“The most secret elements of woman’s nature, in association with the magic mystery of her organization, indicate the existence in her of peculiar and deep-lying creative ideas, and in this wonderful riddle of love we find the sympathetic of the entire universe expressed. The sympathetic, which attracts and binds forces, the silent music in the innermost being of the world’s soul, by means of which the stars, the suns, bodies, spirits, are compelled to move in this eternal, changeable rhythm, and in this continuous opposition--is the feminine of the universe. This is the eternal feminine, of which Goethe says that it draws us heavenward. Therefore there is nothing deeper, more gentle, more unsearchable, than a woman’s heart. All-movable, it extends into that wonderful distance of existence, and hears with fine nerves the most hidden elements of existence. Touched and shaken by every sound, like a spiritual harp, the most hidden aspects of nature and of life often evoke in its strings prophetic oscillations. The feminine is something common to all life, the most gentle psyche of existence, and hence the fine connexion of the feminine nature with the general organizations, operations, and world forces; hence the mysterious force of attraction which exercises itself in such a magic manner as the true pole of sex, as though each one only in, and with, the true feminine could first find peace.... The ancients made a remarkable use of this idea of a common feminine element in human nature, inasmuch as by the name they gave to the pupil of the eye they expressed the idea that =a young girl was to be found in every man’s eye=. Young girls (pupillæ, κοραι)--these formed the centre of the human eye, as Winkelmann points out; and is it possible to describe the eye more aptly and distinctively, this radiant chiaroscuro of the hidden basis of the soul, than by ascribing femininity to it--femininity, which rises from that hidden basis of the soul as an Anadyomene rises from the deep?”