THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SCHOPENHAUER 257
cause it is the strongest affirmation of the lust for life." 148 What crime
have these children committed that they should be born?
If, now, we contemplate the turmoil of life, we behold all occupied with
its want and misery, straining all their powers to satisfy its infinite needs and
to ward off its multifarious sorrows, yet without daring to hope for anything
else than simply the preservation of this tormented existence for a short span
of time. In between, however, and in the midst of this tumult, we see the
glance of two lovers meet longingly; yet why so secretly, fearfully, and
stealthily? Because these lovers are the traitors who seek to perpetuate the
whole want and drudgery which would otherwise speedily reach an end;
. . . here lies the profound reason for the shame connected with the process
of generation. 144
It is woman that is the culprit here; for when knowledge has reached to
will-lessness, her thoughtless charms allure man again into reproduction*
Youth has not intelligence enough to see how brief these charms must be;
and when the intelligence comes, it is too late.
With young girls Nature seems to have had in view what, in the language
of the drama, is called a striking effect; as for a few years she dowers them
with a wealth of beauty and is lavish in her gift of charm, at the expense
of all the rest of their lives; so that during those years they may capture the
fancy of some man to such a degree that he is hurried away into undertaking
the honorable care of them ... as long as they live a step for
which there would not seem to be any sufficient warrant if only reason
directed man's thoughts. . . . Here, as elsewhere. Nature proceeds with her
usual economy; for just as the female ant, after fecundation, loses her wings,
which are then superfluous, nay, actually a danger to the business of breed-
ing; so, after giving birth to one or two children, a woman generally loses
her beauty; probably, indeed, for similar reasons. 145
Young men ought to reflect that "if the object which inspires them
today to write madrigals and sonnets had been born eighteen years earlier,
it would scarcely have won a glance from them." 146 After all, men are
much more beautiful in body than women.
It is only a man whose intellect is clouded by Ms sexual impulse that
could give the name of the fair sex to that under-sized, narrow-shouldered,
broad-hipped, and short-legged race; for the whole beauty of the sex is
bound up with this impulse. Instead of calling them beautiful there would
be more warrant for describing women as the unesthetic sex. Neither for
music, nor for poetry, nor for the fine arts, have they really and truly any
sense of susceptibility; it is a mere mockery if they make a pretense of it in
order to assist their endeavor to please. . . They are incapable of taking
a purely objective interest in anything. . . . The most distinguished intel-
lects among the whole sex have never managed to produce a single achieve-
""In Wallace, p. 29.
"*Essay on Women, p. 73.
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