If a Western man should hear me tell you this, he would want the statement qualified, unless he happened to be a philosopher.

But I am trying to put the facts before you in the way in which you can best understand them.

Let me say, then, that the all-important thing for the student of English literature to try to understand, is that in Western countries woman is a cult, a religion, or if you like still plainer language, I shall say that in Western countries woman is a god.
So much for the abstract idea of woman.

Probably you will not find that particularly strange; the idea is not altogether foreign to Eastern thought, and there are very extensive systems of feminine pantheism in India.

Of course the Western idea is only in the romantic sense a feminine pantheism; but the Oriental idea may serve to render it more comprehensive.