he man," they would affirm, "The man and the woman were equally
made for each other, to advance hand in hand to perfection." Those
who assume this scientific point of view, will see that the question
of the rights of woman, and her true relation to man, is to be
decided purely by a philosophical mastery of the expediency and
inexpediency, the essential right and wrong, in the facts of the
case. The question of the eligibility of woman to public life and
political prerogatives has nothing to do with her comparative
personal weakness; nothing to do with any supposed rule, given in an
ancient revelation; nothing to do with any supposition that man was
the first to be created and the second to sin, woman the second to be
created and the first to sin. Did priority of creation confer
authority to govern, then man should obey the lower animals; for they
were made before he was. Even Apostolic logic sometimes limps. The
question can be understood only by a correct perception of the will
of God, as indicated in the nature and destiny of progressive
humanity composed of male and female.

What, then, is the will of God, so indicated? Regarded as the two
halves of humanity, men and women are alike and equal. Their
unlikeness, when regarded as male and female, cannot destroy this
primary and fundamental equality, or vitiate any of the rights it
involves. Consequently, whatever belongs to humanity proper, belongs
equally to men and to women. Woman has an equal claim with man to
every thing permanently connected with the fulfilment of the human
destiny; that is, the full and harmonious exercise of the faculties
of human nature. The division into male and female, affecting not
their equality of rights, merely gives special fitnesses and duties
to each. Unquestionably, the higher nervous development and maternal
offices of woman relatively fit her for tenderness and domesticity:
the coarser muscular development and adventurousness of man
relatively fit him for hardihood and publicity. But this can furnish
no ground for subjecting one, and enthroning the other. It is a
reason for their equal co-operation in assimilating each other's best
qualities for their mutual and common perfection. Every thing that is
good should be granted to both: whatever is evil should not be sought
by either.

The true social desideratum at last is, not that women, equally with
men, assume the exercise of authority; but that men, equally with
women, forego t