To Women

As stated in the Bible, a law was given to the man and the woman,--to
the man, the law of labor; to the woman, the law of bearing children.
Although we, with our science, avons change tout ca, the law for the
man, as for woman, remains as unalterable as the liver in its place,
and departure from it is equally punished with inevitable death. The
only difference lies in this, that departure from the law, in the
case of the man, is punished so immediately in the future, that it
may be designated as present punishment; but departure from the law,
in the case of the woman, receives its chastisement in a more distant
future.

The general departure of all men from the law exterminates people
immediately; the departure from it of all women annihilates it in the
succeeding generation. But the evasion by some men and some women
does not exterminate the human race, and only deprives those who
evade it of the rational nature of man. The departure of men from
this law began long ago, among those classes who were in a position
to subject others, and, constantly spreading, it has continued down
to our own times; and in our own day it has reached folly, the ideal
consisting in evasion of the law,--the ideal expressed by Prince
Blokhin, and shared in by Renan and by the whole cultivated world:
"Machines will work, and people will be bundles of nerves devoted to
enjoyment."

There was hardly any departure from the law in the part of women, it
was expressed only in prostitution, and in the refusal to bear
children--in private cases. The women belonging to the wealthy
classes fulfilled their law, while the men did not comply with
theirs; and therefore the women became stronger, and continued to
rule, and must rule, over men who have evaded the law, and who have,
therefore, lost their senses. It is generally stated that woman (the
woman of Paris in particular is childless) has become so bewitching,
through making use of all the means of civilization, that she has
gained the upper hand over man by this fascination of hers. This is
not only unjust, but precisely the reverse of the truth. It is not
the childless woman who has conquered man, but the mother, that woman
who has fulfilled her law, while the man has not fulfilled his. That
woman who deliberately remains childless, and who entrances man with
her shoulders and her locks, is not the woman who rules over men, but
the one who has been corrupted by man, who has descended to his
level,--to the level of the vicious man,--who has evaded the law
equally with himself, and who has lost, in company with him, every
rational idea of life.

From this error springs that remarkable piece of stupidity which is
called the rights of women. The formula of