Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/102

98 develop, and use every human faculty; and the duty is to make use of the right, and make her human nature human history. She is here to develop her human nature, enjoy her human rights, perform her human duty. Womankind is to do this for herself, as much as mankind for himself. A woman has the same human nature that a man has, the same human rights—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—the same human duties; and they are as inalienable in a woman as in a man.

Each man has the natural right to the normal development of his nature, so far as it is general-human, neither man nor woman, but human. Each woman has the natural right to the normal development of her nature, so far as it is general-human, neither woman nor man. But each man has also a natural and inalienable right to the normal development of his peculiar nature as man, where he differs from woman. Each woman has just the same natural and inalienable right to the normal development of her peculiar nature as woman, and not man. All that is undeniable.

Now see what follows. Woman has the same individual right to determine her aim in life, and to follow it; has the same individual rights of body and of spirit, of mind and conscience, and heart and soul; the same physical rights, the same intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious rights which man has. That is true of womankind as a whole: it is true of Jane, Ellen, and Sally, and each special woman who can be named.

Every person, man or woman, is an integer, an individual, a whole person, and also a portion of the race, and so a fraction of humankind. The rights of individualism are not to be possessed, developed, used, and enjoyed by a life in solitude, but by joint action. Accordingly, to complete and perfect the individual man or woman, and give each an opportunity to possess, use, develop, and enjoy these rights, there must be concerted and joint action: else individuality is only a possibility, not a reality. So the individual rights of woman carry with them the same domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and political rights as those of man.

The family, community, Church, and State, are four modes of action which have grown out of human nature