But you, who wish to annihilate woman, from what principle do you draw such a consequence? That she is an affective power, you say ... yes, but, as to that, man is such, likewise; and is not woman, as well as he, alike intellect and activity? By reason of a purely accidental predominance, can one half of the human species be banished beyond the clouds of sentimentality? And ought not all serious discipline to tend to develop, not one phase of the being, but the ponderation, the harmony of all its phases? Want of harmony is the source of disorder and deformity. The woman who is solely sentimental commits irreparable errors; the man who is solely rational is a species of monster, and the person in whom activity predominates is but a brute. Since you believe in Gall and Spurzheim, you know that the encephalon of the two sexes is alike, that it is modifiable in both, that all education is founded on this modificability; why has it never occurred to you that if man en masse is more rational than woman, it is because education, laws and custom have developed in him the anterior lobes of the brain; while in woman, education, laws and custom develop especially the posterior lobes of this organ; and why, having established these facts, have you not been led to conclude that, since organs are developed only in consequence of the excitants applied to them, it is probable that man and woman, subjected to the same cerebral excitants, would be developed in the same manner, with the shades of difference peculiar to each individuality; and that for woman to be developed harmoniously under her three aspects, she must manifest herself socially under three aspects? Be sure, sir, your principle is thrice false, thrice in contradiction to science and reason; in the presence of the physiology of the brain, all theories of classification fall to the ground: before the nervous system, women are the equals of men: they can be their inferiors only before muscular supremacy, attacked by the invention of powder, and about to be reduced to dust by the triumph of mechanism.
I should say many more things to you, sir, were not this critical sketch too long already; but imperfect though it may be, having to my mind only the meaning of a woman's protest against your doctrines, I shall pause here.
CHAPTER IV.
LEGOUVÉ.
The inheritor of a name which commands respect, Ernest Legouvé, an elegant, eloquent, and impassioned author, has written a Moral History of Women, whence exhales a perfume of purity and love which refreshes the heart and calms the soul.
In every page of this book, we detect the impulse of an upright heart and lofty mind, indignant at injustice, oppression, and moral deformity. The author has deserved well of women, and it is with pleasure that I seize the opportunity of thanking him in the name of those who, at the present time, are struggling in various countries for the emancipation of half the human race.
What is the object of Legouvé's work? We will let him tell it himself.
"The object of this book is summed up in these words: to lay claim to feminine liberty in the name of the two very principles of the adversaries of this liberty: tradition and difference (of the sexes), that is to say, to show in tradition progress, and in difference equality.
God created the human species double, we utilize but half of it; Nature says two, we say one; we must agree with Nature. Unity itself, instead of perishing thereby, would only then be true unity; that is, not the sterile absorption of one of two terms for the benefit of the other, but the living fusion of two fraternal individualities, increasing the common power with all the force of their individual development.
"The feminine spirit is stifled, but not dead.... We cannot annihilate at our pleasure a force created by God, or extinguish a torch lighted by his hand; but turned aside from its purpose, this force, instead of creating, destroys; this torch consumes instead of giving light.