The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

expended. Zest demands energy more than that
sufficient for the necessary work, and this in turn
demands the smooth working of the psychological
machine. Of the causes promoting the smooth
working I shall have more to say in later chapters.
In women, less nowadays than formerly, but still to
a very large extent, zest has been greatly
diminished by a mistaken conception of
respectability. It was thought undesirable that
women should take an obvious interest in men, or
that they should display too much vivacity in
public. In learning not to be interested in men they
learned very frequently to be interested in nothing,
or at any rate in nothing except a certain kind of
correct behaviour. To teach an attitude of inactivity
and withdrawal towards life is clearly to teach
something very inimical to zest, and to encourage a
certain kind of absorption in self which is
characteristic of highly respectable women,
especially when they are uneducated. They do not
have the interest in sport that average men have,
they care nothing about politics, towards men their