"Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the State to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man's existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes."[227]
Thus we see how men, proceeding from different starting-points, are guided by their scientific investigations to the identical conclusions. The complete emancipation of woman, and her equality with man is the final goal of our social development, whose realization no power on earth can prevent;—and this realization is possible only by a social change that shall abolish the rule of man over man—hence also of capitalists over workingmen. Only then will the human race reach its highest development. The "Golden Age" that man has been dreaming of for thousands of years, and after which he has been longing, will have come at last. Class rule will have reached its end for all time, and, along with it, the rule of man over woman.
FOOTNOTES:
[224] "Frauenrecht und Frauenpflilcht. Eine Antwort auf Fanny Lewald's Briefe 'Fuer und wider die Frauen.'"
[225] In his work "Bau und Leben des sozialen Koerpers" (The Structure and Life of the Social Body), Dr. Schaeffle says: "A loosening of the bonds of matrimony by the facilitation of divorce is certainly undesirable. It flies in the face of the moral objects of human pairing, and would be injurious to the preservation of the population as well as the education of the children." After what has been said herein it follows that we not only consider this view wrong, but are inclined to regard it as "immoral." Nevertheless, Dr. Schaeffle will allow that the idea of introducing and maintaining institutions that do violence to its own conceptions of morality, is simply unimaginable in a society of much higher culture than the present.
[226] Quoted in Haeckel's "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte."
[227] Morgan's "Ancient Society."