Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/355

Rh to any one. This is the greatest, the most comprehensive progress after which human aspirations have so far aimed, and to misapprehend this is possible only to the blindness of an ancient habit, and a hardened egotism, that sees in a hoary privilege the immutable decree of nature. This universal prejudice, so old, and so deeply rooted, which has erected a barrier ‘between the two halves of humanity, must be overthrown by a revolution that will create a new ethical consciousness, but a revolution, which, although it is directed against a wrong sustained only by force, ‘will for the first time give an example of a peaceful, purely intellectual resistance. Six hundred million women are fighting with purely intellectual, humane weapons against six hundred million men, and will conquer them, that they may change themselves as well as their opponents into truly humane beings. Was there ever a struggle more interesting than this?

I know that our aspirations will also meet with Opposition from some women, but they are irresponsible, by their numbers, as well as by their qualities. It is a well-known fact that in Paris, after the storming of the Bastille, several of the prisoners, instead of rejoicing in their liberty, begged to be returned to the prison. Long habit had so dulled them and estranged them from the external world that the prison atmosphere had become their vital air. In a somewhat similar manner some of the negroes in the South, after the emancipation,