Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/366

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THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN

petent judge of true manhood, and man the competent judge of true womanhood. It is a futile attempt to investigate why this dualism of the sexes must exist, and if it were not possible to have an organic world without this division; the fact is that the organic world does consist of male and female beings, who could not and would not exist without each other, and a sex "in itself" and "for itself," without relation to the other, is no more to be thought of than a thing in itself or for itself. Therefore, it is proper for each of the two parts to decide what qualities the other ought to have, in order to meet its expectations. According to this I ought to be content to express my opinions only on true womanhood, and to leave the judgment of my own sex to a representative of the other. But since, according to various signs, there is danger that a great part of the male sex, at least of the German tongue, is about to disappear, and all the world seems willing to leave it to its fate, I must, even in the interest ot the female sex, include the male in my observations, and do my duty in attempting to come to its rescue.

Another difficulty, besides the one resulting from. sexual one-sidedness that stands in the wav of finding an ideal of universal validity, is the diverging conceptions of various nations and finally of the single individuals. Every nation has a different ideal of womanhood, and among the individual men each one will be inclined to make that woman his ideal