10. The Process of Delusion
Such poor fools, rolling their eyes in appraisement of such meagre
female beauty as is on display in Christendom, bring to their
judgments a capacity but slightly greater than that a cow would
bring to the estimation of epistemologies. They are so unfitted for
the business that they are even unable to agree upon its elements.
Let one such man succumb to the plaster charms of some prancing
miss, and all his friends will wonder what is the matter with him.
No two are in accord as to which is the most beautiful woman in
their own town or street. Turn six of them loose in millinery shop
or the parlour of a bordello, and there will be no dispute
whatsoever; each will offer the crown of love and beauty to a
different girl.
And what aesthetic deafness, dumbness and blindness thus open the
way for, vanity instantly reinforces. That is to say, once a normal
man has succumbed to the meretricious charms of a definite fair one
(or, more accurately, once a definite fair one has marked him out
and grabbed him by the nose), he defends his choice with all the
heat and steadfastness appertaining to the defense of a point of the
deepest honour. To tell a man flatly that his wife is not beautiful, or
even that his stenographer or manicurist is not beautiful, is so harsh
and intolerable an insult to his taste that even an
enemy seldom
ventures upon it. One would offend him far less by arguing that his
wife is an idiot. One would relatively speaking, almost caress him
by spitting into his eye. The ego of the male is simply unable to
stomach such an affront. It is a weapon as discreditable as the
poison of the Borgias.
Thus, on humane grounds, a conspiracy of silence surrounds the
delusion of female beauty, and so its victim is permitted to get quite
as much delight out of it as if it were sound. The baits he swallows
most are not edible and nourishing baits, but simply bright and
gaudy ones. He succumbs to a pair of well-managed eyes, a
graceful twist of the body, a synthetic complexion or a skilful
display of ankles without giving the slightest thought to the fact that
a whole woman is there, and that within the cranial cavity of the
woman lies a brain, and that the idiosyncrasies of that brain are of
vastly more importance than all imaginable physical stigmata
combined. Those idiosyncrasies may make for amicable relations in
the complex and difficult bondage called marriage; they may, on the
contrary, make for joustings of a downright impossible character.
But not many men, lost
in the emotional maze preceding, are
capable of any very clear examination of such facts. The truth is
that they dodge the facts, even when they are favourable, and lay all
stress upon the surrounding and concealing superficialities. The
average stupid and sentimental man, if he has a noticeably sensible
wife, is almost apologetic about it. The ideal of his sex is always a
pretty wife, and the vanity and coquetry that so often go with
prettiness are erected into charms. In other words, men play the
love game so unintelligently that they often esteem a woman in
proportion as she seems to disdain and make a mock of her
intelligence. Women seldom, if ever, make that blunder. What they
commonly value in a man is not mere showiness, whether physical
or spiritual, but that compound of small capacities which makes up
masculine efficiency and passes for masculine intelligence. This
intelligence, at its highest, has a human value substantially equal to
that of their own. In a man's world it at least gets its definite
rewards; it guarantees security, position, a livelihood; it is a
commodity that is merchantable. Women thus accord it a certain
respect, and esteem it in their husbands, and so seek it out.
