Being unequal in strength and in intellect, and notwithstanding declared equal in right, it is evident therefore that you have not founded right on qualities. And if you have not taken these qualities into account when your right has been in question, why then do you talk so loudly of them when the question is that of the right of woman. If the faculties were the basis of right, as the faculties are unequal, the right would be unequal; and, to be just, it would be necessary to accord right to those who made good their claims to the necessary faculties and to exclude the rest; by this standard many women would be chosen and an infinite number of men excluded. See where we end when we have not the intellectual energy to take principles into consideration! You have but one means of evicting us of equality; namely, to prove that we do not belong to the same species as you. 2. Woman, you add, cannot have the same rights as man because, as mother and housewife, she performs only functions of an inferior order. From this second proposition, we have a right to conclude that _functions are the basis of right_; That your functions are equivalent, since your right is equal! That the functions of woman are not equivalent to those of man. You have to prove then, gentlemen, that the functions _individually_ performed by each of you are equivalent; that, for example, Cuvier, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Arago, Fulton, Jacquard, and other inventors and scholars have not done more, are not doing more for humanity and civilization than an equal number of manufacturers of pins' heads. You have to prove next that the labors of maternity, those of the household to which the workman owes his life, his health, his strength, the possibility of accomplishing his task--that these functions without which there would be no humanity, are not equivalent; that is, as useful to the social body as those of the manufacturer of jewels or of toys. You have to prove lastly that the functions of the female teacher, merchant, book keeper, clerk, dressmaker, milliner, cook, waiting-maid, etc., are not equivalent to those of the male teacher, merchant, accountant, clerk, cook, tailor, hatter, footman, etc.; I grant that it is embarrassing to your triumphant argument to encounter the thousands of _facts_ which show us the _real_ woman performing numerous functions in competition with you; So it is, and these facts must be taken into account. But gentlemen, I have you in a dilemma! if functions are the basis of right, as right is equal, functions are equivalent; in which case those performed by woman are not inferior, since none are so. The functions which she performs are therefore equivalent to yours, and, by this equivalence, she again becomes equal. Or else functions are not the basis of right; did you not take them into account when the establishment of your right was in question; why then do you speak of functions when the question is the right of woman?