Extricate yourself from this as you can; I shall not help you. II. 3. Woman produces less than man industrially, you say. Admitting this to be true, do you count as nothing the great maternal function--the risks that woman runs in accomplishing it; Do you count as nothing the labors of the household, the cares that are lavished upon you, and to which you owe cleanliness and health? If the quantity of the product be the origin of the equality of right, why have those who produce little, those who produce nothing, and all of you who produce unequally, equal right? Why are all those women who produce, while their husbands and sons enjoy and dissipate, destitute of the rights which the latter possess? You do not admit the question of product into that of right when man is in question, why then do you admit it when woman is in question? You see that this is inconsiderate, irrational, unjust. 4. Woman cannot be the equal of man, because her peculiar temperament interdicts to her certain functions. Well, then a legislator can, without being unreasonable, decree that all men who are unfitted by temperament for the profession of arms, for instance, are excluded from equality of right! Temperament, the source of right? If a woman had written anything so absurd, she would have been cried down from one end of the world to the other. Why, gentlemen, do you not exclude from equality all men who are weak, all those who are incapable of performing the functions that you _prejudge_ woman incapable of performing? When you are in question, you admit indeed that the right to perform every function supposes neither the faculty nor the inclination to make use of it; why do you not reason in the same manner when the question concerns us? What would you think of women if, having your rights while you were in subjection, they should keep you in an inferior position because you could not accomplish the great functions of gestation and lactation. Man, they would say, being unable to be mother and nurse, shall not have the right of being instructed like us; of having, like us, civil dignity. His coarser temperament renders him incapable of being a witness to a certificate of birth or death; it is evident that his clumsiness excludes him judicially from diplomatic functions; we cannot therefore recognize his right to solicit them, etc. Ah! gentlemen, you reason in the same manner in excluding woman from equality under the pretext that, in general, she is of a temperament weaker than your own; that is, you reason absurdly. 5. Woman cannot be the equal of man in right because he protects and maintains her. If it is because you protect and maintain us, that we ought not to have our right, restore it then to unmarried women who are of age, and to widows whom you neither protect nor maintain.