Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/22

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As a rule history considers women only in so far as they occasionally exert an apparent influence upon the history of men. The feminine half of humanity is usually overlooked like a superfluous appendage. The women are weak, they are silent, they patiently suffer, they do not rebel, and that is sufficient to expose them to disregard, to make them historically irresponsible. It would be of great interest to write a history from a radical point of view of the position which women have occupied among the different nations and in different ages in a social, political, and literary respect. I would undertake to do this work if I were sufficiently well read, and if the necessary material were not wanting to me as well as the leisure to make exhaustive use of the latter. I shall therefore content myself with giving from scant notes and recollections a brief survey, in order at least to uphold the leading idea that the position of women, dependent upon the general state of civilization and liberty of a people, can become an entirely just and honorable one only in that distant future in which the subordination of