My body licenseth my soul to see the world’s beauties through mine eyes, to hear pleasant things through mine ears, and affords it apt organs for conveyance of all perceivable delights. But alas my soul cannot make any part, that is not of itself disposed, to see or hear – though without doubt she be as able and as willing to see behind as before. Now if my soul would say that she enables my parts to taste these pleasures, but is herself only delighted with those rich sweetnesses which her inward eye and senses apprehend, she should dissemble. For I feel her often solaced with beauties which she sees through mine eyes, and music which through mine ears she hears. This perfection then my body hath, that it can impart to my mind all her pleasures; and my mind hath this maim, that she can neither teach my indisposed parts her faculties, nor to the parts best disposed show that beauty of angels or music of spheres, whereof she boasts the contemplation. Are chastity, temperance or fortitude gifts of the mind? I appeal to physicians whether the cause of these be not in the body. Health is a gift of the body, and patience in sickness of the mind. Then who will say this patience is as good a happiness as health, when we must be extremely miserable to have this happiness? And for nourishing of civil societies and mutual love amongst men, which is one chief end why we are men, I say the beauty, proportion and presence of the body hath a more masculine force in begetting this love than the virtues of the mind. For it strikes us suddenly, and possesseth us immediately, when to know these virtues requires sound judgment in him which shall discern, and a long trial and conversation between them. And even at last, alas, how much of our faith and belief shall we be driven to bestow, to assure ourselves that these virtues are not counterfeited? For it is the same to be and to seem virtuous. Because he that hath no virtue can dissemble none. But he that hath a little may gilt and enamel, yea, and transform much vice into virtue. For allow a man to be discreet and flexible to companies – which are great virtues and gifts of the mind – this discretion will be to him the soul and elixir of all virtue. So that, touched with this, even pride shall be made civil humility, and cowardice, honourable and wise valour. But in things seen there is not this danger. For the body which thou lovest and esteemest fair is fair certainly, and if it be not fair in perfection, yet it is fair in the same degree that thy judgment is good. And in a fair body I do seldom suspect a disproportioned mind, or expect a good in a deformed. As when I see a goodly house I assure myself of a worthy possessor, and from a ruinous, withered building I turn away, because it seems either stuffed with varlets, as a prison, or handled by an unworthy negligent tenant, that so suffereth the waste thereof. And truly the gifts of fortune which are riches are only handmaids, yea pandars of the body’s pleasure. With their service we nourish health and preserve beauty, and we buy delights. So that virtue which must be loved for herself, and respects no further end, is indeed nothing; and riches, whose end is the good of the body, cannot be so perfectly good as the end whereto it levels.

Problem 7: Why Hath the Common Opinion Afforded Women Souls?

It is agreed that we have not so much from them as any part of either of our mortal souls of sense or growth; and we deny souls to others equal to them in all but speech, for which they are beholding only to their bodily instruments, for perchance an ape’s heart or a goat’s or a fox’s or a serpent’s would speak just so if it were in the breast, and could move the tongue and jaws. Have they so many advantages and means to hurt us (for even their loving destroys us) that we dare not displease them, but give them what they will, and so, when some call them angels, some goddesses, and the Peputian heretics made them bishops, we descend so much with the stream to allow them souls? Or do we somewhat, in this dignifying them, flatter princes and great personages that are so much governed by them? Or do we, in that easiness and prodigality wherein we daily lose our own souls, allow souls to we care not whom, and so labour to persuade ourselves that since a woman hath a soul, a soul is no great matter? Or do we but lend them souls, and that for use, since they, for our sakes, give their souls again, and their bodies to boot? Or perchance because the Devil, who doth most mischief, is all soul, for conveniency and proportion, because they would come near him, we allow them some soul. And so as the Romans naturalized some provinces in revenge, and made them Romans only for the burden of the commonwealth, so we have given women souls only to make them capable of damnation.

Problem 8: Why Are the Fairest Falsest?

I mean not of false alchemy beauty, for then the question should be inverted, why are the falsest fairest? It is not only because they are much solicited and sought for. So is gold, yet it is not so coming. And this suit to them should teach them their value and make them more reserved. Nor is it because delicatest blood hath best spirits, for what is that to the flesh? Perchance such constitutions have the best wits, and there is no other proportionable subject for women’s wits but deceit. Doth the mind so follow the temper of the body that because these complexions are aptest to change, the mind is therefore so too? Or as bells of the purest metal retain the tinkling and sound longest, so the memory of the last pleasure lasts longest in these, and disposes them to the next? But sure it is not in the complexion, for those that do but think themselves fair are presently inclined to this multiplicity of loves, which being but fair in conceit are false indeed. And so perchance when they are born to this beauty, or have made it, or have dreamt it, they easily believe all addresses and applications of every man, out of a sense of their own worthiness, to be directed to them, which others less worthy in their own thoughts apprehend not or discredit. But I think the true reason is that being like gold in many properties (as that all snatch at them, that all corruption is by them, that the worst possess them, that they care not how deep we dig for them, and that by the law of nature occupanti conceditur), they would be also like in this, that as gold to make itself of use admits allay, so they, that they may be tractable and malleable and current, have for their allay falsehood.

Paradox 10: That it is Possible to Find Some Virtue in Some Women

I am not of that seared impudency that I dare defend women, or pronounce them good. Yet when we see physicians allow some virtue in every poison, alas, why should we except women? Since certainly they are good for physic – at least, so as wine is good for a fever.