/lit/ - Literature

>>7536561

To take care of the propagation of the human race nature has chosen the young, strong and handsome men, so that the race shall not degenerate. This is the firm will of nature in this matter, and its expression is the passion of women. In antiquity and force this law precedes every other: so woe to him who sets his rights and interests in the path of this law: whatever he says or does they will, at the first serious encounter, be mercilessly crushed. For the secret, unspoken, indeed unconscious, but nonetheless inborn morality of women is: ‘We are justified in deceiving those who, because they provide a meagre support for us, the individual, think they have acquired a right over the species. The character and consequently the well-being of the species has, through the next generation proceeding from us, been placed in our hands and entrusted to our care: let us discharge that trust conscientiously.’ Women are, however, by no means conscious of this supreme law in abstracto, only in concreto; and they have no way of giving expression to it apart from their mode of action if the occasion presents itself; and then they are usually less troubled by their conscience than we suppose, because they are aware in the darkest recesses of their heart that in violating their duty to the individual they are all the better fulfilling their duty to the species, whose rights are incomparably greater.
Because fundamentally women exist solely for the propagation of the race and find in this their entire vocation, they are altogether more involved with the species than with individuals, and in their hearts take the affairs of the species more seriously than they do those of the individual. This gives their entire nature and all their activities a certain levity and in general a direction fundamentally different from those of the man: which is why dissention between married couples is so frequent and indeed almost the normal case.