ove that the great final end of
creation, whatever it may be, can only be achieved through the
perpetuity and increasing progress of the race, it follows that
unmarried woman is not the most necessary, the indispensable type of
woman. If there were no other class of females left upon the earth but
the women who do not bear children, then the world would be a failure,
creation would be nonplussed.

If, then, the movement for the emancipation of woman has for its final
end the making of never so fine a quality, never so sublimated a sort
of non-child-bearing women, it is an absurdity upon the face of it.

From the standpoint of the Chimney Corner it appears that too many
even of the most gifted and liberal-minded of the leaders in the
woman's rights movement have not yet discovered this flaw in their
logic. They seek to individualize women, not seeing, apparently,
that individualized women, old maids, and individualized men, old
bachelors, though they may be useful in certain minor ways, are, after
all, to speak with the relentlessness of science, fragmentary and
abortive, so far as the great scheme of the universe is concerned, and
often become, in addition, seriously detrimental to the right progress
of society. The man and woman united in marriage form the unit of the
race; they alone rightly wield the self-perpetuating power upon which
all human progress depends; without which the race itself must perish,
the universe become null.

Reaching this point of the argument, it becomes evident that while the
development of the individual man or individual woman is no doubt of
great importance, since, as Margaret Fuller has justly said, "there
must be units before there can be union," it is chiefly so because of
their relation to each other. Their character should be developed
with a view to their future union with each other, and not to be
independent of it. When the leaders of the woman's movement fully
realize this, and shape their course accordingly, they will have made
a great advance both in the value of their work and its claim upon
public sympathy. Moreover, they will have reached a point from which
it will be possible for them to investigate reform and idealize the
relations existing between men and women.

Mr. President, it is no part of my purpose in any manner whatever
to speak disrespectfully of the large number of intelligent ladies,
sometimes called strong-minded, who are constantly going before the
public