Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/55

Rh It has been intimated before that the liberty and influence of women must grow in the same degree in which the brutal strength of men declines in value. The nearer, therefore, the time approaches when decisions through force are replaced by decisions based on right, when wars are abolished as barbarities, when the strength of the hands is directed only against nature, and even in that struggle has in a great measure become superfluous through the skill of machinery, etc., the more will the man approach the humane plane upon which the woman, so to speak, stands waiting until the savage has become appeased, and has developed the capacity of acknowledging a being as free and endowed with rights, who is wanting the strength to enforce its liberty and its rights. Woman represents, as it were, from the start the humane principle, and man in a certain sense becomes a human being only in so far as he approaches woman. A great part of that which hitherto has passed as "manly" is nothing more than barbarity. Brutal strength, which has been a mere means in the pioneer work of history, has come to be considered as a principle and as a permanent object. Thus what has been looked upon as the highest will hereafter be declared to be the lowest, and women will have to learn that many a "hero" whom they have adored as the ideal of manliness, at a later time will appear as a murderer or a rowdy.