Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/32

16 often since been echoed, and those who did so have entirely overlooked that they repeated in one word a stupidity and a barbarity.

Xenophon thinks rather humanely of women, but still they appear to him as beings whom men, out of regard or pity, must take into their care. He thus expressed his opinion of their inferiority in his "Symposium": "Zeus has left the women whom he had loved behind him in the class of the mortals, but the men to whom he was devoted he exalted among the gods." Perhaps this proof admits of a refutation by the gallantry that it was no longer necessary to promote lovable women among the gods.

Aristoteles has a higher opinion of woman than Xenophon. He says among other things: "The ruling intelligence is to be attributed to man as the leader. All the other virtues are common to both sexes. Woman is subordinate to man, but still free, and the right to give good counsel (!) cannot be denied her. She furnishes the material which man utilizes."

"Woman is not at all to be regarded as a means for the furtherance of man's selfish ends."

"Husband and wife ought to work together for their support. They go hand in hand, they both accumulate property, their union rests on common benefits and pleasures."

Aristoteles demands that the husband should stake his possessions and his life in the defence of