Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/107

 Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard 105

then I shall be eloquent. Let then Constantin have my thanks for the banquet, and the wine, and the excellent ap- pointments â€” the speeches, however, were but indifferent. But in order that things shall have a better ending I shall now pronounce a eulogy on woman.

Just as he who is to speak in praise of the divinity must be inspired by the divinity to speak worthily, and must therefore be taught by the divinity as to what he shall say, likewise he who would speak of women. For woman, even less than the divinity, is a mere figment of man's brain, a day-dream, or a notion that occurs to one and which one may argue about pro et contra. Nay, one learns from woman alone what to say of her. And the more teachers one has had, the better. The first time one is a disciple, the next time one is already over the chief diflficulties, just as one learns in formal and learned disputations how to use the last opponent's compliments against a new opponent. Nevertheless nothing is lost. For as little as a kiss is a mere sample of good things, and as little as an embrace is an exertion, just as little is this experience exhaustive. In fact it is essentially different from the mathematical proof of a theorem, which remains ever the same, even though other letters be substituted. This method is one befitting mathe- matics and ghosts, but not love and women, because each is a new proof, corroborating the truth of the theorem in a different manner. It is my joy that, far from being less perfect than man, the female sex is, on the contrary, the more perfect. I shall, however, clothe my speech in a myth ; and I shall exult, on woman's account whom you have so unjustly maligned, if my speech pronounce judgment on your souls, if the enjoyment of her beckon you only to flee you, as did the fruits from Tantalus ; because you have fled, and thereby insulted, woman. Only thus, forsooth, may she be insulted, even though she scorn it, and though punish- ment instantly falls on him who had the audacity. I, how- ever, insult no one. That is but the notion of married men, and a slander ; whereas, in reality, I respect her more highly than does the man she is married to.

Originally there was but one sex, so the Greeks relate,