Translated by Mary A. Ward, 1890.
March 17, 1868.--Women wish to be loved without a
why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good,
or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they
are themselves. All analysis seems to them to imply a loss
of consideration, a subordination of their personality to
something which dominates and measures it. They will
have none of it; and their instinct is just. As soon as we
can give a reason for a feeling we are no longer under the
spell of it; we appreciate, we weigh, we are free, at least
in principle. Love must always remain a fascination, a
witchery, if the empire of woman is to endure. Once the
mystery gone, the power goes with it. Love must always
seem to us indivisible, insoluble, superior to all analysis, if
it is to preserve that appearance of infinity, of something
supernatural and miraculous, which makes its chief beauty.
The majority of beings despise what they understand, and
bow only before the inexplicable. The feminine triumph
par excellence is to convict of obscurity that virile intelli-
gence which makes so much pretense to enlightenment.
And when a woman inspires love, it is then especially that
she enjoys this proud triumph. I admit that her exulta-
tion has its grounds. Still, it seems to me that love--true
and profound love--should be source of light and calm,
a religion and revolution, in which there is no place left
for the lower victories of vanity. Great souls care only
for what is great, and to the spirit which hovers in the
sight of the Infinite, any sort of artifice seems a disgraceful
puerility.
December 26, 1868. ....
If men are always more or less deceived on the subject
of women, it is because that forget that they and women
do not speak altogether the same language, and that
words have not the same weight or the same meaning for
them, especially in questions of feeling. Whether from
shyness or precaution or artifice, a woman never speaks
out her whole thought, and moreover what she herself
knows of it is but a part of what it really is. Complete
frankness seems to be impossible to her, and complete
self-knowledge seems to be forbidden her. If she is a
sphinx to us, it is because she is a riddle of doubtful
meaning even to herself. She has no need of perfidy, for
she is mystery itself. A woman is something fugitive,
irrational, indeterminable, illogical, and contradictory.
A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a
good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for
she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing
it, capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of
treason, "monstre incompréhensible,'' raised to the second
power, she is at once the delight and the terror of men.
_________
The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum
of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree
of perfection.
_________
Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt
everything. The final result of all deceptions and dis-
appointments is atheism, which may not always yield up
its name and secret, but which lurks, a masked specter,
within the depths of thought, as the last supreme ex-
plainer. "Man is what his love is," and follows the for-
tunes of his love.
May 13, 1869.--A break in the clouds, and through
the
blue interstices a bright sun throws flickering and uncer-
tain rays. Storms, smiles, whims, anger, tears--it is May,
and nature is in its feminine phase! She pleases our fancy,
stirs our heart, and wears out our reason by the endless
succession of her caprices and the unexpected violence of
her whims.
This recalls to me the 213th verse of the second
book of
the Laws of Manou. "It is in the nature of the feminine
sex to seek here below to corrupt men, and therefore wise
men never abandon themselves to the seductions of
women." The same code, however, says: "Wherever
women are honored the gods are satisfied." And again:
"In every family where the husband takes pleasure in his
wife, and the wife in her husband, happiness is ensured."
And again: "One mother is more venerable than a thous-
and fathers." But knowing what stormy and irrational
elements there are in this fragile and delightful creature,
Manou concludes: "At no age ought a woman to be
allowed to govern herself as she pleases."
Up to the present day, in several contemporary and
neighboring codes, a woman is a minor all her life. Why?
Because of her dependence upon nature, and of her sub-
jection to passions which are the diminutives of madness;
in other words, because the soul of a woman has some-
thing obscure and mysterious in it, which lends itself to
all superstitions and weakens the energies of man. To
man belong law, justice, science, and philosophy, all that
is disinterested, universal, and rational. Women, on the
contrary, introduce into everything favor, exception, and
personal prejudice. As soon as a man, a people, a litera-
ture, an epoch, become feminine in type, they sink in the
scale of things. As soon as a woman quits the state of
subordination in which her merits have free play, we see a
rapid increase in her natural defects. Complete equality
with man makes her quarrelsome; a position of supremacy
makes her tyrannical. To honor her and to govern her
will be for a long time yet the best solution. When educa-
tion has formed strong, noble, and serious women in whom
conscience and reason hold sway over the effervescence of
fancy and sentimentality, then we shall be able not only
to honor woman, but to make a serious end of gaining her
consent and adhesion. Then she will be truly an equal,
a work-fellow, a companion. At present she is so only in
theory. The moderns are at work upon the problem, and
have not solved it yet.
April 1, 1870.--I am inclined to believe that for
a
woman love is the supreme authority--that which judges
the rest and decides what is good or evil. For a man, love
is subordinate to right. It is a great passion, but it is
not the source of order, the synonym of reason, the
criterion of excellence. It would seem, then, that a
woman places her ideal in the perfection of love, and a
man in the perfection of justice. It was in this sense that
St. Paul was able to say, " The woman is the glory of the
man, and the man is the glory of God." Thus the woman
who absorbs herself in the object of her love is, so to
speak, in the line of nature; she is truly woman, she
realizes her fundamental type. On the contrary, the man
who should make life consist in conjugal adoration, and
who should imagine that he has lived sufficiently when he
has made himself the priest of a beloved women, such a
one is but half a man; he is despised by the world, and
perhaps secretly disdained by women themselves. The
woman who loves truly seeks to merge her own individual-
ity in that of the man She loves. She desires that her love
should make him greater, stronger, more masculine, and
more active. Thus each sex plays its appointed part: the
woman is first destined for man, and man is destined for
society. Woman owes herself to one, man owes himself
to all; and each obtains peace and happiness only when he
or she has recognized this law and accepted this balance
of things. The same thing may he a good in the woman
and an evil in the man, may be strength in her, weakness
in him.
There is then a feminine and a masculine morality--
preparatory chapters, as it were, to a general human moral-
ity. Below the virtue which is evangelical and sexless,
there is a virtue of sex. And this virtue of sex is the occa-
sion of mutual teaching, for each of the two incarnations
of virtue makes it its business to convert the other, the
first preaching love in the ears of justice, the second jus-
tice in the ears of love, And so there is produced an
oscillation and an average which represent a social state,
an epoch, sometimes a whole civilization.
Such at least is our European idea of the harmony
of the
sexes in a graduated order of functions. America is on
the road to revolutionize this ideal by the introduction of
the democratic principle of the equality of individuals in a
general equality of functions. Only, when there is nothing
left but a multitude of equal individualities, neither young
nor old, neither men nor women, neither benefited nor
benefactors--all social difference will turn upon money.
The whole hierarchy will rest upon the dollar, and the
most brutal, the most hideous, the most inhuman of
inequalities will be the fruit of the passion for equality.
What a result! Plutolatry--the worship of wealth, the
madness of gold--to it will be confided the task of chastis-
ing a false principle and its followers. All plutocracy
will be in its turn executed by equality. It would be a
strange end for it, if Anglo-Saxon individualism were
ultimately swallowed up in Latin socialism.
It is my prayer that the discovery of an equilibrium
between the two principles will be made in time, before
the social war, with all its terror and ruin, overtakes us.
But it is scarcely likely. The masses are always ignorant
and limited, and only advance by a succession of contrary
errors. They reach good only by the exhaustion of evil.
They discover the way out, only after having run their
heads against all other possible issues.
December 11, 1872. ...
The ideal which the wife and mother makes for herself,
the manner in which she understands duty and life, con-
tain the fate of the community. Her faith becomes the
star of the conjugal ship, and her love the animating prin-
ciple that fashions the future of all belonging to her.
Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She
carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
_________
Perhaps it is not desirable that a woman should be
free
in mind; she would immediately abuse her freedom. We
cannot become philosophical without losing her special.
gift, which is the worship of all that is individual, the
defense of usage, manners, beliefs, traditions. Her rôle
is
to slacken the combustion of thought. It is analogous to
that of azote in vital air.
_________
In every loving woman there is a priestess of the
past--a
pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has
disappeared.
April 3, 1873. ...
Women of an enthusiastic temperament have a curious
way of speaking of extempore preachers and orators. They
imagine that inspiration radiates from a crowd as such,
and that inspiration is all that is wanted. Could there be
a more naïf and childish explanation of what is really
a
lecture in which nothing has been left to accident, neither
the plan, nor the metaphors, nor even the length of the
whole, and where everything has been prepared with the
greatest care! But women, in their love of what is mar-
velous and miraculous, prefer to ignore all this. The
meditation, the labor, the calculation of effects, the art, in
a word, which have gone to the making of it, diminishes
for them the value of the thing, and they prefer to believe
it fallen from heaven, or sent down from on high. They
ask for bread, but cannot bear the idea of a baker. The
sex is superstitious, and hates to understand what it wishes
to admire. It would vex it to be forced to give the smaller
share to feeling, and the larger share to thought. It
wishes to believe that imagination can do the work of
reason, and feeling the work of science, and it never asks
itself how it is that women, so rich in heart and imagina-
tion, have never distinguished themselves as orators--that is
to say, have never known how to combine a multitude of
facts, ideas, and impulses, into one complex unity. Enthu-
siastic women never even suspect the difference that there
is between the excitement of a popular harangue, which is
nothing but a mere passionate outburst, and the unfold-
ing of a didactic process, the aim of which is to prove
something and to convince its hearers. Therefore, for
them, study, reflection, technique, count as nothing; the
improvisatore mounts upon the tripod, Pallas all armed
issues from his lips, and conquers the applause of the
dazzled assembly.
Evidently women divide orators into two groups;
the
artisans of speech, who manufacture their laborious dis-
courses by the aid of the midnight lamp, and the inspired
souls, who simply give themselves the trouble to he born.
They will never understand the saying of Quintilian, "Fit
orator, nascitur poeta." [A poet is born but an orator is made]
The enthusiasm which acts is perhaps an enlightening
force, but the enthusiasm which accepts is very like blind-
ness. For this latter enthusiasm confuses the value of
things, ignores their shades of difference, and is an obstacle
to all sensible criticism and all calm judgment. The
"Ewig-Weibliche" [Eternal Womanly] favors exaggeration,
mysticism, sentimentalism--all that excites and startles. It
is
the enemy of clearness, of a calm and rational view of things,
the antipodes of criticism and of science. [The preponderant
influence of women is all to the advantage of religion and the
priests, and subsidiarily the poets, to the detriment of truth
and liberty. This influence is an intoxication analogous to the
intoxication of love.--So Athene prefers the males, and
Proudhon has shown that the accession of women destroyed
ancient society, because, as a reciprocal effect, it made the
men effeminate.] 1
I have had only too much sympathy and weakness for
the
feminine nature. The very excess of my former indulgence
toward it makes me now more conscious of its infirmities.
Justice and science, law and reason, are virile things, and they
come before imagination, feeling, reverie, and fancy. When
one reflects that Catholic superstition is maintained by women,
one feels how needful it is not to hand over the reins to the
"Eternal Womanly," [the charm of which at bottom is
dangerous and deceptive.] 1
1 These [passages] seem to have been omitted
without even an
indication that they were originally there. They are
part of the
Brooks translation offered below. - Web Editor.
Translated by Van Wyck Brooks and Charles Van Wyck Brooks, ©1935.
(see copyright notice at bottom) 1
May 3, 1852. ...
... man rather forms himself by his will and woman is rather moulded
by her lot; because the one modifies circumstances with his energy,
while the other submits to them and reflects them in her gentleness;
briefly, because woman is rather of the species and man the
individual.
May 6, 1852. --Oddly enough, women are
the sex that is at
once most one and most different; the most alike from the moral
point of view, the most different from the social point of view.
Women are a sisterhood in the first case, in the second a hierarchy.
All the degrees of culture and condition are sharply marked in their
exterior, their manners and their tastes; the inner community
is found
in their feelings, their instincts and desires. The feminine sex thus
represents the equality of nature and the inequality of human his-
tory; it maintains the unity of the species and separates the cate-
gories of society. Woman has therefore an essentially conservative
mission. She preserves, on the one hand, the work of God, that
which is permanent in man, the beautiful, the great, the human;
she preserves, on the other hand, that which is the work of circum-
stances, the usages, absurdities, prejudices, pettinesses--the good
and the bad, the serious and the frivolous. How could one wish
it
otherwise? Accept the smoke, if you would have the fire. This is a
law that is providential and consequently good.--Woman is tradi-
tion, as man is progress; without both there would be no life.
His-
tory, like all that has life, is the product of two forces; if its
father
is progress, tradition is its mother. Each sex has its part to
play in
the common work of the race.
February 16, 1871 (midnight).--One understands
women as one
understands the language of the birds, either by intuition or not at
all. Trouble, study, effort count for nothing here: it is a gift
and a
grace...
April 2, 1873 .... A voluptuous shepherd girl
quells
Attila. A baker's maid extinguishes Raphael. Delilah, with
her
tresses, does more than a whole people to reduce Samson ...
In short, the sexual function is the most terrible
of the tributes
that nature has imposed upon us. And of all the ways of escaping
this bondage, the surest, the only good one, is obedience to its
law. Calm comes from using it, not from privation or mutilation.
Woman cures us of the curiosity, the desire and
the madness of
sex. She cures us of the ill that she causes. She tempts, but
she
satiates; she excites, but she allays. And reciprocally.
Each sex
thus attains a balanced humanity only through the other sex.
Sexu-
ality is an imperfection in the individual which can be corrected
only by pairing ...
February 15, 1874.--What always astonishes
me is the kind of
impetuous enthusiasm with which women side against the accused.
A prisoner is in their eyes a culprit. Far from distrusting their
own
passion, they glory in it; they have an antipathy to impartiality,
to
calm, to the spirit of justice. Great God, what would become of the
tribunals if women sat there under the ermine? Not one of us,
not
one of them[,] would wish to be weighed in this balance and have no
other security for our honour than this blind and violent verdict of
beings who are incapable of perfect equity. Suspected and con-
demned, arraigned and convicted, judged and executed is all one
thing with the ladies. Twenty errors on their part, consecutive
and
proved, gives them neither greater modesty in their accusations nor
more reserve in their procedure, nor more charity in their judg-
ments. Cosi fan tutte [all women are like that].
They know only
love and hatred and do not conceive even the fringe of justice.
These
gentle creatures are truly ferocious the moment they cease to be partial.
Beware then of theological women, political women, socialistic women,
beware of the women with the knitting-needles, the women who pour
petroleum on the flames, those that light the pyres. Having a
horror of
reason, they are the prey of every extravagance and they can go to
every extreme. The moment the feminine element dominates, over-
excitement and orgies are imminent; religions, art, poetry, customs,
states are impaired and fall into decadence.--I have believed too
much in woman, I must lower my estimate. Her role must be subor-
dinate in order to be salutary. Her preponderance would be disas-
trous.
It seems to me that we already have an exaggeration
of the fem-
inine element. Proudhon, the robust misogynist, is not altogether
wrong in his anti-feminist crusade (see his book La Justice).
Sci-
ence, reason, justice, all that is best in the patrimony of our race,
is
threatened by the advent of woman, who is all feeling, imagination,
caprice, passion, credulity, favour, without respect for general inter-
ests.
"Woman is the wise man's affliction", the moment
she becomes
proud of her infirmity and obstinate in her weaknesses. It is
neces-
sary therefore that she should obey. But this is a sorry expedient,
for she must still be persuaded, won over, complied with in her un-
believable contentions...
What attaches me to S. is that she has the fine
manly attributes,
strict rectitude, the love of the truth, the instinct of justice and
the
practice of charity, in short, that she is a noble creature who reacts
against the vexatious instincts of her sex, without neglecting its
vir-
tues.
February 1, 1876. ....
Women, encountering everywhere the incomprehensible,
very
quickly accommodate themselves to it, and form the habit of con-
verting everything into questions of faith and opinion. The differ-
ence between the knowable and the unknowable is never dear to
them. Scientific criticism is not their business; they shine
only in
the analysis of the feelings....
March 24, 1878.--A sex that prefers favour
to justice, supersti-
tion to wisdom, opinion to knowledge, error to truth, must be kept
out of the great historic questions and decisions. It has only
a
tenant's faculties, not a general's. It is invalid, and would
be dread-
ful as judge, as legislator, as revolutionary, as institutor, as inventor.
It is proper that the sex should be employed in everything, but it
should not be given the supreme direction in anything. To grant
it
complete equality with the other sex in functions and in rights
would be to check the advance of humanity and civilization. The
manifest exceptions prove nothing. A few extraordinary women
do not
prevent the average from being the sentimental, passionate, retard-
ing element of society, passive and committed to routine. Progress
does not come from them, but in spite of them. Progress is es-
sentially progress in truth, and it is man who invents, finds, dis-
covers, innovates, undertakes, attempts, man who creates and con-
quers. Cuique suum [to each his own]. The male has
many
weaknesses and makes many mistakes; but everything would be
worse if he ceased to the master. The age of gynæcocracy
must
have been a sad age, and a return of if is not to be desired.
The
effemination of a race alone means that the race is decedent ...
It will be a singular thing if the democratic era
ends in the com-
plete emancipation of women, which will put an end to democratic
customs. All women have the aristocratic weakness, they detest
vul-
garity and equality; their taste is for distinction, for arbitrary
fa-
vour, for the inequality of merits. Their first care will be
to arrange
a good tyranny after their own heart, the dictatorship of the priest
and the artist. The reaction will be amusing.
Liberalism in politics and religion is the last
thing that women
will like or practise. Respect for science if the opposite pole
from
their inclination.
March 25, 1878.--The feminine tendency is
to a swift and usurp-
ing assimilation. Things that they remember they convert at once
into personal finds. They think things have happened for the
first
time ... The critical need to indicate one's sources, to acknowledge
one's borrowings, to cite there from wham one has borrowed, to
give others their rights is not properly feminine. The echo pretends
to originality. The small additional element of recombination
poses
as the equal of the mother-wit that creates. The talent of the
pu-
pil considers itself the equivalent of the master's genius. And
this il-
lusion has its good faith, or at least it guards itself against any
ex-
amination of conscience that might disturb it. Women do not wish
to distinguish between giving birth and procreating, between ex-
ploiting and originating, between the power of imitation and that of
innovation. The moon, which reflects, imagines also that it is
a light
by itself, and secretly thinks itself a little sun. Eagerness
to receive,
facility in reproducing are, however, only secondary qualifies of the
intelligence. The male alone labours over things and creates
some-
thing new. The feminine mind pumps ideas out of man and imagines
it has drawn them from nature itself. This perpetual unconfessed
larceny is the comedy of cultivated epochs. Women are a good
deal
like those stewards who contrive to collect in their money-boxes the
gold that has been produced by the unceasing toil of other men,
and who think they are superior to those who produce it because
they have carried it off.--The drones of the intellectual hive mock
the bees who make the honey and think themselves better than their
collaborators.
The imaginative faculty is not the same thing
as the imagination.
Woman does not produce the fruitful ideas, but she discovers the
details, she dresses, polishes, finishes, perfects, she observes the
overlooked, she embellishes the exterior. She represents adroitness
and taste, finesse and care. In a word, to be done well a work
should be created, hewn by man, finished by woman. To one the
architecture belongs, to the other the dressing and trimming.
Mas-
terpieces, in fact, demand both genius and talent, one providing the
stuff and the proportions, the other eliminating the seams and the
defects. And humbler works demand no less the concert of two
forces, both of which indeed exist in the artist, but one of which
as
a rule predominates in one of the sexes.--I have therefore been
very fortunate and highly favoured in having been able to review
à deux everything I have done during the last few years.
This auxil-
iary and this check is very useful to me, not to mention my great
advantage in having, instead of a simple copyist, an intelligent, sym-
pathetic and zealous secretary.
September 17, 1880.--I cannot conceal from
myself that for a
dozen years or more I have ceased to be under the spell of sex; I
know too well the defects and weaknesses of the idol. I had set
it
too high, to the detriment of the virile man; I have liked women
and sought their company too much. At last impartiality has come.
It is never too late to be wise. If I continue to feel a slight
prefer-
ence for the more loving sex, I am less naive, less blind, less cred-
ulous, less admiring than before. The veil of Maya has worn thin,
and illusion is less necessary to me. My camaraderie has
enabled
to see truly. I can look at them as they look at one another,
as their
mothers, fathers and brothers look at them, as the doctor sees them,
that is, in all the ways other than the amorous and illusioned way.
I
am sensitive to their charm, without overrating them; I am touched,
moved, grateful, attracted, without being deceived. This is the
state
I prefer.
April 26, 1868. ...
You are as weak at heart as a woman; you should do
something
rash to preserve your self-respect, and yet you an afraid of any
elation became you fear the anti-heroic reactions in yourself.
You
have impulses but no confidence in your impulses. You cannot
en-
dure the idea of causing unhappiness to one who loves you, nor yet
the thought of a humiliation, nor the prospect of regret, remorse,
repentance. You lack the courage to will, for your conscience,
you
reason and your heart do not wish to yield either way, and you
spurn any arbitrary determination. The divided men draws down
upon himself thunderbolts, and woes, and, as he foresees this, he
shuns adventures and is loath to quit the port.
... Unhappy soul, you have no energy left, no will,
no heroism.
You seek for nothing but that which pampers your over-feminine
instincts of sympathy and affection. The malaria of indifference has
sterilized your intelligence and whatever talent you have. And for
this then is no remedy, for you cherish your infirmity, and you do
not believe them is any cure. All manly ambition is extinguished
in
you. The enjoyment of struggle, the illusion of success, the
passion
for victory, the craving for power and influence, the thirst for riches,
the desire for reputation, the curiosity of the mind are reagents that
have ceased to be capable of biting into your indolence. Inner
peace
is your one and only longing. To make those who are around you
happy and reduce your existence as much as possible is your sole
instinctive aspiration. You no longer have the stuff in you for any-
thing but a poor little paterfamilias, and, even there, the life of
a
husband and father seems to you too complicated and difficult at
your age and with your habits of mind. To avoid destitution or
humiliation you would renounce everything in advance and with a
good grace. Incredulity, timidity, sloth, discouragement.--This
is all
wrong. We must give pleasure to those who love us, those who
re-
spect us and have faith in us. This is reason enough, and this
stimu-
lant has not lost its efficacy.
May 21, 1868. ... Why, I ask
myself, does love always make one
think of death? Because it is itself a death, death to ourselves,
the
annihilation of the sombre despot of whom the Persian poet speaks,
the extinction of egoism, of the personal, solitary life. And
this death
is a new life; but this life is indeed a death.--Why is it that woman,
nervous, feeble, timid as she is, feels that danger has ceased to
exist when she is with the one she loves? Because to die on the
heart
of her beloved is her secret dream. Paradise for her is to be
together;
whether in suffering, joy, pleasure or death is a secondary matter.
To
cease to be two, to make a single one, at all costs, everywhere,
always: that is her aspiration, her soul, her cry, her instinct.
Woman has only one religion, love; love has only one concern,
ecstatic identification, the combustion of isolated beings and their
union in a single flame. And there are people who deny and scoff
at mysticism, when half of our species has no other cult, no other
faith, no other ideal, when the supreme state glimpsed by the tender
feelings, by lofty piety and great poetry bears witness to this moral
reality! Mysticism, which disturbs the reason, is the natural
home-
land of the soul. Its more summary method ends in the same result
as speculation; it brings one back to Unity and the Absolute.
It
breaks down the temporary and fictitious barriers of individuality.
It gives vent in the finite breast to the overflowing sentiment of
the
infinite. It is an emancipation, a metamorphosis, a transfiguration
of our poor little Self.
August 8, 1876.--Woman is loving but passive,
receiving the idea
and the spark, but without the gift of self-electrification. Virility
alone originates things spontaneously and is an origin, a punctum
saliens [salient point] . Thus the feminine principle
is subordinate,
it comes afterwards and in the second place. Man is by nature
the
master in art. legislation, science, industry; woman is the pupil,
disciple, servant, imitator. Chivalrous courtesy dissembles this
in vain,
for there is no equity between the sexes. They are indispensable
one
to another, but one is the leader and the other led. The ram
is the
master of the ewe; the reverse would be an aberration and monstrosity.
The pride of the American women will bring about a reaction; for
whatever these ladies are they owe to man. If the latter wearies
of
his generosity and leaves them to their own merits, the expiatory
plunge will oblige them to measure the immensity of their ingrati-
tude.
Nature has willed the subordination of woman.
Civilized man
dignifies his companion, submits willingly to grace, sweetness,
frailty, creates for her the right to protection, gives her a privi-
leged place. But the condition is such that, if she denies the
bene-
faction and claims to have earned what has been given to her and to
be indebted to no one, her benefactor may bring this course to an
abrupt end.
The illusion consists in this: superiority constitutes
a moral duty
on the part of the superior towards the inferior, but inferiority
does not constitute any legal right on the part of the inferior over
the superior. Generosity is beautiful and noble, but it
is optional;
the cripple who demands that he should he carried dispels one's
desire to aid him. Man enjoys protecting woman, but when woman
imperatively summons him to serve and protect her, he whom an
entreaty would have softened loses his inclination at once.
By substituting the legal sphere for the moral sphere,
the eman-
cipation of women will desiccate society, as legal charity destroys
real charity, as love by command would sterilise the marriage-bed.
--In asking more than civil equality and economic equality, women
are playing a dangerous game. Equality in services will be demanded
of them, and this will serve them right.
1 This text is copyrighted and is believed to be used
in accordance with
"Fair use" limitation of the Copyright Act given below. Since
the guidelines are
not strict, and therefore subject to misapplication, I will make my
case as follows:
(1) This copying is being done non commercially as part of a nonprofit
gender studies series and for other
purposes allowed in the "Fair use"
limitation.
(2) This work was published long ago; partly from the passage of
time, and partly because of the unpopular
views expressed,
this work is unknown to many, and by
copying such excerpts
it is believed that an interest or new
interest in the work will be
kindled. Furthermore, a check
for the year 1999 revealed this
work out of print, which one would then
think would give a
greater latitude to its use as no commercial
interest is being
affected at this time.
On the issue of whether this translation is
more fact than fiction
(which would give a greater latitude to its
"fair use"), a cursory
examination reveals a great similarity
between the Ward and Brooks
translations, the differences often
being a matter of different grammar
and syntax choices that give the same
meaning. Perhaps the French
is a rather clear and easy language
to translate, and then the Brooks
translation came later (and through
the same publisher) which allows
the possibility of the earlier
Ward translation being used as reference.
Whatever the reasons, there seems to
be little art or originality in the
translation.
(3) The text used is about six pages out of a total work of 675 pages
(including introduction and index) -
or less than 1% of the entire
work.
(4) Taking movie advertisements and book reviews as a clue,
it appears that showing colorful clips
and excerpts has the
effect of causing people to want to
take in the rest of the work
(see also (2) above.)
I also wish to note that this copying is being done in the public's
interest.
It is believed by some that what is frequently portrayed in the media
as to
the relationship of the sexes in this country is false. That
such false information
assists the passage of discriminatory legislation aimed at the sex
portrayed as
the oppressor class. The excerpts above are of such a contrary character
to what is given as the "truth" today that further comment by myself
would
seem superfluous.
Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use
of a
copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or
phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes
such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple
copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement
of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any
particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include
-
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether
such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit
educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in
relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or
value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished
shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made
upon
consideration of all the above factors.