[225] This tendency to add to personal attractions by cultivating intellectual interests is more particularly suspicious in the mature virgin, and in the young married woman who is either childless or has ceased to bear children. In both the waxing unconscious desire for fertilization calls forth the instinct to use every possible weapon to draw attention. [226] See, for instance, Lecky, _History of European Morals_, Vol. II, p. 379: “Morally the general superiority of women over men is, I think, unquestionable ... they are more chaste both in thought and act” [!!!]. See also Vol. I, p. 145: “Sensuality is the vice of young men.” There is scarcely an English book on this subject that does not reiterate this insane legend. See also footnote on p. 308 _ante_. [227] Nature evidently intended it to be pleasant in all its stages: for all bodily functions, when healthy, are pleasant; their very pleasantness seems to be part of the design of preserving life on earth. He who has watched a female cat, as I have often done, from the moment of fertilization to the day when the kittens are weaned, can no longer entertain any doubt that the enormous amount of unpleasantness that civilized women have to undergo, in the process of child-bearing, is all the result of degeneration and disease. A female cat purrs even while the kittens are being born. [228] For a description of how our ancestors deliberately created a majority of negative women, see Chapter V of my _Defence of Aristocracy_. [229] This method of going to work, which is the method of amputation, is always the first adopted by weak and stupid people. It is easier to amputate and suppress than it is to master and to organize. Hence there is an element of impotence and dull-wittedness in the counsel, “And if thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee” (Matthew v. 29, 30); “And if thy right hand offend thee” do ditto. [230] _Book of Laws_, IX, 2. [231] Rousseau was groping towards this truth when in _Emile_, Book V, he said: “_Vous dites sans cesse, les femmes out un tel et tel défaut que nous n’avons pas. Votre orgueil vous trompe; ce seroint des défauts pour vous, ce sont des qualités pour elles; tout iroit moins bien si elles ne les avoient pas. Empêchez ces prétendus défauts de dégénerer, mais gardez-vous de les détruire._” CHAPTER XI Women in Art, Philosophy and Science. The Outlook. Conclusion From what has been laid down in the previous chapter, it will have been seen that, in the economy of Nature, the female of the species has been endowed with very special qualities which, while they are indispensable to the survival of life, also give her a very definite character, different from that of the male and susceptible of alteration only at the peril of the species.