It was necessary to struggle and fight in order to establish justice and to subject nature to humanity; this belonged of right to man, who represents muscular force, the spirit of conflict; but as we already foresee in the approaching future, the coming of peace, the substitution of pacific labor and negotiations for war, it is clear that woman will take rightfully the direction of human affairs, to which she will be called by her faculties, found better adapted to the end henceforth to be pursued.
Woman should be the last to develop and manifest herself socially, for the same reason that the human species is the last creation of our globe; the perfect being always appears after those that have served to pave the way.
As it is demonstrated, on the other hand, that, in the scale of the various organisms, the organ that is superadded to the others to constitute a change of species, governs those which the individual derives from inferior species, so woman, fully developed in a social body organized for peace and pacific labor, will be the new organ that will govern the social body.
Does this signify that woman should oppress man? By no means; she would thus be ungrateful for the services rendered her, and would trespass against her gentle nature; but she will teach him to comprehend that his glory is to obey, to become subordinate to the other sex, because he is less perfect, and because his qualities are no longer necessary to the general good.
You laugh, gentlemen, at this second theory; you think it absurd.... So it is; for it is the counterpart of the thetic woman of Proudhon. Let us proceed then to the third theory.
III.
Every classification of the human species is a pure subjective creation; that is, one which exists only in the form given to the perception by the intellect; the very conception of humanity with the enumeration of the characteristics which are reputed to distinguish it from the other species, is stamped with subjectivity.
The truth is that not a single human being resembles his neighbor; that there are as many different men and women as there are men and women composing the species.
Classifications, in all things, are illusions of the mind, for nature hates identity and never repeats herself: there are not two grains of sand, not two drops of water, not two leaves alike; and most probably the sun, since the commencement of its existence, has not appeared twice identically the same at its rising. Yet despite the evidence of these truths, despite the conviction which we have attained of the illusion of the senses, of the weakness of our intellect, which can know nothing of the inmost nature of beings; which can only seize upon a few fleeting traces of their personal characteristics; yet despite all these things we dare establish series, attribute to them characteristics which are speedily contradicted by facts, and torture and do violence to the only beings that really exist; namely, individuals, in the name of that other thing which exists only in our sick brain: kind, class!
The bitter fruits that have been produced by our mania for classification ought to cure us of this. Has not this malady, impelling theocratists and legislators to divide humanity into castes and classes, caused most of the calamities of our species? Have we not, thanks to these execrable divisions, a hideous past, the echoes of which bring back to our shrinking ears naught but sobs, cries of anger, rebellion, malediction and vengeance, and sinister clanking of weapons and chains?