The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill

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Title: The Subjection of Women

Author: John Stuart Mill

Release Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #27083]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN

BY
JOHN STUART MILL

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER
1869

LONDON:
SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.

CHAPTER I.

The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the
grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period
when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters,
and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly
growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of
life: That the principle which regulates the existing social
relations between the two sexes--the legal subordination of one sex
to the other--is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances
to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle
of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side,
nor disability on the other.

The very words necessary to express the task I have undertaken, show
how arduous it is. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the
difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of
the grounds of reason on which my conviction rests. The difficulty is
that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to
be contended against. So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the
feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a
preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted
as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake
the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling,
the worse it fares in argumentative contest, th