PROUDHON.Ah! I understand: you mean that, in the character of author, the woman of genius does not exist. But in this respect, among the number of men that write how many are there who have genius, and who never borrow from any one?
PROUDHON.I grant that there are many effeminate men; which does not alter the fact that woman would do betterto go and iron her collarsthan to meddle with writing; for, "it may be affirmed without fear of calumny, that the woman who dabbles with philosophyand writing destroys her progeny by the labor of her brain and her kisses which savor of man; the safest and most honorable way for her is to renounce home life and maternity; destiny has branded her on the forehead; made only for love, the title of concubine if not of courtesan suffices her."—Id.
Let us now consider thetheticwoman in the moral point of view. We will admit in the first place the principlethat virtue exists in the ratio of strength and intellect, whence we have a right to conclude that man is more virtuous than woman. Do not laugh; it disturbs my ideas. I go further; man alone is virtuous; man alone has the sense of justice; man alone has the comprehension of right. Tell me, I pray you, "what produces in man this energy of will, this confidence in himself, this frankness, this daring, all these powerful qualities that we have agreed to designate by the single word, morality. What inspires him with the sentiment of his dignity, the scorn of falsehood, the hatred of injustice, the abhorence of all tyranny? Nothing else than the consciousness of his strength and reason."
AUTHOR.But then, Master, if man is all this, why do you reproach the men of our times with lack of courage, of dignity, of justice, of reason, of good faith? When I take up in minute detail the terrible charges which you have fulminated against the masculine race, I can make nothing of the meaning of the tirade you have just uttered.
PROUDHON.Consider what you irreverently name a tirade, as the necessary check to feminine immorality.
It is only to set forth the truth that of all the differences that separate her mind from ours, the conscience of woman is the most trifling, her morality is of a differentnature; what she regards as right and wrong is not identically the same as what man himself regards as right and wrong, so that, relatively to us,woman may be styled an immoral being.
"By her nature she is in a state of constant demoralization, always on this side or that of justice.... Justice is insupportable to her.... Her conscience is anti-judicial."
She is aristocratic, loves privileges and distinctions; "in all revolutions that have liberty and equality for their object, women make the most resistance. They did more harm in the revolution of February than all the powers of the masculine reaction combined.
"Women have so little judicial sense that the legislator who fixed the age of moral responsibility at sixteen for both sexes, might have delayed it till forty-five, for women. Woman's conscience isdecidedly of no value till this age."
In herself, woman isimmodest.
It is from man therefore that she receives modesty, "which is the product of manly dignity, the corollary of justice.
"Woman has no other inclination, no other aptitude than love.
"In affairs of love, the initiative belongs truly to woman."—Justice,Vol.III., pp. 364, 366.
AUTHOR.How many persons you will astonish, Master, by revealing to them thatmodesty comes from man; that consequently all the young girls who have been seduced, all the little girls whose corruptors and violators are punished by the courts, are but jades, who, through their initiative, have caused men to forget their character as inspirers of chastity!
You enlighten me, illustrious Master; and I shall at once draw up a memorial to demand that all seduced and violated women and girls shall be punished as they deserve; and that, to console the seducers, suborners, corruptors and violators, poor innocent victims of feminine ferocity, for having sinned against thecorollary of justice and the product of manly dignity, rose-trees shall be forced to blossom, in order that themairesof the forty thousand communes of France and Algeria may crown them winners of the roses.
PROUDHON.Jest as you please; woman is nevertheless so perverse in her nature, that, through inclination, she seeks men who are ugly, old, and wicked.
AUTHOR.Is not this somewhat exaggerated, Master?
PROUDHON.(Forgetting what he has just said,)
"Woman always prefers a pretty, finical puppet to an honest man; a beau, a knave can obtain from her all that he desires; she has nothing but disdain for the man who is capable of sacrificing his love to his conscience."
You see what woman is: "unproductive by nature, inert, without industry or understanding, without justice, and without modesty, she needs that a father, a brother, a lover, a husband, a master, a man, in fine, should give her that magnetic influence, if I may thus term it, which will render her capable of manly virtues, of social and intellectual faculties."—Id.
And as "all her philosophy, her religion, her politics, her economy, her industry are resolved in one word: Love;
"Now shall we make of this being belonging wholly to love, an overseer, an engineer, a captain, a merchant, a financier, an economist, an administrator, a scholar,an artist, a professor, a philosopher, a legislator, a judge, an orator, the general of an army, the head of a State?
"The question carries its answer within itself."—Id.
I have laid down and proved my thesis, I am about to draw my conclusions.
"Since in economical, political and social action, the strength of the body and that of the mind concur and are multiplied, the one by the other, the physical and intellectual value of the man will be to the physical and intellectual value of woman as 3 ☓ 3 is to 2 ☓ 2, or as 9 to 4.
"In the moral, as in the physical and intellectual point of view, her value (that of woman,) is also as 2 to 3.
"Their share of influence, compared together, will be as 3 ☓ 3 ☓ 3 is to 2 ☓ 2 ☓ 2 or as 27 to 8.
"According to these conditions, woman cannot pretend to counterbalance the virile power; her subordination is inevitable. Both by nature, and before justice, she does not weigh the third of man."—Id.
Do you understand clearly?
AUTHOR.Very clearly. Your theory, if theory there be, is only a tissue of paradoxes; your pretended principlesare contradicted by facts, your conclusionsare equally contradicted by facts; youaffirmlike a revelator, but younever prove, as a philosopher should do. There is so much ignorance and senseless metaphysics in all that you say, that I should rather give you credit for bad faith than be compelled to despise you.
I have listened to you patiently while you have said to me, in saying it of all women:
You are inert, passive, you possess the germ of nothing;
You are a mean term between man and beast, you have no right to exist;
You are immoral, immodest, imbecile, aristocratic, the enemy of liberty, equality and justice.
In your turn, endeavor to listen to me calmly, while I refute your allegations by facts, by science and by reason.
III.
There is, by your own confession, but one good method of demonstration; that of basing every affirmationupon well established facts, not contradicted by others, legitimately deduced.
Let us see how you have followed this method.
In order to prove that thetheticwoman, or woman considered apart from the influence of man, is such as you depict her, it is necessary that you should bring us face to face with an assemblage of such women, and afterwards, with another assemblage composed of men who have never been subjected to the influence of women, that we may verify for ourselves the native activity of the latter and the native inertness of the former. Have you had at your disposal, can you place at ours these proofsde facto?
No; and if you neither have them nor can procure them, what is your thesis, if not the illusion of a brain sick with pride and with hatred of woman?
1. You say: man alone produces physical germs. Anatomy answers:It is woman that produces the germ; the organ that performs this function in her, as in all other females, is the ovary.
2. You say: woman is a diminutive of the man; she is an imperfect male; anatomy says:man and womanare two distinct beings, each one complete, each one furnished with a special organism, the one as necessary as the other.
3. You say with Paracelsus, of whom this is not the only absurdity:where virility is wanting, the subject is imperfect; where it is taken away, the subject deteriorates. Mere good sense replies: the being can only be incomplete or deterioratewhen it differs from its type; now the type of woman is feminity notmasculinity.... If, like you, I were a lover of paradox, I would say:man is an imperfect woman, since it is the woman that produces the germ; his part in reproduction is very doubtful, and science may even learn some day to dispense with it. This is Auguste Comte's paradox; it is worth as much as yours.
To prove that woman is only an imperfect male, it is necessary to establish by facts that man on being deprived of virility, finds the organs developed in him peculiar to woman, becomes qualified for conception, gestation, delivery, and giving suck. Now I have never learned that any keeper of a seraglio had been transformed into an odahlic; have you?
4. You say: the organs peculiar to woman are inert, and purposeless with respect to herself; physiology answers: the labor that these organs accomplish is immense; pregnancy and the crisis that terminates it are incontestable proofs of this. The influence of these organs makes itself felt, not only on the general health, but in the intellectual and moral order. Pathology, no less eloquent, depicts to us the grave disorders produced among women by forced continence, incontinence, the excessive or perverted vitality of these organs which you pretend are inert.
5. You say: woman is the soil, the place of incubation for the germ. Anatomy has told you in reply that the woman alone produces the germ. Read my reply to your friend Michelet on the subject of the resemblance of children and you will know what facts add to the answer of science. Your affirmation is no less absurd in the presence of these facts than that of a simpleton who should pretend that the soil in which the seed of the carnation or the oak is deposited, has the property of causing rosebushes or palm trees to spring up.
From thisfalsesupposition that woman has not physical germs, you conclude that she is destitute of intellectual and moral germs.... And do you really dare accuse woman of thustaking false analogies for principles?
Grant that when a man indulges in them thus wantonly, and mistakes them for principles, we ought to be more inclined to laugh than to be vexed.
6. You say that intellectually and morally, woman is in herself, nothing.
Now, if I am not mistaken, you admit that our functions have our organs for their basis, and you place the functions of intellect and morality in the brain, according to Gall, or similarly.
Well, Anatomy tells you: in both sexes, the cerebral mass is similar in composition and, adds Phrenology, in the number of organs. Biology adds: the law of development of our organs isexercise, which supposes action and reaction, the result of which is the augmentation of the volume, consistency and vitality of the organ exercised.
The point in question then, to convince your readersof the truth of your affirmations, is to prove thatthe two sexes are subjected to the same exercise of the brain and to the same stimulus, and that despite this identity of education, woman constantly remains inferior. Have you proved this? Have you ever thought of doing so? No. For if you had, your theory would have fallen to to the ground, since you would have been forced to acknowledge that man and woman cannot be alike, for we say to man from his infancy: resist, struggle;
To woman: yield, always submit.
To man: be yourself, speak your thoughts boldly, ambition is a virtue; you can aspire to everything.
To woman: dissemble, calculate your slightest word, respect prejudices; modesty, abnegation, such is your lot; you can attain to naught.
To man: knowledge, talent, courage will open every career of life to you, will make you honored by all.
To woman: knowledge is useless to you; if you have it, you will pass for a pedant, and if you have courage, you will be disdainfully calledvirago.
To man: for you are instituted lyceums, universities, special schools, high prizes; all the institutions through which your intellect can be developed; all the libraries in which is accumulated the knowledge of the past.
To woman: for you is history in madrigals, the reading of prayer-books and novels. You have nothing to do with lyceums, special schools, high prizes, anything that would elevate your mind and enlarge your views; a learned woman is ridiculous!
Man must display the knowledge that he often possesses but superficially, woman must hide what she really possesses.
Man must appear courageous when he is often but acoward; woman must feign timidity when in reality she is not afraid.
For where man is reputed great and sublime, woman is found ridiculous, sometimes odious.
If you had verified as you should have done, these diametrically opposite systems of training, the one tending to develop and ennoble the being, the other to degrade it and render it imbecile, instead of writing such absurdities, you would have said to yourself: woman must really have the initiative to resist the iniquitous system of repression that weighs upon her; she must have great elasticity to show herself so often superior to the majority of men in intellect, andalways in morality.
I am curious to know what you males would be if subjected to the same system as we. Look at those who have not studied like you, and tell me whether they are not in general beneath uncultivated women. Look then at the men who have received a feminine education; have they not all the affectation, all the narrowness of mind of silly women?
Look, on the contrary, at those women who, through the wish of their teachers or their own energy, have been subjected to masculine discipline, and tell me, on your conscience, whether they do not equal the most intelligent, the firmest among you?
7. You say: intellectual force is in proportion to physical force.Factsreply: great thoughts, useful works, date from the period when the physical forces began to decline.Factssay also: the athletic temperament, which is the most vigorous, isthe least intellectual: statuaries fully comprehend this, and sculpture Hercules with a large body and a small head.
8. You say that morality is in a direct ratio to physical and intellectual force combined. This pleasantry we will not refute; every one knows too well that these things have no relation, and that facts contradict your assertion.
9. You say: woman being one third weaker, should have in social labor one third the privileges of man.
Upon what elements do you base this proportion? In order to establish it, did you carry a dynamometer about through our districts and measure the strength of each man and of each woman?
But were your affirmation true, is naught butstrengthemployed in labor? Then, great economist, what do we do withskill? What Samsonian muscles are needed to keep books, dispense justice, measure cloth, cut and sew garments, etc.!
And what is the end of civilization if not to shift the employ of our strength from ourselves to machinery that we may be at liberty to use only our intellect and skill?
10. You say: the infirmities, the weaknesses, the maternity of woman, and her aptitude for love, exclude her from all functions; she isjudicially and absolutelyexcluded from all political, industrial and doctrinal direction.
She cannot be a political leader.... Yet history shows us numerous empresses, queens, regents and sovereign princesses who have governed with wisdom and glory, and have shown themselves far superior to many male sovereigns, unless Maria Theresa, Catherine II, Isabella and Blanche of Castile, and many others, are but myths.
Woman cannot be a legislator.... All the women whom I have just cited have been so, and many more beside.
Women can be neither philosophers nor professors.
Hypatia, massacred by the Christians, taught Philosophy with luster; in the Middle Age and later, Italian women filled chairs of Philosophy, Law and Mathematics, and excited admiration and enthusiasm; in France, at the present time, the Polytechnists are making great account ofthe geometrician, Sophie Germain, who has taken it into her head to study Kant.
Woman cannot be a merchant or an administratrix... Yet a great portion of the feminine population devote themselves to trade, or fill commercial positions. It is even admitted that the prosperity of commercial establishments is almost always due to the administrative genius of woman.
Woman cannot be an overseer, a foreman of a workshop... Yet a host of women superintend workshops, invent, improve, carry on manufactures alone, and contribute, by their taste and activity, to the increase of the national wealth and the industrial reputation of France.
Woman cannot be artist... Yet every one knows that the greatest literary artist of our age is a woman, George Sand; yet every one bows before Duchesnois, Mars, Georges, Maxime, Ristori, Rachel, Dorval; yet every one pauses before the beautiful paintings of Rosa Bonheur; yet since the revival of the fine arts, every century has registered many celebrated women.
We meet women everywhere, working everywhere, competing with man.... Yet Proudhon pretends that she can be nowhere, that she is excluded from every place absolutely andjudicially; that if she governs and legislates like Maria Theresa, it is a contradiction;
That if she philosophises like Hypatia, it is a contradiction;
That if she commands an army and wins victories like the wife of the conqueror of Calais; if she fights like Jeanne d'Arc, Jeanne Hachette, Madame Garibaldi and thousands of others, it is a contradiction;
That if she is merchant, administratrix, superintendent of a workshop, like thousands of women, it is a contradiction;
That if she is learned like Dr. Boivin, Sophie Germain, and many others, if she is a professor as are many among us, it is a contradiction.
The thesis sustained by Proudhon is, as we have just seen, contradicted byscienceand byfacts. We ask ourselves whether it is possible that he is ignorant of the simplest notions of Anatomy and Biology; we ask ourselves whether it is possible that he is so far blind as not to see that womanis in realityall that he pretends that sheabsolutely and judiciallycannot be in his absurd and insulting theory; and we conclude that the author is struck with ignorance and voluntary blindness.
Your reproaches are pleasant; from the origin of society, man has been the master; now, the ancient world sunk beneath the weight of slavery, usury, and the most shameless vices; the modern world seems doomed to perish through inequality and its sad consequences, you yourself acknowledge that injusticecaused by your sexexists every where in the world, and you say that man has judicial sense!
And, in the face of the inequality and oppression created by men, of their love of puerile distinctions, of the base deeds which they commit for a bit of ribbon, you accuse women of loving inequality and privileges!
They may love them,like you, but they are better than you, if not more just; they pray for the vanquished, you kill him!
I do not deny that women did much harm to the Revolution of February, for they are as intelligent as men, and have great influence over them. But what did this Revolution do for them, I pray?
Mark me well, you and all those who are blind enough, proud enough, despotic enough to resemble you, and remember what I say.
Woman is like the people: she desires no more of your revolutions, which decimate us for the benefit of a few ambitious babblers.
She will have liberty and equality for all men and women, or she will take care that no one shall have them.
We, Women of Progress, openly declare ourselves adversaries of whoever shall deny the right of woman to liberty.
Our sisters of the people, indignant at their exclusion from the popular assemblies, say to you: you have lured us long enough, it is time that this should end. We will no longer suffer ourselves to be ensnared by your high-sounding words of Justice, Liberty, and Equality, which are only false coin so long as they are applied to but half the human species. Do you wish to save the perishing world? Call woman to your side. If you will not do this, let us alone, insipid phraseologists; you are naught but ambitious hypocrites; we do not wish our husbands to follow you, and they will not.
IV.
PROUDHON.Let us consider woman in the antithesis. I have said that woman, considered apart from masculine influence, isnothing.
AUTHOR.Yes, Master, because this is a pure creation of your thought.
PROUDHON.But woman, considered under the influence of man, is half of the human being, andI sing litanies in her praise.
AUTHOR.Then you make woman re-enter humanity through the door of Androgyny, in order to restore to her her share of rights.... This is absurd; no matter.
PROUDHON.Not so! not so! Women have rights! Never, so long as I am Proudhon! She is indeed the complement of man, who, without her, would be only a brute.
AUTHOR.Ah! my learned Master, how do these things harmonize in your brain? You have said hitherto thatwoman owes everything to man, you tell me now that, without woman, man would be only a brute. Is he not then,adequate to his destiny, as you have affirmed? And if woman is nothing without him, and he nothing without woman, I can see no longer upon what you rest in making him the guide of this poor unfortunate.
PROUDHON.I need not explain myself, such is my idea. I am simply comparing the respective qualities of the sexes, and, as I find, they areincommutable.
AUTHOR.Ah! I catch a glimpse of your meaning; then you do not weigh them in the balance since they are not alike, and, being unable to prejudice the rights of woman, you leave her free.
PROUDHON.What! what! Woman free! Horrible! Are you resolved to throw me into convulsions? Woman, however eminent may be her talents, should serve man in silence and in all humility.
AUTHOR.Frankly, Master, all this appears to me nonsense, which, satanic as you are, you cannot yourself understand in the least.
PROUDHON.Listen without interrupting me further, if you wish to comprehend me.
"Without feminine grace,man would not have emerged from the brutality of the early ages; he would violate his female, smother his little ones, and give chase to his fellows in order to devour them.
"Woman is the conscience of man personified, the incarnation of his youth,his reason and his justice, of all within him that is purest, most sacred, most sublime.—Justice,Vol.III., etc.
"The ideality of his being, she becomes to him aprinciple of animation, a gift of strength, of prudence, of justice, of patience, of courage, of sanctity, of hope, of consolation, without which he would be incapable of sustaining the burden of life, of preserving his dignity, of enduring himself,of fulfilling his destiny.
"It is through her, through the grace of her divine word, that man gives life and reality to his ideas, by bringing them back unceasingly from the abstract to the concrete.
"The auxiliary on the side of justice, she is the angel of patience, of resignation, of tolerance, the guardian of his faith, the mirror of his conscience, the source of his devotion. Vanquished, guilty, it is still in the bosom of woman that he finds consolation and pardon."
Man has strength, woman beauty. Through herbeauty, she should be the expression of Justice, "and the attraction that draws us to it....She will be better than man.... She will be the motor of all justice, all knowledge, all industry, all virtue."—Id.
Also, "beauty is the true destination of the sex; it is its natural condition, its state."—Id.
Woman is the soul of everything; "without her, all beauty fades; nature is sad, precious stones lose their luster, all our arts, children of love, become insipid, half of our labor is without value.
"If, with respect to vigor, man is to woman as 3 to 2, woman, with respect to beauty, is to man as 3 to 2.
"If, from the body, we pass to the mind and conscience, woman, through her beauty, will be revealed with new advantages."—Id.
The mind of woman ismore intuitive, more concrete, finer than that of man; "it seems to man, and is in fact, more circumspect, moreprudent, more reserved,wiser, more equable; it wasMinerva, the protectress of Achilles and Ulysses, who appeased the fury of the one,and shamed the other of his paradoxes and profligacies; it is the Virgin whom the Christian litany callsthe seat of wisdom.
"The quality of the feminine mind has the effect of serving the genius of man as a radiator, by reflecting his thoughts at an angle which makes them appear more beautiful if they are correct, more absurd if they are false; consequently, of simplifying our knowledge and condensing it into simple propositions, easy to seize upon as simple facts, and the intuitive, aphoristic, imaged comprehension of which,while giving woman a share in the philosophy and the speculations of man, makes their memory clearer to him, their digestion more easy...There is not a man among the most learned, the most inventive, the most profound, who does not feel a sort of refreshment from conversation with women....
"Popularizers are generally minds of the feminine type; but man does not like to be subservient to the glory of man, and provident Nature has assigned this part to woman.
"Let her speak, then,let her write, even, I authorize and invite her to do so; but let her do it according to the measure of her feminine intelligence, since it is on this condition that she can serve us, andpleaseus,otherwise I withdraw the permission.
"Man has strength; but that constancy of which he boasts overmuch, he derives especially from woman.... Through her he endures, and learns true heroism.Upon occasion, she can set him the example of it; she will be, then,more sublime than he.
"Woman will render the law kind, and will convert this two-edged sword into an olive branch.... There is no justice without tolerance; now, it is in the exercise of tolerance that woman excels; by the sensibility of her heart and the delicacy of her impressions, by the tenderness of her soul, by her love, in fine, she will blunt the sharp angles of justice, destroy its asperities, of a divinity of terror make a divinity of peace. Justice, the mother of Peace, would be only a cause of disunion to humanity, were it not for this tempering which she receives especially from woman."—Id.
And what chastity does woman possess! With what constancy she awaits her betrothed! What continence she observes during the absence or sickness of her husband! Ah! "woman alone knows how to be modest.... Through this modesty, which is her most preciousprerogative, she triumphs over the transports of man, and ravishes his heart."—Id.
And what wisdom in her choice of the companion of her life!
"She desires man to be strong, valiant, ingenious; she turns from him if he is mincing and delicate."—Id.
Now, my unloved, indocile, and very irreverent disciple, let us recapitulate.
Woman, with respect to physical, intellectual and moral beauty, is to man as 3 to 2; "thus it may be said, indeed, that between man and woman there exists a certain equivalence, arising from their respective comparison, in the two-fold point of view of strength and beauty; if, by labor, genius, and justice, man is to woman as 27 to 8, in her turn, by graces of form and mind, by amenity of character and tenderness of heart, she is to man as 27 to 8.... But these respective qualities are incommutable, cannot be the subject of any contract....
"Now, as every question of preponderance in the government of human life is within the jurisdiction either of the economical order, or of the philosophical or judicial order, it is evident that superiority of beauty, even of that which is intellectual and moral, cannot create a compensation for woman, whose condition is thus made fatally subordinate."—Id.
Do you understand me now?
AUTHOR.I understand that this is pure sophistry, a thing easily demonstrated; that if yourthesisis absurd, yourantithesis, however complimentary it may be, is quite as much so; that you have piled contradictions upon contradictions, and that it is a sad spectacle to me to see so strong and fine an intellect as yours abandon itself to such practices.
You shall judge for yourself whether my reproaches and regrets are well founded.
In theThesisyou say: man alone is in himself intelligent and just, he alone is adequate to his destiny. Woman has no reason for existing; without man, shewould not emerge from the bestial condition.
In theAntithesis: without woman, who is the principle of animation of man, the motive power of all science, of all art, of all industry, of all virtue—without woman, who renders justice possible, thought comprehensible and applicable, man, far from being in himself just, intelligent, a worker, would be but a brute,who would violate his female, strangle his little ones, and pursue his fellow men in order to devour them.
What follows from these divergent affirmations? That if woman alone is inadequate to her destiny, man alone is inadequate to his, and that the adequateness of both is caused by the synthesis of their respective qualities.
It also follows, by your own admission, that man receives as much from woman as she receives from him, since, if he rescues her from the bestial state, she rescues him from the state of brute ferocity.
It follows, lastly, by your own admission, that there is equivalence between the respective qualities of the two sexes. Only you pretend that these qualities cannot be measured by each other, and cannot therefore be subject for contract, and that the qualities of man being more important to the social state than those of woman, the latter should be subordinated to the former.
Tell me, is there commutability between the qualities that distinguish men from each other?
Between the man of genius and the humble rag-picker?
Between the philosopher who elevates the human mind and the porter who does not even know how to read?
Between the brain that discovers a great natural law and the one that reflects on nothing?
To answer affirmatively is impossible: for we only compare things of the same nature.
Now, if there can be no commutability between individuals so different, is there not, according to your system, subject for social contract between them?
Why then do you claim that these men should beequal socially?
Why then do you admit that they may associate things in a private contract which cannot be subjected to a common measure?
There is no need to be learned in philosophy or economy to knowthat any contract whatsoever is an admission of personal insufficiency; that we would not enter into partnership with others if we could dispense with them; and that in general the design of the contracting parties isto establish commutability where it has not been established by the nature of things.
To a common work, one brings his idea, another his hands, a third, his money, a fourth, custom: if each of the parties had had all these combined, no one would have thought of forming a partnership: a happy insufficiency brought them together, and caused them to establish equivalence between the shares of capital which could not be subjected to a common measure.
Were it true, therefore, that the qualities of the sexes differ as you pretend, then, as through this same difference,they areequallynecessary to the collective work, they areessentiallysubject to contract, andequivalent.
But do they differ as you say? You know the answer ofscienceandfacts. We will not return to it. All your distinctions of beauty and strength are only imaginary classifications. We all know that of eighteen millions of Frenchmen, at the present time, we have a few men of genius, absorbed in specialties, a few more men of talent, perhaps not four philosophers, mediocrities in abundance, and an immense host of cyphers. It is mockery, therefore, to establish the right of prepotency of a sex from qualities which, on the one hand, do not exist in each of its members, and, on the other, are often found in the highest degree in the sex which it is claimed to reduce to subjection.
Besides, did your sex possess the qualities which you ascribe to it, to the exclusion of mine; since, by your admission, there would be neither civilization, nor science, nor art, nor justice, without the qualities you term peculiar to woman; and since, without these qualities, man would be only a brute and an anthropophagus, it thence follows that woman isat leastthe equivalent of man, if not his superior.
Let us now notice a few of your contradictions.
1stThesis. Woman is a sort of mean term between man and the rest of the animal kingdom.
Antithesis.No; woman is the idealisation of man, in that which is purest and most sublime in him.
2dThesis. Woman is an inert creature, devoid of understanding, that has no reason for existing.
Antithesis.No; woman is the animating principle of man; without her, he could not fulfil his destiny; she is the motive power of all justice, all science, all industry, all civilization, all virtue.
3dThesis. Woman does not know how to express an opinion in set terms, or to assign reasons for it; she has only disconnected ideas, erroneous reasonings; she mistakes chimeras for realities, composes nothing but medleys, monsters.
Antithesis.No; the intellect of woman is finer than that of man; she has a wiser, more prudent, more reserved mind; she is the foil of masculine ideas. She is Minerva shaming Ulysses for his paradoxes and profligacies; she is the seat of wisdom.
4thThesis. Without the magnetic influence of man, woman would not emerge from the bestial state.
Antithesis.Without the magnetic influence of woman, man would be but a ferocious beast.
5thThesis. The woman who philosophises and writes, destroys her progeny; she had better go iron her collars; she is good for nothing but to be concubine or courtesan.
Antithesis.Woman should participate in the philosophy and speculations of man, and popularize them by her writings.
6thThesis. The conversation of woman exhausts, enervates; he who wishes to preserve intact the force of his mind and body, will flee her.
Antithesis.The conversation of woman refreshes the most eminent men.
7thThesis. Woman has an infirm conscience; she is immoral, anti-judicial; she is worth nothing as to moral responsibility until forty-five years of age.
Antithesis.Woman is the mirror of the conscience of man, the incarnation of this conscience; through her alone justice becomes possible; she is the guardian of morals; she is superior to man in moral beauty.
8thThesis. Woman is without virtue.
Antithesis.Woman excels in tolerance; through her, man learns constancy and true heroism.
9thThesis. Woman is immodest: she takes the initiative in affairs of love.
Antithesis.Woman alone knows how to be modest; in principle, there are no impure women; woman calms the sensual passions of man.
10thThesis. Woman prefers an ugly, old, and wicked man.
No; woman prefers a pretty, mincing puppet, a beau.
Antithesis.No; woman wishes man strong, valiant, ingenious; she turns from him when he is but a pretty, mincing puppet, a beau.
I might go on thus to a hundred, and then make a cross to begin another hundred. Can it be possible that you trifle in this manner with your readers?
PROUDHON.The contradiction is not in my thought, but only in the terms. The woman of my thesis is she who has not been subjected to masculine magnetism, to which the woman of my antithesis, on the contrary, has been subjected.
AUTHOR.You would have reason to laugh at us, should we take such an answer in earnest. What! have you seen women outside of society, who would have taken men for monkeys?
Have you proved that in this menagerie, they think falsely, they write badly, they are worth nothing as to conscience until forty-five years of age?
That there, in the absence of men, the women take the initiative in affairs of love?
That the conversation of these women exhausts, enervates the men who are not there?
That these women prefer the old, ugly and wicked men, or the pretty, mincing puppets, who are not at their disposal?
If the woman of your thesis is the one who has not been subjected to masculine influence, why do you take the women whom you attack from among those who have been subjected to it?
Your contradictions, Master, are genuine and fair contradictions. For you as for us, there is but one woman: she who lives in the society of man, who has, like him, faults and vices, and who influences him as much as she is influenced by him: the other has never existed except in the brain of mystics and of victims of hallucination.
But we will leave this.
I have been told that you have spoken of love: it would seem to me impossible, did I not know your audacity.
PROUDHON.I have spoken of it, as well as of Marriage.
AUTHOR.Well! let us make a little excursion into these two territories. We will first speak of Love.
V.
PROUDHON.Love!... It wearies and annoys me greatly. I have never yet been able to make my ideas agree on this subject.
I at first defined love: "the attraction of the two sexes towards each other with a view to reproduction," adding that this attraction becomes purified by the adjunction of the Ideal. I even made a most beautiful discovery with respect to this, namely: that there is a sexual division because it is impossible to idealize anything but the objective.—Vol.III.
AUTHOR.How you run on! Then all of the animal and vegetable species in which the sexes are separated have an ideal in love? An ideal in the brain of a horse or a mare may pass, since there is a brain; but where will you lodge that of the male and female flower?
PROUDHON.On my honor, I never thought of asking myself that question. We will return, if you please, to the definition of human love. I say, then, that love is an attraction given with a view to reproduction; notwithstanding, I think, also, that to love, properly called, progeny is odious.—Id.
AUTHOR.But this is a contradiction...
PROUDHON.Am I to blame for that! You know, that in my eyes, man and woman formthe organ of justice, the humanitary Androgynus. Now I affirm that love is the moving power of justice, because it is this that attracts towards each other the two halves of the couple. It is through love, therefore, that the conscience of man and woman is opened to the knowledge of justice, which does not hinder it from being "the most powerful fatality by which nature could have found the secret of obscuring reason within us, of afflicting the conscience, and of chaining the free will."—Id.
AUTHOR.The moving power of justice, the sentiment which opens the conscience of the sexes to justice, and which forms the judicial organ, disturbs the reason and afflicts the conscience! But this is a contradiction.
PROUDHON.Once more, am I to blame for it? Love, sought for itself, renders man unworthy, and woman vile; and stop! "love, even when sanctioned by justice, I do not like."—Id.
AUTHOR.Have you not said that without the love inspired in man by the beauty of woman, there wouldbe neither art, nor science, nor industry, nor justice; that man would be only a brute?
PROUDHON.Ah! I have said much more!... This love, the motor of justice, the father of civilization, is, notwithstanding,the abolition of justice, which exacts that it should be cast aside as soon as its office of motor is performed. The impulse, the movement given, it must be dispensed with. In marriage, it should play the smallest part possible; "all amorous conversation, even between betrothed lovers, even between husband and wife, is indecorous, destructive of domestic respect, of the love of labor and the practice of social duty." A marriage of pure inclination is nearly allied to shame, and "the father that gives his consent to it is deserving of censure."—Id.
AUTHOR.A father deserving of censure because he unites those who yield to the motive power of justice!
PROUDHON.Let young people marry without repugnance, that is right.... But "when a son, a daughter, to satisfy inclination, tramples under foot the wishes of the father, disinheritance is his first right and most sacred duty."—Id.
AUTHOR.Thus love, the motor of justice, the cause of civilization, the necessity for reproduction, is at the same time a thing of shame which should be feared and banished from marriage, and that, in certain cases, deserves disinheritance!... May the gods bless your contradictions, and posterity pass lightly over them!
PROUDHON.I can say nothing more satisfactory on the subject; but, let us talk of marriage; I am strong indeed on that point.
Every function supposes an organ; man is the organ of liberty; but justice exacts an organ composed of twoterms: the couple. It is necessary that the two persons that compose it should be dissimilar and unequal, "because, if they were alike, they would not be completed by each other; they would be two beings wholly independent, without reciprocal action, incapable, through this cause, to produce justice.... In principle, there is no difference between man and woman, except a simple diminution of energy in their faculties.
"Man is stronger, woman is weaker, that is all.... Man is the power of that of which woman is the ideal, and reciprocally, woman is the ideal of that of which man is the power."—Id.
Androgyny laid down, I define marriage to be: "the sacrament of justice, the living mystery of universal harmony; the form given by nature itself to the religion of the human race. In a lower sphere, marriage is the act by which man and woman, elevating themselves above love and the senses, declare their wish to be united according to the law, and, as far as in them lies, to pursue the social destiny, by laboring for the Progress of Justice.
"In this family religion, it may be said that the father is the priest, the wife the god, the children the people....All are in the hands of the father, fed by his labor, protected by his sword, subjected to his government,within the jurisdiction of his court, heirs and continuers of his thought....Woman remains subordinate to man, because she is an object of worship, and because there is no common measure between the force and the ideal.... Man will die for her, as he dies for his faith and his gods, but he will keep for himself the command and the responsibility."—Id.
In result, the spouses are equal, since there is communityof fortune, of honor, of absolute devotion; "in principle and practice... this equality does not exist,cannot exist.... The equality of rights supposing an equilibrium between the advantages with which Nature has endowed woman and the more powerful faculties of man, the result would be that woman, instead of being elevated by this equilibrium, would be denaturalized, debased. By the ideality of her being, woman is, so to speak, beyond price.... That she may preserve this inestimable charm, which is not a positive faculty in her, but a quality, a manner, a state, she must accept the law of marital power:equality would render her odious, would be the dissolution of marriage, the death of love,the destruction of the human race.
"And the glory of man consists in reigning over this admirable creature, in being able to say: she is myself idealized, she is more than I, and, notwithstanding, would be nothing without me.... In spite of this or on account of this, I am and ought to remain the head of the community; if I yield the command to her, she becomes debased and we perish."—Id.
Marriage should be monogamous, "because conscience is common between the spouses, and because it cannot, without being dissolved, admit a third participant."—Id.
It should be indissoluble, because conscience is immutable, and the spouses could not procure an exchangewithout being guilty of sacrilege. If they are obliged to separate, "the deserving one needs only to heal the wounds made in his heart and conscience, the other has no longer the right to aspire to marriage, but must be content with concubinage."—Id.
What do you think of this theory?
AUTHOR.Hitherto I have refused to believe in the god Proteus; but on contemplating you, Master, I abjure my incredulity.
You appear to us first under the garb and form of Manou, and we discuss his physiology;
You appear to us next, successively, in the shape and vestments of Moses, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Bonaventure; you are incarnated for a moment in Paracelsus;
Lastly, you put on the Roman toga, over which you wrap the ungraceful robe of Auguste Comte.
All this is too old, too unsightly for our age.... Have you really nothing better to give us than the resurrection of the Roman law at the glorious time when Cincinnatus ate his dish of lentils stark naked?
PROUDHON.What! do you dispute that marriage byconfarreation is not the masterpiece of the human conscience?
AUTHOR.Do I dispute it? Yes, indeed, and many other things beside. But tell me, what meaning do you give to the wordssacramentandmystery, that sound so hollow and false from your lips?
PROUDHON.Despite all my explanations concerning marriage, there nevertheless remains a mystery with respect to it. This is all I can tell you in elucidation. You must comprehend that "marriage is an institutionsui generis, formed at the same time at the tribunal of human justice by contract, and at the spiritual tribunal by sacrament, and which perishes as soon as the one or the other of these two elements disappears."—Id.
You must also comprehend that "marriage is a function of humanity, outside of which love becomes a scourge, the distinction of the sexes has no longer any meaning, the perpetuation of the species becomes a realinjury to the living,justice is contrary to nature and the plan of the creation is absurd."—Id.
AUTHOR.The plan of the creation absurd, and justice contrary to nature without marriage! What does this mean in plain language?
PROUDHON.What! Is your intellect so feeble that it does not comprehend that, without marriage, there is not, there cannot be justice?
AUTHOR.Then marriage is necessary to all?
PROUDHON.No; but "all participate in it and receive its influence through filiation, consanguinity, adoption which, universal in its essence, in order to act, has no need of cohabitation.... In the animic or spiritual point of view, marriage is to each of us a condition of felicity.... Every adult, healthy in mind and body, whom solitude or abstraction has not sequestered from the rest of mankind, loves, and by virtue of this love, contracts marriage in his heart.... Justice, which is the end of love, and which can be obtained either by domestic initiation, by civic communion, or, lastly, by mystical love," suffices "for happiness in every condition of age and fortune."—Id.
And do not confound marriage with any other union, with concubinage, for example, "which is the mark of a feeble conscience." I do not however condemn the concubinary, for "society is not the work of a day, virtue is difficult to practise, without speaking of those to whom marriage isinaccessible."—Id.
In my opinion, it is for the interest of woman, of children, and of morals, that concubinage should be regulated by legislation. Every child should bear the name of the concubinary father, who should provide for his subsistence and for the expenses of his education;"the forsaken concubine should also have a right to an indemnity, unless she has been the first to enter into another concubinage."—Id.
But it is not from concubinage, but from marriage that all justice, all right proceeds. This is so true, that if you "take away marriage, the mother is left with her tenderness, but without authority, without rights:she can no longer do justice to her son; there is illegitimacy, a first step backward, a return to immorality."—Id.
AUTHOR.All that you have just said concerning love, marriage, justice and right, contains so many equivocations, errors, sophisms, and so much pathos, that nothing less than a huge volume would suffice to refute, after first explaining you. We will content ourselves, therefore, with dwelling on the principal points.
VI.
1. The Androgynus, by definition, is a being combining the two sexes. Now marriage does not make of man and womana single being; each preserves his individuality; your humanitary Androgynus is not therefore worth the trouble of discussion; it is only a fantasy.
2. Every organ supposes a function, it is true, but whatfactsauthorize you to say that the married couple is the organ of justice? Especially when you take the trouble to contradict yourself, in admitting that justice is produced outside of marriage; that there is no need of being married to be just?
The organ of justice, like all other organs, is in each of us; it is the moral sense which comes into action when the point in question is the appreciation of themoral value of an act, or to apply to our own conduct the moral science accepted by the reason of the age.
3. According to you, equilibrium isequality;equality is justice: there is, therefore, a contradiction on your part in exacting of two beings, endowed each with liberty, will and intellect, that they should acknowledge themselvesunequalto produceequality.
4. To affirm, as you have done, that progress is the realization of the ideal through free will; that, consequently, the ideal is superior to the reality, and that man progresses because he suffers himself to be guided by it; then to affirm that woman is the ideal of man and that, notwithstanding, she islessand shouldobey, is a double contradiction. If the point from which you start be admitted, logic would exact that man should permit himself to be guided by woman. But what is the use of discussing a thing that is devoid of meaning to the intellect? If man, according to you, represents in reality strength, reason, justice, woman being the idealization of man, would therefore represent the greatest strength, the loftiest reason, the most sublime justice.... Do you pretend to say this, you who affirm the contrary?
5. To say that marriage is an institutionsui generis, asacrament, amystery, is to affirm what? And what enlightenment do you fancy that you have given us? Are you fully sure of comprehending yourself better than we comprehend you? I doubt it.
6. Can you demonstrate why, in an association between strong, intelligent men, and weak, narrow-minded men, justice exactsequality, respect for the dignity of all, and declares the slavedebasedwho submits; whilst in the association of man and woman,identical in speciesaccording to you, the woman who is always, according to you, the weak and narrow-minded being, would bedebasedand would becomeodiousby equality?
7. Can you explain also how, in a couple which stands for the producer of justice or equality, this equalitywould be the death of love and the destruction of the human race?
Grant that such a farrago of nonsense and contradictions presents as many unfathomablemysteriesas your marriage.
We will say nothing of divorce: we leave it to modern reason and conscience whether the dissolution of morals and of the family, due in a great measure to the indissolubility of marriage, does not give cause that it should be granted. What reasons do you give, besides, to support your opinions? An absurdity: that the rupture of marriage issacrilege; an affirmation contradicted by facts: that conscience is immutable.
8. Between the bastard and his mother, there is no justice, say you. Your conscience is younger by two thousand and some hundred years than the modern conscience. In the work of reproduction, the task to be performed with reference to the new being, is divided between the parents. On the woman, as the more vital, more elastic, and more resisting, devolves the more perilous part of this task. You shall risk your life to form humanity from your own substance, says Nature to her. To the man it belongs to pay his debt to his children by erecting the roof under which they take shelter, by bringing the food which you elaborate or prepare for them. To him it belongs to accomplish his duty towards his sons by the use of his strength, as you accomplish yours by supplying them with your blood and your milk.
Your rights over the child arise, adds conscience, from his incapacity to take care of himself, from the duties which you fulfil towards him, from the obligation under which you are placed to form his reason and conscience, and to make him a useful and moral citizen.
Well, what happens most of the time, in cases of illegitimacy? That the father having weakly, cruelly, contrary to all justice, deserted his task, the mother performs double duty towards her children:she is at once father and mother.
And it is when this mother has adoubleright that you dare to say that she hasnone! that between her and her son there is no justice! In truth, I should rather live among savages than in a society that thinks andfeelslike you.
A mother has an incontestable right over her child, for she has risked her own life to give it birth: the father acquires rights over it only when ever he fulfils his duty; when he does not fulfil it, he has no right; thus says reason. In this question, marriage signifies nothing. If I were illegitimate, and my father had basely abandoned me, I should despise and hate him as the executioner of my mother; as a man without heart and conscience, a vile egotist; and I should doubly love and respect her who had been at once my mother and my father. Such are the dictates of my conscience, my reason, and my heart.
9. What is your marriage,the first form given by Nature to the religion of the human race, in which woman is an idol who does the cooking and mends the stockings of her priest?
What is this institution, in which man is reputed todefend his wife and children with his sword, whom the law defends, even against him?
In which man is reputed to support by his labor those who often labor more than he, or who bring him a dowry?
The wife and children are under the jurisdiction of the tribunal of man!May the gods preserve us from this frightful return to the manners and customs of the patriarchs and Romans. Women and children are under the jurisdiction of the social tribunal, and it is safer for them: the French wife has not at least to fear that her Abraham will sacrifice her little Isaac, nor that her domestic despot, leaving the child on the ground, like the ancient Roman, will thus condemn it to death. Society has a heart and generous proctors who, happily, no longer see the family tribunal in the same light as Proudhon. It is true that our author is an Epimenides, awaking after a sleep of more than two thousand years.
I have finished, Master; have you anything more to say?
PROUDHON.Certainly. I have to speak of the sphere of woman. This sphere is "the care of the household, the education of childhood, the instruction of young girls under the superintendence of the magistrates, the service of public charity. We dare not add the national festivals and spectacles, which might be considered as the seed-time of love.
"Man is the worker, woman the housewife.
"The household is the full manifestation of woman.
"For woman, the household is an honorable necessity.
"As all her literary productions are always reduced to a domestic novel, the whole value of which is to serve, through love and sentiment, to the popularizationof justice, so her industrial production is brought back in conclusion, to the labors of the household; she will never depart from this circle."—Id.
AUTHOR.Pardon my astonishment, Master, that woman, whose mind isirremediably false, who isimmoral, who composes nothing butmedleys,monsters, whotakes chimeras for realities, who does not even know how to write a novel, knows how, notwithstanding, by your own admission, to write a novel in order to popularize justice through sentiment and love. She therefore comprehends, feels, and loves justice?
I remark next, that the cares of the household arelabor;
That education islabor;
That the service of public charity islabor;
That the arrangement and superintendence of festivals and spectacles presume variedlabors;
That to popularize justice through a domestic novel islabor;
Whence it follows that woman is aworker, that is, a useful producer; she differs from man, therefore, merely in the kind of production; and we have only to ascertain whether the labor of woman is as useful to society as that of man. I charge myself, when you like, with establishing thisequivalencebyfacts.
I remark, in the second place, that the education of childhood, the instruction of young girls, the service of public charity, the arrangement of festivals and spectacles, the popularization of justice by literature, do not form a part of the labors of the household; and that woman, therefore, is notmerely housewife.
I remark, thirdly, that our female superintendents, merchants, artists, accountants, clerks, and professors,are no more housewives than your male superintendents, merchants, artists, book keepers, clerks, and professors; that our female cooks and waiting-maids are no more housewives, than your male cooks, bakers, confectioners, and footmen; that, in all these functions, and in many others, women equal men, which proves that they are not less fitted than you for employments that do not pertain to the household, and that you are not less adapted than they to those that do pertain to it. Rude facts thus stifle your affirmations, and show us that woman may besomething else than housewife or courtesan.
Lastly, Master, what is the position of all women relatively to all men?
PROUDHON.Inferiority; for the entire feminine sex fills the place with regard to the other sex, in certain respects, of the wife with regard to the husband: this proceeds from the sum total of the respective faculties.
AUTHOR.So there is neither liberty nor equality even for the woman who has not a father or husband?
PROUDHON."The truly free woman is the woman who is chaste; the chaste woman is she who experiences no amorous emotion for any one,not even for her husband."—Vol.III.
AUTHOR.Such a woman is not chaste: she is a statue. Chastity being avirtue, supposes the dominion of the reason and the moral sense over an instinct: the chaste woman, therefore, is she who controls a certain instinct, not she who is destitute of it. I add that the woman who yields herself to her husband without attraction, plays the part of a prostitute. I knew well that you understood nothing either of love or of woman!
Shall we, in conclusion, compare your doctrine concerningthe right of woman with that which you profess concerning right in general?
PROUDHON.Willingly ... since I cannot do otherwise.
AUTHOR.Do you admit that woman is identical in species with man?
PROUDHON.Yes, only her faculties are less energetic.
AUTHOR.I grant you this for the sake of discussion. Expound your general theory concerning right, I will apply it to woman, and you shall draw the conclusion.
VII.
PROUDHON."The law regulating only human relations,it is the same for all; so that, to establish exceptions, it will be necessary to prove that the individuals excepted are of superior order, or inferior to the human species."—Creation of Order in Humanity.
AUTHOR.Now you admit that woman is neither superior nor inferior to the human species, but is identical in species with man; the law is therefore the same for her as for man.
PROUDHON.I draw the contrary conclusion,because man is the stronger.
AUTHOR.A contradiction, Master.
PROUDHON."Neither figure, nor birth, northe faculties, nor fortune, nor rank, nor profession, nor talent,nor anything which distinguishes individuals apart, establishes between them a difference of species: all being men, and the law only regulating human relations, it is the same for all."—Id.
AUTHOR.Now, woman is in essence identical with man; she differs from him only in manners and qualitieswhich, according to you, by no means make her differ in essence; once more, therefore, the law is the same for her as for man.