Basic writings of Nietzsche - By Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche & Walter Arnold Kaufmann Page 0,154

last. Is it not in the worst taste when woman sets about becoming scientific that way? So far enlightenment of this sort was fortunately man’s affair, man’s lot—we remained “among ourselves” in this; and whatever women write about “woman,” we may in the end reserve a healthy suspicion whether woman really wants enlightenment about herself—whether she can will it—

Unless a woman seeks a new adornment for herself that way—I do think adorning herself is part of the Eternal-Feminine?—she surely wants to inspire fear of herself—perhaps she seeks mastery. But she does not want truth: what is truth to woman? From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth—her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty. Let us men confess it: we honor and love precisely this art and this instinct in woman—we who have a hard time and for our relief like to associate with beings under whose hands, eyes, and tender follies our seriousness, our gravity and profundity23 almost appear to us like folly.

Finally I pose the question: has ever a woman conceded profundity to a woman’s head, or justice to a woman’s heart? And is it not true that on the whole “woman” has so far been despised most by woman herself—and by no means by us?

We men wish that woman should not go on compromising herself through enlightenment—just as it was man’s thoughtfulness and consideration for woman that found expression in the church decree: mulier taceat in ecclesia!24 It was for woman’s good when Napoleon gave the all too eloquent Madame de Staël to understand: mulier taceat in politicis!25 And I think it is a real friend of women that counsels them today: mulier taceat de muliere!26

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It betrays a corruption of the instincts—quite apart from the fact that it betrays bad taste—when a woman adduces Madame Roland or Madame de Staël or Monsieur George Sand, of all people, as if they proved anything in favor of “woman as such.” Among men these three are the three comical women as such—nothing more!—and precisely the best involuntary counterarguments against emancipation and feminine vainglory.

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Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook: the gruesome thoughtlessness to which the feeding of the family and of the master of the house is abandoned! Woman does not understand what food means—and wants to be cook. If woman were a thinking creature, she, as cook for millennia, would surely have had to discover the greatest physiological facts, and she would have had to gain possession of the art of healing. Bad cooks—and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen—have delayed human development longest and impaired it most: nor have things improved much even today. A lecture for finishing-school girls.

235

There are expressions and bull’s-eyes of the spirit, there are epigrams, a little handful of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society is suddenly crystallized. Among these belongs the occasional remark of Madame de Lambert to her son: “mon ami, ne vous permettez jamais que de folies, qui vous feront grand plaisir”27—incidentally the most motherly and prudent word ever directed to a son.

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What Dante and Goethe believed about woman—the former when he sang, “ella guardava suso, ed io in lei”28 and the latter when he translated this, “the Eternal-Feminine attracts us higher”—I do not doubt that every nobler woman will resist this faith, for she believes the same thing about the Eternal-Masculine—

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SEVEN EPIGRAMS ON WOMAN

How the longest boredom flees, when a man comes on his knees!

Science and old age at length give weak virtue, too, some strength.

Black dress and a silent part make every woman appear—smart.

Whom I thank for my success? God!—and my dear tailoress.

Young: flower-covered den. Old: a dragon denizen.

Noble name, the legs are fine, man as well: that he were mine!

Ample meaning, speech concise29—she-ass, watch for slippery ice!

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Men have so far treated women like birds who had strayed to them from some height: as something more refined and vulnerable, wilder, stranger, sweeter, and more soulful—but as something one has to lock up lest it fly away.

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To go wrong on the fundamental problem of “man and woman,” to deny the most abysmal antagonism between them and the necessity of an eternally hostile tension, to dream perhaps of equal rights, equal education, equal claims and obligations—that is a typical sign of shallowness, and a thinker who has proved shallow in this dangerous place—shallow in his instinct—may be considered altogether suspicious, even more—betrayed, exposed: probably he will be too “short” for all fundamental problems