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The tenth and eleventh studies of the last work of M. Proudhon, "Justice in the Revolution and in the Church," comprise the author's whole doctrine concerning Woman, Love, and Marriage.

Before analyzing it and criticising its chief points, I must acquaint my readers with the polemical commencement which appears to have given rise to the publication of the strange doctrines of our great critic. In the Revue Philosophique of December, 1856, the following article by me was published under the title, Proudhon and the Woman Question:—

"Women have a weakness for soldiers, it is said. It is true, but they should not be reproached for it; they love even the show of courage, which is a glorious and holy thing. I am a woman, Proudhon is a great soldier of thought. I cannot therefore prevent myself from regarding him with esteem and sympathy; sentiments to which he will owe the moderation of my attack on his opinions concerning the rôle of woman in humanity. In his first "Memoir on Property," note on page 265, edition of 1841, we read the following paradox in the style of the Koran:

"Between man and woman may exist love, passion, the bond of habit, whatever you like; there is not true society. Man and woman are not companions. The difference of sex gives rise between them to a separation of the same nature as that which the difference of races places between animals. Thus, far from applauding what is now called the emancipation of woman, I should be much more inclined, were it necessary to go to this extremity, to put woman in seclusion."

In the third "Memoir on Property," we read:

"This signifies that woman, by nature and by destination, is neither associate, nor citizen, nor public functionary."

I open the "Creation of Order in Humanity," and read there:

"It is in treating of education that we must determine the part of woman in society. Woman, until she becomes a wife, is apprentice, at most under-superintendent, in the work-shop, as in the family, she remains a minor, and does not form a part of the commonwealth. Woman is not, as is commonly affirmed, the half nor the equal of man, but the living and sympathetic complement that is lacking to make him an individual."

In the "Economical Contradictions," we read:

"For my part, the more I reflect on the destiny of woman outside of the family and the household, the less I can account for it: courtesan or housewife, (housewife, I say, not servant,) I see no medium."

I had always laughed at these paradoxes; they had no more doctrinal value in my eyes than the thousand other freaks so common to this celebrated critic. A short time since, an obscure journal pretended that Proudhon, in private conversations, had drawn up a formula of an entire system based on masculine omnipotence, and published this system in its columns. One of two things is certain, said I to myself; either the journalist speaks falsely, or he tells the truth; if he speaks falsely, his evident aim is to destroy Proudhon in the confidence of the friends of progress, and to make him lose his lawful share of influence, in which case, he must be warned of it; if he tells the truth, Proudhon must still be warned of the fact, since it is impossible that, being the father of several daughters, paternal feeling should not have set him on the road to reason. At all events, I must know about it. I wrote to Proudhon, who, the next day, returned me an answer which I transcribe verbatim:

"MADAM:

"I know nothing of the article published by M. Charles Robin in the Telegraphe of yesterday. In order to inform myself with regard to this paraphrase, as you entitle the article of M. Robin, I examined my first "Memoir on Property," page 265, Garnier edition, (I have no other,) and found no note there. I examined the same page in my other pamphlet, and discovered no note anywhere. It is therefore impossible for me to reply to your first question.

"I do not exactly know what you call my opinions on woman, marriage and the family; for I believe I have given no one a right to speak of my opinions on these subjects, any more than on that of property.

"I have written economical and social criticisms; in making these criticisms (I take the word in its highest signification), I may have indeed expressed judgments to a greater or less degree relative, concerning a truth. I have no where that I know of, framed a dogma, a theory, a collection of principles; in a word, a system. All that I can tell you is, in the first place, as far as concerns myself, that my opinions have been formed progressively and in an unvarying direction; that, at the time at which I write, I have not deviated from this direction; and that, with this reserve, my existing opinions accord perfectly with what they were seventeen years ago when I published my first memoirs.

"In the second place, with regard to you, Madam, who, in interrogating me do not leave me in ignorance of your sentiments, I will tell you with all the frankness which your letter exacts, and which you expect from a compatriot, that I do not regard the question of marriage, of woman, and of the family in the same light as yourself, or any of the innovating authors whose ideas have come to my knowledge; that I do not admit, for instance, that woman has the right at the present time to separate her cause from that of man, and to demand for herself special legislation, as though her chief tyrant and enemy were man; that further, I do not admit that, whatever reparation may be due to woman, of joint thirds with her husband (or father) and her children, the most rigorous justice can ever make her the EQUAL of man; that neither do I admit that this inferiority of the female sex constitutes for it either servitude, or humiliation, or a diminution of dignity, liberty, or happiness. I maintain that the contrary is true.

"I consider, therefore, the sort of crusade that is being carried on at this time by a few estimable ladies in both hemispheres in behalf of the prerogatives of their sex, as a symptom of the general renovation that is being wrought; but nevertheless, as an exaggerated symptom, an infatuation that proceeds precisely from the infirmity of the sex and its incapacity to understand and to govern itself.

"I have read, Madam, a few of your articles. I find that your wit, capacity and knowledge place you certainly above an infinity of males who have nothing of their sex but the proletary faculty. In this respect, were it necessary to decide on your thesis by comparisons of this kind, you would doubtless gain the cause.

"But you have too much good sense not to comprehend that the question here is by no means to compare individual with individual, but the whole feminine sex in its aggregate with the whole masculine sex, in order to know whether these two halves, the complements of each other, are or are not equals in the human androgynus.

"In accordance with this principle, I do not believe that your system, which is, I think, that of equality or equivalence, can be sustained, and I regard it as a weakness of our epoch.

"You have interrogated me, Madam, with Franche-Comtois abruptness. I wish you to take my words in good part, and, since I doubtless do not agree at all with you, not to see in me an enemy of woman, a detractor of your sex, worthy of the animadversions of maidens, wives and mothers. The rules of fair discussion oblige you to admit at least that you may be deceived, that I may be right, that in such case it is I who am truly the defender and friend of woman; I ask nothing more.

"You and your companions have raised a very great question, which I think that you have hitherto treated quite superficially. But the indifferent manner in which this subject has been treated should not be considered as conclusive reason for not receiving it; on the contrary, I regard it as another reason for the advocates of the equality of the two sexes to make greater efforts. In this respect, Madam, I doubt not that you will signalize yourself anew, and await with impatience the volume that you announce, which I promise to read with all the attention of which I am capable."

On reading this letter, I transcribed the note which M. Proudhon had not succeeded in finding, and sent it to him, with the article of M. Charles Robin. As he did not reply, his silence authorizes me to believe the journalist.

Ah! you persist in maintaining that woman is inferior, minor! you believe that women will bow devoutly before the high decree of your autocracy! No, no; it will not, it cannot be so. To battle, M. Proudhon! But let us first dispose of the question of my personality.

You consider me as an exception, by telling me that, if it were necessary to decide on my thesis by comparison between a host of men and myself, the decision would be, doubtless, in favor of my opinions. Mark my reply:

"Every true law is absolute. The ignorance or folly of grammarians, moralists, jurisconsults, and other philosophers, alone invented the proverb: There is no rule without an exception. The mania of imposing laws on Nature, instead of studying Nature's own laws, afterwards confirmed this aphorism of ignorance." Who said this? You, in the "Creation of Order in Humanity." Why is your letter in contradiction with this doctrine?

Have you changed your opinion? Then I entreat you to tell me whether men of worth are not quite as exceptional in their sex, as women of merit in theirs. You have said: "Whatever may be the differences existing between men, they are equal, because they are human beings." Under penalty of inconsistency, you must add: Whatever may be the differences existing between the sexes, they are equal, because they form a part of the human species—unless you prove that women are not a part of humanity. Individual worth, not being the basis of right between men, cannot become so between the sexes. Your compliment is, therefore, a contradiction.

I add, lastly, that I feel myself linked with my sex by too close a solidarity ever to be content to see myself abstracted from it by an illogical process. I am a woman—I glory in it; I rejoice if any value is set upon me, not for myself, indeed, but because this contributes to modify the opinion of men with respect to my sex. A woman who is happy in hearing it said: "You are a man," is, in my eyes, a simpleton, an unworthy creature, avowing the superiority of the masculine sex; and the men who think that they compliment her in this manner, are vainglorious and impertinent boasters. If I acquire any desert, I thus pay honor to women, I reveal their aptitudes, I do not pass into the other sex any more than Proudhon abandons his own, because he is elevated by his intellect above the level of foolish and ignorant men; and if the ignorance of the mass of men prejudges nothing against their right, no more does the ignorance of the mass of women prejudge anything against theirs.

You affirm that man and woman do not form true society.

Tell us, then, what is marriage, what is society.

You affirm that the difference of sex places between man and woman a separation of the same nature as that which the difference of races places between animals. Then prove:

That the race is not essentially formed of two sexes;

That man and woman can be reproduced separately;

That their common product is a mixed breed, or a mule;

That their characteristics are dissimilar, apart from sexuality.

And if you come off with honor from this great feat of strength, you will still have to prove:

That to difference of race corresponds difference of right;

That the black, the yellow, the copper-colored persons belonging to races inferior to the Caucasian cannot truly associate with the latter; that they are minors.

Come, sir, study anthropology, physiology, and phrenology, and employ your serial dialectics to prove all this to us.

You are inclined to seclude woman, instead of emancipating her?

Prove to men that they have the right to do so; to women, that it is their duty to suffer themselves to be placed under lock and key. I declare, for my part, that I would not submit to it. Does Proudhon remember how he threatens the priest who shall lay his hand on his children? Well, the majority of women would not confine themselves to threats against those who might have the Mussulmanic inclination of Proudhon.

You affirm that by nature, and by destination, woman is neither associate, nor citizen, nor functionary. Tell us, in the first place, what nature it is necessary to have to be all these.

Reveal to us the nature of woman, since you claim to know it better than she does herself.

Reveal to us her destination, which apparently is not that which we see, nor which she believes to be such.

You affirm that woman, until her marriage, is nothing more than apprentice, at most, under-superintendent in the social workshop; that she is minor in the family, and does not form a part of the commonwealth.

Prove, then, that she does not execute in the social workshop and in the family works equivalent, or equal, to those of man.

Prove that she is less useful than man.

Prove that the qualities that give to man the right of citizenship, do not exist in woman.

I shall be severe with you on this head. To subordinate woman in a social order in which she must work in order to live is to desire prostitution; for disdain of the producer extends to the value of the product; and when such a doctrine is contrary to science, good sense, and progress, to sustain it is cruelty, is moral monstrosity. The woman who cannot live by working, can only do so by prostituting herself; the equal of man or a courtesan, such is the alternative. He is blind who does not see it.

You see no other fate for woman than to be courtesan or housewife. Open your eyes wider, and dream less, and tell me whether all those useful and courageous women are only housewives or courtesans, who support themselves honorably by arts, literature, instruction;

Who found numerous and prosperous manufactures;

Who superintend commercial establishments;

Who are such good managers, that many among them conceal or repair the faults resulting from the carelessness or dissipation of their husbands.

Prove to us, therefore, that all this is wrong;

Prove to us that it is not the result of human progress;

Prove to us that labor, the stamp of the human species—that labor, which you consider as the great emancipator—that labor, which makes men equal and free, has not virtue to make women equal and free. If you prove this to us, we shall have to register one contradiction more.

You do not admit that woman should have the right of claiming for herself special legislation, as though man were her chief enemy and tyrant.

You, sir, are the one that legislates specially for woman; she herself desires nothing but the common law.

Yes; until now, man, in subordinating woman, has been her tyrant and enemy. I am of your opinion when, in your first "Memoir on Property," you say that, so long as the strong and the weak are not equals, they are strangers, they cannot form an alliance, they are enemies. Yes, thrice yes, so long as man and woman are not equals, woman is in the right in considering man as her tyrant and enemy.

"The most rigorous justice cannot make woman the EQUAL of man." And it is to a woman whom you set in your opinion above a host of men, that you affirm such a thing! What a contradiction!

"It is an infatuation for women to demand their right!" An infatuation like that of slaves, pretending that they were created freemen; of the citizens of '89, proving that men are equal before the law. Do you know who were, who are the infatuated? The masters, the nobles, the whites, the men who have denied, who do deny, and who will deny, that slaves, citizens, blacks, and women, are born for liberty and equality.

"The sex to which I belong is incapable of understanding and governing itself," say you!

Prove that it is destitute of intellect;

Prove that great empresses and great queens have not governed as well as great emperors and great kings;

Prove against all the facts patent that women are not in general good observers and good managers;

Then prove that all men understand themselves perfectly and govern themselves admirably, and that progress moves as if on wheels.

"Woman is neither the half nor the equal of man; she is the complement that finally makes him an individual; the two sexes form the human androgynus." Come; seriously, what means this jingle of empty words? They are metaphors, unworthy to figure in scientific language, when our own and the other higher zoölogical species are in question. The lioness, the she-wolf and the tigress are no more the halves or the complement of their species than woman is the complement of man. Or Nature has established two exteriorities, two wills, she affirms two unities, two entireties not one, or two halves; the arithmetic of Nature cannot be destroyed by the freaks of the imagination.

Is equality before the law based upon individual qualities? Proudhon replies in the "Creation of Order in Humanity":

"Neither birth, nor figure, nor faculties, nor fortune, nor rank, nor profession, nor talent, nor anything that distinguishes individuals establishes between them a difference of species; all being men, and the law regulating only human relations, it is the same for all; so that to establish exceptions, it would be necessary to prove that the individuals excepted are above or beneath the human species."

Prove to us that women are above or beneath the human species, that they do not form a part of it, or, under penalty of contradiction, submit to the consequences of your doctrine.

You say in the "Social Revolution;"

"Neither conscience, nor reason, nor liberty, nor labor, pure forces, primary and creative faculties, can be made mechanical without being destroyed. Their reason of existence is in themselves; in their works they should find their reason of action. In this consists the human person, a sacred person, etc."

Prove that women have neither conscience, nor reason, nor moral liberty, and that they do not labor. If it is demonstrated that they possess the primary and creative faculties, respect their human person, for it is sacred.

In the "Creation of Order in Humanity," you say:

"Specifically, labor satisfies the desire of our personality, which tends invincibly to make a difference between itself and others, to render itself independent, to conquer its liberty and its character."

Prove then that women have no special work, and, if facts contradict you, acknowledge that, it inevitably tends to independence, to liberty.

Do you deny that they are your equals because they are less intelligent as a whole than men? In the first place, I contest it; but I need not do so, you yourself resolve this difficulty in the "Creation of Order in Humanity:"

"The inequality of capacities, when not caused by constitutional vices, mutilation or want, results from general ignorance, insufficient method, lack or falsity of education, and divergence of intuition through lack of sequence, whence arises dispersion and confusion of ideas. Now, all these facts productive of inequality are essentially abnormal, therefore the inequality of capacities is abnormal."

Unless you prove that women are mutilated by Nature, I do not exactly see how you can escape the consequences of your syllogism: not only has feminine inferiority the same sources as masculine ignorance, but public education is refused to women, the great professional schools are closed to them, those who through their intellect equal the most intelligent among you have had twenty times as many difficulties and prejudices to overcome.

You wish to subordinate women because in general they have less muscular force than you; but at this rate the weak men ought not to be the equals of the strong, and you combat this consequence yourself in your first "Memoir on Property," where you say:

"Social equilibrium is the equalization of the strong and the weak."

If I have treated you with consideration, it is because you are an intelligent and progressive man, and because it is impossible that you should remain under the influence of the doctors of the Middle Age on one question, while you are in advance of the majority of your cotemporaries on so many others. You will cease to sustain an illogical series that is without foundation, remembering, as you have said so well in the "Creation of Order in Humanity:"

"That the greater part of philosophical aberrations and chimeras have arisen from attributing to logical series a reality that they do not possess, and endeavoring to explain the nature of man by abstractions."

You will acknowledge that all the higher animal species are composed of two sexes;

That in none is the female the inferior of the male, except sometimes through force, which cannot be the basis of human right;

You will renounce the androgynus, which is only a dream.

Woman, a distinct individual, endowed with consciousness, intellect, will and activity like man, will be no longer separated from him before the laws.

You will say of all, both men and women, as in your first "Memoir on Property:"

"Liberty is an absolute right, because it is to man what impenetrability is to matter, a condition sine qua non of existence. Equality is an absolute right, because without equality, there is no society."

And you will thus show the second degree of sociability, which you yourself define, "the recognition in another of a personality equal to our own."

I appeal therefore from Proudhon drunk with theology to Proudhon sobered by facts and science, moved by the sorrows and disorders resulting from his own systems.

I hope I shall not encounter his Herculean club raised against the holy banner of truth and right; against woman,—that being physically so weak, morally so strong, who, bleeding, and steeped in gall beneath her crown of roses, is just on the point of reaching the top of the rough mountain where progress will shortly give her her lawful place by the side of man. But if my hopes are deceitful, mark me well, M. Proudhon, you will find me standing firmly in the breach, and, whatever may be your strength, I vow that you shall not overthrow me. I will courageously defend the right and dignity of your daughters against the despotism and logical error of their father, and the victory will remain mine, for, definitively, it always belongs to truth."

Proudhon replied by the following letter in the Revue Philosophique:

"TO MADAME d'HÉRICOURT.

"Well, Madam, what did I tell you in my last letter?

"I consider the sort of crusade that is being carried on at this time by some estimable ladies in both hemispheres in behalf of their sex, as a symptom of the general revolution that is being wrought; but nevertheless as an exaggerated symptom, an infatuation that proceeds precisely from the inferiority of the sex and its incapacity to understand and to govern itself.

"I begin by withdrawing the word infatuation, which may have wounded you, but which was not, as you know, intended for publicity.

"This point adjusted, I will tell you, Madam, with all the respect that I owe you as a woman, that I did not expect to see you confirm my judgment so speedily by your petulant appeal.

"I was at first at a loss to know whence came the discontent that impelled the bravest, the most distinguished among you, to an assault on paternal and marital supremacy. I said to myself, not without disquietude, What is the matter? What is it that troubles them? With what do they reproach us? To which of our faculties, our virtues, our prerogatives; or else of our failings, our perfidies, our calamities, do they aspire? Is this the cry of their outraged nature, or an aberration of their understanding?

"Your attack, joined to the studies which I immediately commenced on the subject, came at last to solve the question.

"No, Madam, you know nothing of your sex; you do not know the first word of the question that you and your honorable confederates are agitating with so much noise and so little success. And, if you do not comprehend this question; if, in your eight pages of reply to my letter, there are forty paralogisms, it results precisely, as I have told you, from your sexual infirmity. I mean by this word, the exactness of which is not, perhaps, irreproachable, the quality of your understanding, which permits you to seize the relation of things only as far as we, men, place your finger upon them. You have in the brain, as in the body, a certain organ incapable by itself of overcoming its native inertia, and which the masculine spirit alone is capable of setting in motion; and even this does not always succeed. Such, Madam, is the result of my direct and positive observations; I make them over to your obstetrical sagacity, and leave you to calculate therefrom the incalculable consequences to your thesis.

"I will willingly enter into an elaborate discussion with you, Madam, on this obscure subject, in the Revue Philosophique. But—as you will comprehend as well as I—the broader the question, the more it affects our most sacred, social, and domestic interests, the more important is it that we should approach it with seriousness and prudence.

"The following course, therefore, appears to me indispensable: In the first place, you have promised us a book, and I await it. I need this work to complete my documents and to finish my demonstration. Since I had the honor of receiving and replying to your letter, I have made earnest and interesting studies on woman, which I ask only to rectify if they are erroneous; as I also desire to set a seal on them if, as I have every reason to presume, your publication brings me but one confirmation more.

"I have verified by facts and documents the truth of all the assertions which you call on me to retract, namely:

"That the difference of sex raises up between man and woman a separation ANALOGOUS—I did not say equal—to that which the difference of races and species establishes between animals;

"That by reason of this separation or difference, man and woman are not associates; I did not say that they could not be anything else;

"That, consequently, woman can only be a citizen in so far as she is the wife of a citizen; as we say Madame la Presidente to the wife of a President: which does not imply that no other rôle exists for her.

"In two words, I am in a position to establish, by observation and reasoning, the facts, that woman, being weaker than man with respect to muscular force, as you yourself acknowledge, is not less inferior to him with respect to INDUSTRIAL, ARTISTIC, PHILOSOPHICAL and MORAL POWER; so that if the condition of woman in society be regulated, as you demand for her, by the same justice as the condition of man, it is all over with her, she is a slave.

"To which I add, immediately, that this system is precisely what I reject: the principle of pure, rigorous right, of that terrible right which the Roman compared to an unsheathed sword, jus strictum, and which rules individuals of the same sex among themselves, being different from that which governs the relations between individuals of different sexes.

"What is this principle, differing from justice, and which, notwithstanding, would not exist without justice; which all men feel in the depth of their souls, and of which you women alone have no idea? Is it love? nothing more? I leave it to you to divine. And if your penetration succeeds in clearing up this mystery, I consent, Madam, to sign you a certificate of genius; Et eris mihi magnus Apollo. But then you will have given me the cause.

"Such, Madam, in a few words, are the conclusions to which I have arrived, and which the reading of your book surely will not modify. Notwithstanding, as it is absolutely possible that your personal observations may have led you to diametrically opposite results, good faith in the discussion and respect for our readers and ourselves exact that, before entering upon the controversy, a reciprocal interchange of all the documents that we have collected should be made between us. You may take cognizance of mine.

"One other condition, which I entreat you, Madam, to take in good part, and from which I shall not depart under any pretext, is that you shall choose yourself a male sponsor.

"You, who have declared yourself so energetically on this point, would not wish your adversary to make the least sacrifice to gallantry in so serious a discussion; and you are right. But I, Madam, who am so far from admitting your pretensions, cannot thus release myself from the obligations which manly and honorable civility prescribes towards ladies; and as I propose, besides, to make you serve as a subject of experiment; as, after having made the autopsy of five or six women of the greatest merit for the instruction of my readers, I count also on making yours, you will conceive that it is quite impossible for me to argue from you, of you, and with you, without exposing myself at every word to a violation of all the rules of conventionality.

"I know, Madam, that such a condition will annoy you; it is one of the disadvantages of your position to which you must submit courageously. You are a plaintiff, and, as a woman, you affirm that you are oppressed. Appear, then, before the judgment seat of incorruptible public opinion with this tyrannous chain which rouses your ire, and which, according to me, exists only in your disordered imagination. You will be but the more interesting for it. Besides, you would deride me if, while sustaining the superiority of man, I should begin by according to you the equality of woman by disputing with you on an equal footing of companionship. You have not counted, I imagine, upon my falling into this inconsistency.

"You will not lack for champions, besides. I expect of your courtesy, Madam, that he whom you shall select as my antagonist, who will sign and affirm all your articles, and assume the responsibility of your affirmations and replies, shall be worthy of both you and me; so that, in fine, I shall not have a right to complain that you have pitted me against a man of straw.

"What has most surprised me, since this hypothesis of the equality of the sexes, renewed by the Greeks as well as by many others, has become known among us, has been to see that it numbered among its partisans almost as many men as women. I sought a long time for the reason of this strange fact, which I at first attributed to chivalric zeal; I think now that I have found it. It is not to the advantage of the knights. I shall be glad, Madam, for their sake and yours, if this serious examination should prove that the new emancipators of woman are the most lofty, the broadest, and the most progressive, if not the most masculine minds of the age.

"You say, Madam, that women have a weakness for soldiers. It is doubtless on this account that you have lashed me soundly. He who loveth, chasteneth. When I was three years and a half old, my mother, to get rid of me, sent me to a school-mistress of the neighborhood, an excellent woman, called Madelon. One day she threatened to whip me for some piece of mischief. It made me furious. I snatched her switch from her hand, and flung it in her face. I was always a disobedient subject. I shall be glad, therefore, to find that you do not assume towards me castigating airs, which it does not belong to a man to return; but I leave this to your discretion. Strike, redouble the blows, do not spare me; and if I should chance to grow restive under the rod, believe me none the less, Madam, your affectionate servant and compatriot,

"PROUDHON."

Taking up the discussion in turn, I replied as follows, in the ensuing February number:—

I am forbidden, sir, to answer your letter in the indecorous style which you have deemed proper to assume towards me:

By respect for the gravity of my subject;

By respect for our readers;

By respect for myself.

You find yourself ill at ease in the Popilian circle that has been traced around you by the hand of a woman; all understand this, I among the rest. Ill-armed for defence, worse armed, perhaps, for attack, you would like to escape; but your skill as a tactician will avail you nothing; you shall not quit the fatal circle till vanquished, either by me, or by yourself, if you confess your weakness on the point in litigation, by continuing to refuse a discussion under flimsy pretexts, or, lastly, by public opinion, which will award to you the quality of inconsistency, the least desirable of all to a dialectician.

This being understood, I must tell you that, personally, I am satisfied that you should attack, in the rights of woman, the cause of justice and progress. It is an augury of success to this cause; you have always been fatal to all that you have sought to sustain.

It is true that your attitude in this question makes you the ally of the dogmatism of the Middle Age; it is true that the official representatives of this dogmatism avail themselves, at the present time, of your arguments and your name to maintain their influence over women, and through them over men and children; and this in order to revive the past, to stifle the future. Is this your intention? I do not believe it. You are, in my eyes, a subverter, a destroyer, in whom instinct sometimes gets the better of intellect, and from whom it shuts out a clear view of the consequences of his writings. Formed for strife, you must have adversaries; and, in default of enemies, you cruelly fall on those who are fighting in the same ranks with yourself. In all your writings, one feels that the second part of education—that which inspires respect and love of woman—is completely wanting in you.

Let us come to your letter.

You reproach me with having made forty paralogisms; it was your duty at least to have cited one of these. However, let us see.

You say: between man and woman there is a separation of the same nature as that which the difference of race establishes between animals.

Woman, by nature and destination, is neither associate, nor citizen, nor functionary.

She is, until marriage, only apprentice, at most, under-superintendent in the social workshop; she is a minor in the family, and does not form a part of the commonwealth.

You conceive of no destiny for her outside of the household: she can be only housewife or courtesan.

She is incapable of understanding and of governing herself.

To make a paralogism is to draw a conclusion from false premises; now did I conclude from such in saying:

In order that all these paradoxes may become truths, you have to prove:

That man and woman are not of the same race;

That they can be reproduced separately;

That their common product is a mixed breed or a mule;

That difference of races corresponds to difference of rights.

You have to define for us an association, and also the nature of a citizen or a functionary.

You have to prove that woman is less useful than man in society;

That, at the present time, she is necessarily a housewife, when she is not a courtesan;

That she is destitute of intellect, that she knows nothing of government.

You pretend that woman has not a right to demand for herself special legislation.

Was I guilty of a paralogism in pointing out to you that it is not she, but you, who demand this, since you lay down as a principle the inequality of the sexes before human law?

All that you say relatively to the pretended inferiority of woman and the conclusions which you draw from it applying to human races inferior to our own, it would be easy for me to demonstrate that the consequence of your principles is the re-establishment of slavery. The nearest perfect has the right to take advantage of the weakest, instead of becoming his educator. An admirable doctrine, full of the spirit of progress, full of generosity! I compliment you most sincerely on it.

You say that labor specialized is the great emancipator of man; that labor, conscience, liberty, and reason, find only in themselves their right to exist and to act; that these pure forces constitute the human person, which is sacred.

You lay down the principle that the law is the same for all; so that, to establish exceptions, it would be necessary to prove that the individuals excepted are above or beneath the human species.

You say that social equilibrium is the equalization of the strong and the weak; that all have the same rights, not through that which distinguishes them from each other, but through that which is common to them,—the quality of human beings.

Was I guilty of paralogisms in saying to you:

Then you cannot, by reason of her weakness or even of a supposed inferiority, exclude woman from equality of right: your principles interdict it, unless you prove:

That she is superior or inferior to the human species, and that she does not form a part of it;

That she is destitute of conscience, of justice, and of reason; that she does not labor, that she does not execute specialties of labor.

It is evident, that your doctrine concerning general right is in contradiction to your doctrine concerning the right of women; it is evident that you are very inconsequent, and that, however skillful you may be, you cannot extricate yourself from this embarrassment.

In what you call an answer, there are a few passages that are worth the trouble of pausing to consider.

You ask what impels the bravest, the most distinguished among us to an assault on paternal and marital supremacy.

You do not comprehend the movement, or you would have said masculine supremacy.

In my turn, I ask you:

What would have impelled Proudhon, a Roman slave, to play the part of Spartacus?

What would have impelled Proudhon, a feudal serf, to organize a Jacquerie?

What would have impelled Proudhon, a black slave, to become a Toussaint L'Ouverture?

What would have impelled Proudhon, a Russian serf, to take the character of Poutgachef?

What would have impelled Proudhon, a citizen of '89, to overthrow the privileges of the nobility and the clergy?

What would impel Proudhon ... but I will not touch on reality.

What would Proudhon have replied to all the holders of prerogatives and supremacy, who would not have failed on their part to have put to him the naïve question: "Ah! what does this vile slave, this unworthy serf, this audacious and stupid citizen want of us, then? To which of our faculties, our virtues, our prerogatives does he aspire? Is this the cry of his outraged nature, or an aberration of his understanding?"

The answer that Proudhon would make, is that which will be made to him by all women who have attained majority.

There is in the brain of woman, say you, an organ which the masculine mind alone is capable of setting in motion. Render the service then to science of pointing it out and demonstrating its manner of working. As to the other organ of which you speak, it is its inertia, doubtless, that has caused it to be defined by some, parvum animal furibondum, octo ligamentis alligatum. Before choosing anatomical and physiological facts as proofs of your assertions, consult some learned physician; such is the counsel given you, not only by my obstetrical, but also by my medical sagacity.

You offer to acquaint me with your direct and positive observations. What, Sir! has it been possible for you in a few weeks to delve into the depths of the healthy and the diseased organization! to go through the whole labyrinth of functions implicated in the questions. It is more than miraculous; despite my good will, I cannot believe it, unless you prove that you are a prophet in communication with some deity. Shall I tell you what I really think? It is that you have studied these matters neither directly nor indirectly, and that it belongs to me to tell you that you do not understand woman; that you do not know the first word of the question. Your five or six purely moral and intellectual autopsies prove only one thing; namely, your inexperience in physiology. You have naïvely mistaken the scalpel of your imagination for that of science.

With regard to autopsies, you tell me that you are awaiting my promised work, in order to make mine. It would be doubtless a great honor to be stretched on your dissecting table in such good company as you promise me, but the instruction of my future readers does not permit me to enjoy this satisfaction. I shall not send my book to press until your own shall have appeared, for I, too, intend to make your autopsy; dissect me therefore now; I promise you on my side that I will perform my duty conscientiously, properly and delicately.

"Woman," you say, "being weaker than man with respect to muscular force, is not less inferior to him with respect to INDUSTRIAL, ARTISTIC, PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL POWER; so that if the condition of woman in society be regulated, as you demand for her, by the same justice as the condition of man, it is all over with her; she is a slave."

Terrible man, you will be then always inconsistent, you will always contradict yourself and facts!

What do you hold as the basis of right? The simple quality of being human; everything that distinguishes individuals disappears before right. Well! even though it were true that women were inferior to men, would it follow that their rights were not the same? According to you, by no means, if they form a part of the human species. There are not two kinds of justice, there is but one; there are not two kinds of right, there is but one in the absolute sense. The recognition and respect of individual autonomy in the lowest of human beings as well as in the man and woman of genius is the law which should preside over social relations; must a woman tell you this!

Let us now examine the value of your series of man and woman.

With respect to the reproduction of the species, they form a series; this is beyond dispute.

As to the rest, do they form a series? No.

If it were a law that woman is muscularly weaker than man, the strongest woman would be weaker than the weakest man; facts demonstrate the contrary daily.

If it were a law that women are inferior to men in industrial power, the most skillful woman would be inferior in industrial pursuits to the least skillful man; now facts demonstrate daily that there are women who are excellent manufacturers and excellent managers; men who are unskilled in and unsuited to this kind of pursuits.

If it were a law that women are inferior to men in artistic power, the best female artist would be inferior to the most indifferent male artist; now facts daily demonstrate the contrary; there are more great female than male tragedians; many men are mediocre in music and painting, and many women, on the other hand, remarkable in both respects, etc., etc.

What follows from all this? That your series is false, since facts destroy it. How did you form it? The process is a curious study. You chose a few remarkable men, in whom, by a convenient process of abstraction, you beheld all men, even to cretins; you here took a few women, without taking into account in the slightest degree any differences of culture, instruction, and surroundings, and compared them with these eminent men, taking care to forget those that might have embarrassed you; then, deducing generals from particulars, creating two entities, you drew your conclusions. A strange manner of reasoning, truly! You have fallen into the mania of imposing rules on Nature, instead of studying Nature's rules, and deserve that I should apply your own words to you: "The greatest part of the philosophical aberrations and chimeras have arisen from attributing to logical series a reality that they do not possess, and endeavoring to explain the nature of man by abstractions."

Still, if this were to strengthen your doctrines concerning the basis of right, it might be comprehended; but it is to overthrow them!

You transform yourself into a Sphinx, to propose to me a riddle. "What is that right," you say, "which is not justice, and which, notwithstanding, would not exist without it, which presides over the relations of both sexes, the jus strictum governing only individuals of the same sex. If you divine it, you will have given me the cause."

It is not necessary to be the great Apollo, to divine that it is the right of grace, of mercy, towards an inferior that is not armed with strict right.

If I have divined rightly, you have simply begged the question by supposing that resolved which I dispute. I maintain that there is only one right, that one single right presides over the rights of individuals and of sexes, and that the right of mercy belongs to the domain of sentiment.

You wish it proved that the new emancipators of woman are the most elevated, the broadest, and the most progressive minds of the age. Rejoice, your wish is accomplished: a simple comparison between them and their adversaries will prove it to you.

The emancipators, taking woman in the cradle of humanity, see her marching slowly towards civil emancipation. The intelligent disciples of progress, they wish, by extending a fraternal hand to her, to aid her in fulfilling her destiny.

The non-emancipators, denying the historical law, regardless of the progressive and parallel movement of the populace, woman, and the industrial arts towards affranchisement, wish to thrust her back far beyond the Middle Age, to the days of Romulus and the Hebrew patriarchs.

The emancipators, believing in individual autonomy, respecting it, and recognizing it in woman, wish to aid her to conquer it. Judging of the need that a free being has of liberty by the need that they have of it themselves, they are consistent.

The non-emancipators, blinded by pride, perverted by a love of dominion as unbridled as unintelligent, desire liberty only for themselves. These egotists, so suspicious of those that menace their own freedom, wish half the human species to be in their chains.

The emancipators have enough heart and ideality to desire a companion with whom they can exchange sentiment and thought, and who can improve them in some respects and be improved by them in others; they love and respect woman.

The non-emancipators, without ideality, without love, chained to their senses and their pride, despise woman; and wish to have in her only a female, a servant, a machine to produce young ones. They are males, they are not yet men.

The emancipators desire perfection of the species, in a three-fold point of view: physical, moral, and intellectual. They know that races cannot be improved without selecting and perfecting the mothers.

The non-emancipators are bent upon something quite different from the improvement of the species: let their children be lacking in intelligence, malicious, ugly, or deformed; they think much less of this than of being masters. Do they know enough of physiology to have reflected that the faculties depend on organization, that organization is capable of modification, that modifications are transmitted, that woman has a great share in this transmission, a greater share, perhaps, than that of man? It is therefore essential to place her in a condition to perform this great function in the manner most useful to humanity.

The emancipators desire humanity to go forward, to vibrate no longer between the past and the future; they know the influence that women possess, first over children, then over men; they know that woman cannot serve progress unless she finds it to her interest to do so; that she will find it so only through liberty; that she will love it only if her intellect is elevated by study, and her heart purified from the petty selfishness of home by the predominating love of the great human family. As they desire the end sincerely, they sincerely desire the means; so long as half the human race shall labor as it is doing to destroy the edifice constructed by a few members of the other half; so long as half the human race, the one that secretly governs the other, shall have its face turned towards the past, the landmarks that point to the future will be threatened with being torn up. Do you consider it a crime in the emancipators to comprehend this, to seek to conjure down the peril; and do you consider a virtue in the non-emancipators the foolish pride that places a cataract over their eyes?

A few words more, and I shall have done. You would rather, you say, that I should not assume castigating airs with you. But have you really the right to complain of it, you who have constituted yourself the chief whipper-in of the economists and the socialists? I shall never go so far towards you as you have gone towards them. You must resign yourself to my abrupt, sometimes harsh style. I am implacable towards whatever appears to me false and unjust; and were you my brother, I should not war against you less sharply; before all ties of affection and family, should come the love of justice and humanity.

I owe now to my readers and to you, sir, the exposition of the thesis that I undertake to sustain; for the phrase, the emancipation of women has been, and is, quite variously interpreted.

With respect to right, man and woman are equal, whether the equality of faculties be admitted or rejected.

But for a truth to be useful, it must be adapted to the surroundings into which we seek to introduce it.

Absolute right being recognized, the practice of it remains. In practice, I see two kinds of rights: woman is ripe for the exercise of one of them; but I acknowledge that the practice of the second would be at present dangerous, by reason of the education that the majority of them have received. You comprehend me, without making it necessary for me to explain myself more clearly in a Review in which social and political subjects are interdicted.

The directors of the Revue having informed me that my adversary refused to continue the discussion, I made the following recapitulation of his creed, concerning the rights and nature of woman.

To the editors of the Revue Philosophique et Religieuse:

You inform me that M. Proudhon will not reply to the questions that I have put to him; I have neither the means nor the wish to constrain him to do so. I shall not inquire into the motives of his determination; my business now is only to make an exposition of his creed, which may be summed up in this wise:

"I believe that between man and woman, there is a separation of the same nature as that which the difference of race places between animals;

"I believe that, by nature and by destination, woman is neither associate, nor functionary, nor citizen;

"I believe that, in the social workshop, she is, until her marriage, only apprentice, at most under-superintendent;

"I believe that she is a minor in the family, art, science, manufactures, and philosophy, and that she is nothing in the commonwealth;

"I believe that she can only be housewife or courtesan;

"I believe that she is incapable of understanding and of governing herself;

"I believe firmly that the basis of the equality of rights is in the simple quality of being human; now, woman being unable to have rights equal to those of man, I affirm that she does not belong to the human species."

Is Proudhon conscious how far his creed is in opposition to science, to facts, to the law of progress, to the tendencies of our own age, and does he dare to attempt to justify it by proofs?

Does he feel that this creed classes him among the abettors of the dogmatism of the Middle Age, and does he recoil before such a responsibility?

If this were the case, I should praise him for his prudent silence, and it would be my warmest desire that he should keep it forever on the question that divides us. To treat a subject, it is necessary to love and understand it; I dare not say that Proudhon does not love woman, but I do affirm that he does not understand her; he sees in her nothing more than the female of man; his peculiar organization seems to render him unfit for the investigation of such a subject. He promises, in the work that he is preparing, to treat of the sphere and the rights of women; if his doctrine has for its basis the paradoxical affirmations of his creed, I hope that he will this time take pains to rest them at least upon the semblances of proofs, which I shall examine with all the attention of which I am capable.

By shrinking from discussion, he cannot escape my criticism.

The two studies of Proudhon are simply the development of this creed.

I promised to dissect the author; therefore, I shall do so.

Let me not be reproached with being pitiless; Proudhon has deserved it.

Let me not be reproached with being a reasoning machine; with such an adversary, one should be nothing else.

Let me not be reproached with being harsh; Proudhon has shown a harshness and injustice with respect to women, even the most illustrious, that exceed all bounds. If I am harsh, I will endeavor on my part not to be unjust.

I.

Well, M. Proudhon, you have sought war with women! War you shall have.

You have said, not without reason, that the Comtois are an obstinate race; now, I am your countrywoman; and as woman generally carries virtues and failings farther than man, I intend to outdo you in obstinacy.

I have raised the banner under which your daughters will one day take shelter if they are worthy of the name they bear; I will hold it with a firm hand and will never suffer it to be struck down; against such as you, I have the heart and claws of a lioness.

You begin by saying that you by no means desired to treat of the inequality of the sexes, but that half a dozen insurgent women with ink-stained fingers having defied you to discuss the question, you will establish by facts and documents the physical, intellectual and moral inferiority of woman; that you will prove that her emancipation is the same thing as her prostitution, and will take her defence in hand against the rambling talk of a few impure women whom sin has rendered mad.—(Vol. III., p. 337.)

I alone, by shutting you up in a circle of contradictions, have dared defy you to discuss the question; I sum up, therefore, in my own person, the few impure women whom sin has rendered mad.

Insults of this sort cannot touch me; the esteem, the regard, the precious friendship of eminently respectable men and women suffice to reduce unworthy insinuations to naught. I should not notice them, with such contempt do they inspire me, were it not necessary to tell you that the time has gone by when one might hope to stifle the voice of a woman by attacking her purity.

If you do not ask the man who demands his rights and seeks to prove their legitimacy, whether he is upright, chaste, etc., no more have you the right to ask the question of the woman who makes the same claim.

Were I therefore so unfortunate as to be the vilest of mortals as regards chastity, this would not at all lessen the value of my claim.

I greatly dislike any justification, but I owe it to the sacred cause that I defend, I owe it to my friends, to tell you that the moral education which my sainted, lamented mother gave me, together with scientific studies, serious philosophy, and continual occupation, have kept me in what is commonly called the right path, and have strengthened the horror that I feel for all tyranny, whether it be styled man or temperament.

You accuse your biographer of having committed an indignity in directing an accusation against a woman, because this woman was your wife; do you not commit an indignity yourself in insulting many others?

And if you blame those who calumniate the morals of Proudhon because he is not of their opinion, in what light do you think that men will regard your calumnious insinuations against women, because they do not think like you?

You claim that we have no morality, because we lack respect towards the dignity of others; who has set us this detestable example more than you? You, who style yourself the champion of the principles of '89—who are the men and women whom you attack?

They who are in different degrees, and from different stand points, in favor of these principles.

Your anger has no bounds against George Sand, our great prose writer, the author of the bulletins of the republic of '48. You depreciate Madame de Stäel, whom you have not read, and who was in advance of most of the masculine writers of her epoch.

Two scaffolds are erected, two women mount thereon: Madame Roland and Marie Antoinette. I, a woman, will not cast insult on the decapitated queen, dying with dignity and courage; no, I bow before the block, whatever head may lay on it, and wipe away my tears. But, Marie Antoinette died the victim of the faults that her princely education had caused her to commit against the modern principles; while Madame Roland, the chaste and noble wife, died for the revolution, and died blessing it.

Whence comes it that you greet the queen with your sympathies, while you have nought but words of blame and contempt for the revolutionist? And the men that belong to the great party of the future, how do you style them?

The Girondins, effeminate;

Robespierre and his adherents, eunuchs;

The gentle Bernardin de St. Pierre, effeminate;

M. Legouvé and those who think like him concerning the emancipation of women, effeminate;

M. de Girardin, absurd;

Béranger, a pitiable author, and effeminate; Jean Jacques, not only the prince of effeminates, but the greatest enemy of the people and the revolution—he who was evidently the chief author of our "French Revolution."

Are we not justified in asking you, whether you are for or against the Revolution?

M. Proudhon, you have forfeited your right to all consideration, since you have none for those who have neither offended you or offered you provocation, those who have never pretended to reduce you to servitude; men have lacked courage; they ought to have stopped you when you began to descend to insulting personalities; what they have not done, I, a woman, will do, fearing nothing, or no one, except my own conscience.

Proudhon, the greatest enemy of the people, is the writer who, treading under foot reason and conscience, science and facts, calls to his aid all the ignorance, all the despotism of the past, to mislead the spirit of the people with respect to the rights of half the human species.

Proudhon, the greatest enemy of the revolution, is he who shows it to women as a toy; who detaches them from its holy cause by confounding it with the negation of their rights; who attacks and vilifies the advocates of progress; who dares, in fine, in the name of the principles of general emancipation, to proclaim the social annihilation and the conjugal servitude of one entire half of humanity.

Behold the enemy of the people and of the revolution!

II.

I had proceeded thus far in my reply when, pausing to take breath and to reflect, I grew calm.

What! said I to myself, have I then no more sense than to take in earnest that shapeless thing honored by the name of theory by the good people who are so bewildered by the noise of Proudhon's drum and tam-tam that they see stars at noon-day and the sun at midnight? Let me be calm, let me not give to the affair more importance than it possesses; and since I must set forth this thing to my readers, let me do it in a fitting tone. We will leave Proudhon to explain himself in his own words.

No sooner had I taken this good resolution, than I evoked M. Proudhon, and said to him in all humility: Master, I come to you that you may define for me the nature of woman, and also something of the nature of man.

PROUDHON. You do well, for I alone am capable of instructing you; listen then to me.

"The complete human being, adequate to his destiny, I speak of the physical, is the male, who, through his virility, attains the highest degree of muscular and nervous tension comporting with his nature and end, and thence, the maximum of action in labor and in battle.

"Woman is a DIMINUTIVE of man, lacking one organ to become a pubescent youth.

"She is a receptacle for the germs that man alone produces, a place of incubation, like the earth for the seed of the wheat; an organ inert in itself, and purposeless with respect to the woman. Such an organization—presupposes the subordination of the subject.

"In herself, I speak still of the physical, woman has no reason to exist; she is an instrument of reproduction which it has pleased nature to choose in preference to any other.

"Woman, in this first count, is inferior to man: a sort of mean term between him and the rest of the animal kingdom."—Justice, Vol. III., etc.

And remark that I am not alone in my opinion:

"Woman is not only different from man," says Paracelsus, "she is different because she is lesser, because her sex constitutes for her one faculty less. Wherever virility is wanting, the subject is imperfect; wherever it is taken away, the subject deteriorates. Woman lacks nothing in the physical point of view except to produce germs.

"Likewise, in the intellectual point of view, woman possesses perceptions, memory and imagination, she is capable of attention, reflection, and judgment; what does she lack?

"The power of producing germs, that is, ideas.—Id.

Now, follow my reasoning closely: It being admitted that strength has some weight in the establishment of right; it being admitted, on the other hand, that woman is one third weaker than man, she will then be to man, in physical respects, as two is to three. Consequently, in the social workshop, the value of the products of woman will be one third less than that of the products of man; therefore, in the division of social advantages, the proportion will be the same: thus says justice.

"Man will always be stronger and will always produce more," which signifies that man will be the master, and that woman will obey, dura lex, sed lex."—Id.

Besides, reflect that woman falls to the charge of man during gestation; her physical weakness, her infirmities, her maternity, exclude her inevitably and judicially from all political, doctrinal and industrial direction.—Id.

We will now proceed to the second point. But first, mark well that woman, like all else, is autonomic; woman, considered apart from the influence of man, is the thesis; woman, considered under the influence of man, is the antithesis; it is the thesis that we are now examining. Let us therefore approach the thetic woman in the intellectual relation.

We will first admit the principle that thought is proportional to force; whence we have a right to conclude that man possesses a stronger intellect than woman. Thus we see man alone possessing genius. As to woman, she is nothing in science; we owe to her no invention, not even her distaff and spindle. She never generalizes, never synthetizes; her mind is anti-metaphysical; she cannot produce any regular work, not even a romance; she composes nothing but medleys, monsters; "she makes epigrams, satire; does not know how to express a judgment in set terms, nor assign its causes; it was not she who created abstract words, such as cause, time, space, quantity, relation. Woman is a true table rapping medium."—Id.

I have already told you that woman does not produce intellectual germs any more than physical germs; her intellectual inferiority tells upon the quality of the product as much as upon the intensity and duration of the action and, as in this feeble nature, the defect of the idea results from the lack of energy of the thought, it may be truly said that woman possesses a mind essentially false, of irremediable falsity.

"Disconnected ideas, contradictory reasonings, chimeras taken for realities, unreal analogies erected into principles, a tendency of mind inclining inevitably towards annihilation: such is the intellect of woman."

Yes, woman "is a passive, enervating being, whose conversation exhausts like her embraces. He who wishes to preserve entire the strength of his mind and body will flee her."—Id.

"Without man, who is to her prophet and word, she would not emerge from the bestial condition."

AUTHOR. Calm yourself, Master, and tell me whether it is true that you have dealt harshly with literary women.

PROUDHON. Literary women! As if there were any! "The woman author does not exist; she is a contradiction. The part of woman in literature is the same as in manufactures; she is useful where genius is no longer of service, like a needle or a bobbin.

"By cutting out of a woman's book all that is borrowed, imitated, gleaned, and common-place, we reduce it to a few pretty sayings; philosophy on nothing. To the community of ideas, woman brings nothing of her own, any more than to generation."

PROUDHON. Ah! I understand: you mean that, in the character of author, the woman of genius does not exist. But in this respect, among the number of men that write how many are there who have genius, and who never borrow from any one?

PROUDHON. I grant that there are many effeminate men; which does not alter the fact that woman would do better to go and iron her collars than to meddle with writing; for, "it may be affirmed without fear of calumny, that the woman who dabbles with philosophy and writing destroys her progeny by the labor of her brain and her kisses which savor of man; the safest and most honorable way for her is to renounce home life and maternity; destiny has branded her on the forehead; made only for love, the title of concubine if not of courtesan suffices her."—Id.