Page 259 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

best you and Aquinas can do?
—Let us take woman, said Stephen.
—Let us take her! said Lynch fervently.
—The Greek, the Turk, the Chinese, the Copt, the Hot-
tentot, said Stephen, all admire a different type of female
beauty. That seems to be a maze out of which we cannot
escape. I see, however, two ways out. One is this hypothe-
sis: that every physical quality admired by men in women is
in direct connexion with the manifold functions of women
for the propagation of the species. It may be so. The world,
it seems, is drearier than even you, Lynch, imagined. For
my part I dislike that way out. It leads to eugenics rather
than to esthetic. It leads you out of the maze into a new gau-
dy lecture-room where MacCann, with one hand on THE
ORIGIN OF SPECIES and the other hand on the new testa-
ment, tells you that you admired the great flanks of Venus
because you felt that she would bear you burly offspring and
admired her great breasts because you felt that she would
give good milk to her children and yours.
—Then MacCann is a sulphur-yellow liar, said Lynch en-
ergetically.
—There remains another way out, said Stephen, laugh-
ing.
—To wit? said Lynch.
—This hypothesis, Stephen began.
A long dray laden with old iron came round the corner
of Sir Patrick Dun’s hospital covering the end of Stephen’s
speech with the harsh roar of jangled and rattling metal.
Lynch closed his ears and gave out oath after oath till the

259