Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/183

 I need not quarrel with his assertion of the original difference between man and woman with regard to sexual relations. "I think," he writes, "it cannot be denied that while sexual passions and sexual gratification are of far more moment to the Male, the idea of the family is, in its turn, essentially a Female sentiment. The former inculcates and stimulates the roving freedom which is characteristic of the Male, the latter consolidates the family, and for the first time establishes the Female as an essential part of a social structure." (The last sentence is dark to me, but let it pass.) The statement may be taken as broadly true of primitive man. Further, it is quite clear that Mr. Heape is uttering almost a platitude, when he states (p. 195) that "The Male and Female are complementary; they are in no sense the same, and in no sense equal to one another; the accurate adjustment of society depends upon proper observance of this fact." No one thinks Male and Female are "the same," nor when people speak of "equality " do they in fact use the word in a mathematical sense. What people do wrap up, in confused and misleading terms, is, that although women are not the same as men, they have many of the same properties and therefore many of the same requirements. Shylock's plea for the Jew has been quoted with much force by women and on behalf of women: "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with