Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/234

218 ! In short, you women always love "superiorities" and not defects, i. e., what is lovable and not what is unlovely! Ina garden you would even pick the roses and not the nettles!

Such are the reproaches which Mr. Ruge heaps upon us women, in contrast to the men! But the praise which he thereby, indirectly, gives to men must, logically, consist of the opposite of these reproaches. I shall, however, limit it to the confession, which is contained in Mr. Ruge's demand, that we women ought also to make ourselves worthy of such praise, that is, that we, too, should love the opposite of "superiorities," that we ought not to be "aristocratic" in our love! We ought, then, to love the ugly men, and not the handsome, the insignificant and not the excellent, the philistines and not the men of genius!

No, Mr. Ruge, forever no! By all that is beautiful and noble upon earth, by all the happiness and all the suffering of the feminine soul, by all the ideals and desires of the heart, by all that is sweet and all that is painful, which finds lodgment in the human breast, by the joy of spring and the sadness of autumn, by the odor of flowers and the murmuring of the cypress, by all the bliss of life and all the bitterness of death, we do not want to love ugliness, insufficiency, vulgarity, philistinism, but, with all the fervor, all the devotion of our being, we want to love beauty, nobility of soul, truth, proud manhood-and, above all, genius! Not that false brilliancy which