hood for a moment, that the elements of society are not
two men, but a little man and a little woman, which constitute a
family, the simplest and earliest form of association for productive
purposes. But Herr Duehring cannot by any means agree to this. On the
one hand the two constituents of society might very possibly be made
alike and on the other Herr Duehring would not be able to construct
the moral and legal equality of man and woman from the original
family. Therefore one of two things must take place. Either the
molecules of Herr Duehring's society from the multiplication of which
all society is built up is merely _a priori_ and destined to fail,
since two men cannot produce a child, or we must consider them as two
heads of families. In this case the entire foundation is made its very
opposite. Instead of the equality of man we have at the most the
equality of two heads of families, and since women are not
comprehended we have the consequent subjection of women.

We are sorry to warn the reader that these two notorious men cannot be
got rid of, for a long time. They take up in the realm of social
conditions the role heretofore played by the dwellers in the other
world with whom it is to be hoped we have now finished. Should any
question of political economy, of politics or any other such matter
require solution, out come the two men and make the thing axiomatic
forthwith. This is a remarkable, clever, and system-shaping discovery
of our system-shaping philosopher. But to give the truth its due we
are regretfully bound to say that he did not discover the two men.
They are common to the whole of the eighteenth century. They appear in
Rousseau's Treatise on Equality, 1754, where, by the way, they serve
to prove axiomatically the direct opposite of Herr Duehring's
contentions. They play an important part in political economy from
Adam Smith to Ricardo, but here they are so far unequal that they
follow different trades, principally hunting and fishing, and they
exchange their mutual products. They serve through the entire
eighteenth century principally as mere illustrative examples, and the
originality of Herr Duehring consists in the fact that he elevates
this method of illustration to a fundamental method for all social
science and to a measure of all historical instruction. There is no
easier way to arrive at "a really scientific philosophy of things and
men."

In order to create the fundamental axiom the two men