Note 808 — Chapter XVIII · PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY (continued 2)

According to Hartmann, The Sexes Compared, 3, 6 ff., there is between man and woman a fundamental and irremovable distinction: The woman rules sexually and therefore "we must, by way of compensation, uphold the legal superiority of man." In establishing sexual equality the progress of culture receives a severe blow. More wonderful is the teaching of Schopenhauer. "Women," he says, "are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted—in a word are big children all their lives, something intermediate between the child and the man, who is a man in the strict sense of the word."—On Women: in Dircks's Essays of Schopenhauer, 65; or his Sämmtliche Werke, III, 649 ff.