[239] "In no age has the weaker sex been treated with as much respect by men as in ours: that belongs to the democratic inclination and basic taste, just like disrespectfullness for old age. No wonder that this respect is immediately abused. One wants more, one learns to demand, finally one almost finds this tribute of respect insulting, one would prefer competition for rights, indeed even a genuine fight: enough, woman loses her modesty. Let us immediately add that she also loses taste. She unlearns her fear of man: but the woman who 'unlearns fear' surrenders her most womanly instincts.
That woman ventures forth when the aspect of man that inspires fear - let us say more precisely, when the "man" in man is no longer desired and cultivated - that is fair enough, also comprehensible enough. What is harder to comprehend is that, by the same token - woman degenerates. This is what is happening today: let us not deceive ourselves about that.
Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic (masterly) spirit, woman now aspires to the economic and legal self-reliance of a clerk: 'woman as clerk' is inscribed on the gate of modern society that is taking shape now. As she thus takes possession of new rights, aspires to become 'master' and writes the 'progress' of woman upon her standards and banners, the opposite development is taking place with terrible clarity: woman is retrogressing.
Since the French Revolution, woman's influence in Europe has decreased propotionately as her rights and claims have increased; and the 'emancipation of woman,' insofar as that is demanded and promoted by women themselves (and not merely by shallow males) is thus seen to be an odd symptom of the increasing weakening and dulling of the most feminine instincts. There is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity of which a woman who had turned out well - and such women are always prudent - would have to be thoroughly ashamed.
To lose the sense for the ground on which one is most certain of victory; to neglect practice with one's proper weapons; to let oneself go before men, perhaps even 'to the point of writing a book,' when formerly one disciplined oneself to subtle and cunning humility; to work with virtuous audacity against men's faith in a basically different ideal that he takes to be concealed in woman, something Eternally-and-Necessarily-Femine - to talk men emphatically and loquaciously out of their notion that women must be maintained, taken care of, protected, and indulged like a more delicate, strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic animal; the awkward and indignant search for everything slavelike and serflike that has characterized woman's position in the order of society so far, and still does (as if slavery were a counterargument and not instead a condition of every higher culture, every enhancement of culture) - what is the meaning of all this if not a crumbling of feminine instincts, a defeminization?
To be sure, there are enough imbecilic friends and corrupters of woman among the scholarly asses of the male sex who advise woman to defeminize herself in this way and to imitate all the stupidities with which 'man' in Europe, European 'manliness,' is sick: they would like to reduce woman to the level of 'general education,' probably even of reading the newspapers and talking about politics. Here and there they even want to turn women into freethinkers and scribblers - as if woman without piety would not seem utterly obnoxious and ridiculous to a profound and godless man.
Almost everywhere one ruins her nerves with the most pathological and dangerous kind of "music" (our most recent German music) and makes her more hysterical by the day and more incapable of her first and last profession - to give birth to strong children. Altogether one wants to make her more 'cultivated' and, as is said, make the weaker sex strong through culture - as if history did not teach us as impressively as possible that making men 'cultivated' and making them weak - weakening, splintering, and sicklying over the force of the will - have always kept pace, and that the most powerful and influential women of the world (most recently Napoleon's mother) owed their power and ascendancy over men to the force of their will - and not to schoolmasters!
What inspires respect for woman, and often enough even fear, is her nature, which is more 'natural' than man's, the genuine, cunning suppleness of a beast of prey, the tiger's claw under the glove, the naivete of her egoism, her uneducability and inner wildness, the incomprehensibility, scope, and movement of her desires and virtues -
What, in spite of all fear, elicits pity for this dangerous and beautiful cat 'woman' is that she appears to suffer more, to be more vulnerable, more in need of love, and more condemned to disappoint than any other animal. Fear and pity: with these feelings man has so far confronted woman, and always with one foot in tragedy which tears to pieces as it enchants.
What? And this should be the end? And the breaking of woman's magic spell is at work? The 'borification' of woman is slowly dawning? O Europe! Europe! We know the horned animal you always found most attractive; it still threatens you! Your old fable could yet become 'history' - once more an immense stupidity might become master over you and carry you off. And this time no god would hide in it; no, only an 'idea,' a 'modern idea'!"
On Virtues
From - Beyond Good and Evil
- Friedrich Nietzsche
