Were it true, therefore, that the qualities of the sexes differ as you pretend, then, as through this same difference, they are equally necessary to the collective work, they are essentially subject to contract, and equivalent.
But do they differ as you say? You know the answer of science and facts. We will not return to it. All your distinctions of beauty and strength are only imaginary classifications. We all know that of eighteen millions of Frenchmen, at the present time, we have a few men of genius, absorbed in specialties, a few more men of talent, perhaps not four philosophers, mediocrities in abundance, and an immense host of cyphers. It is mockery, therefore, to establish the right of prepotency of a sex from qualities which, on the one hand, do not exist in each of its members, and, on the other, are often found in the highest degree in the sex which it is claimed to reduce to subjection.
Besides, did your sex possess the qualities which you ascribe to it, to the exclusion of mine; since, by your admission, there would be neither civilization, nor science, nor art, nor justice, without the qualities you term peculiar to woman; and since, without these qualities, man would be only a brute and an anthropophagus, it thence follows that woman is at least the equivalent of man, if not his superior.
Let us now notice a few of your contradictions.
1st Thesis. Woman is a sort of mean term between man and the rest of the animal kingdom.
Antithesis. No; woman is the idealisation of man, in that which is purest and most sublime in him.
2d Thesis. Woman is an inert creature, devoid of understanding, that has no reason for existing.
Antithesis. No; woman is the animating principle of man; without her, he could not fulfil his destiny; she is the motive power of all justice, all science, all industry, all civilization, all virtue.
3d Thesis. Woman does not know how to express an opinion in set terms, or to assign reasons for it; she has only disconnected ideas, erroneous reasonings; she mistakes chimeras for realities, composes nothing but medleys, monsters.
Antithesis. No; the intellect of woman is finer than that of man; she has a wiser, more prudent, more reserved mind; she is the foil of masculine ideas. She is Minerva shaming Ulysses for his paradoxes and profligacies; she is the seat of wisdom.