the right to lay out those resources of which he
is constructed happily, effectively, properly; the right to rise
to the highest position in excellence and in blessedness to which
his capacities and powers may elevate him. This is a
comprehensive description of man's rights, a comprehensive
description of woman's rights, and a comprehensive description of
human rights, under every form and phase of application of which
human rights may be supposed capable.

Now, I regard it as a repulsive feature of the age, that one sex
should feel itself constrained to come forward and defend itself
from the other sex; to demand a redress of the wrongs to which it
may be exposed, and a vindication of the rights to which it may
be entitled; for, look you! most obviously and clearly, the
relation between the sexes is naturally most intimate. The one
lives in and through the other. They do not make two distinct
classes, most obviously and certainly. They do not in nature;
they do not according to the Divine arrangement; and it always
seems to me to be most absurd, and in the highest degree
ungrateful, to present the subject with which we are now
occupied, under any such aspect. Mankind are divided,
doubtless--divided now by accident, and now by arrangement--into
different classes; but to make the women one class, and the men
another class, seems to me to be essentially and flagrantly
absurd. (Applause). Manifestly, the grand right of man (employing
the term man here not generally, but specifically), in his
relations to woman, as well as in all his other relations, is to
be grandly, vigorously beautiful; in every way a man; in all the
relations of life to be true to whatever may be characteristic of
his nature, and to whatever may be distinctive in his sex. And
what may be affirmed of him in this respect may be affirmed of
his mother, of his wife, of his sister.

It is a general law of our humanity, an all-comprehensive and all
controlling principle, that we belong, as human beings, to each
other. Every man belongs to the whole human family, and the whole
human family belongs to every one of its members. We are
mutually, as a matter of course, under the controlling influence
of this great law; we are mutually to contribute, as effectively
and wisely as we