Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/83

 The fashion of over-praising women, of asserting that their mental capacities are not only equal but superior to those of men, is a bad and harmful fashion. That woman should not be restricted in any rights, that the same respect and love should be observed towards her as towards men, that in the matter of rights she is equal to man, all this cannot be doubted. But to say that average women are gifted with the same spiritual power as men, to expect to find in every woman what you expect to find in every man, is to deceive yourself intentionally, and to do so detrimentally to woman... Expecting this you will demand it, and not finding it you will be irritated, and attribute to ill-will what is really an impossibility. So that the recognition of woman as she is, -a spiritually weaker being, is not cruelty; to claim her equality is cruel. By weakness or lesser spiritual power, I mean lesser subordination of the body to the spirit; especially which is an essentially feminine trait, -a lesser faith in the dictates of reason.

A good family life is possible only when the conviction has been instilled into and accepted by woman that she should always submit to her husband. I have said that this is proved by the fact that it has been so since the life of man has been known to us, and that family life with children is a passage in a fragile boat possible only when those in it submit to one individual. And this one has always been recognized as the man, for the reason that neither having nor nursing children, he can be a better guide for his wife than she for him. "But are women really always inferior to men?" Not at all. Unmarried, they are equals. "But what does it mean that at present