ld, should cause his cheeks to
burn with shame; the thought that he, rude jester, expects from a
similar condition on the part of his wife the fulfillment of his dearest
wishes should cause him, furthermore, to hold his tongue in shame.

_A woman who gives birth to children renders, at least, the same service
to the commonwealth as the man who defends his country and his hearth
with his life against a foe in search of conquests._ Moreover, the life
of a woman trembles in the scales at child-birth. All our mothers have
looked death in the face at our births, and many succumbed. _The number
of women who die as a result of child-birth, or who as a consequence
pine away in sickness, is greater than that of the men who fall on the
field of battle, or are wounded._ In Prussia, between 1816-1876, not
less than 321,791 women fell a prey to child-birth fever--a yearly
average of 5,363. This is by far a larger figure than that of the
Prussians, who, during the same period, were killed in war or died of
their wounds. Nor must, at the contemplation of this enormous number of
women who died of child-birth fever, the still larger number of those be
lost sight of, who, as a consequence of child-birth, are permanently
crippled in health, and die prematurely.[157] These are additional
reasons for woman's equal rights with man--reasons to be held up
especially to those, who play man's duty to defend the Fatherland as a
decisive circumstance, entitling them to superior consideration to
women. For the rest, in virtue of our military institutions, most men do
not even fill this duty: to the majority of them it exists upon paper
only.

All these superficial objections to the public activity of woman would
be unimaginable were the relations of the two sexes a natural one, and
were there not an antagonism, artificially raised side by side with the
relation of master and servant between the two. From early youth the two
are separated in social intercourse and education. Above all, it is the
antagonism, for which Christianity is responsible, that keeps the sexes
steadily apart and the one in ignorance about the other, and that
hinders free social intercourse, mutual confidence, a mutual
supplementing of traits of character.

One of the first and most important tasks of a rationally organized
society must be to end this unhallowed split, and to reinstate Nature in
its rights. The violence done to Nature starts at school: First, the
separation