A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or, Woman affranchised.: An answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, Legouvé, Comte, and other modern innovatorsHéricourt, Madame d'
Philosophy
A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or, Woman affranchised.: An answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, Legouvé, Comte, and other modern innovators
Héricourt, Madame d'
Women's rights -- France
When will you respond to the appeal that generous and intelligent men
have made to you?
When will you cease to be masculine photographs, and resolve to complete
the revolution of humanity by finally making the word of woman heard in
Religion, in Justice, in Politics and in Science?
What are we to do, you say?
What are you to do, ladies? Well! what is done by women believing. Look
at those who have given their soul to a dogma; they form organizations,
teach, write, act on their surroundings and on the rising generation in
order to secure the triumph of the faith that has the support of their
conscience. Why do not you do as much as they?
Your rivals write books stamped with supernaturalism and individualistic
morality, why do you not write those that bear the stamp of rationalism,
of solidary morality and of a holy faith in Progress?
Your rivals found educational institutions and train up professors in
order to gain over the new generation to their dogmas and their
practices, why do not you do as much for the benefit of the new ideas?
Your rivals organize industrial associations, why do not you imitate
them?
Would not what is lawful to them be so to you.
Could a government which professes to revive the principles of '89, and
which is the offspring of Revolutionary right, entertain the thought of
fettering the direct heirs of the principles laid down by '89, while
leaving those free to act who are more or less their enemies? Can any one
of you admit such a possibility?
What are we to do?
You are to establish a journal to maintain your claims.
You are to appoint an encyclopedic committee to draw up a series of
treatises on the principal branches of human knowledge for the
enlightenment of women and the people.
You are to found a Polytechnic Institute for women.
You are to aid your sisters of the laboring classes to organize
themselves in trades associations on economical principles more equitable
than those of the present time.
You are to facilitate the return to virtue of the lost women who ask you
for aid and counsel.
You are to labor with all your might for the reform of educational
methods.
Yet, in the face of a task so complicated, you ask: what are we to do?
Ah, ye women who have attained majority, arise, if ye have heart and
courage!
Arise, and let those among you who are the most intelligent, the most
instructed, and who have the most time and liberty constitute an
_Apostleship of women_.
Around this Apostleship, let all the women of Progress be ranged, that
each one may serve the common cause according to her means.
And remember, remember above all things, that _Union is strength_.
THE END.
NEW BOOKS
And New Editions Recently Issued by CARLETON, PUBLISHER, NEW YORK.
_418 BROADWAY, CORNER OF LISPENARD STREET._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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