Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/50

34 you wish from the start to introduce woman into the sphere of men? This is only apparently done. Woman is to participate in public and political life only as far as is consistent with her nature; but if public and political life has hitherto been so coarse and violent that only masculine nature and strength could perform the chief work in it, it neither follows for the past that the smaller part the more delicate nature of woman could necessarily have played in public life ought to have furnished a standard for her human rights, nor does it follow for the future that the work of public and political life will always remain so coarse and violent as it has been until now, and that therefore the participation of woman in the same must always meet with the same difficulties.

The chief work of history, that coarse preliminary work which has so far called for the greatest strength, and the purely male qualities, but which at the same time, to the disgrace of reason be it said, gave these qualities their most glorious significance, has hitherto been wholesale murder, war. This work could of course not be performed by the women; but neither could the successes, the fame, and the merit of it fall to their lot. The men carried on this murderous profession alone, had to carry it on alone according to their nature, and whatever the women did in the meantime, according to their nature, was not credited to them as worthy of the same distinction as