Equality | Page 8

it
should logically follow political equality; resulting in extravagance,
misapplication of natural capacities, a notion that physical labor is
dishonorable, or that the state should compel all to labor alike, and in
efforts to remove inequalities of condition by legislation.
IV. The equality of the sexes. The stir in the middle of the eighteenth
century gave a great impetus to the emancipation of woman; though,
curiously enough, Rousseau, in unfolding his plan of education for
Sophie, in Emile, inculcates an almost Oriental subjection of
woman--her education simply that she may please man. The true
enfranchisement of woman--that is, the recognition (by herself as well
as by man) of her real place in the economy of the world, in the full
development of her capacities--is the greatest gain to civilization since
the Christian era. The movement has its excesses, and the gain has not
been without loss. "When we turn to modern literature," writes Mr.
Money, "from the pages in which Fenelon speaks of the education of
girls, who does not feel that the world has lost a sacred accent--that

some ineffable essence has passed out from our hearts?"
How far the expectation has been realized that women, in fiction, for
instance, would be more accurately described, better understood, and
appear as nobler and lovelier beings when women wrote the novels,
this is not the place to inquire. The movement has results which are
unavoidable in a period of transition, and probably only temporary. The
education of woman and the development of her powers hold the
greatest promise for the regeneration of society. But this development,
yet in its infancy, and pursued with much crudeness and misconception
of the end, is not enough. Woman would not only be equal with man,
but would be like him; that is, perform in society the functions he now
performs. Here, again, the notion of equality is pushed towards
uniformity. The reformers admit structural differences in the sexes,
though these, they say, are greatly exaggerated by subjection; but the
functional differences are mainly to be eliminated. Women ought to
mingle in all the occupations of men, as if the physical differences did
not exist. The movement goes to obliterate, as far as possible, the
distinction between sexes. Nature is, no doubt, amused at this attempt.
A recent writer--["Biology and Woman's Rights," Quarterly Journal of
Science, November, 1878.]--, says: "The 'femme libre' [free woman] of
the new social order may, indeed, escape the charge of neglecting her
family and her household by contending that it is not her vocation to
become a wife and a mother! Why, then, we ask, is she constituted a
woman at all? Merely that she may become a sort of second-rate man?"
The truth is that this movement, based always upon a misconception of
equality, so far as it would change the duties of the sexes, is a
retrograde.--["It has been frequently observed that among declining
nations the social differences between the two sexes are first obliterated,
and afterwards even the intellectual differences. The more masculine
the women become, the more effeminate become the men. It is no good
symptom when there are almost as many female writers and female
rulers as there are male. Such was the case, for instance, in the
Hellenistic kingdoms, and in the age of the Caesars. What today is
called by many the emancipation of woman would ultimately end in the
dissolution of the family, and, if carried out, render poor service to the

majority of women. If man and woman were placed entirely on the
same level, and if in the competition between the two sexes nothing but
an actual superiority should decide, it is to be feared that woman would
soon be relegated to a condition as hard as that in which she is found
among all barbarous nations. It is precisely family life and higher
civilization that have emancipated woman. Those theorizers who, led
astray by the dark side of higher civilization, preach a community of
goods, generally contemplate in their simultaneous recommendation of
the emancipation of woman a more or less developed form of a
community of wives. The grounds of the two institutions are very
similar." (Roscher's Political Economy, p. 250.) Note also that
difference in costumes of the sexes is least apparent among lowly
civilized peoples.]-- One of the most striking features in our progress
from barbarism to civilization is the proper adjustment of the work for
men and women. One test of a civilization is the difference of this work.
This is a question not merely of division of labor, but of differentiation
with regard to sex. It not only takes into account structural differences
and physiological disadvantages, but it recognizes the finer and higher
use of woman in society.
The attainable, not to say the ideal, society requires an