6. There are men who are women both in head and in heart; women who are men both in heart and in head; in humanity they form the eighth of an exception. Full liberty and right are granted to them.
7. Each member of the Phalanstery follows his vocation, obeys his attractions, for attractions are proportional to destinies. Therefore the eighth of an exception in both sexes, having an attraction towards labors that belong more especially to the other sex, is at liberty to yield to them.
8. All major men and women have an equal vote.
9. All matters are regulated by chiefs of both sexes, chosen by the free vote of both sexes.
10. All offices, from the presidency of the group to that of the globe, are filled jointly by men and women, who divide between them the details of this common function.
11. The mother is the instructress of her children; they belong to her alone; the father has no rights over them unless the mother chooses to confer these on him.
Such is the summary of the Fourierist doctrine on the subject of which we treat.
If the Societary School has not reached perfect truth, it must be at least acknowledged that it has taken the right way to attain it. Whether its theory of the classification and the predominance of faculties in conformity with the sexes be exact or not, the error will not be productive of mischievous results in practice. Woman being free to follow her aptitudes, being half in rights and functions, could always place herself in the exceptional eighth, without fear of encountering jealous individuals, better fitted than herself to warble in the minor key, who would send her back to the duties of the household.
I remember, in this connection, a certain advocate, by no means feminine, professing a superb disdain of the sex to which his mother belonged, worthy in a word, to be the disciple of P. J. Proudhon; would you know what this man had retained of all his lessons in law? The art of sweeping a room properly, of polishing furniture, of hemming napkins and pocket handkerchiefs neatly, and of compounding sauces. Do you not think, illustrious Proudhon, that he might have been advised with more justice to go and iron his collars, than certain women who write good articles on Philosophy.
But let us return to Fourier.