it is; it is much easier to go with the majority, than, as Kant did, to climb, painfully and slowly, to the heights of isolation.
But a great deal of what is taken for enmity to emancipation is due to the want of confidence in its possibility. Man does not really want woman as a slave: he is usually only too anxious for a companion. The education which the woman of the present day receives is not calculated to fit her for the battle against her real bondage. The last resource of her "womanly" teacher, if she declines to do this or that, is to say that no man will have her unless she does it. Women's education is directed solely to preparing them for their marriage, the happy state in which they are to find their crown. Such training would have little effect on man, but it serves to accentuate woman's womanishness, her dependence, and her servile condition. The education of woman must be taken out of the hands of woman; the education of mankind must be taken out of the hands of the mother. This is the first step towards placing woman in a relation to the idea of mankind, which since the beginning she has done more than anything else to hinder.
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A woman who had really given up her sexual self, who wished to be at peace would be no longer "woman." She would have ceased to be "woman," she would have received the inward and spiritual sign as well as the outward form of regeneration.
Can such a thing be?
There is no absolute woman, but even so to say "yes" to the above question is like giving one's assent to a miracle. Emancipation will not make woman happier; it will not ensure her salvation, and it is a long road which leads to God. No being in the transition stage between freedom and slavery can be happy. But will woman choose to abandon slavery in order to become unhappy? The question is not merely if it be possible for woman to
