Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/509

 before in the women, is replaced by the maternal feeling. I believe that women are absolutely equal with men, but the moment they marry and become mothers, there naturally takes place a division of labour in the conjugal pair. The maternal feelings absorb so much energy that there is little of it left for moral guidance, and the moral guidance naturally passes over to the husband. So it has been ever since we have known the world. Now, since this natural order of things has been misused,—since the guidance of man has been asserted through rude force, and women were liberated by Christianity,—woman has ceased to obey man from fear, or to delegate to him the guidance of life from a consciousness that it is better so; and there began a tangle and disorganization of life, which is noticeable in all layers of society and under all conditions.

The mental fashion of lauding the women, of asserting that they are spiritually not only equal, but even superior to men, is a very bad and harmful fashion.

There can be no doubt as to this, that women ought not to be limited in their rights, that we must treat a woman with the same deference and love as men, that she is legally man's equal; but to assert that the average woman is endowed with the same spiritual power as man, to expect to find in every woman what you expect to find in every man, means intentionally to deceive oneself, and—to deceive oneself to the injury of woman.

If we expect from woman the same as from man, we shall be demanding it; and if we do not find what we demand, we shall become irritated, shall ascribe to ill-will what is due to impossibility.

Thus it is not a cruelty to woman to recognize that she is what she is,—a spiritually weaker being; it is a cruelty to recognize her as equal.

What I call weakness or lesser spiritual power is the