us today, and which the
nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in
oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still
retain one's own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to be
the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat
and the true individuality, man and woman, can meet without
antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one
another; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of
Madame de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive
everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor
of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow-being conveys the idea
of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-being
suffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of
my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire
sex.

Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the
truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and
activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers
should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of
every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.

This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation.
But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed
her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential
to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an
artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French
arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels,
and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the
expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown
plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially
in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.

Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these
words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest
and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glory
was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to
direct her own destiny--an aim certainly worthy of the great
enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the
tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything
against a world of prejudice and ignorance.

My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that the
emancipation of woman, as interpr