Readers, male and female, several of the adversaries of the cause which I defend, have carried the discussion into the domain of science, and have not shrunk before the nudity of biological laws and anatomical details. I praise them for it; the body being respectable, there is no indecency in speaking of the laws which govern it; but as it would be an inconsistency on my part to believe that blamable in myself which I approve in them, you will not be surprised that I follow them on the ground which they have chosen, persuaded that Science, the chaste daughter of Thought, can no more lose her chastity under the pen of a pure woman than under that of a pure man.
Readers, male and female, I have but one request to make; namely, that you will pardon my simplicity of style. It would have cost me too much pains to write in the approved fashion; it is probable, besides, that I should not have succeeded. My work is one of conscience. If I enlighten some, if I make others reflect; if I awaken in the heart of men the sentiment of justice, in that of women the sentiment of their dignity; if I am clear to all, fully comprehended by all, useful to all, even to my adversaries, it will satisfy me and will console me for displeasing those who love ideas only as they love women: in full dress.
TO MY ADVERSARIES.
Many among you, gentlemen, adversaries of the great and holy cause which I defend, have cited me, evidently without having read me, without even knowing how to write my name. To such as these I have nothing to say, unless that their opinion matters little to me. Others, who have taken the trouble to read my preceding works in the Revue Philosophique and the Ragione, accuse me of not writing like a woman, of being harsh, unsparing to my adversaries, nothing but a reasoning machine, lacking heart.
Gentlemen, I cannot write otherwise than as a woman, since I have the honor to be a woman.
If am I harsh and unsparing to my adversaries, it is because they appear to me to be those of reason and of justice; it is because they, the strong and well armed, attack harshly and unsparingly a sex which they have taken care to render timid and to disarm; it is, in short, because I believe it perfectly lawful to defend weakness against tyranny which has the audacity and insolence to erect itself into right.
If I appear to you in the unattractive aspect of a reasoning machine, is, in the first place, because Nature has made me so, and I see no good reason for modifying her work; secondly, because it is not amiss for a woman that has attained majority to prove to you that her sex, when not fearing your judgment, reasons as well, and, often, better than you.
I have no heart, you say. I am lacking in it, perhaps, towards tyrants, but the conflict that I undertake proves that I am not lacking in it towards their victims; I have therefore a sufficient quantity of it, the more, inasmuch as I neither desire to please you, nor care to be loved by any among you.
Be advised by me, gentlemen; break yourselves of the habit of confounding heart with nerves; cease to create an imaginary type of woman to make it the standard of your judgment of real women; it is thus that you pervert your reason and become, without wishing it, the thing of all others the most hateful and least estimable—tyrants.
TO MY FRIENDS.