Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/245

Rh I shall perhaps never have the opportunity of meeting, or of associating with, then I feel quite hopeless. Men and women, only men and women with lofty minds and noble hearts, and a pleasant, cozy corner in which to enjoy their companionship — more I do not want."

With all my heart I agree with you, but I am more modest than you. I do not need half a dozen in order to be a man among men. But it is perhaps just as hard to find three as six. I, too, have found it easier to find men in Europe without the lantern of Diogenes. There there was more mutual understanding, a greater need of companionship, of common aspirations, a circumstance that can be readily explained by the common past, in part also by the greater want of liberty, while here each one of us is seeking for a new path, and the greater freedom of life directs the attention more to the external. But in Europe I have noticed a greater disposition among women to seek and cherish the society of free people than here. — It is remarkable that among the five million Germans in this country one meets with so few women who by their intellect, their character, and their aspirations rise above the level of philistinism. But in spite of this I cannot yet bring myself to despair of German women as I do of the majority of German men.

"If we women are nothing and accomplish nothing it is certainly the men who are to blame for it, for it is a pity how thoroughly dependent on them