Immanuel Kant

I was quite enjoying reading 'Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime' until I read this....

"The fair sex has just as much understanding as the male, but it is a beautiful understanding, whereas ours should be a deep understanding, an expression that signifies identity with the sublime......Deep meditation and a long-sustained reflection are noble but difficult, and do not well befit a person in whom unconstrained charms should show nothing else than a beautiful nature. Laborious learning or painful pondering, even if a woman should greatly succeed in it, destroy the merits that are proper to her sex, and because of their rarity they can make of her an object of cold admiration; but at the same time they will weaken the charms with which she exercises her power over the other sex. A woman who has a head full of Greek, like Mme Dacier.......might as well even have a beard...." (p78)

These words were uttered about 300 years ago by "a little man, stooped and stunted by a deformity from birth. He is a bachelor and is not known ever to have had a love affair. He shuns any intimacy with women".

It's still kinda put me off the book.