Woman owes herself to one, man owes
himself to all; and each obtains peace and happiness only when he or she
has recognized this law and accepted this balance of things. The same
thing may be a good in the woman and an evil in the man, may be strength
in her, weakness in him.
There is then a feminine and a masculine morality--preparatory chapters,
as it were, to a general human morality. Below the virtue which is
evangelical and sexless, there is a virtue of sex. And this virtue of
sex is the occasion of mutual teaching, for each of the two incarnations
of virtue makes it its business to convert the other, the first
preaching love in the ears of justice, the second justice in the ears of
love. And so there is produced an oscillation and an average which
represent a social state, an epoch, sometimes a whole civilization.
Such at least is our European idea of the harmony of the sexes in a
graduated order of functions. America is on the road to revolutionize
this ideal by the introduction of the democratic principle of the
equality of individuals in a general equality of functions. Only, when
there is nothing left but a multitude of equal individualities, neither
young nor old, neither men nor women, neither benefited nor
benefactors--all social difference will turn upon money.
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