Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/363

Rh him as a rib. And then the vexing rib as such! I have sought in vain to trace the meaning of the Biblical origin of woman, and could explain it only if man belonged to those beings whose best part 1s the cutlet. Perhaps this interpretation is also admissible, that the Bible meant to convey the impression that man's need of woman was so great that he would even "cut her out of his ribs," as we say, rather than do without her. But in that case it would have been more poetical and aesthetic to cut her out of his heart; however, at the time the Bible was written, aesthetics was as yet in a bad way.

The male origin of woman is, therefore, untenable, and if anyone insists on adhering to it, I would agree with him only if he meant to indicate thereby that man lost his most human part when woman was separated from him, and that that is the reason why he has remained as brutal and barbaric as he still shows himself to be on the average. Lessing says: "Nature wished to make of woman her masterpiece. But she made a mistake in the clay; she took too fine a quality." The fineness of the clay is certainly not one of man's defects; in that respect we shall still have to make the most strenuous efforts in order to become masterpieces. I attribute the fable of the paradisiacal genesis to the domineering ar-> rogance, with which man always condemns the weaker sex to dependence, and would even have it‘believe that it is indebted to him for its very existence. I, therefore, consider that interpretation of