of people we call
"Savages." Fatherhood will not be such an uncompensated sacrifice in
those days, even apart from its inherent rewards.

The point I am trying to make is that the legislation and the social
changes here advocated as necessary in the interests of women, and
indeed asserted to be their rights, do not involve any injury to men.
This common delusion is a mere instance of the poisonous principle of
politicians, notably fiscal politicians, and of many business men. Their
belief is that what benefits Germany must hurt England, that what hurts
Germany must benefit England, that all trade is a question of somebody
scoring off another or being scored off. The idea that there are great
games in which both sides stand to win, if they "play the game," is
meaningless to them. That German prosperity can favour English
prosperity, that true commerce is a mutual exchange for mutual
benefit--these are notions obviously absurd to people who think on this
horrible assumption which reigns unchallenged in a thousand columns of
fiscal controversy every morning. And when these people turn to the
question of legislation as between the sexes, they naturally assume that
anything which promises to benefit women will injure men. The vote is
thus regarded as a means of injuring men--necessarily, because it
advantages women--and assuredly such people will suppose that any
measures in the direction of granting what I here prefer to call the
"rights of mothers" (leaving to one side the "rights of women"),
necessarily involve a proportionate disadvantage to men. I deny it
utterly:

The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or God-like, bond or free.

The rights of mothers, we have seen, are fundamental for any society,
and to satisfy them is to meet the most clearly primary of social needs.
But there will be some readers of this book, perhaps, who miss any
discussion of the "rights of women." I do not care for the phrase,
because I do not think that we often see it usefully employed. For me
the propositions are self-evident that men and women, being human
beings, have the rights of human beings. Each of us has the right to the
conditions of the most complete self-development and expression that is
compatible with the granting of the same right to others. It is true
that women have been largely debarred from these conditions as a sex,
and in so far there is some meaning in the phrase "Women's rights." But
o