Suppose then that we invite him to accompany us in the [B]argument, and then we may hope to show him that there is nothing peculiar in the constitution of women which would affect them in the administration of the State.
By all means.
The same natural gifts are found in both sexes, but they are possessed in a higher degree by men than women. Let us say to him: Come now, and we will ask you a question:—when you spoke of a nature gifted or not gifted in any respect, did you mean to say that one man will acquire a thing easily, another with difficulty; a little learning will lead the one to discover a great deal; whereas the other, after much study and application, no sooner learns than he forgets; or again, did you mean, that the one has a body which is a good servant to his mind, while the body of the other is a hindrance to him?—would not these be the sort [C]of differences which distinguish the man gifted by nature from the one who is ungifted?
No one will deny that.
And can you mention any pursuit of mankind in which the male sex has not all these gifts and qualities in a higher degree than the female? Need I waste time in speaking of the art of weaving, and the management of pancakes and preserves, in which womankind does really appear to be 148 great, and in which for her to be beaten by a man is of all [D]things the most absurd?
You are quite right, he replied, in maintaining the general inferiority of the female sex: although many women are in many things superior to many men, yet on the whole what you say is true.
And if so, my friend, I said, there is no special faculty of administration in a state which a woman has because she is a woman, or which a man has by virtue of his sex, but the gifts of nature are alike diffused in both; all the pursuits of [E]men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a man.
Very true.
Men and women are to be governed by the same laws and to have the same pursuits. Then are we to impose all our enactments on men and none of them on women?
That will never do.