Keller, who is the most modern writer of the old school, always describes woman as normally healthy, whereas the modern French authors describe her as being always ill; it was they who introduced the great army of _détraquées_, in the same way as the modern Scandinavians continually describe the emancipated woman in her various phases. But, after all, these are only features on the surface of time, opinions without foundation, rays without focus, they are old ways and old methods in new and cheap clothing. Our object is to pursue the outward phenomena to their physiological roots, and to unravel the intricate skeins which have woven themselves out of the physical qualifications of woman in her conflict with the laws and influences of the surrounding world. For woman, as regards her outward surroundings, is the most dependent creature upon earth, while as regards her natural disposition, she is the most self-willed. A true poet ought to understand this without being told. And as it happens the poets have all written a verse upon it and have altered the text to make it suit; this they have done out of a manly love of theorising--with or without experience of life. But the modern French writers, like the modern Scandinavians, looked chiefly into their own little corner of the world and studied the little extract of life against which it was their luck to run their noses. It was an author’s experience, and nothing more! Old Gottfried Keller saw considerably further, but then he was not a writer with a purpose.