rule, and must rule, over men who have evaded the law, and who have,
therefore, lost their senses. It is generally stated that woman (the
woman of Paris in particular is childless) has become so bewitching,
through making use of all the means of civilization, that she has
gained the upper hand over man by this fascination of hers. This is
not only unjust, but precisely the reverse of the truth. It is not
the childless woman who has conquered man, but the mother, that woman
who has fulfilled her law, while the man has not fulfilled his. That
woman who deliberately remains childless, and who entrances man with
her shoulders and her locks, is not the woman who rules over men, but
the one who has been corrupted by man, who has descended to his
level,--to the level of the vicious man,--who has evaded the law
equally with himself, and who has lost, in company with him, every
rational idea of life.

From this error springs that remarkable piece of stupidity which is
called the rights of women. The formula of these rights of women is
as follows: "Here! you man," says the woman, "you have departed from
your law of real labor, and you want us to bear the burden of our
real labor. No, if this is to be so, we understand, as well as you
do, how to perform those semblances of labor which you exercise in
banks, ministries, universities, and academies; we desire, like
yourselves, under the pretext of the division of labor, to make use
of the labor of others, and to live for the gratification of our
caprices alone." They say this, and prove by their action that they
understand no worse, if not better, than men, how to exercise this
semblance of labor.

This so-called woman question has come up, and could only come up,
among men who have departed from the law of actual labor. All that