Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/207

Rh to me. Do we fear, perhaps, that emancipated men would seize our knitting, or sit down by the embroidery frame? Or do you, too, want to frighten us with that bugbear of public duty, and deny us the use of our rights, because we are not able to undertake everything that the present condition of society imposes on its members, as a duty? Should we be slaves, because we are not able, for instance, to become instruments for the preservation of slavery — that is, soldiers — like the men? But even men, among themselves, do not measure their rights, according to their respective abilities, to fulfill public duties. The weak, the cripples, are absolved from military service, without, therefore, being deprived of the least of their human and civil rights; but women are to be disfranchised, because they have not the nature or the limbs of a grenadier. Whence this contradiction?

I think you may just as well lay aside your anxiety that we would crowd upon the battlefields and ships, if the right were granted us to do that which our ability and inclination leads us to do, as you might have spared us the lesson that we — women — are not men. You may take offense or not, but I must tell you frankly that at first, of course only at first, I laughed aloud when I learned from your answer that it was the destiny of women to become mothers. In order to learn that, Mr. Ruge, no one need study philosophy; nor need a philosopher fear that we might unlearn this destiny, or be tempted to