Hence
Rousseau has truly said: "Women, in general, are not attracted to art at
all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius". Everyone indeed who has
got beyond appearances will have long since observed it. One need only
notice the direction and manner of their attention at a concert, an
opera, and a play; for instance, look at the childish innocence with
which during the finest passages of the greatest masterpieces they
continue their chatter. If the Greeks in reality did not admit their
women to the drama they only did right; one would at least have been
able to hear something in their theatres. For our own time one ought to
add to the taceat mulier in ecclesia a taceat mulier in theatro, or to
substitute it and to place it in large letters on the curtain of the
theatre. One can expect nothing else from women, when one considers that
the most eminent members of the whole sex have never been able to
produce a single really great, genuine, and original achievement in the
fine arts, and have never once given the world a work of lasting value.
This is most striking as regards painting, the technique of which is at
least as suited to them as it is to us, and which they pursue
industriously enough, but nevertheless have no single great painting to
show, for they are wanting in all objectivity of mind, a thing that
painting most directly demands; they