placed at her
disposal by the State, as well as at the disposal of man.

This is not all. Not only should she receive an education enabling her
to make a livelihood, but also one enabling her to direct her steps in
life in the right direction. She should be told the mysteries of life,
and the role she is called upon to play in life. In our times the ideal
young girl is the one who knows nothing. This ideal is absolutely false,
and creates the greatest source of danger in existence that stares women
in the face. This ideal was created by the monstrous selfishness of man,
who reserved to himself the satisfaction, the pleasure (only a rake's
pleasure) of teaching her in one moment what, little by little, without
shock, she should learn without astonishment.

It is innocence that disarms women and hands them over, defenceless, to
the most odious and revolting attempts to corrupt them. When we suppose
nowadays that a girl knows too much of the mysteries of love, we think
she is depraved; but degradation does not come from the knowledge of
certain things--it comes from the mysterious and unhealthy way in which
that knowledge is sometimes imparted.

If she were told openly, in full daylight, all she should know of the
role Nature has given her to play, she would not be depraved.

When a young girl shall have received from a rational society an
education that will enable her to live independently by her work, and to
behave to the best of interests, what will she do?

Well, she will do exactly what men do. The rich ones will manage their
own fortune, and will engage in pursuits, civil, political, and
intellectual. They will embrace professions, be writers, lawyers,
artists, doctors, professors, and so on. All the careers will be open to
them. In humbler stations of life, she will be clerk, shop-woman,
work-woman, servant, labourer, etc. In fact, no woman will be prevented
from entering a career for which she has aptitude, and, by so doing, no
intellectual force will be lost to society.

For instance, we have lately heard, in Europe, of a young American girl
passing a brilliant examination for naval engineering, who presented the
model of a ship far superior to anything known up to date. With the new
system a woman will not be prevented from building ships for the State
because she is a woman. This will not only be justice to woman, but
justice to society, which has a right to benefit by the genius of all
its members, wheth