Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/47

Rh a real monster of a woman, and it is astonishing that this "virgin" hypocrite found even a single lover.

In a word, the chief error in the direction of the emancipation of woman has hitherto consisted in the attempt to educate woman into a man, and even into a man of the present state of development, that is, on occasion even into a soldier, instead of vindicating her humanity and her right to citizenship in accordance with her nature as against man, and allowing her nature free scope of development and of activity. Because hitherto man alone could assert himself, the belief has arisen that the self-assertion of woman must begin on masculine domain. But with this sort of emancipation the feminine sex is benefited least of all. Let us but imagine the opposite case, namely, that the oppressed man is to be emancipated by a feminine education and by being assigned a feminine sphere of action. Without a true conception of and strict adherence to the feminine nature, every attempt at emancipation must necessarily lead to error and absurdity. We hear many a woman express the wish that she were a man. Not one of them would ever strike upon such unnatural wishes of despair, if she had the opportunity and liberty of being entirely a woman.

If the woman oversteps the limits of her nature and destiny, she does not find an elevated