Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/325

 THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER formed men male and female in his own likeness; and often the poets, speaking of the gods, confuse the sex." 15.— Then my lord Gaspar said: •' I would not have us enter upon such subtleties, because these ladies will not understand us, and although I answer you with excellent arguments, they will believe (or at least pretend to believe) that I am wrong, and straightway will pronounce judgment to their liking. Yet since we are already begun, I will say merely this, that (as you know is the opinion of very wise men) rnan jesemhles form, and woman matter; and there- fore, just as form is more perfect than matter, — nay, gives it its being, — so man is far more perfect than woman. And I remem- ber having once heard that a great philosopher says in some of his problems:*" ' W^hy is it that a woman always naturally loves the man who first tasted the sweets of love with her ? and on the contrary a man holds that woman in hatred who was the first to give herself to him ? ' And adding the reason, he affirms it to be this : because in this matter the woman receives perfec- tion from the man, and the man imperfection from the woman; and therefore everyone naturally loves that thing which makes him perfect, and hates that which makes him imperfect. And besides this, a great argument for the perfection of man and for the imperfection of woman is that every woman universally desires to be a man, by a certain natural instinct that teaches her to desire her perfection." 16.— The Magnifico Giuliano at once replied: " The poor creatures do not desire to be men in order to be perfect, but in order to have liberty and to escape that dominion over them which man has arrogated to himself by his own authority. And the analogy that you cite of matter and form does not apply in everything; for woman is not made perfect by man, as matter by form : because matter receives its being from form and cannot exist without it; nay, the more matter forms have, the more they have of imperfection, and are most perfect when separated from it. But woman does not receive her being from man; nay, just as she is made perfect by him, she also makes him perfect. Hence both join in procreation, which neither of them can effect without the other. 185