I It is therefore legitimate to consider the composite picture of woman presented to us by the beliefs and opinions recorded by men. These opinions are curiously contradictory and at the same time generalised. In spite of the intense interest felt in individual women, generalisations about women are common, whereas generalisations about men are made warily, if at all. Men are fellow-creatures of many different kinds: conclusions are drawn about classes of men, such as kings, statesmen, or warriors, angry men, foolish men, or strangers; but nothing less than a universal attribute of humanity is attached to all men, such as that men are mortal, or subject to Fate, or inconstant. But it is seriously believed by Moslems that women have no souls. Thousands of Christians believe that women are not intelligent. Mystics believe that women are on a lower plane of spiritual development than men. Women have no sense of justice, no sense of honour: women cannot be trusted with political power: women are all the better for a good beating with a stick. These generalisations reflect man as the dominant sex, conscious of his superiority. But one comes at once upon contradictions. Every great man has been inspired by some woman. The hand that rocks the cradle indisputably rules the world. A woman was the first cause of original sin, but a woman was the Mother of God. What does this mean? Half of the picture is tinged with vague contempt, and the other half with vague reverence. Apparently the average man sees woman alternately as an inferior being and as an angel. One must conclude that he is looking at her through a distorting medium. His conception of her as an inferior being is natural, in a man-made State, and were she really inferior it would stop there. His vague reverence for her remains to prevent this conclusion: it is certainly a compensation for something, a distorted recognition of some half-guessed-at power in women. It looks as if man knows that the inferiority of woman is a fiction, that his domination of her and his refusal to admit her to his own level are not justified. In the background there lurks a fear of reprisals. The distorting medium contains fear as one of its elements. In men’s societies of a primitive or arrested type where the etiquette of conduct betrays its origin, one can see clearly man’s fear of woman. Woman possesses some mysterious power which must be averted by elaborate taboos. A woman can ruin a man’s chances of success in hunting or fishing by touching his gear. A woman’s shadow can blight a religious ceremony. Women are particularly to be feared when they are menstruating or in childbed. The most terrible ghost is that of a woman who dies in childbed. In more developed societies men burn old crones as witches in possession of the evil eye. And even to-day, especially in politics, men find it difficult to rid themselves of the uneasy suspicion that women are dangerous.