I will say this: it is but lightly as compared with a man that
one need scratch a woman to come on the natural creature.

Now, your natural creature, not inhibited by reason, lives by
theft, murder, and dissimulation. It lives, even as regards the
male, but for one purpose: to continue its species. Enrage a
woman, then, or frighten her into the natural creature, and she
will discard all those petty rules invented by the human male for
his advantage over, and his safety from, the less disciplined
members of the species. All that stuff about `honour,'
`Queensberry rules,' `playing the game,' and what not will go by
the board. And she will fight you with tooth and talon, with
lies, with blows below the belt--metaphorically, of course.

It may well be that you have done nothing more than hurt her
pride--the civilized part of her. But instinctively she will
fight you as the mother animal, either potentially or in being.
It will not occur to her that she is doing so. Nor will it occur
to you. But the fact that she is fighting at all will bring it
about, for fighting to any female animal means defence of her
young. She may not have any young in being. That does not
affect the case. She will fight for the ova she carries, for the
ova she has yet to develop. Beyond all reason, deep, instinct
deep, within her she is the carrier of the race. This instinct
is so profound that she will have no recollection in a crisis of
the myriads of her like, but will think of herself as the race's
one chance to persist. Dangerous? Of course she's dangerous--as
dangerous as Nature! Just as dangerous, just as self-centred, as
in its small way is that vegetative organism the volvox, which,
when food is scarce and the race is threatened, against possible