Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/55

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CHAPTER IV


PHYSICAL FORCE

"He will not read her good,
 Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures;
 Through that old devil of the thousand lures,
 Through that dense hood:

 Through terror, through distrust;
 The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live:
 Through all that makes of him a sensitive
 Abhorring dust."


IN the last chapter the question was put whether women are intellectually and morally inferior to men, and the conclusion was that this was a question incapable of solution, certainly now, and probably always; furthermore, that, even if it were answered in the affirmative, this would be no reason for denying to women opportunities for their fullest development. We now come to another sort of superiority, which is capable of proof, which has been proved to demonstration and which of itself accounts perfectly for the subjection of women during the ages of human development in the past. This is, of course, the superiority of men as a whole, over women as a whole, in size, weight and muscle.

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