5. The Thing Called Intuition
Men, as every one knows, are disposed to question this superior
intelligence of women; their egoism demands the denial, and they
are seldom reflective enough to dispose of it by logical and
evidential analysis. Moreover, as we shall see a bit later on, there is
a certain specious appearance of soundness in their position;
they have forced upon women an artificial character which well
conceals their real character, and women have found it profitable to
encourage the deception. But though every normal man thus
cherishes the soothing unction that he is the intellectual superior of
all women, and particularly of his wife, he constantly gives the lie to
his pretension by consulting and deferring to what he calls her
intuition. That is to say, he knows by experience that her judgment
in many matters of capital concern is more subtle and searching than
his own, and, being disinclined to accredit this greater sagacity to a
more competent intelligence, he takes refuge behind the doctrine
that it is due to some impenetrable and intangible talent for guessing
correctly, some half mystical super sense, some vague(and, in
essence, infra-human) instinct.
The true nature of this alleged instinct, however, is revealed by an
examination of the situations which inspire a man to call it to his aid.
These situations do not arise out of the purely technical problems
that are his daily concern, but out of the rarer and more
fundamental, and hence enormously more difficult problems which
beset him only at long and irregular intervals,
and go offer a test,
not of his mere capacity for being drilled, but of his capacity for
genuine ratiocination. No man, I take it, save one consciously
inferior and hen-pecked, would consult his wife about hiring a clerk,
or about extending credit to some paltry customer, or about some
routine piece of tawdry swindling; but not even the most egoistic
man would fail to sound the sentiment of his wife about taking a
partner into his business, or about standing for public office, or
about combating unfair and ruinous competition, or about marrying
off their daughter. Such things are of massive importance; they lie
at the foundation of well-being; they call for the best thought that
the, man confronted by them can muster; the perils hidden in a
wrong decision overcome even the clamors of vanity. It is in such
situations that the superior mental grasp of women is of obvious
utility, and has to be admitted. It is here that they rise above the
insignificant sentimentalities, superstitions and formulae of men, and
apply to the business their singular talent for separating the
appearance from the substance, and so exercise what is called their
intuition.
Intuition? With all respect, bosh! Then it
was intuition that led
Darwin to work out the hypothesis of natural selection. Then it was
intuition that fabricated the gigantically complex score of "Die
Walkure." Then it was intuition that convinced Columbus of the
existence of land to the west of the Azores. All this intuition of
which so much transcendental rubbish is merchanted is no more and
no less than intelligence--intelligence so keen that it can penetrate to
the hidden truth through the most formidable wrappings of false
semblance and demeanour, and so little corrupted by sentimental
prudery that it is equal to the even more difficult task of hauling that
truth out into the light, in all its naked hideousness. Women decide
the larger questions of life correctly and quickly, not because they
are lucky guessers, not because they are divinely inspired, not
because they practise a magic inherited from savagery, but simply
and solely because they have sense. They see at a glance what most
men could not see with searchlights and telescopes; they are at grips
with the essentials of a problem before men have finished debating
its mere externals. They are the supreme realists of the race.
Apparently illogical, they are the possessors of a rare and
subtle super-logic. Apparently whimsical, they hang to the truth with a
tenacity which carries them through every phase of its incessant,
jellylike shifting of form. Apparently unobservant and easily
deceived, they see with bright and horrible eyes. In men, too, the
same merciless perspicacity sometimes shows itself--men recognized
to be more aloof and uninflammable than the general--men of
special talent for the logical--sardonic men, cynics. Men, too,
sometimes have brains. But that is a rare, rare man, I venture, who
is as steadily intelligent, as constantly sound in judgment, as little put
off by appearances, as the average women of forty-eight.