s will work, and people will be
bundles of nerves devoted to enjoyment."

There was hardly any departure from the law in the part of women, it was
expressed only in prostitution, and in the refusal to bear children--in
private cases. The women belonging to the wealthy classes fulfilled
their law, while the men did not comply with theirs; and therefore the
women became stronger, and continued to 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 is required
is, to return to that, and this question cannot exist. Woman, having her
own inevitable task, will never demand the right to share the toil of men
in the mines and in the fields. She could only demand to share in the
fictitious labors of the m