ssimilation must go on to complete
equality; but it assuredly affords some presumption that such is the
case.

Neither does it avail anything to say that the _nature_ of the two
sexes adapts them to their present functions and position, and
renders these appropriate to them. Standing on the ground of common
sense and the constitution of the human mind, I deny that any one
knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have
only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had
ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if
there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not
under the control of the men, something might have been positively
known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in
the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an
eminently artificial thing--the result of forced repression in some
directions, unnatural stimulation in others. It may be asserted
without scruple, that no other class of dependents have had their
character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their
relation with their masters; for, if conquered and slave races have
been, in some respects, more forcibly repressed, whatever in them has
not been crushed down by an iron heel has generally been let alone,
and if left with any liberty of development, it has developed itself
according to its own laws; but in the case of women, a hot-house and
stove cultivation has always been carried on of some of the
capabilities of their nature, for the benefit and pleasure of their
masters. Then, because certain products of the general vital force
sprout luxuriantly and reach a great development in this heated
atmosphere and under this active nurture and watering, while other
shoots from the same root, which are left outside in the wintry air,
with ice purposely heaped all round them, have a stunted growth, and
some are burnt off with fire and disappear; men, with that inability
to recognise their own work which distinguishes the unanalytic mind,
indolently believe that the tree grows of itself in the way they have
made it grow, and that it would die if one half of it were not kept
in a vapour bath and the other half in the snow.

Of all difficulties which impede the progress of thought, and the
formation of well-grounded opinions on life and social arrangements,
the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and inattention of
man