Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/261

Rh 1. The degradation and subordination of woman had its origin in the most barbaric primeval ages, in man's superior physical strength and wildness of temperament, and received permanent sanction from the monstrous creations of his ignorance and delusion, which placed a "God" upon the throne of the world without a goddess, and created man in the "image" of this "God," and woman merely from a "rib" of this man. The belief in God and its implications excludes the equality of woman from the start. The religious woman is the upholder of her own debasement, and only the pure, sovereign human mind is the savior of her dignity and of her rights.

2. The profound prejudice which has accustomed men to look upon the difference of the sexes as an inequality must be traced back to the origin of mankind. The manner in which the first men as well as the first animals originated is a mystery; but this manner, as well as the matter from which they originated, must have been the same for both sexes, and this equality must by their union logically have been preserved to the present day. Animals know of no inequality of the sexes and unite on a basis of equal rights for a common life-purpose. Man alone, who has the power to depart from nature, in order to return to it as a thinking being, could become so barbarous as to sophisticate the companionship by an arbitrary subordination of the weaker sex, thus establishing a union upon a difference of rights.