Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/512

 of the sexes, or even about the superiority of the women over the men. For a man with a Christian world conception there can naturally be no question about giving any rights exclusively to men, or about not respecting and loving a woman like any other person; but to assert that woman has the same spiritual forces as man, especially that woman can just as much be guided by reason and can believe in the same way as man, is to demand of woman what she cannot give (I do not speak of exceptions), and to provoke in her irritation, which is based on the supposition that she does not want to do what she cannot do, without having for it a categorical imperative in reason.

If the question is about being removed by man from those cares and labours which result from education, or rather from tending on little children,—from putting them to bed, washing their linen and, in general, all linen, from preparing food for them and, in general, for all, from making clothes for them, and so forth,—this is in the highest degree not only un-Christian and not good, but also unjust.

Woman, as it is, bears the greater labour of carrying and nursing the children, and so, it would seem, it is natural that all the other cares ought to be taken over by man as much as it is possible without interfering with his work, which is also necessary for the family. And so it would be by all means, if the barbarous habit of throwing the whole burden of work on the weaker, and, therefore, on the oppressed, had not taken such firm root in our society. This has so permeated our habits that, in spite of the equality of woman as recognized by men, the most liberal man, as well as the most chivalrous, will warmly defend a woman's right to be a professor, a preacher, or will at the risk of his life rush to lift up a handkerchief which a woman has dropped, and so forth,