To this question squarely put: “Why does a man arrogate to himself the right to live as he chooses, and why should a woman submit to a prohibitive moral code?”—men answer that in marriage the virtue of the wife and the legitimacy of her children are absolutely and supremely essential.

This touches one point merely, and only applies to married women. In all that concerns “free” women, by what right are they condemned to abstain from making full use of their independence, as most men do? “Woman’s life, like man’s,” says Miramont, “is a harmonious evolution, by which every phase is developed, and which thus brings into play a succession of forms and aspects of existence. Daughter, mother and grandmother; dreamer, fighter, thinker—woman, like man, passes through many transformations in the course of life, and is always progressive.”

By the same fact of social evolution, thanks to her participation in the battle of life, and also to a rational education, it has long been proved that woman is not an inferior creature, of no use save for the propagation of the species.

We are far removed, happily, from the theories of Schopenhauer, who declared that woman was afflicted with intellectual shortness of sight, that she was childish, futile and narrow, inferior to man in everything concerning rectitude and scrupulous honesty; that she was lacking in sense and reflection, incapable of taking any unbiased view, etc. etc.

If woman’s characteristic feature be that nature has destined her for motherhood, it is none the less true that, just as she has a fine skin and quick sensibilities, her intellect is prompt to seize details, and that she possesses a brain as well furnished as that of man.

Her apparent inferiority comes from the fact that woman is oppressed by the law and ill-treated by the moralist, whence result her native timidity and diffidence. The truth is that man, desiring to keep the supremacy attributed to him, does not care to see in woman the qualities of courage and independence. He will not admit the immanent struggle between two beings inspired by the same needs and the same desires. Men would like women to remain tied down to household cares, while thinking women who have ceased to resign themselves to this wish their sex to profit by all the rights of men.

The partisans of absolute feminism desire that there should be no difference between men and women, in the name of biological equality which incites them to claim social equality.

Without going so far as this, it is certain that women should now enjoy more independence and be authorised, without losing caste in the eyes of moralists, to prove the strength of their personal faculties.

Unfortunately, as a modern thinker has observed: “Kept apart from magnificent realities ... maintained continually in a state of moral independence worse than physical slavery, only quitting the maternal yoke to fall under that of a husband, trained entirely with a view to marriage, which is to transform at a stroke the child into the wife, the wife into the mother, educated according to the prejudices of their set at the sacrifice of expansion of their own personality, women do not develop normally, except by finding a kindred soul, according to the ideal formed in their dim consciousness. And as social conventions do not permit them to seek this ideal, which is falsified and made vague, too, by novel-reading, enlightenment usually comes to them too late to destroy the effect of a narrow existence accepted through timidity, ignorance, or chagrin, and moulded by the dictates of society; so they live, for the most part, either like children broken in to their destiny, or like rebels in search of visionary compensations: in any case misunderstood.”

I have nothing better to add. For centuries, man has denied to woman her finest qualities, which are fearlessness and presence of mind, and the majority of women have come to be convinced themselves that these qualities are unwomanly and to be reckoned faults.

Now, if tenderness be woman’s most beautiful attribute, it should be recognised that true tenderness is especially found amongst those women who are courageous, strong and endowed with shrewd sense. The acceptance of servitude does not admit of real tenderness, such as influences, for instance, the conception and carrying out of works of art, as incites to noble action, and produces wonderful results in every degree of the social scale.

For years, in many countries, the attention of thinkers has been fixed upon the liberation of woman. Many mistakes have been made. Against one John Stuart Mill a crowd of philosophers like Nietzsche have arisen, but the idea is gaining ground in scientific centres, and, with the help of rational Socialism, the work of woman’s emancipation is being steadily pursued.

Reverting to old times, we find that in many primitive races, the males were chosen by the females for their valour, physical strength, or natural beauty. This selection having led to the progressive development of the male in the majority of races, resulted in an ideal female type also.

But when the woman became the “property” of the man, the slave destined to work for the male, the development of the race stopped short; the salutary effect of the woman’s free choice having ceased.

In a new state of society, when woman, duly trained for her part, shall recover her complete freedom, we shall see the triumph of affinities, and the power of a feminine ideal will ensure for the future a new and vigorous race.