Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard 107
When compared with her in this sense man will indeed be found to be exceedingly imperfect.
And the stratagem of the gods was crowned with suc- cess ; but not always. There have existed at all times some men — a few — who have detected the deception. They per- ceive well enough woman's loveliness — more keenly, indeed than the others — ^but they also suspect the real state of affairs. I call them erotic natures and count myself among them. Men call them seducers, woman has no name for them — such persons are to her unnameable. These erotic natures are the truly fortunate ones. They live more lux- uriously than do the very gods, for they regale themselves with food more delectable than ambrosia, and they drink what is more delicious than nectar; they eat the most se- ductive invention of the gods' most ingenious thought, they are ever eating dainties set for a bait — ah, incomparable delight, ah, blissful fare — they are ever eating but the dain- ties set for a bait; and they are never caught. All other men greedily seize and devour it, like bumpkins eating their cabbage, and are caught. Only the erotic nature fully ap- preciates the dainties set out for bait — he prizes them in- finitely. Woman divines this, and for that reason there is a secret understanding between him and her. But he knows also that she is a bait, and that secret he keeps to himself.
That nothing more marvellous, nothing more delicious, nothing more seductive, than woman can be devised, for that vouch the gods and their pressing need which hight- ened their powers of invention; for that vouches also the fact that they risked all, and in shaping her moved heaven and earth.
I now forsake the myth. The conception "man" corre- sponds to his "idea." I can therefore, if necessary, think of an individual man as existing. The idea of woman, on the other hand, is so general that no one single woman is able to express it completely. She is not contemporaneous with man (and hence of less noble origin), but a later crea- tion, though more perfect than he. Whether now the gods took some part from him whilst he slept, from fear of wak- ing him by taking too much ; or whether they bisected him
