influences of his home will have no effect on his character; even if he have no settled home, the female society he consorts with elsewhere will have much the same effect. And so long as his relations with that society are falsified, how can their effect be a good one? how can it be expected that the atmosphere of a subjected and distorted womanhood should be wholesome? The so-called virtues which it is the fashion to patronise when exhibited by women, are the virtues of the slave, not of the citizen; they borrow a little grace from being labelled womanly, but their real name is servile. And, after all, those who thoughtlessly foster this sort of thing, do not really admire it. They let it pass as a drawback of nature,—one of those things that cannot be helped, and give their attention only to picking out the few sweet plums which are to be found in the very unsavoury dish. But man cannot live on plums alone.
Nor is it any escape from responsibility to say that we must sit and wait until feminine nature changes and becomes something else than what it is. After all said and done, men must be here for something. If they had no business in the world, surely they would not have been put into it. Surely it is obvious enough that if on the one hand woman’s influence is to determine, and does determine, the moral character of society, men, on the other hand, have their part to play in educating the source of that influence. There is no evidence to show that so long as two sexes are needed to propagate the race, the part of the father, the brother, or other male companion, is likely to count for nothing or little in the training of girls. On the contrary, we know that—for the present, at all events—it counts for much. Then our contention is that in order to be improved and elevated by feminine influence, men must feel women to be in all things without exception their equals—let alone the question of superiority—and that in order to
