies, had to seek for the means of defending herself, by wounding their more delicate organs, by inflicting such acute pain as would serve to disable them. This tendency to protect one’s self by such means has become instinctive by heredity; and so much the more since the woman who was able thus to defend herself, had at the outset of man’s evolution a far better chance of survival. All this is so true, that we find other weak creatures also to be cruel. Children take pleasure in tormenting insects, birds, or little dogs, and are very cruel to each other. I knew a child who used to cut his nails like the teeth of a saw, in order to inflict more painful scratches on his companions. Humming birds, says Brehm, are the smallest and the cruelest of birds. When they are attacked by a more powerful enemy they try to peck out his eyes with their long, sharp beaks. The struggle for life and natural selection has provided their weakness with this means of defense, and they are even cruel to each other when they fight, to such an extent has the sentiment of cruelty in them become instinctive.