Page:B20442294.djvu/317

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WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
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woman's life that women can never feel really jealous. However ignoble jealousy and the spirit of revenge may be, they both contain an element of greatness, of which women, whether for good or evil, are incapable. In jealousy there lies a despairing claim to an assumed right, and the idea of justice is out of woman's reach. But that is not the chief reason why a woman can never be really jealous of any man. If a man, even if he were the man she was madly in love with, were sitting in the next room making love to another woman, the thoughts that would be aroused in her breast would be so sexually exciting that they would leave no room for jealousy. To a man, such a scene, if he knew of it, would be absolutely repulsive, and it would be nauseous to him to be near it; woman would feverishly follow each detail, or she would become hysterical if it dawned on her what she was doing.

A man is never really affected by the idea of the pairing of others : he is outside and above any such circumstance which has no meaning for him; a woman, however, would be scarcely responsible for her interest in the process, she would be in a state of feverish excitement and as if spellbound by the thought of her proximity to it.

A man's interest in his fellow men, who are problems for him, may extend to their sexual affairs; but the curiosity which is specially for these things is peculiar to woman, whether with regard to men or women. It is the love affairs of a man which, from first to last, interest women; and a man is only intellectually mysterious and charming to a woman so long as she is not clear as to these.

From all this it is again manifest that femaleness and match-making are identical; even a superficial study of the case would have resulted in the same conclusions. But I had a much wider purpose, and I hope I have clearly shown the connection between woman positive as match-maker, and woman negative as utterly lacking in the higher life. Woman has but one idea, an idea she cannot be conscious of, as it is her sole idea, and that is absolutely opposed to the spiritual idea. Whether as a mother seeking