Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/397

Rh If even in general any want of magnanimity toward the defenseless, and the abuse of superior strength as a right against the weak, is considered unmanly, I know of nothing in the world that is more unmanly than the egotistic denial of equal rights to beings whose equal worth we cannot question, and who are, moreover, as indispensable to us as our own life, whom we, in a state of exaltation, elevate to angels and goddesses, and "at whose feet we lie," according to a common poetic expression of the Don Juans, in order to gain their favor. Is it perhaps more manly "to lie at the feet" of a being who is our inferior in rights than of one who is our equal? I should like to hear such a prostrate model of manliness deliver one of his usual declamations on the "feminine sphere," at the moment when, with humble mien, he is bending his knee before his adored. The sovereign master kneeling before the disfranchised slave, from whom, by cringing flattery, he would obtain a gracious smile, in order, later on, to turn against her as the brutal tyrant, the heartless deceiver! What model specimens of manliness! Any little goose with a pretty face can daily amuse herself with putting a grim-bearded lord of creation to the test, and then avenge her disfranchisement upon him by a scornful refusal. Indeed, nowhere does this proud manliness, that rises with so much sovereign dignity above the disfranchised woman, suffer shipwreck more frequently and more wretchedly, than in his dealings with this weak