Beyond Good and Evil

all that women write about “woman,” we may well have considerable doubt as to whether woman really desires enlightenment about herself⁠—and can desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new ornament for herself⁠—I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally feminine?⁠—why, then, she wishes to make herself feared: perhaps she thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she does not want truth⁠—what does woman care for truth? From the very first, nothing is more foreign, more repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth⁠—her great art is falsehood, her chief concern is appearance and beauty. Let us confess it, we men: we honour and love this very art and this very instinct in woman: we who have the hard task, and for our recreation gladly seek the company of beings under whose hands, glances, and delicate follies, our seriousness, our gravity, and profundity appear almost like follies to us. Finally, I ask the question: Did a woman herself ever acknowledge profundity in a woman’s mind, or justice in a woman’s heart? And is it not true that on the whole “woman” has hitherto been most despised by woman herself, and not at all by us?⁠—We men desire that woman should not continue to compromise herself by enlightening us; just as it was man’s care and the consideration for woman, when the church decreed: mulier taceat in ecclesia. It was to the benefit of woman when Napoleon gave the too eloquent Madame de Stael to understand: mulier taceat in politicis!⁠—and in my opinion, he is a true friend of woman who calls out to women today: mulier taceat de mulierel.

233

It betrays corruption of the instincts⁠—apart from the fact that it betrays bad taste⁠—when a woman refers to Madame Roland, or Madame de Stael, or Monsieur George Sand, as though something were proved thereby in favour of “woman as she is.” Among men, these are the three comical women as they are⁠—nothing more!⁠—and just the best involuntary counterarguments against feminine emancipation and autonomy.

234

Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terrible thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the family and the master of the house is managed! Woman does not understand what food means, and she insists on being cook! If woman had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession of the healing art! Through bad female cooks⁠—through the entire lack of reason in the kitchen⁠—the development of mankind has been longest retarded and most interfered with: even today matters are very little better. A word to High School girls.

235

There are turns and casts of fancy, there are sentences, little handfuls of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society suddenly crystallises itself. Among these is the incidental remark of Madame de Lambert to her son: “Mon ami, ne vous permettez jamais que des folies, qui vous feront grand plaisir”⁠—the motherliest and wisest remark, by the way, that was ever addressed to a son.

236

I have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose what Dante and Goethe believed about woman⁠—the former when he sang, “ella guardava suso, ed io in lei,” and the latter when he interpreted it, “the eternally feminine draws us aloft”; for this is just what she believes of the eternally masculine.

237

Seven Apophthegms for Women

How the longest ennui flees,
When a man comes to our knees!

Age, alas! and science staid,
Furnish even weak virtue aid.

Sombre garb and silence meet:
Dress for every dame⁠—discreet.

Whom I thank when in my bliss?
God!⁠—and my good tailoress!

Young, a flower-decked cavern home;
Old, a dragon thence doth roam.

Noble title, leg that’s fine,
Man as well: Oh, were he mine!

Speech in brief and sense in mass⁠—
Slippery for the jenny-ass!

237A

Woman has hitherto been treated by men like birds, which, losing their way, have come down among them from an elevation: as something delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and animating⁠—but as something also which must be cooped up to prevent it flying away.

238

To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of “man and woman,” to deny here the profoundest antagonism and the necessity for an eternally hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal rights, equal training, equal claims and obligations: that is a typical sign of shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has proved himself shallow at this dangerous spot⁠—shallow in instinct!⁠—may generally be regarded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, as discovered; he will probably prove too “short” for all fundamental questions of life, future as well as present, and will be unable to descend into any of the depths. On the other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of desires, and has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only think of woman as Orientals do: he must conceive of her as a possession, as confinable property, as a being predestined for service and accomplishing her mission therein⁠—he must take his stand in this matter upon the immense rationality of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia, as the Greeks did formerly; those best heirs and scholars of Asia⁠—who, as is well known, with their increasing culture and amplitude of power, from Homer to the time of Pericles, became gradually stricter towards woman, in short, more Oriental. How necessary, how logical, even how humanely desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves!

239

The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present⁠—this belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age⁠—what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this respect? They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to