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264 individuality she has nothing to contrast with pairing; and so, unlike man, she cannot realise its significance, or even notice the presence in herself of this instinct.

No woman knows, or ever has known, or ever will know, what she does when she enters into association with man. Femaleness is identical with pairing, and a woman would have to get outside herself in order to see and understand that she pairs. Thus it is that the deepest desire of woman, all that she means, and all that she is, remain unrecognised by her. There is nothing, then, to prevent the male negative valuation of pairing overshadowing the female positive valuation of it in the consciousness of the woman. The susceptibility of woman is so great that she can even act in opposition to what she is, to the one thing on which she really sets a positive value! But the imposture which she enacts when she allows herself to be incorporated with man's opinions of sexuality and shamelessness, even of the imposture itself, and when she uses the masculine standard for her actions, is such a colossal fraud that she is never conscious of it; she has acquired a second nature, without even guessing that it is not her real one; she takes herself seriously, believes she is something and that she believes in something; she is convinced of the sincerity and originality of her moralisings and opinions; the lie is as deeply rooted as that; it is organic. I cannot do better than speak of the ontological untruthfulness of woman.

Wolfram von Eschenbach says of his hero: " . . . So keusch und rein

Ruht' er bei seiner Königin,

Dass kein Genügen fand' darin

So manches Weib beim lieben Mann.

Dass doch so manche in Gedanken

Zur Üppigkeit will überschwanken,

Die sonst sich spröde zeigen kann!

Vor Fremden züchtig sie erscheinen,

Doch ist des Herzens tiefstes Meinen

Das Widerspiel vom äussern Schein." Wolfram indicates clearly enough what is at the bottom