y
reasonable excuse to man for monopolizing all social and political
rights. The external world and our fellow beings, by whom and for whom
we live in body and mind, are the same for woman as for man, so that
even when the mentality of one sex is on the average a little higher
than that of the other, the first cannot claim the right of refusing
the second the liberty of living and acting from the social point of
view according to her own genius. The two sexes differ in many
respects it is true; on the other hand, all legal and consequently
artificial constraint of one by the other has the effect of hindering
the free development of both. Each sex has the right to look upon the
world and assimilate it according to its nature. It can thus develop
its personality so that it does not become etiolated and atrophied
like a domestic animal. It is only the right of the stronger,
cultivated by narrow-minded prejudice, that can deny or misunderstand
these facts. The legal restrictions which we impose on woman, on her
mentality and her whole life, especially her conjugal life, have
nothing in common with the just restrictions which the law should
provide against the encroachments of individual egoism, which injure
the rights of others or those of society.

=4. Prejudice and Tradition.=--There is still another enemy opposed to
reform, which is so deeply rooted in human nature that we can only
hope for a slow improvement in the quality of men, by its progressive
weakening. I refer to the host of prejudices, traditional customs,
mystic superstitions, religious dogmas, fashions, etc. I should
require many pages of moral preaching to deal with all the vices which
are perpetually created and supported by the wretched tendency of the
human mind to sanctify every ancient tradition and consider it as
unalterable.

Prejudice, faith in authority, mysticism, etc., with conscious or
unconscious hypocrisy, and by the aid of more or less transparent
sophisms, place themselves at the service of the basest human
passions--envy, hatred, vanity, avarice, lewdness, scandal, desire of
domination and idleness--and clothe them all with the sacred mantle of
ancient customs, the better to sanction their ignominy by relying on
the authority of tradition. There is no infamy which has not been
justified, glorified or even deified in this way.

I am convinced that it is only by the introduction of the scientific
spirit, of an inductive and philosophical m