Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/266

250 still being written to-day. It is surprising that Christianity, which also at a later day came to greatly relish roasted living human flesh, has not adopted this Hindoo method of beatification.

Thus the spirit of all religions established by men, whose pious delight has always been in human sacrifice, the sacrifice of the helpless, has understood the rights of women! If woman wished, by a single fact, to prove herself the representative of true humanity, and by a single word to deny all complicity in the misery of the world, she need but say: Never has a woman, whatever else she may have done, in the capacity of queen, for instance, never has she founded a religion!

In drawing up our resolutions we have gone back to nature, this fountain head of all knowledge, to open men's eyes to the barbaric prejudice that permeates all his opinions, habits and laws, and through which he has deemed himself justified in conducting himself as the lord and owner of his fellow-beings of the feminine sex. Not until he has become entirely conscious of this prejudice, not until he has learned to recognize in the subordination of woman the debasement of his own race and humanity, will he be able to grant equal rights to us honestly and completely. Before this even the most just and humane man will concede them more or less as an act of mercy, rather than a demand of inexorable logic, the fulfillment of a categorical command of duty, the expiation of an ancient wrong. But when this false