Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/214

198 tyranny, and you from your lies. The triumph of weakness over strength, through the sentiments of humanity, that is the ‘surest and noblest triumph that we can think of, and can wish for, and this triumph is exclusively feminine.

It is a lie, therefore, when men deny our equality of rights, and it is a daughter of this lie, when they, instead of acknowledging their own unfitness for a state of humane equality, try to make it appear as though we were not yet adapted to equality. As soon as men begin to be truly humane beings, they will cease to oppose the equality of women; only so long as they remain brutal egotists will they protest against humanity without the bones of a grenadier, i. e., the women, sharing their dominion.

But if that were all we could await the future more calmly, for it would indeed be a difficult task for us to attempt, as a humanizing element, to mitigate the rule of men in the domain of politics, at a time when they still regard it as the greatest honor to slay each other by the hundred thousand, without knowing why; when millions of them still stand prepared like gladiators, to fall upon each other at the command of some emperor, to tear each other to pieces, and fertilize the earth with streams of blood. Why? They have not even the incentive that excuses the gladiator. They slay from habit, or from servility; they allow themselves to be slain for a stiver or a gracious look. What glory to be a man!

In other words, there is nothing tempting, even