for supposing that if, as a result of woman's adopting new forms of labour,
she should become more free, more wealthy, or more actively intelligent,
that this could in any way diminish her need of the physical and mental
comradeship of man, nor his need of her; nor that it would affect their
secondary sexual relations as progenitors, save by deepening,
concentrating, and extending throughout life the parental emotions. The
conception that man's and woman's need of each other could be touched, or
the emotions binding the sexes obliterated, by any mere change in the form
of labour performed by the woman of the race, is as grotesque in its
impossibility, as the suggestion that the placing of a shell on the
seashore this way or that might destroy the action of the earth's great
tidal wave.

But, it may be objected, "If there be absolutely no ground for the
formation of such an opinion, how comes it that, in one form or another, it
is so often expressed by persons who object to the entrance of woman into
new or intellectual fields of labour? Where there is smoke must there not
also be fire?" To which it must be replied, "Without fire, no smoke; but
very often the appearance of smoke where neither smoke nor fire exist!"

The fact that a statement is frequently made or a view held forms no
presumptive ground of its truth; but it is undoubtedly a ground for
supposing that there is an appearance or semblance which makes it appear
truth, and which suggests it. The universally entertained conception that
the sun moved round the world was not merely false, but the reverse of the
truth; all that was required for its inception was a fallacious appearance
suggesting it.

When we examine narrowly the statement, that the entrance of woman into the
new fields of labour, with its probably resulting greater freedom of