Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/233

Rh rank, superiority. When they fall in love they look much more to superiority in the position of the man than men look to the rank of her parents. If it is not an office or a title, it surely is a superiority of endowment or fame — in short, some kind of aristocratic quality, that determines the love of the girl. Love is aristocratic; it is superiority that is loved. Beauty is an aristocracy; few people in their appearance correspond to the conception of beauty," etc.

What a confession against men and for women these lines contain!

In other words, this confession in favor of the women reads thus: Gifted with quick emotions and a lively imagination, you cannot content yourselves with the merely apathetic consciousness of the existence of these or the other things or persons — no, by means of your more direct and more vital susceptibility to your environment, you quickly place yourself into a personal relationship to it, whether this relationship be one of sympathy or of antipathy. Your nature is especially attuned for sympathy, wherefore your proper element is love. But for alt" this, you generally have the good taste not to love what is most inferior. If you have your choice, you will love the general and not the corporal, the independently rich man, and not the dependent beggar, the handsome and not the ugly suitor, the noble and not the low, the cultured and not the vulgar, the famous and not the obscure, the poet and not the shop-keeper; yes, even the genius and not the