Who would dare maintain such absurdities to-day, brave and upright Leroux? P. J. Proudhon, the man who called you Theopompe and Pâlissier—M. Michelet, who claims that woman was created to be the most tiresome doll of her loving husband.
But to return to yourself.
You affirm that God is androgynous; that in him coexist the male and female principles on the footing of equality: that consequently, man and woman are equal in God. I assent to this willingly, although I know absolutely nothing about it. But when you add that woman is deserving of quite as much as man, because she has shared in all the agonizing crises of the progressive education of the human race;
That love, which cannot exist without the woman, has led us from the law of slavery to that of equality;
That consequently woman represents half in the work of the ages;
In this there is no mystery; I join you therefore with all my heart in repeating to men the invitations and the lessons which you give to these ungrateful and stubborn males:
"If we are free, it is in part by woman; let her then be made free by us.
"But is she so? Is she treated by us as an equal?
"A wife—does she find equality in love and marriage?
"A human being, does she find equality in the State?