she constituted a woman at all? Merely that she may become a sort of
second-rate man?"

The truth is that this movement, based always upon a misconception of
equality, so far as it would change the duties of the sexes, is a
retrograde.--["It has been frequently observed that among declining
nations the social differences between the two sexes are first
obliterated, and afterwards even the intellectual differences. The more
masculine the women become, the more effeminate become the men. It is no
good symptom when there are almost as many female writers and female
rulers as there are male. Such was the case, for instance, in the
Hellenistic kingdoms, and in the age of the Caesars. What today is called
by many the emancipation of woman would ultimately end in the dissolution
of the family, and, if carried out, render poor service to the majority
of women. If man and woman were placed entirely on the same level, and if
in the competition between the two sexes nothing but an actual
superiority should decide, it is to be feared that woman would soon be
relegated to a condition as hard as that in which she is found among all
barbarous nations. It is precisely family life and higher civilization
that have emancipated woman. Those theorizers who, led astray by the dark
side of higher civilization, preach a community of goods, generally
contemplate in their simultaneous recommendation of the emancipation of
woman a more or less developed form of a community of wives. The grounds
of the two institutions are very similar." (Roscher's Political Economy,
p. 250.) Note also that difference in costumes of the sexes is least
apparent among lowly civilized peoples.]--One of the most striking
features in our progress from barbarism to civilization is the proper
adjustment of the work for men and women. One test of a civilization is
the difference of this work. This is a question not merely of division of
labor, but of differentiation with regard to sex. It not only takes into