Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/393

Rh took unto himself that wife, whose beauty he began to value. She became his property, his chattel. That was Astarte's reign.

"When he became further developed, he began to value her beauty more than before, and he began to worship her beauty. But her conscience was not yet developed. He valued in her only beauty. She could get her ideas from him alone. He said he only was a man, while she was not. She saw in herself only a beautiful, beautiful object, belonging to him; she did not look upon her as belonging to humanity. That was the reign of Aphrodite.

"But here the consciousness that she, too, was a human being, began to awake in her. What grief must have seized her at the very faintest appearance of this thought, that she was an independent human being! For she was not recognized as such. A man did not want her in any other relation than that of slave. And she said, 'I do not want to be your friend on this condition.' Then his passion compelled him to implore her and to humiliate himself, and he forgot that he did not look upon her as a human being, and he loved her, the resistant, the unapproachable, the virtuous maiden. But as soon as she put trust in his prayers, as soon as he touched her,—woe to her! She was in his clutches; his hands were stronger than her hands, and he made her his slave, and despised her. Woe to her! This was the sorrowful reign of the virgin.

"But ages past: my sister—dost thou know her? The one that before I appeared, did her work for thee. She always existed, she was before all, she was in existence as soon as man came upon earth, and she always worked untiringly. Hard was her task, slow her success, but she worked, worked, and her success increased. Man became more rational, woman more and more firmly recognized her equality with man, and the time came when I was born.

"This was not long ago; Oh, far from long ago. Do you know who first recognized that I was born, and told it to others? It was Rousseau, in his 'Nouvelle Eloïse.' From it, from him, people for the first time heard of me.

"Since then my kingdom has been spreading. But I am not yet tsaritsa over many. But it spreads rapidly, and you can foresee the time when I shall reign over all the earth. Only then people will perfectly appreciate how beautiful I am. Now, those who acknowledge my power, are not yet