of Philistines. Hence it is, that owing to the absurd
arrangement that they share the position and title of the man, they are
the continuous spurs of his ignoble ambition; and what is more, owing to
the same quality their domination and influence is the ruination of
modern society. In respect of the first, one should take the saying of
Napoleon I. as a clue: "Women should not be of rank," and for the rest
Chamfort very rightly says: "Women are qualified for dealing with our
weaknesses, with our madness, but not with our reason. There is a
superficial sympathy between men and women, but very small sympathy for
spirit, for soul and for character." They are the sexus sequior, the, in
every respect backward, secondary sex, whose weaknesses we should
accordingly spare, but to show honour to which is, to the last degree,
ridiculous, and lowers us in their own eyes. When Nature split the human
race into two halves she did not make the division quite through the
middle. With all polarity, the distinction between the positive and the
negative pole is no merely qualitative, but at the same time a
quantitative one. It is thus that the ancients and the oriental peoples
regarded women, and accordingly recognized much more correctly the place
belonging to them than we, wi