Is that clear? In plain English, to take an extreme case, if a girl is to be equipped with that ability for wiles and small deceptions which, despite adverse circumstances, are to enable her to secure a lover and a husband and a large family early in life; if, moreover, she is to be prepared to go to extreme lengths to defend and promote the welfare of her children (as all good mothers are), and also to secure their survival and success over the heads of other and possibly more deserving or better children (as all good mothers are prepared to do[184]); if, moreover, in her relations with her husband and her children, she is to display that tact and diplomacy which always secure her the victory in domestic negotiations; then, it seems to me, we have a creature whose special gifts will extend beyond her family and its vital concerns, and invade all the other circumstances of her life, and who will inevitably practise wiles and small deceptions in those conditions where life, its multiplication and preservation are not necessarily in question. The fact, however, that such a creature may be detected again and again in some act of unscrupulousness, not necessarily concerned directly with Life, or some vital interest, does not mean that she is perverse or depraved for the sake of perversity and depravity, as ends in themselves, but simply that her vital unscrupulousness cannot well be confined to the business of Life and its multiplication, and cannot exist as a useful characteristic of her being, without manifesting itself in conditions and circumstances where no vital consideration is at stake. In other words, if you are to have a good house-dog, who will protect you from burglars at night, you must warn your milkman and your dustman, although they have no dishonest intention in entering your garden, not to go too near him, for his useful characteristic is bound to manifest itself in circumstances and conditions where its usefulness is not vital. When from folklore and myth, from national proverbs and tradition, and from the text-books of the oldest religions, therefore, we learn that woman is two-faced, or false, or treacherous, or disloyal, while we cannot expect these sources of information to give us also their reasons for their verdict, we have at least a hint that something deeper is in question than an obliquity of mind. For one would have thought that centuries of schooling would have eradicated these characteristics from women, and that if they have failed to do so, something more essential to woman’s nature than a mere perversion of mind may be suspected. Neither is it enough to point, as Lombroso does, to woman’s relative weakness, to her periodical functional disturbances, to her modesty, etc., to account for a trait so universally attested.[185]