The genuine cause of the dominion which the wives obtain
by this cunning is, that the man acts from the understanding and the
woman from the will, and that the will can persist, but not so the
understanding. I have been told, that the worst of this sort of women,
who are altogether a prey to the desire of dominion, can remain firm in
their positive humors even to the last struggle for life. I have also
heard the excuses pleaded by such women (_mulieres_) for entering upon
the exercise of this art; in which they urged that they would not have
done so unless they had foreseen supreme contempt and future rejection,
and consequent ruin on their part, if they should be subdued by their
husbands: and that thus they had taken up these their arms from
necessity. To this excuse they add this admonition for the men; to leave
their wives their own rights, and while they are in alternations of
cold, not to consider them as beneath their maid-servants: they said
also that several of their sex, from their natural timidity, are not in
a state of exercising the above art; but I added, from their natural
modesty.
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