Before, however, we proceed with this inquiry, we should like to remind all readers, who at this point may begin to feel their cheeks mantling with indignation, that, since from the optimist’s point of view it is desirable for the human species to survive, a very high sanction indeed prevails over woman’s vital unscrupulousness, however surprising and unexpected its consequences may prove to be.[183] For instance, if, as we hope we have already abundantly shown, woman’s chief and deepest concern is the multiplication and preservation of life, it is obvious that, when confronted by a situation in which a lie will secure her vital end, and one in which truth will defeat it, she will naturally and instinctively choose to lie—not because she necessarily prefers to lie, but because _she is more concerned about the end in view than the means she adopts to achieve it_, and every lie to her is a “white” lie that secures her vital end. If then from a vital indifference to truth she ultimately reveals an ordinary indifference to truth in the common and less vital circumstances of everyday life, we must blame, not a fundamental perversity of her nature, which would seem to suggest that moral obliquity is a deep-rooted and ineradicable element of her psyche, but a self-preservative characteristic of the race which, though manifesting itself, as it were, unnecessarily and provokingly in everyday affairs, nevertheless, if absent altogether, would prove the most serious menace to the survival of humanity. In the form of a simile we might say that, just as the good army marksman annoys us when, in peace-time, he disturbs our quiet moments with his incessant revolver or rifle practice, and his insatiable desire to “pot” anything and everything, yet we applaud and defend his love of his fire-arm and his skill with it, when, in time of war, he and his like defend our homes and ourselves by “accounting” for numbers of the enemy.