Schopenhauer's essay "On Women" (1851) has come to be known among twentieth-century feminists as a classic of misogynist writing. He combines virtually all the negative aspects of traditional ideas on womankind and adds one or two of his own. Schopenhauer's basic contention is twofold -- first, that women's qualities (their behaviour, virtues, vices, etc.) are natural, and second, that by nature women are in all respects inferior to men. This inferiority is both qualitative (men have certain qualities that women lack) and quantitative (women are deficiernt in the qualities they share with men). Specifically, women are deficient in reason, in physical strength, and in love, and -- a new twist -- in the aesthetic faculty. All these flaws have serious consequences. Women's deficient intelligence accopuntys fotr her lifelong childishness, her willfulness, and her lack of a sense of justice, since justice depends on deliberation, and explains why woman must obey and man rule by nature. She is not physically strong, and so nature made her cunning, a master of pretence and lying. This natural cunning, in turn, explains why women are by nature false, unfaithful, hypocritical ingrates, among other things. Women's definciency in love makes her hate her own sex and unable to love her own children on any level other than the purely instinctive. She is capable only of genuinely loving man, since this is her whole goal in life. Finally, she has no aesthetivc faculty (which goes with her naturally ugly appearance) and so cannot appreciate any fine art. In short, to reverance woman in a chilvaric spirit is to flout nature at every turn.