By her mere presence she will remove the constraint of form and custom and will create varying expressions, elevated by her own nobility, for the family life, the public life and for society. She will probably speak less than the woman of the present time, but her silence and her smile will be more eloquent. She will give herself always directly and always with moderation, different and always constant, spontaneous and always exquisite. Her being will pour forth, brimming free and fresh, like the surge of the mountain torrent, but like this, dominated by a certain inner rhythm. However far she allows herself to go--in ecstasy of joy, in passion of tenderness, in delirium of happiness or in the frenzy of grief--yet she will never lose herself. She will be a multiplicity of women and yet always one, whether she plays and smiles or suffers and smiles; whether she beams with health or bleeds with mortal wounds; whether she be imbued with and radiate repose or nervous intensity, joy or tears, sun or night, coolness or ardor. The woman of the future exists already in man's dreams of women, and woman fashions herself according to the dreams of man. The modern man's ideal of woman is not the masculine woman, but the revelation of the "eternal feminine" developed in all directions. This new type of woman has already gleamed forth here and there, not only in our time but in centuries passed. In the Middle Ages she wrote the letters of Heloise; in the Renaissance, Leonardo painted her as Mona Lisa; and in the eighteenth century she held the salon of Mlle. Lespinasse. In our century she wrote the love sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; she appeared upon the stage as Eleonora Duse--and as in a precious stone her being is crystallized by the poet's words with which Rahel's personality was epitomized: "calm yet emotionally vivid."[B] [B] Footnote from French translation:--The reference here is to Rahel de Varnhagen. The citation is taken from the "Hyperion" of Holderlin, a German poet of whom mention is made apropos of Nietzsche, upon whom he had great influence. THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN