But women have no abstract knowledge of this
leading principle; they are conscious of it only as a concrete fact;
and they have no other method of giving expression to it than the
way in which they act when the opportunity arrives. And then their
conscience does not trouble them so much as we fancy; for in the
darkest recesses of their heart, they are aware that in committing a
breach of their duty towards the individual, they have all the
better fulfilled their duty towards the species, which is infinitely
greater.[1]
[Footnote 1: A more detailed discussion of the matter in question may
be found in my chief work, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol.
ii, ch. 44.]
And since women exist in the main solely for the propagation of the
species, and are not destined for anything else, they live, as a rule,
more for the species than for the individual, and in their hearts
take the affairs of the species more seriously than those of the
individual. This gives their whole life and being a certain levity;
the general bent of their character is in a direction fundamentally
different from that of man; and it is this to which produces that
discord in married life which is so frequent, and almost the normal
state.
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