AUTHOR. Is not this somewhat exaggerated, Master?
PROUDHON. (Forgetting what he has just said,)
"Woman always prefers a pretty, finical puppet to an honest man; a beau, a knave can obtain from her all that he desires; she has nothing but disdain for the man who is capable of sacrificing his love to his conscience."
You see what woman is: "unproductive by nature, inert, without industry or understanding, without justice, and without modesty, she needs that a father, a brother, a lover, a husband, a master, a man, in fine, should give her that magnetic influence, if I may thus term it, which will render her capable of manly virtues, of social and intellectual faculties."—Id.
And as "all her philosophy, her religion, her politics, her economy, her industry are resolved in one word: Love;
"Now shall we make of this being belonging wholly to love, an overseer, an engineer, a captain, a merchant, a financier, an economist, an administrator, a scholar, an artist, a professor, a philosopher, a legislator, a judge, an orator, the general of an army, the head of a State?
"The question carries its answer within itself."—Id.
I have laid down and proved my thesis, I am about to draw my conclusions.
"Since in economical, political and social action, the strength of the body and that of the mind concur and are multiplied, the one by the other, the physical and intellectual value of the man will be to the physical and intellectual value of woman as 3 ☓ 3 is to 2 ☓ 2, or as 9 to 4.
"In the moral, as in the physical and intellectual point of view, her value (that of woman,) is also as 2 to 3.